Thread: What I'd have preferred for 5.1 Samurai

• Consolidation: Seigan temporarily replaces Third Eye after proc.
• Consolidation: Merciful Eyes is now simply a proc-effect. While Eyes Opened is active, you gain a shield equal to 400 potency of healing which will only affect attacks which would reduce you below 20% HP. Can prevent fatal damage if the 400 potency would save you. Shield consumed upon use of Seigan. If not consumed by the time Eyes Opened ends, heals for the remaining shield amount.
• Consolidation: When Guren would strike only one target, Senei is used instead. (Appears as a dynamic key based on number of enemies in front of you.) May be decoupled by manually adding Senei to your hotbar while Guren is already present.
  
  
• Shoha increased to 120 potency per stack, to a maximum of 960 potency at 8 stacks. This extra margin has been added to ensure that one does not waste existing stacks when entering a long jump phase. Thus, a full Meditation at level 80 exactly doubles its effect from 600 at level 70 to 1200 potency at level 80. Simple, but also gives Meditation a little extra oomph.
• Meditate decoupled from the server tick. Now grants Kenki and Meditation instantly and then once per GCD until having reached a maximum of 5 ticks. This guarantees that each woven use will be worth 240 potency, and held use tapers to 240 ppgcd. Animation gains an initial flourish that lets it better fit woven use aesthetically. Now has 2 charges, so that you always have 1 to use for a period of downtime.
  
  
• Tsubame-Gaeshi now has an 8-second grace period (i.e. holds onto your most recent Iaijutsu for 8 seconds). Now scales with SkS.
• Tsubame-Gaeshi now applies a GCD equal to that of your other weaponskills, rather than a fixed 2.5-second GCD. This better maintains CD-sync and conserves at least 15% of a GCD's uptime (worth roughly 63+ potency).
• Hagakure returned. Gives 15 Kenki per use on a 30-second CD, scaling with SkS. 2 charges. With no other changes, this would be worth a mere 32 potency. With the changes listed further below, it neither grants nor costs potency (neutral-potency). Hagakure now introduced earlier, at level 58. Swaps places with Merciful Eyes.
  
  
• Shinten again gives only 300 potency (efficiency 12, down from 12.8), returning Samurai's positionals to a smooth potency value of 60. This will be a running theme.
• 20 potency from each finisher shuffled instead to Hakaze. This does not change combo potency or ppm (except faintly during MKSS), but means that Kaiten on Gekko/Kasha does not simply replace Shinten at 12 potency per kenki). This reduces the net potency value of Hagakure from 32 to 0; it is now purely a QoL tool. It also puts SAM at a simple 420 ppgcd outside of TG/MKSS.
• Seigan buffed to 240 (efficiency 16), giving it a potency bonus over Shinten of 60 (4x15). More noticeably worth using.
• Guren smoothed back to 800 potency. Senei smoothed to 1000. This gives Guren the same efficiency as Seigan and Senei the same efficiency increase over Seigan as Seigan gives over Shinten. Efficiencies: 12->16->20.
  
  
• Iaijutsu now uses a cast time of 60% of GCD from the start (1.5 base, 1.35 under Shifu and 1.3 after level 78). Enhanced Iaijutsu changed to Flash of Steel, which gives Gyoten and Yaten a second charge each and allows Iaijutsu and Tsubame-Gaeshi a 20-yalm range when carrying at least 10 additional Kenki and a charge of Gyoten, causing it to use Gyoten to immediately reach the target to deliver the Iaijutsu attack. This takes up no additional animation lock and Gyoten will go off slightly before the cast would otherwise complete such that the travel time does not delay the GCD. This better allows for SAM's mobility to be used without issues of desync or uptime loss.
  
  
• Balancing/Sums: Assuming one could already perfectly match Tsubame-Gaeshi, completely avoid Hagakure, and would never miss nor delay a Meditate weave, the above following changes would cost SAM roughly 80 ppm. However, such is almost absurdly unlikely. If one had to use even a single-Sen Hagakure per minute, as typically the case in the leading E2S SAM parses, each use would have cost a minimum of 108 potency (or 217 for 2 Sen, 326 for 3 Sen). A single missed Meditate weave would previously have cost 220 potency. Holding onto Meditate for an upcoming period of downtime would have cost 220*minutes_held.
  Thus, while the theoretical maximum has decreased minutely, SAM should be far more consistent in its output across varying fights, all while feeling smoother to play (i.e. no longer having to follow one and only one 1sen-Haga-per-TG rotation to feel fluid and tightly designed).

Reserved for notes and responses.

Why the Nerfs?

Read the "Balancing/Sums" section.

Merciful Eyes and TE-Seigan Consolidation

I chose not to consolidate ME with TE and Seigan with Shinten because leaving Shinten and Seigan separate allows one to bank Seigan for later use to perfectly max gauge before raid buffs. They have distinct Kenki costs, after all, and I prefer it that way. I like the 10/15/20/25/50 cost range.

Moreover, I saw no reason to make ME an active skill. It is only ever useful when it prevents death, but that can be handled passively with just as much interaction as it has now. In all other cases, it merely overheals you in light of AoE healing. By simply using it as passive last-ditch healing that can be granted at end of effect if it doesn't prevent death in the meantime it maintains the exact same use without cluttering the bar.

Finally, I buffed ME from 200 to 400 because a mere 200 potency is outright insignificant, hard even to notice in its effect on one's health bar. If I could fix Second Wind as well (say, to 1200 potency instead of the mere 6% or so of HP it currently grants at level 80), I'd likely buff ME further to 600 potency.

Guren-Senei Consolidation

Yes, this would inadvertantly make it so you could never mistakenly hit Guren in single-target. I honestly believe these single-alternatives to be merely bloat, as there is not a single ST situation in which we'd use the AoE variant, nor a single AoE situation (even with only 2 targets) in which we'd use the single-target version, and so I am okay with that.

You can still reposition around the target to get other enemies out of your line of attack in order to use Senei specifically, just as you would have done when you only had Guren in order to avoid, say, hitting CCed, damage-reflecting, or explode-on-death mobs.

I personally just wish they would remove that server tick thing from meditation. In its current state, it will force us to fish for server ticks, and that is terrible.
This made me switch from monk to sam, and now both have to fish for it. On top of that, ps4 players can't even do that effectively, I just can't understand how the dev team can be so clueless.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Sadly, that seems like it'll just get more vital, as it'll now provide a third of a Shoha atop its 128+ potency of Kenki value. Just as awkward to fish, and even more depends on it.

Wouldn't want to allow for more than one fluid rotation anything, nah -- let's just make one of the three most awkward mechanics even more prominent and call it a day...

Agreed, they could have taken time to fix the rotation and making more fluid instead of forcing samurais to have a filler combo, this doesn't make sense at all.