Tachi: Shoha :: Don't panic, its the next greatest thing since sliced bread!

For the record, my main job is ranger. I have both a relic and an empyrean weapon for the job, and as far as the capability of this job goes, its is a superb DD but it has not, since back in 2004/5, been the supreme damage dealer in FFXI.

I also have an Ukonvasara warrior, which is not my main but rather a secondary job and is therefore not anywhere near as well geared or set up as my ranger is.

I say this now, because I am a little disappointed in the events following the last version update. The introduction of the new merited weapon skills was fantastic - I enjoy Last Stand and the dagger weapon skill a good deal. They are beefy weaponskills that do very consistent and decent damage outside the abyssean front, and are great for voidwatch in its old andn ew installments.

HOWEVER...

The subject is Tachi: shoha. In my opinion, the weaponskill is overpowered to a very, very large degree. Samurai has been in the past one of the best stock damage dealers, and abyssea made them fade from the endgame scene for quite a while but, sweet Jesus, what a revival! A two hit Weaponskill with a strong fTP modifier and a 100% strength modifier when fully merited is fantastic. But, alas, it is also obscene.

Speaking for a base of players that had to sweat, grind, and work very hard to achieve the pinnacle of my respective job, it is disheartening to see players pick up the job samurai, merit this weaponskill three or four times and grab a subpar weapon off the AH and consistently do higher spike damage, more frequently, than I can. We're not talking about a difference of a few key pieces of gear; A Samurai can grab a cheap or easily obtained weapon and thow on a little bit of gear and do ridiculously well, where in the same situation any other job would fail horribly.

It is not the job, though, it is the weaponskill. Samurai was quite capable of holding its own with Tachi: Fudo or Tachi: Kaiten, but now any samurai fresh out of windurst woods can do as well or better than their predecessors with a minimum amount of effort.

The end result? A gradual shift to SAM-o-mania, as in the 75 cap era, albeit samurai is considerably more powerful now through its new weaponskill than it was in relation to all other jobs at 75.

My opinion would be to modify its strength moderately, by no means reducing it to irrelevance, but bringing it back to being on par with other jobs. When a Samurai with a magian great katana and average equipment can easily out perform someone who took the effort to make, say, an Ukonvasara (PRE-NERF!!) and the gear out their job well, there is a problem. When a samurai's own empyrean weapon and weaponskill and its own relic and relic weaponskill are completely and utterly replaced by a great katana that can be created in the course of a week by someone working by themself and a weaponskill that requires a few solid hours in an abyssea experience alliance, there is a problem.

Tachi: Shoha is a great addition to the arsenal of the endgame linkshell, but it is too powerful to the point of redundency.

I shall quote myself, simply because i thin kit's befitting:

It's not Tachi: Shoha It's Tachi: Godmode

Keep in mind my SAM is still only 92, so haven't unlocked this yet, and I have no mythic or relic of any kind yet, so don't have any actual numbers here to compare things. This post is more out of curiousity, wondering if the situation is really as bad off as the OP seems to be making it, and jsut what should/needs to be done about it. Please forgive the rambling thoughts, but I'm also still trying to decide just where I'm ultimately going to focus my merits on these WS:

If it is a sub-par SAM (gear and skill wise) doing massive chunks of damage like that--to the point they pull hate--wouldn't they get in big trouble and die? Hopefully, those lolSAM's would figure out they either need to gear better and such, or stop being so aggressive. Also, the other WS mentioned may still have utility that the new ones don't--ie: skillchain lines (provided people still work with them as a group, magic bursting and what not--but that is a whole other issue).

Just curious how skewed this new WS actually is in the general sense. Sure, for someone who is able to fully trick out with it, it may be insane output. I myself am likely not going to be able to fully merit any one of them, and IDK if I will ever get around to making an empyrean or completing a relic/mythic. I already have 31 magians across 10 jobs, 7 of which I play regularly, 5 DD and 2 mage (with 2 DD and 1 mage I use situationally). So, I may never be able to max out any of these new WS for any one job, but MIGHT be able to get them on par with other top tier WS with this ONE WS for some jobs (think Stardiver vs. Drakesbane: don't have Drakesbane but may be able to get Stardiver to level 3 or 4). So, in that scenario, it may be more of a game balancer than a game breaker for the general population but broken for a small section of the population?

Maybe the problem isn't necessarily the WS itself, but the background tweaks affecting it like things associated with it's modifier (like fSTR and such). Perhaps it should have been a different mod like DEX, or maybe setting lower FTP mods on it. Perhaps the fSTR function is due for some tweaking in general now....idk...just spitballing on some things that could be done about it.

It's not really a good idea to just whine and complain about something being overpowered if you're not willing to provide any ideas on just what is broken about it and offering suggestions....might get some very unwanted changes otherwise. So... just what would you expect to see them do to the WS (or maybe WS calculation in general). Strong clamping on fSTR in the extremes? Adjustments to FTP bonuses? pDIF tweaking? Level Difference? Need some suggestions, otherwise we may get dumped on pretty bad here....

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Originally Posted by RAIST

......concerns......

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I also recently decided to finish leveling SAM, and am currently finishing up my TP bonus 100 GK. Keep in mind that you have to have to have the Nyzul Isle weapon skill in order to complete the TP bonus GK.

I haven't used shoha much outside of abyssea so far, other than to do nyzul isle, and @ 30 minutes in dynamis. Inside of abyssea, it is really way more powerful than any other WS sam has IMO. At 5/5 I was able to frequently 1 shot exp mobs with an auction house GK. Outside abyssea however, I wasn't all that impressed. It's still really powerful, but not nearly as game breaking as people make it sound. from what I've read, the TP bonus GK makes a huge difference, and I still have @425 more ws to go before I complete it (Still on the ws DMG + %10 stage). When I get it finished, and get a little better gear, I'll let you know how it handles. At my current (sub-par) level, I don't think people should be worried about this like they are though.

Ok, I can dig a little deeper into this than I did originally.

The problem with Shoha is that it is a two hit, 100% STR modified WS. fSTR has only something to do with it - other WSs like, for instance, Coronach or Last Stand have different mods (40% DEX and 30% AGI for Coronach, 100% AGI for Last Stand). The basic idea is that a lot of your modifiers get converted into base damage for the weapon during that WS, -HOWEVER-, for non-STR based WSs, you still need to bring your STR up for fSTR concerns. So, a STR based WS automatically has most of those WSs beat for simple fact that it does not need to cap fSTR before recieving full benefit of the WS modifiers; STR *IS* the modifier.

The key difference between abyssea EXP mobs and outside of abyssea is a matter of pDIF; atmas will have some effect on Shoha damage, particularly double and triple attack bonuses and STR additions as well as abyssite of furtherance. Outside of abyssea, your numbers will be lower because of difference in level between you and mobs as well as potential accuracy issues that do not really exist in abyssea. Not to mention that many voidwatch NMs take reduced physical damage anyway.

Now, Shoha (I mispoke earlier if I said it ignores defense, it does not) is suspected to have the same WS properties as Yukikaze, Gekko, and Kasha - a hidden attack bonus. I believe testing is in progress to determine that. The BIG strength of Shoha versus other merited WSs, or, in truth, any other WS in the game, is it is effectively a 2-hit gekko with a 100% STR modifier instead of 75%. With any double attack chance at all, there is the potential for a three hit but spike damage like that cannot seriously be taken into consideration in the overall picture.

My basic opinion comes from watching the same SAM in an abyssea alliance pounding out 3-6K Shoha's, and then doing the T6 VW in Valkurm and popping 1250-3000 damage shoha's. Ukon warriors in that same alliance were doing 1000-3400, spikes being relatively rare, I was doing 1300 coronachs with a +43 STR, +48 DEX, +46 AGI build in addition to 49 ranged attack and 1750-2000 Last stands with a +91 AGI set ( am still tweaking last stand set). The samurai was using average gear and a masamune (AKA Unkai set +2 with an average WS set). The WAR(s) in question were wearing average gear as well (mixture of DEX, crit rate, and STR and attack for WS). The disparity in damage doesn't seem like much, except the SAM was able to perform 2-3 WS's for every one Ukkos, and the same for me. COR was NOT involved in this setup; no misers roll or samurais roll was in effect. I was running a 4-hit build for my annihilator, the WAR mentioned a 6-hit for ukkos, and the SAM a 5-hit with masamune. With a TP bonus GKT the output of damage would have increased, and especially with a lower xhit on the SAM.

I do not have raw numbers to work with, but leveling SAM and meriting it to run testing is not completely out of the question - obtaining SAM TP and WS gearsets is a cakewalk compared to many other jobs.

Also consider this: The above numbers are pre-nerf for Ukko's Fury which means that following it, the WARs damage will lose a good chunk. Barring Resolution WARs and DRKs, Ukko's was the only WS capable of competing with Shoha. And keep in mind is not the spike damage that is the consideration on Shoha, though it plays a role, it is the characteristics of the job AND having that kind of WS. Imagine if SAM could use Ukko's fury on a 4-hit build... A good SAM can crank out, without Misers or SAM roll, 9-10 WSs in a string with the use of meditate and 2 hour ability. With Miser's and SAM roll, could probably increase that number to 15+ WSs in a rapid string with skillful use of meditate and sekanoki (since with Misers and SAM roll, the SAM would be operating on a 2-hit build if not a 1-hit while meditate is active from atmacite and meditate regain ticks).

As for fixing the weaponskill, making it either a single hit weaponskill or removing the theoretical hidden attack bonus would suffice, or as Raist suggests, reducing the fTP mod on it.

I'll agree Tachi: Shoha definatly needs a nerf, I recently finished Amanomurakumo 95 and shohas dmg trounces all over kaitens.

I don't really care that it trounces over your relic weaponskill, on the whole most jobs relic weaponskills suck so horribly they are not even worth mentioning. Kaiten was one of the better weaponskills (Up there with coronach, namas arrow, and catastrophe), but all of the above mentioned weaponskills have been outclasses by other weaponskills for the weapon classes they belong to (Shoha for GKT, Last Stand/Slugshot for Gun, Jishnu's/Apex Arrow/Sidewinder for Bow, and I have no clue for scythe because, lets face it, its a dark knights weapon)

What I was getting at is that the weapon skill is too powerful, especially considering what is required to make it very good. Relic weapon? Please. Empyrean? Get real. Mythic? Ok, with level 3 aftermath active...maybe. GKT tp bonus +100 magian trial? Oh hell yes, hard to obtain weapons burn in the gate of hades, lets go get a really easy weapon and make people who took the time to make that high base damage weapons cry like babies.

I am not a SAM, but the very concept upsets me. Spend the time, money, or effort to make a very good weapon and get spewed all over by a fell cleave burned samurai that spends a week making a TP bonus great katana and goes and grabs some +1 unkai gear after fully meriting shoha.

Take it a step further, and a sam with actually good gear and that same easy to obtain weapon will make your masamune, or amano looks like a can opener for all its worth.

I hate the idea of nerfing even an OP weaponskill like this, but for all of their talk about balance, this was clearly the wrong direction to go in and it does need to be adjusted, if only slightly.

SITE FEEDBACK.

It's already too late! Your thread will blow up in a ridiculous mass of posts where people call you out on things to tell you you're just QQing, and then people trollbaiting each other, turning the thread away from the topic!! I have once challenged Shoha. Needless to say, it only created squalor. D:

Bewaaaaare~ http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy...t_1_(FFXI).png

Actually, I have done some further testing, and come to the conclusion that Tachi: Shoha is not completely broken - it puts SAM on par with an Ukon WAR or relic ranger. Initial wtf fasctor was an oddball occurence, though I still think it shouldn't be powerful enough to compete with an ukko's fury WAR or relic DDs.

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Originally Posted by Aeyliea

Actually, I have done some further testing, and come to the conclusion that Tachi: Shoha is not completely broken - it puts SAM on par with an Ukon WAR or relic ranger. Initial wtf fasctor was an oddball occurence, though I still think it shouldn't be powerful enough to compete with an ukko's fury WAR or relic DDs.

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Considering how bad Fudo is, what other option would you have? Kaiten doesn't even approach Fudo's power, and Fudo doesn't touch UF and the rest of the crit emp WS's. Shoha is just a super Gekko. It has the same properties as Gekko did in the past, it's something you spam on high defense monsters. What you should be worrying about is Stardiver. It has the potential to beat out Shoha, provided the SAM is buffed enough.

Here's your smn fix right here, give them yojimbo. and make his bp Tachi: Shoha.

Stardiver I have not seen anything exciting from, Drakesbane is ALWAYS a better option if you don't suck ass.

And yeah, Fudo doesn't beat UF in spike damage, but you neglect to mention the fact that SAMs can pop more than one Fudo in the time it takes a WAR to do one UF. Same principle for SHoha; its WS speed plus WS damage thats an issue still, and it will not be an issue until UF gets its nerf, then Shoha will be best WS in game outside of Resolution with mighty strikes up :)

Even at 2 merits, Tachi: Shoha is what every merited WS should be. Instead of taking Shoha down, I say bring every other WS on level terms (Especially Requiescat, which the devs should never have allowed to be released with that needless 20% attack penalty).

How many 99Ukons have you compared Shoha's damage too? I'm guessing not a lot. a lvl 99 WS with a lvl 99 weapon is most likely gonna do more damage than a lvl 90. This doesn't see too mind blowing to me. Just sayin. Might wanna keep the linch mob at bay until you see some actual comparisons.

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Originally Posted by Aeyliea

Stardiver I have not seen anything exciting from, Drakesbane is ALWAYS a better option if you don't suck ass.

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You a lie! DB is always a better option inside abyssea, but outside it's a toss up at least.

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Originally Posted by Aeyliea

Stardiver I have not seen anything exciting from, Drakesbane is ALWAYS a better option if you don't suck ass.

And yeah, Fudo doesn't beat UF in spike damage, but you neglect to mention the fact that SAMs can pop more than one Fudo in the time it takes a WAR to do one UF. Same principle for SHoha; its WS speed plus WS damage thats an issue still, and it will not be an issue until UF gets its nerf, then Shoha will be best WS in game outside of Resolution with mighty strikes up :)

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Originally Posted by Motenten

No. Drakes matches Stardiver at (for the config I have set up) 43% crit rate. That's capped dDex crit rate plus merits plus 10% base weaponskill crit rate at 100 TP plus ~8% extra percent (gear and/or higher TP).

RR atma in Abyssea puts you at ~55% crit rate before figuring the weaponskill itself and the crit hit damage on top of that, so certainly Drakes wins there. Outside Abyssea, that's rather more difficult to achieve.

If you look purely at total fTP, Drakes is about 4.1 or 4.2 (gorget or gorget+belt) while Stardiver is about 0.95*4 = 3.8, maybe 3.88 with some extra TP. That puts Drakes 6%-10% ahead of Stardiver. On the other hand, Stardiver gets 100% str mod vs Drakes' 50%, which you can expect to yield roughly a 35% lead in total base damage. Drakes gets crits, but also gets attack penalty, and that's not an easy total effect to throw a number at, but overall it should be easily clear that Stardiver 'should' be stronger most of the time, and that you would need a pretty decent crit rate for Drakes to overtake it.


Shoha wins over Stardiver at less than 1.65 cRatio. I would expect it to similarly win over Drakes when under some cRatio value, though the exact value would depend on overall crit rate and such on Drakes. From the above, if you're at 43% crit rate than Shoha should win if cRatio is 1.65 or less, though the comparison of crit rate to attack bonus makes things a bit fuzzy.

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(posted in TACTICS
Damage Dealing
Re: [dev1064] Job Adjustments: Weapon Skills

I know you will critisize my response from the start because I am SAM myself and "live in denial" but in all honesty, I do not quite understand where all this "Tachi: Shoha is overpowered" talk comes from. Yes, it is a strong weaponskill and yes, in raw damage it even beats our Relic and Empyrean weaponskill. However Fudo -which is second in line now- (again only raw damage wise) wasn't the strongest weaponskills to start with. Still, Shoha can put out more than decent numbers but it also has its downsides, which many do not want to see.

SC properties: Yes, the SC properties of Shoha aren't that great. Fragmentation/Compression, which is a punch in the face for Konzen-ittai lovers, because it will not generate a lv 3 SC like Gekko, Kasha, Kaiten or Fudo. Only a lvl 2 will come out of it and hence it will never be the best option to be used in combination with that job ability. Especially the combination of Konzen-ittai + Sekkanoki, which can create double light SCs Shoha will always fall short of Kaiten or Fudo and that by a large amount.
Even with only Sekkanoki up, it is questionable if Kasha -> Shoha will put out more damage than a simple Fudo -> Fudo would do, due to the fact that Kasha isn't as powerful as Fudo. It becomes even more apparent when duoing when Fudo is able to either make Light or Darkness Skillchains, no matter what weapon your partner is using, same thing in small groups where it actually is possible to SC properly without too long waiting times and barely any TP loss from waiting.

Aftermath: Yes, believe it or not, even Samurais profit from the aftermath a empyrean weapon bestows upon usage of the weaponskill. Due to the low amount of hits required for 100%TP maybe not as much as other jobs, but it sure as hell does. At a chance of 30% ODD it will statistically at least happen once if not more often, which easily ends up generating 600 damage or even more during your TP phase over a TP phase without aftermath, and yes, Shoha doesn't induce aftermath effects. So every few weaponskills you are bound to use another WS further "taking away" from Shoha.

Relation to other weapons: I cannot show parses since I do not use additional programs for FFXI but several people of my group do parse quite often when we do VW and never, I mean really NEVER has a Samurai (not only me) outparsed our warrior, and no, they (we) are not shitty Samurais, they (we) know how to play the job and how to gear it. So, if Shoha is so ridiculously broken, how can this warrior still maintain a higher damage than we do?

Again, I agree, Shoha is pretty strong and maybe one of the best WSs ingame, I however do not agree with it being overpowered.

I'm sorry, Shoha is the type of damage ALL JOBS SHOULD BE DEALING AT 99! I don't understand what is so difficult to understand about dealing more damage at 99 then at 75, what part of 24 levels higher do you not understand?

The real answer is that SE needs to stop basing everyone else's damage around competing with weaponskills at the 75 cap and join the rest of us here in 2012.

As for people arguing shoha is too strong in comparison to other SAM WSs, if you have better gear you're still going to do more damage the the AH SAM's shoha, chill the **** out.

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Originally Posted by Aeyliea

Stardiver I have not seen anything exciting from, Drakesbane is ALWAYS a better option if you don't suck ass.

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Really.... Do you have anything to back that up?
Given gear for the ws's Stardiver has a 100% str mod, with 4 hits, 3.8 ftp at 100%, 4.175 at 200% and 4.55 at 300%. and when used you lower the mobs crit def by 5%.

For Drakesbane a 50% str mod, 4.0 ftp at all percentage, crit+10, 25, 40 at tp%, attack penalty of .8125.

drakes only has 5% more ftp at 100%, and lower after that. Drakes has at least 33% less base damage than stardiver given you have decent str+ gear. So at worst stardiver is about 28% head at 100% tp. Then with the attack penality even crit's dont add that much damage as they would have without it, plus the percentage of crits outside of abyssea isn't going to be very good outside of abyssea.

If you do the math you will see that stardiver is quite a bit better than drakesbane outside of abyssea.

The problem I see with shoha isn't that it's over powered, it's that the WS is for SAM. If you put a ws doing this sort of damage on a job who can't WS spam like SAM then the damage from this WS isn't a problem. Shoha isn't even the best merit WS, yet people have problems with it due to it being on SAM and easy to use.

Fudo beats Shoha when Fudo's attack is capped

Shoha beats Fudo when Fudo's attack isn't capped

Fuck it, even Gekko beats Fudo when Fudo's attack isn't capped.


What's a SAM to do?!

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Originally Posted by Dirtyfinger

Fudo beats Shoha when Fudo's attack is capped

Shoha beats Fudo when Fudo's attack isn't capped


What's a SAM to do?!

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This x1000. (edited out the 3rd line, never found Gekko > fudo)

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Originally Posted by Quetzacoatl

Bewaaaaare~ http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy...t_1_(FFXI).png

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Lol. I don't care about the rest of the thread, but I had to comment on how much I love this. I'm making it my signature. ^^

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Originally Posted by Dirtyfinger

Fudo beats Shoha when Fudo's attack is capped

Shoha beats Fudo when Fudo's attack isn't capped

Fuck it, even Gekko beats Fudo when Fudo's attack isn't capped.


What's a SAM to do?!

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zomg keep using those stalwarts!?!?!

Tachi: Ageha all the things obviously.

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Originally Posted by Saiken253

I shall quote myself, simply because i thin kit's befitting:

It's not Tachi: Shoha It's Tachi: Godmode

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tachi:desu [fixed]

if you want to be technical...

Tachi: Kami