Zanshin? why?

[Riko]

Instead of arguing amongst yourselves about what merits you should have or not, you should be looking at possible alternatives to changing this job ability based on its meaning.

This description is taken from Wikipedia:

Zanshin
In the context of kendō, zanshin is the continued state of spirit, mental alertness and physical readiness to meet the situation (such as an opposing attack) that must be maintained when one returns to kamae after attacking. It is one of the essential elements that define a good attack.

In-game this could be changed to simply be an increase in the rate of parrying and/or evading an attack directed at you, and then attacking immediately after. Since parry is an A+ skill for Samurai and evasion skill is decent, I think this would fit in well as an alternative to what we have currently. I'd rather have something along the lines of this than having to miss my target, which I rarely do these days. I'd rather they miss me and pay for it.

[Superchicken]

never said it was effective at building tp, you fail to see where i have mentioned about the whole capped accuracy thing and how have a very low chance at missing an attack and then on that miss having zanshin activate.

Its not about building gear sets to get tp faster its about attacker faster and speeding up your DoT. Yes this will translate into also getting tp faster but just cause you have the TP to WS doesn't mean you should WS as soon as you get for things such as pulling hate off your tank when its not a good idea to do it because you will end up dead when the mob turns to you and bust your ass, etc. But if your hasted out you can deal more attacks and DoT to help kill the mob and let your tank tank it vs you spamming WS and pulling hate and becoming the tank when its not senseable for you to be tanking. Yes attacking faster gives the mob more tp faster but at least the mobs spamming his tp moves on the tank and not you. Yes i know some mobs use aoe tp moves, so then maybe the situation calls for you to not be in there dealing dmg and instead tping up on something else to dump your tp on, again in the long run tping up in haste gonna get you tp faster than banking on zanshin effects and ikishoten to get you to that tp. You're not seeing the whole acc thing here. If you have capped accuracy the chance of you hittin on your first attack is very very much higher than missing and getting a zanshin attack and getting your tp bonus from ikishoten. If your accuraccy is at 95% your most likely gonna not miss so zanshin not even gonna play a factor, and it would be better to attack faster.

and yes things like melee burns where your just burning through mobs to farm exp, cruor, w/e, of course you want to be tpign as fast as possible and when your capped on accuracy a haste set is gonna work out better. If you want to merit Ikishoten for your tp bonus so that if you were using a nana sword (which i doubt and if you are your gimping your dmg even worse) (lets remeber DoT here). you get your tp bonus on that so called 5% time you miss your initial first attack of the attack round go for it, but if you can't see where using something like a nana GK at lvl 90 effects your overall DoT especially in your WS damage well ><.

The point here is a lvl 90 sam inside abyssea should be capped on ACC if not should extremely close.

take everything out of the picture gear etc and lets go back to my statement about everything is situational to help clear the point.

SAM A and SAM B

SAM A has ikishoten SAM B doesn't

THey are both at their abyssea event. The tanks tanking the sams are in there DDing. both are in the same gear. Both build 100 tp from initial attack where neither of them missed cause they are both capped on accuracy. Did the ikishoten pay off? No, but wait here comes that hellish TP move from the NM, and oh crap our blm can't stun it cause he's timer down, Blade: Bash pow.

Next scenario. same NM w/e.

SAM A and SAM B are attacking at the same speed round for round both at X tp. SAM A misses and happens to gets a zanshin attack cause he has lvl 72 dmg 77 nana gk, and this pushes him to 100 tp or over cause he has ikishoten and gets his tp bonus. He WS's, oh yuck that was some crap dmg from my 77 dmg GK, 2 attack rounds later SAM B gets his 100 tp and POW with his much much higher base dmg GK destroys SAM A's WS dmg.

Lets add to this scenario. SAM A reaches 100 tp + before SAM B because of his zanshin attack and ikishoten bonus but does taht means its a good time to dump that tp as soon as he got it?

Now the argument you could make here is put SAM A and B with the same GK and then apply the nature of damage depends on TP of sam weaponskills. Yes SAM A may have slightly a bit more TP than SAM B because they then got lucky and zanshin activated on miss (cause now they aren't getting 100% activation cause we took away the nana gk) and because SAM got lucky on zanshin proc and got his ikishoten bonus SAM A now has 140 TP vs sam B's 100 and they both WS sure gear for gear etc SAM A gonna get a little more dmg, but wait before SAM A got to WS NM just did that nasty move and the blm stun was done and because SAM A had ikishoten and said i'm not even gonna put a single merit in blade bash, the group just wiped and lost claim and the NM depopped and now we gotta go refarm our KI's.

Everything is situational, everyone merits to what suits them. But when I think about it ikishoten is not worth it for me. Sure if the game was all about drop ws as soon as youget 100 tp everytime you get it then maybe ikishoten would become somewhat useful to me but even then the rare chance that i'm gonna miss and get my zanshin attack its still not worth it over other meritables imo.

You keep argueing me about this but i'm not gonna change my mind, but i will keep offering you my stance on ikishoten and zanshin and using a nana GK at lvl 90 etc. I know i'm not gonna change your mind about blade bash as i'm not trying to, i'm simply giving you support as to why i dont think ikishoten is worth it for ME and why I'd rather put my merits in Blade Bash, SHikikoyo (really i didnt want to do this at all but i did it for my abyssea groups benefit), and overwhelm.

[Superchicken]

I want to stress how disappointed i am at the recent development given to SAM. the whole development has revolved around improving a trait that relies on missing. It is so wrong and counter productive. What melee would want a trait that promotes missing? that is like promoting being bad, and our Emperian armor is littered with this useless stuff.

It is not so much that sam requires a ton of improvements (abyssea nature with it's improvements to crit hit WS is the only thing hurting the job at the moment) but that was just a disgraceful low blow to sam.

but lets go back to the OP.

I too i'm disappointed around improving a trait that relies on missing because with the current state of the game (abyssea and RR atma and being able to cap accuracy so easily) where missing is very few. I'm i complaining about it the set bonus on af3 of zanshin no, do i think it could have been something different yes. Can i deal with it, yes, but imo for the very few times zanshin comes into play having the set bonus evolve around it was meh for ME, but maybe not for others. Now i can go into my opinion about the stats placed on SAM af3 hands as well but its really irelevant to the OP.

[Zenpachi]

your still forgetting about the whole set bonus thing, if your zanshin is going off 100% of the time and you have full af3 (which isnt nice to tp in full af3) you'll have 25% chance of doing double damage zanshins which are sexy, ive done one with my masamune for 1966, but superchicken you have this suggestion all wrong wintermute was just trying to toss out ideas on how to turn zanshin into a useful situation, using Nanatsusaya would be the best way to take advantage of the Af3 set bonus to get some awesome numbers, but you would have to sacrifice ws damage, but the problem that most sams have today is using their store tp, i see tons of people stuck at 6 hit builds because they want that extra 1 or 2% haste when they could just toss on some extra stp and get a 5 hit build, hell with Kikugosaku you can have a 4 hit build (off topic but needed to be said) but zanshin isnt a complete waste it can activate on stoneskin and blink and i know everyone gets a kick endlessly swinging at mobs that perfect dodge,

WHEN SE GIVES YOU LEMONS, JUST MAKE LEMONADE AND STFU

[Invasion]

Samurai's AF3 should have had a Haste set bonus and some Haste on either Hands or Feet as it's one of the few jobs that cannot cap Haste while maintaining a 5-hit build. WAR is an insane DD and the fact that they can easily reach Haste cap while having a 5-hit and a incredible WS is mind blowing @.@

[chrism]

Ok so this is a thread for Samurais and the job trait Zanshin and here is what I think about Zanshin: Its nice to have a trait that allows me a chance to hit again after missing... But I think that when we miss that first hit zanshin should activate and give us a 99% chance to hit again instead of just having a normal attack swing aimlessly and miss twice in a row.... which sucks ass if you ask me.. excuse the language but anyways it seems like a lot of you are bashing on how zanshin is not a good thing, I say anything is better than nothing.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Samurai's AF3 should have had a Haste set bonus and some Haste on either Hands or Feet as it's one of the few jobs that cannot cap Haste while maintaining a 5-hit build. WAR is an insane DD and the fact that they can easily reach Haste cap while having a 5-hit and a incredible WS is mind blowing @.@

Sam can 5 hit Masamune and keep capped haste if you fulltime hasso with emp+2 pants (easier if you WS in them or eat carbonara but not needed), not impossible but annoying if you have to maintain seigan for some odd reason.

[Invasion]

The Enhanced Hasso effect goes towards the Magic Haste cap, not gear fyi.

[Neisan_Quetz]

EDIT: mistake on my part actually, it is magic haste, but that only matters if you have x2 marches anyway. While not exactly capped haste in the same sense of other melee capping gear haste Sam still gets close and pseudo caps it unless you're getting marches, in which case Sam lags unless they can swap it out for bustle dirs and maintain xhit (would probably need carbonara).

[Een]

I found Zanshin VERY useful when I leveled from 75-90 when I couldn't hit anything!

Other than that....it's poop. Not gonna build anything around 'missing' for tp.

That is why Sams can meditate, that's why you merit store tp. That's why you can set yourself up with a 4 hit build and WS pretty much non-stop.

Zanshin was just a bonus...cause back in the day...Samurai had the worst acc of any job almost. Now...if you miss that much, sacrifice some STP for some ACC. But Hasso takes care of that. Hell, I could 'accidentally' leave my WS gear on and still not miss the mob. And that has NO ACC that is speakable...lol

Meriting Zanshin...I don't think so. Back when you only engaged the mobs, ie Gods, to WS, guess what everyone came as? Samurai, cause they didn't need to feed the mob TP to gain TP and could Land WS's like crazy. Besides Overwhelm..the other category is basically a toy. Either give TP to another pt member to open a crazy magic burstable SC at start, or merit blade bash to where you can stun a mob...but then again Hobaku does a pretty good job of that to.

I couldn't imagine needing to merit Zanshin or Ikishoten.

Here: Zanshin Activation rate is 45% on 75SAM main, and about 25% on /SAM.
SAM merit Zanshin Attack Rate increases activation rate by 1% per upgrade. 1%...come on...no way would someone do that?!?!?! Without gear..50% is capped.

Ikisho: Game Description: Increases amount of TP gained with a Zanshin attack
Adds 3 TP per upgrade to the base weapon TP (before Store TP is applied) gained from a Zanshin attack.

I just don't see why.....do you honestly miss that much?!?!?!?!?!? Maybe carry a couple sniper rings with you if you do? Lol

A 4 hit build is best...with food and just a little bit of accuracy it just outweighs the amount of WS's you can produce with a STP build. Even on something you can barely hit....meditate and stick with the 45%, STP adds to Zanshin attacks to! Okay...Thread Closed please. lol