Samurai Feedback Post

As it currently stands as of patch 4.2 Samurai has seen no changes. Throughout the development teams efforts to fix jobs that came out less then desired upon launch Samurai has quickly found it\\'s way to the bottom of list. I\\'m creating this post to get the Samurai community to give feedback on how they feel the job can be adjusted to make it more accepted by the mid-core and hard-core community.

While they aren't getting adjustments, they might still see potency increases, but we'll have to wait and see until patch notes drop this week.

I think the problem is "outright raw personal damage." Like BLM, SAM is also in the precarious position of being labeled a "selfish DPS." In fact, SAM and BLM are both selfish DPS jobs and contribute nothing group (raid) DPS. It seems the SE is either unwilling to give either job the damage needed to justify them being used in raids or simply put, SE believes that SAM, like BLM is fine enough. We will need to wait for the patch notes to drop and tinker around with the changes before we can draw any logical conclusions. I do believe that the devs idea of "selfish DPS" should re-evaluated. Just my opinion.

Phone edit: before anyone says slashing debuff is something, NIN already covers that and most people will also have a WAR in the group. Both SAM and BLM should be top DPS and competing with each other but this does not seem to be the case for the most part. Again, these are just my opinions.

SAM already isn't in a great place but I predict after the upcoming MNK(and BLM to an extent) buffs, SAM will be where BLM is now and BLM will be where SAM is now. I wonder what they're thinking...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marianno

Phone edit: before anyone says slashing debuff is something, NIN already covers that and most people will also have a WAR in the group. Both SAM and BLM should be top DPS and competing with each other but this does not seem to be the case for the most part. Again, these are just my opinions.

---

Not every group does have that, though. Initially my static group was running PLD/DRK as tanks and my co-melee DPS was DRG. So when we were initially progressing and I was playing SAM, I was the sole source of slashing debuff. I don't think it's something that can be entirely hand waved away. Yes, it's minor, and it's something that is doubled over from two other jobs, but it exists all the same.

Unless, of course, we're not going to count that as utility on ANY job, but that's often not how I see WAR and NIN described.

The problem with Samurai is that it's undesirable in all forms of raiding. Progging it has the no utility aside slashing when a Samurai dies their dps drops like a brick and when they raise its hard for them to get back into action DEAD WEIGHT no Shifu and no Jinpu and in certain comps no Slashing. When they're going for the clear most groups make as many mid maxing changes they can in order to increase raid dps Samurai would be good in this regard but Samurai isn't the highest dps. And farm/speed kills disregard Samurai for the same principles. The development team needs to realize their mistake and either buff Samurai dps or get it utility to make it more desirable.

If your samurai is good, it helps in prog as if the samurai doesn't die, he or she can prop up the DPS from other party members to make sure that deaths can still mean a clear rather than hitting enrage. But once your team has its act together, there really isn't much of a benefit, and you really don't save much time by taking a samurai for weekly clears over other jobs.

At least this is what we found when I ran both as ninja and samurai later into the raid tier.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gintokiygo

As it currently stands as of patch 4.2 Samurai has seen no changes. Throughout the development teams efforts to fix jobs that came out less then desired upon launch Samurai has quickly found it\\'s way to the bottom of list. I\\'m creating this post to get the Samurai community to give feedback on how they feel the job can be adjusted to make it more accepted by the mid-core and hard-core community.

---

The issue is that Square Enix will not take into account DPS utility when balancing DPS classes, meaning Samurai and Black Mage will always get the raw end of the stick

The only way to balance SAM with other DPS classes is to ramp up their damage so that 4 SAM damage = 1 SAM + 3 DPS with utility... I'm not a math person so I'm not sure what the exact numbers would need to look like

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HaroldSaxon

The issue is that Square Enix will not take into account DPS utility when balancing DPS classes, meaning Samurai and Black Mage will always get the raw end of the stick

---

I think they started with that intent when Stormblood launched with how much utility jobs like SMN and DRG have, so they rightly started the expansion with lower damage. Then Square caved to the complaints and buffed the jobs so that now jobs have both high damage, utility, and mobility regarding mechanics. This is blatantly in contrast to their initially stated goal that high mobility, high utility jobs would have low personal DPS.

^This above. Square should have gone with their initial intent. If I remember correctly when people complained about DRG and it was stated in some live letter or what have you, "DRG is a support melee job" people disliked that so Square caved. Cannot find where that was said but I do remember that being stated. SAM/BLM should be competing with each other but instead both are flat out not found to be in between a rock and a hard place.

I'm inclined to agree on I believe that the initial potencies and weapon skills damage that samurai started out with was meant to compete with the other dps starting SB launch

Futhermore the development team needs to acknowledge that the meta has been the same for quite some time as far as dps is concerned double range is too powerful due to the disembowel debuff.

I dislike saying that something should get toned down but in this case, I think maybe disembowel needs some kind of rework, removal, or outright removal while adding the damage to DRG personally. No amount of "play what you want and ignore the meta" will be enough currently. Square needs to not only acknowledge that jobs with utility simply do said DPS more damage than those with only raw personal damage but address the fact that certain jobs are always wanted and certain others are shunned or simply not as favorable. We have gone too long with jobs that have tons of utility running rampant and out of control. This needs to stop or give SAM/BLM the numbers to match. (Got a little carried away but you get the point).

Potency increases would be enough Samurai plays very well for the target playerbase it's aimmed towards

Everyone complained SAM was "OP" when 4.0 launched, so SE buffed the other melee classes and now everyone says "SAM is worthless raiding, go DRG or NIN". Maybe don't listen to players who say DRG and NIN need buffs next time SE.

When SAM was announced, I was hoping it would be a contender for the DRG slot with it's DPS. I would like it if SE would consider giving SAM piercing debuff, although the katana slashes it can also pierce, Yukikaze's animation is a slash then a pierce. Shintens are pierces as well, the lore already matches so why not give it piercing? :) (clarification, I know it's damage is slashing and those attacks are slashing.) This would make it so you have to choose between rDPS or betting everything on 1 dps. Most people would pick rDPS but it would at least make it a choice.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azurelos

When SAM was announced, I was hoping it would be a contender for the DRG slot with it's DPS. I would like it if SE would consider giving SAM piercing debuff, although the katana slashes it can also pierce, Yukikaze's animation is a slash then a pierce. Shintens are pierces as well, the lore already matches so why not give it piercing? :) (clarification, I know it's damage is slashing and those attacks are slashing.) This would make it so you have to choose between rDPS or betting everything on 1 dps. Most people would pick rDPS but it would at least make it a choice.

---

Honestly, the piercing debuff is the reason DRG is a mandatory slot in raids, and it's a failure of design when you look at another job, monk in this case, who's blunt damage resistance does absolutely nothing to contribute to party damage. This is where rather than advocate for SAM to get a piercing debuff, maybe we just have magic resistance down and physical resistance down. Divide the melee jobs into two groups so maybe MNK/DRG give physical resist down and NIN/SAM give magic resistance down.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wereotter

Honestly, the piercing debuff is the reason DRG is a mandatory slot in raids, and it's a failure of design when you look at another job, monk in this case, who's blunt damage resistance does absolutely nothing to contribute to party damage. This is where rather than advocate for SAM to get a piercing debuff, maybe we just have magic resistance down and physical resistance down. Divide the melee jobs into two groups so maybe MNK/DRG give physical resist down and NIN/SAM give magic resistance down.

---

You give it to the tanks. Giving DPS permanent vulnerabilities enforces more party compositions, where as giving it to tanks does not. It wouldn't even have to be different vulnerabilities among them, just each tank job is capable of applying a stack, at 3/6% increased damage taken. Let it go up to 9% if you want to triple tank something.

It's strange because SAM was in such a great position in 4.0... but then they buffed all the other classes so the gap closed. Now SAM is no longer wanted. They really need to look at SAM especially after the MNK buffs. MNK was already close to SAM in DPS and wouldn't surprise me this pushes it over.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

You give it to the tanks. Giving DPS permanent vulnerabilities enforces more party compositions, where as giving it to tanks does not. It wouldn't even have to be different vulnerabilities among them, just each tank job is capable of applying a stack, at 3/6% increased damage taken. Let it go up to 9% if you want to triple tank something.

---

Give it to the tanks and you might as well remove it entirely as there will always be a tank in party content. Split magic and physical resistance between the 4 melee, and you get a situation where one slot needs to be one of two melee and the other needs to be one of the other two. This would then work closer to the idea that groups might have for the other two DPS one BRD/MCH and one BLM/RDM/SMN and you'll have a melee DPS in charge of buffing the damage of each.

NIN I would think would be on the magic end only because it also does magic damage with its ninjutsu, the other three can sort as needed from there, though might be smarter, in retrospect, to make DRG the other magic DPS if only to shake up the current existing meta and force SAM/MNK into the physical slots.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wereotter

I think they started with that intent when Stormblood launched with how much utility jobs like SMN and DRG have, so they rightly started the expansion with lower damage. Then Square caved to the complaints and buffed the jobs so that now jobs have both high damage, utility, and mobility regarding mechanics. This is blatantly in contrast to their initially stated goal that high mobility, high utility jobs would have low personal DPS.

---

I'm not so sure. Utility classes were still strong in 4.0 - hell, BLM was utterly broken in a bad way - both damage wise and rotationally back then. While DRG, MCH and SMN did get buffs, Bard was still very strong, as was Ninja. RDM was also a bit stronger, albeit due to a bug.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marianno

I dislike saying that something should get toned down but in this case, I think maybe disembowel needs some kind of rework, removal, or outright removal while adding the damage to DRG personally. No amount of "play what you want and ignore the meta" will be enough currently.

---

They should just change BRD and MCH their damage type to ranged damage or just physical damage instead of piercing. This would mean that RDM stilll has a benefit of having a DRG and it will just destroy the entire piercing meta as well. This also makes it so the party isnt forced to take a DRG with them if they have a BRD/MCH for the bonus 5% damage.

I would like to see TP costs for SAM's AoE slightly reduced, I don't really have an idea on how much to reduce, but I feel like AoE's TP cost is fairly expensive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wereotter

Give it to the tanks and you might as well remove it entirely as there will always be a tank in party content..

---

Give it to the DPS and you might as well remove it entirely. If the point isn't to hard-lock classes into compositions, it makes even less sense to keep them on DPS. Permanent vulnerabilities have traditionally been the realm of tanks in these style of games because it cements them as the primary Assist target, it gives them meaningful damage contribution without letting them encroach on the DPS, and it prevents forced party compositions / exclusion based solely on who brings the Vulnerability.

You get the ability to pick and choose your composition without having to juggle which vulnerabilities are present for you to take advantage of. It's on the tanks, you're solid, grab what you want / play what you want, instead of going "We have a machinist, we need a dragoon"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

It's on the tanks, you're solid, grab what you want / play what you want, instead of going "We have a machinist, we need a dragoon"

---

Which is why my suggestion is eliminate piercing, slashing, and blunt as separate debuffs and just make it "physical"

Separating the 4 melee DPS into two categories, one that boosts physical damage and one that boosts magical, will mean that you'll have your choice of two melee DPS for each slot as you will ultimately want one of each. As it is now, the DRG/NIN comp is practically mandatory because of enmity and piercing, but if you gave the two jobs both the same magic resist down debuff then gave monk and samurai the physical down debuff, you then want one of those both to boost tank damage, but also to boost the damage of any ranged physical and your other melee, but would still want a dragoon or ninja to boost healer and caster DPS.

Which still force locks one of each melee contributor.

Instead of making it universal, and just giving it to the tanks.

Dunno why we want to lock slots based on what the jobs do instead of asking SE to offer a degree of synergy with casters. Hell they can throw MNK in the mix since they insist on the Fist stances. RDM could have embolden give a 15% boost in DPS to casters (PLD, DRK and healers included) and 8% to physical DPS while RDM gets infinite Mana during the durartion. I mean, options are a dime a dozen but locking vulnerabilities on melee seems like just adding another layer on this chaotic cake of party synergy.


And yes, that cake seems to only stock on one flavor for a few years already.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Everyone complained SAM was "OP" when 4.0 launched, so SE buffed the other melee classes and now everyone says "SAM is worthless raiding, go DRG or NIN". Maybe don't listen to players who say DRG and NIN need buffs next time SE.

---

SAM just don't offer any "carry a whole group of slackers" abilities in raids. They are a "selfish" DPS.

The problem is that it's not selfish enough. The dps it brings doesn't compare against most utility's currently as of 4.2 . The development team and Yoshi-P promised that they would look at jobs after Monk and look to make raid utility close to equal all across the board. Samurai offers the slashing debuff something that Ninja and Warrior already provide, without anything else Samurai will always have a hard time finding groups or staying popular this expansion. My suggestion is to increase the slashing debuff that Samurai provides up to 15% and prevent it from being overridden. 5% boost to Samurai damage 5% extra from both Tanks and Ninja. That will give still make Samurai a selfish damage dealer but more accepted.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Everyone complained SAM was "OP" when 4.0 launched, so SE buffed the other melee classes and now everyone says "SAM is worthless raiding, go DRG or NIN". Maybe don't listen to players who say DRG and NIN need buffs next time SE.

---

Correct me if I'm wrong but...did NIN get any buffs? As far as I remember offhand, they only had the gust slash nerf.

Ninja got buffs on certain skills when Square realized they were incorrectly coded as physical damage rather than magical. So they upped the potency when they fixed it so ninjas wouldn’t feel bad when the outgoing damage was lessened as a result of not getting the benefit from the slashing debuff and dripping blades trait.

Not exactly an outright buff, as the job started stronger than they expected, but still an instance of imbalance between what they intended for its power level vs utility.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wereotter

Ninja got buffs on certain skills when Square realized they were incorrectly coded as physical damage rather than magical. So they upped the potency when they fixed it so ninjas wouldn’t feel bad when the outgoing damage was lessened as a result of not getting the benefit from the slashing debuff and dripping blades trait.

Not exactly an outright buff, as the job started stronger than they expected, but still an instance of imbalance between what they intended for its power level vs utility.

---

So far the NIN "buffs" have been nerfs to them. Bhavacakra got 50 potency to get the skill to 600 (From 550 to 600), but lost about 90 (Was 687.5+) potency from the dripping blades trait alone. And the same goes for Doton (Used to do 400+ potency and does now 360). Again, this is only from the dripping blades traits, not counting the slashing that might've been added to them, dont remember if it did at that time.

It seems like people have already given up on Samurai, tons of raider who enjoyed Samurai have switched to DRG/NIN or will be switching now, it turned from decent in 4.0 to bad in 4.1 to dead in 4.2.

Samurais will probably be behind Monks, Black Mages and even Summoner in personal DPS and at the very bottom with Red Mages when it comes to actual contributed Raid DPS. At least RDM will be wanted for progress. Samurais bring absolutely nothing to the table, the job is alot of fun and i was so looking forward to playing it but it just became too weak and undesirable in any group setting, it needs either some utility or has to be much stronger in personal DPS. Utitily would be the best choice, thats what people playing this game usually prefer. You could say it doesnt really matter for casual players but even then, so many pick up groups in Party Finder block out Samurais because a mediocre Nin or Drg is always better than a mediocre Samurai.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Everyone complained SAM was "OP" when 4.0 launched, so SE buffed the other melee classes and now everyone says "SAM is worthless raiding, go DRG or NIN". Maybe don't listen to players who say DRG and NIN need buffs next time SE.

---

This is nonsense. The only people calling Samurai OP were idiots who read the tooltip and saw a high number. Even when people were still figuring out jobs, Dragoon and Ninja remained the de facto "meta."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This is nonsense. The only people calling Samurai OP were idiots who read the tooltip and saw a high number. Even when people were still figuring out jobs, Dragoon and Ninja remained the de facto "meta."

---

And this is the problem. People reading tooltips and complaining. Most people are not theory crafters and top 20%. They see "oh, this job has high numbers and looks like it will make mine irrelevant, better go complain on the forums." There were many such posts IIRC. We have 2 selfish DPS who do not really out dps the non selfish dps by much, if at all in some fights. They either need to nerf DRG and NIN, or make some significant changes to BLM and SAM.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

And this is the problem. They see "oh, this job has high numbers and looks like it will make mine irrelevant, better go complain on the forums."

---

actually this... first move is complaining, second move is flaming, third move is switching to the wtj cls – "because se forced me to drop xy!" people are so... erratic and hypercritical... always want to be the "strongest" one around. no-one forces u to anything - except your own ego. why not just take your cls in good AND bad times?... nerfs & buffs are coming anyway... like always : o

Honestly I never understood this mentality.... : /

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Neela

why not just take your cls in good AND bad times?... nerfs & buffs are coming anyway... like always : o

---

Main Machinists can relate. Since 2015.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Caitlyn

Main Machinists can relate. Since 2015.

---

really glad to hear that there are people around who don't give a fuck on wtjs as well! :3 – *thumbs up* <3