Do Samurai not have any positionals?

I could of sworn they had one or two the last time I played, but I don't see positional requirements on any of their abilities. Is I going crazy?

They do, though it is mostly just for filling your resource bars faster. Still worth doing them though.

Your three piece combo endpoints gain positional requirements at level 52 when you get access to the "Kenki Gauge".
Gekko gains "Rear Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauge by 5", and Kasha gains "Flank Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauge by 5"
Those two abilities constitute the sum total of all of your positionals.

They do have positionals, but they don't increase damage directly, instead they increase your gauge, which you mostly spend on weaving damage and powering up attacks. At early levels you may have no use for it though.

A lot of people say it's easier, perhaps implying the positionals matter less, but they do actually have positionals.

Yeah they do, though the combo bonus appears only after level 52 when you get the kenki gauge, before that the text is hidden, was confused as well when I first changed to samurai and was searching for positionals since i had heard they do have positionals.

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Originally Posted by Ralph2449

Yeah they do, though the combo bonus appears only after level 52 when you get the kenki gauge, before that the text is hidden, was confused as well when I first changed to samurai and was searching for positionals since i had heard they do have positionals.

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Think they did then SHB pruning happened

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

A lot of people say it's easier, perhaps implying the positionals matter less, but they do actually have positionals.

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They do matter less. The difference they make over time is almost immesaurable.

If a SAM stays behind the the boss and ignores positionals they will typically lose 5 kenki every ~21 seconds, which typically equates to the loss of one 320 potency Shinten every ~105 seconds. That in turn equates to a loss of ~3 potency per second.

In a typical ~21 seconds where you do 3 sen and Midare your output is 3,760 potency (this is bare minimum 8 gcds and Kaiten Midare) 3,760 / 21 = 179 potency per second. losing a positional would drop that to 176.. However by the time you add the dot effect from Higabana, any Shintens you can do in that 21 seconds along with other ogcds. the potency you lost missing that positional ends up being roughly half of 1 percent of your total dps.

Thats typically such a small loss you couldn't even measure it in terms of an actual fight. Any difference you might see would be so small it would typically be put down to the margin of error that people often allow for to accommodate the rng nature of crits, direct hits, latency, etc.

It's realistically possible you could miss positionals and actually get a better parse than if you did them just by landing a couple of extra lucky crits or direct hits thus is the nature of rng.

This is why a lot of people find positionals unrewarding and think they should be scrapped. As on jobs like Samurai and Ninja the difference they make is so little you cant measure it.

Thanks for the thorough explanation. I don't really play Samurai and just frequently see these vague statements of them not being important.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

this is why a lot of people find positionals unrewarding and think they should be scrapped. as on jobs like samurai and ninja the difference they make is so little you cant measure it

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If they make such little difference, then there's no need to scrap them.
They serve as a bonus challenge for people who do want to optimise their DPS, plus there's Monk who absolutely needs to hit it's positionals because it's 30 potency on every single GCD, and even Ninja gets an additional 60 potency every third GCD for it, which is often enough that you want to try and hit as many positionals as you can.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

If they make such little difference, then there's no need to scrap them.
They serve as a bonus challenge for people who do want to optimise their DPS, plus there's Monk who absolutely needs to hit it's positionals because it's 30 potency on every single GCD, and even Ninja gets an additional 60 potency every third GCD for it, which is often enough that you want to try and hit as many positionals as you can.

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Monk perhaps but not Ninja. if a Niinja just ignored positionals and stayed behind the boss they would only lose 60 potency every ~30 seconds on Armor Crush which again is a loss of just 2 potency per second. which again ends up beaing immeasurable in any actual fight as any differences in results would be put down to the rng margin of error for crts, direct hits or even latency.

I'd much rather see them bring something actually rewarding in rather than positionals... Even the age old idea of battle regimens would blow positionals out of the water.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Monk perhaps but not Ninja. if a ninja just ignored positionals and stayed behind the boss would only lose 60 potency every ~30 seconds on Armor Crush which again is a loss of just 2 potency per second. which again ends up beaing immeasurable as any differences in results would be put down to the rng margin of error for crts, direct hits or even latency.

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Also interesting to note that Ninja can just ignore Aeolian Edge and spend the majority of the time at the flank for a similarly small loss (less than 2% dps), which additionally makes Huton refresh braindead and removes a button from the rotation.

The positional requirement appears when you level up. At the beginning both skills doesn't say anything.

A good qol would be is they just put the full skill description from the begining and put the parts that need x lvl to be upgraded on grey or something so you can see how it will work early and avoid confusion later on.

OP here. For the record, my Samurai is level 80. I don't see any tooltips that indicate positionals. I can be a bit absent minded though, so if anyone can point out which specific tooltips show the rear or flank requirements it would really put my mind at ease lol.

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Originally Posted by Awarewolf

OP here. For the record, my Samurai is level 80. I don't see any tooltips that indicate positionals. I can be a bit absent minded though, so if anyone can point out which specific tooltips show the rear or flank requirements it would really put my mind at ease lol.

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Gekko and Kasha
They're only going to be on skills in your main GCD combo and typically the finishers at that.

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Originally Posted by Awarewolf

OP here. For the record, my Samurai is level 80. I don't see any tooltips that indicate positionals. I can be a bit absent minded though, so if anyone can point out which specific tooltips show the rear or flank requirements it would really put my mind at ease lol.

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Kasha, in the third line of combo buffs:

Flank Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauage by 5

Same with Gekko, but exchange Flank with Rear

We do have them but I always just forget/ignore them. Unlike Monk and Dragoon, us Sam bois don't really need to worry about them unless we try harding.

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

We do have them but I always just forget/ignore them. Unlike Monk and Dragoon, us Sam bois don't really need to worry about them unless we try harding.

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If you keep your gauges filled you don't have to worry about much of anything. The positionals are worth doing. Period.

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

We do have them but I always just forget/ignore them. Unlike Monk and Dragoon, us Sam bois don't really need to worry about them unless we try harding.

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Speak for yourself, silly catboi.

They don't help much so in most content it doesn't make sense to worry if you miss any or all of them.

Kasha:
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Shifu
Combo Potency: 480
Flank Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauge by 5
Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauge by 5
Combo Bonus: Grants Ka

Geko: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Jinpu
Combo Potency: 480
Rear Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauge by 5
Combo Bonus: Increases Kenki Gauge by 5
Combo Bonus: Grants Getsu

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

They don't help much so in most content it doesn't make sense to worry if you miss any or all of them.

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Each missed positional is a 64 potency loss (1/5th of a shinten). It adds up.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

They don't help much so in most content it doesn't make sense to worry if you miss any or all of them.

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Please please please don't advise new players (or players new to different classes at the least) to ignore basic aspects of their class. They should be learning these things early on so they don't have to learn them later if they start trying to do extreme and savage content. And it's not even like pure optimization stuff, positionals are basic level stuff you should be learning as you go. And it does add up

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Each missed positional is a 64 potency loss (1/5th of a shinten). It adds up.

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Actually if you take into account Jinpu's 13% damage buff it's 72.32 potency if you miss it.
(Psst, I'm proving your point even more)

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Each missed positional is a 64 potency loss (1/5th of a shinten). It adds up.

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True but its still insignificant on Samurai. (See math above).. missing a positional on a samurai loses less than 0.5% of your dps.

It's roughly the same for Ninja (again see math above) and apparently also Dragoon to. Haven't touched drg since 1.0 so i persoma;;y have no idea about that job.

But a 0.5% loss is virtually impossible to notice in any actual fight even if you parsed and tested 100 times. Because of the margin for error relating to rng crits direct hits latency, server ticks and other factors..

This again is why so many people think positionals generally suck. It's an illusion of depth that has no measurable effect. And should generally just be scrapped at this point.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

True but its still insignificant on Samurai. (See math above).. missing a positional on a samurai loses less than 0.5% of your dps.

It's roughly the same for Ninja (again see math above) and apparently also Dragoon to. Haven't touched drg since 1.0 so i persoma;;y have no idea about that job.

But a 0.5% loss is virtually impossible to notice in any actual fight even if you parsed and tested 100 times. Because of the margin for error relating to rng crits direct hits latency, server ticks and other factors..

This again is why so many people think positionals generally suck. It's an illusion of depth that has no measurable effect. And should generally just be scrapped at this point.

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The problem with making the difference between using/ignoring positionals actually significant is that people will then complain about how unfair it is. Personally, i like them and i hope they never remove them

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Originally Posted by lolicon09

The problem with making the difference between using/ignoring positionals actually significant is that people will then complain about how unfair it is. Personally, i like them and i hope they never remove them

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So stick the positionals on the class built around them and ditch the rest

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Originally Posted by Nothv13

So stick the positionals on the class built around them and ditch the rest

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Or make the positionals stronger and ignore people who want pretty much every melee outside of Monk to treat bosses like fancy DPS test dummies. Balancing any game around people who don't want to put in any effort is a bad idea in every conceivable way.

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

Or make the positionals stronger and ignore people who want pretty much every melee outside of Monk to treat bosses like fancy DPS test dummies. Balancing any game around people who don't want to put in any effort is a bad idea in every conceivable way.

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Sure, but we know they won't do that as that is the exact opposite of what they've been doing.

Each sam combo positonal is worth approx. 67ish potency. For ST. Kasha is flank and Gekko is rear.