Pipe Dreams: Samurai (two for one special)

[Duelle]

I was bored over the last week or so, and with the back and forth over whether SAM would be a DPS or tank, I decided to put something together. I'll split this into two posts, with the first being DPS and the second being tank.

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Samurai/侍 The DPS

Mechanics: SAM is built around a combo system that is flexible and not as linear as that of DRG or MNK. Attacks are categorized as either Opener, Bridge, and Closers. Bridges and Closers cannot be used out of order.

The SAM-exclusive mechanic is Focus. Focus allows the SAM to extend their combos, and regenerates over 15 seconds upon being consumed.

Weapons: Great katana
Cross Class: ARC (Raging Strikes, Quelling Strikes, Hawkeye), LNC (Blood for Blood, Invigorate, Feint)

Abilities

01 Cut (切) - Opener. Delivers an attack with a potency of 120.
02 Third Eye (心眼) - Parry the next incoming attack. 10 second duration. Cooldown: 60s.
04 Demon Cut (鬼切) - Bridge. Delivers an attack with a potency of 140.
06 Accumulation (溜める) - Doubles the TP cost of weapon skills and increases their potency by 50%. Duration: 10s. Cooldown: 60s.
08 Skill Chain (連携) - Toggle ability. Weaponskills consume Focus while this effect is active. Expires upon consuming all Focus. Effect expires upon reuse.
----Focus - The next Bridge-type weaponskill allows the use of another Bridge instead of a Closer-type weaponskill. (see About Focus)
10 Dragon Fang (牙竜) - Opener. Delivers an attack with a potency of 100 to all enemies directly in front of you.
12 Blade Bash (峰打ち) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 80. Additional effect: Stun for 3s. Cooldown: 30s.
15 Iron Flash (斬鉄閃) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 130. 15-yalm range.
18 Tiger Claw (虎) - Bridge. Delivers an attack with a potency of 120. Additional effect: Damage over time with a potency of 30 for 21s.
22 Meditation (黙想) - Restores own TP over 10s. Cooldown: 60s.
26 Turning Swallow (燕返し) - Closer. Delivers an attack with a potency of 280.
30 Alacrity (神速) - Increases movement speed by 30% and the potency of the next weaponskill by 20%. Duration: 6s. Cooldown: 90s.
34 Shooting Star (流星) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 50. Additional effect: 10y knockback. Cooldown: 45s.
38 Tornado (陣風) - Bridge. Delivers an attack with a potency of 110 to all enemies within 5 yalms.
42 Full Break (ブレイク) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 80. Additional effect: Reduces target's resistance to damage by 10% for 10s. Cooldown: 180s.
46 Nine Dragons (九頭竜閃) - Closer. Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional effect: Places 9 stacks of Dragon's Bite on target for 30s. Subsequent weapon skills consume one stack, delivering an attack with a potency of 10 per remaining stack in addition to the weapon skill's normal damage.
50 Clarity (著明) - Refreshes the cooldown of all Focus. Cooldown: 90s.

Traits

08 Student's Discipline - Grants access to Focus.
14 Enhanced Strength
16 Enhanced Strength II
20 True Dragon Fang (真・牙竜) - Dragon Fang causes the next Bridge-type weapon skill to deal additional fire damage with a potency of 50. Buff duration: 10s.
24 Adept's Discipline - Increases your amount of Focus to two.
28 Enhanced Strength III
32 True Demon Cut (真・鬼切) - Demon Cut increases the critical strike chance of the next weapon skill by 20%. Buff duration: 10s.
36 True Tiger Claw (真・虎) - Tiger Claw increases the speed at which Focus refreshes by 10%. Buff duration: 21s.
40 Master's Discipline - Increase your amount of Focus to four.
44 Hasty Accumulation - Reduces the cooldown of Accumulation to 45s.
48 Enhanced Alacrity - Reduces the cooldown of Alacrity to 60s.

Job Abilities

30 Enpi (燕飛) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Cooldown: 60s. If used under the effect of Focus, cooldown is reduced to 15s.
35 Ageha (鳳蝶) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 120. Decreases target's resistance to slashing attacks by 10% for 30 seconds. Cooldown: 60s. If used under the effect of Focus, cooldown is reduced to 15s.
40 Kouki (光輝) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Pacification for 4 seconds. 60 second cooldown. If used under the effect of Focus, cooldown is reduced to 15s.
45 Shikikoyo (士気高揚) - Reduces the cost of target party member's weapon skills by 20% for 20s. Cooldown: 150s.
50 Meikyou Shisui (明鏡止水) - Increases skill speed by 15% for 15s and removes the TP cost from all weapon skills. Cooldown: 150s.
52 Battoujutsu (抜刀術) - You sheath your blade, increasing the potency of the next Opener weaponskill by 25%. Allows the use of certain weaponskills. Movement speed reduced by 40% while active. Requires 1 Focus to activate. Cannot be used with Skill Chain. Duration: 5s. Cooldown: 15s.
54 Thunderclap (迅雷) - Closer. Delivers an attack with a potency of 80 to target and nearby enemies. Additional effect: 30% Slow to target and nearby enemies for 18s.
56 Zanmaken (斬魔剣) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Potency increased to 350 if used on a target below 20% HP. Can only be used while under the effect of Battoujutsu. Cooldown: 60s.
58 Kaiten (回天) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Spreads the effects of the next weapon skill to two nearby enemies in addition to target. Buff duration: 10s. Cooldown: 60s. If used under the effect of Focus, cooldown is reduced to 15s.
60 Kachou Fuugetsu (花鳥風月) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 200 on target and nearby enemies. Can only be executed while under the effect of Battoujutsu. Cooldown: 90s.

Lv3 Limit Break: Midare Setsugekka (乱れ雪月花) - Melee Limit Break. The SAM jumps back from the enemy, then does a dashing cut on the enemy 3 times, from 3 different directions. Each time the SAM cuts the enemy, you see a kanji appear. The first kanji is Yuki (雪), then the kanji Tsuki (月), and then Hana (花), also known as the corresponding kanji for the FFXI WS Yukikaze/Gekko/Kasha. (visual examples)

About Focus

Focus is a resource unique to SAM that allows them to extend combos beyond the normal bounds of 3-steps. In order to consume Focus, the SAM must first toggle Skill Chain, and subsequent Bridge-type weaponskills will consume Focus until you either run out or disable the effect.

Focus appears in the UI over your hotbars as small orbs. By the time you hit lv50, you'll have access to 4 Focus units, which individually recharge within 15 seconds of being consumed. The orbs would be marked with the Eorzea versions of the kanji for numbers 1-4. To give an idea of the effect of Focus, here's some examples:

Standard combo:
Cut => Demon Cut => Turning Swallow

Combo extended by Focus:
Cut => click on Skill Chain => Demon Cut (consumes 1 Focus) => Tiger Fang (consumes 1 Focus) => click on Skill Chain => Turning Swallow.

A really bad combo performed by a nooby lv50 SAM:
Cut => click on Skill Chain => Demon Cut (consumes 1 Focus) => Demon Cut (consumes 1 Focus) => Demon Cut (consumes 1 Focus) => Demon Cut (consumes 1 Focus; makes Skill Chain expire since you're at 0 Focus) => Turning Swallow.

Extending this mechanic a bit more are the special techniques you gain during the SAM questline. The inconvenient cooldown timers become manageable if used with Focus.

Notes

- Several of the abilities are based on Auron's overdrives from FFX. These include Dragon Fang, Shooting Star and Tornado.
- Rotational abilities (combos and so on) are localized and the special techniques gained through quests are just romanized versions of the names.
- True Tiger Fang's effect might need to be buffed, specially in light of the skills that can be weaved in while Skill Chain is active.
- Skill Chain being a toggle means it has to activate very quickly and without animation delays. In practice it should be something that you can activate/deactivate in between GCDs without losing any time.
- The sword techniques (Enpi, Ageha, Kouki, Kaiten) are designed so that they can be used stand-alone if needed, but have penalties when done so. They do count as Bridge-type weapon skills when used with Focus. The write up doesn't mention this but your combo is lost/reset if you use the techniques without activating Skill Chain. I'm considering making the sword techniques oGCD to make it easy to weave them in and sort of speed up combat for SAM.
- Kaiten should make it easy to apply certain effects like Tiger Claw's DoT, Ageha's slashing debuff and Kouki's pacification on multiple targets. Note that it applies only to the additional effects and does not include the on-contact damage component of those abilities. I'm also thinking of elongating the cooldown.
- Battoujutsu is meant to first buff your opener, and later be used for techniques like Zanmaken and Kachou Fuugetsu.
- As for Accumulation, assuming perfect timing with no delay and a ton of skill speed, you'd be able to do 4 weaponskills at most before the buff wears off.
- Meikyou Shisui and Accumulation stack.
- Shikikoyo was originally going to affect all skills on target party members, but then I realized that this would mean BLM would be SAM's best friend since they'd massively benefit from their spells being 20% cheaper during an Astral Fire/Fire IV rotation. I also am aware that this name is already in one of SCH's abilities (though theirs is Shikikoyo no saku/士気高揚の策 rather than just Shikikoyo).
- The LNC cross-class skills are there mostly because I fear the job might run out of TP faster than most melee given that it can double the cost of its abilities every 45 seconds.
- Fun fact: The Skill Chain/Focus system in this suggestion was originally an alternate system I had come up with for Dark Arts.

[Duelle]

Samurai/侍 The Tank

Mechanics: The combo system would be similar for the tank SAM, since skills are split between Openers, Bridge skills and Closers.

The main thing is that SAM would have several ways of responding to attacks from enemies, with a hopefully greater degree of control over their mitigation over what other tanks provide.

Weapons: Great katana
Cross-class: GLA (Provoke, Convalescence, Flash), LNC (Invigorate, Keen Flurry, Feint)

Abilities

01 Cut (切) - Opener. Delivers an attack with a potency of 130.
02 Third Eye (心眼) - Parry the next incoming attack. Duration: 10s. Cooldown: 45s.
04 Demon Cut (鬼切) - Bridge. Delivers an attack with a potency of 160. Additional effect: Increased enmity.
06 Exuberance (意気衝天) - The next direct heal cast on you places a healing over time effect that heals for 25% of the amount restored over 12s. Cooldown: 90s.
08 Dragon Fang (牙竜) - Opener. Delivers an attack with a potency of 100 to all enemies directly in front of you. Additional effect: Increased enmity.
10 Brace (気を張る) - Reduces damage taken by 15% for 15s. Cooldown: 150s.
12 Blade Bash (峰打ち) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 80. Additional effect: Stun for 5s. Cooldown: 40s.
15 Iron Flash (斬鉄閃) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 130. 15-yalm range. Additional effect: Increased enmity.
18 Bright Rend (照破) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 120. Can only be used after a parry. Additional effect: Damage over time with a potency of 20 for 15s. Cooldown: 10s.
22 Meditation (黙想) - Restores own TP over 10s. Cooldown: 90s.
26 Turning Swallow (燕返し) - Closer. Delivers an attack with a potency of 270. Additional effect: Increased enmity.
30 Counterstance (構える) - Reduces attack speed by 50% while increasing parry chance to 100%. Upon receiving damage, delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Increases enmity generation. Each parry drains TP while this effect is active. Effect ends upon reuse. Cooldown: 2.5s.
34 Tornado (陣風) - Bridge. Delivers an attack with a potency of 110 to all enemies within 3 yalms. Additional effect: Increased enmity.
38 Howling Draw (龍鳴閃) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 50. Additional Effect: Silence for 2s. Cooldown: 60s.
42 Full Break (ブレイク) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Can only be used after a parry. Additional effect: Reduces target's damage dealt to you by 5% for 10s. Cooldown: 10s.
46 Tiger Claw (虎) - Closer. Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Additional effect: Damage over time with a potency of 30 for 30s.
50 Challenge (勝負) - Places you at the top of target's enmity list. Additional effect: Reduces target's damage dealt to anyone but you by 20% for 10s. Does not work when enemy is already engaging you or if you are at the top of the enmity list. Shares a cooldown with similar abilities. Cooldown: 40s.

Traits

08 Enhanced Vitality
14 Enhanced Third Eye - Increases the amount of damage blocked by Third Eye's parry by 10% of your VIT.
16 Enhanced Vitality II
20 Enhanced Vitality III
24 Enhanced Brace - Increases Brace's damage reduction to 25%.
28 Enhanced Exuberance - Increases the amount of HP restored over time to 50%.
32 Enhanced Blade Bash - Reduces the cooldown of Blade Bash to 20s.
36 Alertness - Allows you to parry attacks aimed at your flank or rear.
40 Inspiring Rend - Increases the amount of TP recovered per tick by 20% while Bright Rend's damage over time effect is active.
44 Enhanced Meditation - Reduces the cooldown of Meditation to 60s.
48 Enhanced Howling Draw - Reduces the cooldown of Howling Draw to 45s.

Job Abilities

30 Mukei (無形) - Counter. Activates upon taking damage. Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Reduces damage taken from the triggering attack by 20%. Cooldown: 30s.
35 Thunderclap (迅雷) - Closer. Delivers an attack with a potency of 80 to target and nearby enemies. Additional effect: 30% Slow to target and nearby enemies for 18s.
40 Mekkyaku (滅却) - Counter. Activates upon taking damage. Rush to attacker and deliver an attack with a potency of 120. Range: 20y. Additional effect: Reduces target's damage dealt to you by 20% for 10s. Cooldown: 45s.
45 Fudo (不動) - Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Can only be executed when target's HP is below 20%. Cooldown: 40s
50 Meikyou Shisui (明鏡止水) - Perfectly parry most incoming attacks for 10s. Cooldown: 420s.
52 Hamanoha (破魔の刃) - Changes your damage dealt from physical to unaspected. Actions performed while under this effect consume MP in addition to their TP costs. Allows magic spells to be parried. Allows the use of certain abilities. Effect ends upon reuse.
54 Arataka (荒鷹) - Counter. Activates upon taking damage. Delivers an attack with a potency of 130. Additional effect: Restores HP equal to damage dealt. Cooldown: 60s.
56 Yaegasumi (八重霞) - Reduces damage nearby party members take from special attacks and magic by 10% for 10s. Can only be used while under the effect of Hamanoha. Consumes Hamanoha and places it on a 20s cooldown. Cooldown: 60s.
58 Shirahadori (白羽鳥) - Counter. Activates upon taking damage. Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Perfectly parries the triggering attack. Duration: 10s. Cooldown: 90s.
60 Kaiten (回天) - Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 300. Can only be used while under the effect of Hamanoha. Consumes Hamanoha and places it on a 20s cooldown. Cooldown: 60s.

Lv3 Limit Break: Kachou Fuugetsu (花鳥風月)

Notes

- Assuming these were the chosen cross-classes for SAM, SAM would not have access to Blood for Blood, and this is intentional.
- Beyond being just a swordsman, the theme I was going for was a hunter of demons/evil spirits. Sort of an extension of the thematics behind FFXI's SAM.
- Counterstance, Bright Rend, Full Break, Hamanoha and the counters are oGCD abilities.
- TP consumption from parries while in Counterstance is actually quite high. We're talking about 200 TP or higher per parry. This means that Counterstance will drain you of TP very quickly between the parry drains and your own attacks.
- The counters are all dependent on a type of damage taken and are meant to have different effects. I did tie some utility to them, and am considering also making them share a cooldown.
- Mukei is a sort of go-to counter for attacks you know are not going to kill you and don't want to waste Third Eye to mitigate.
- Mekkyaku would be useful to catch up to targets attacking you at range; I see it getting a lot of use in PvP too.
- Arataka is a self-heal and could prove useful in situations where you know the incoming damage will be considerable. The self heal is determined by the damage dealt by Arataka's counter-attack rather than the incoming attack itself.
- Shirahadori is meant to be used on stuff like tank-busters. If perfectly parrying the attack is too much, I could change it to 80-90% mitigation instead.
- With the exception of Mekkyaku, the counters rely on the enemy being in melee range of you.
- Enhanced Third Eye is meant to make parries stronger on SAM as they continue to gear up. So a Third Eye parry without the trait is capped at 20% like with other jobs. The trait allows the parry to mitigate beyond that 20%.
- Inspiring Rend is only active once and unlike other buffs, does not have a timer. The effect will only be active on you so long as Bright Rend's DoT is active on a target.
- Using Hamanoha should ideally cover the SAM's great katana with the standard spirit fire effect. This is the aspect of the ability that would allow the SAM to parry magic. The magic parry effect works with all of SAM's other skills, so you can activate Hamanoha and then Third Eye to guarantee a spell parry.
- Yaegasumi and Kaiten can be removed and replaced with something else, but I figured it'd be neat to have abilities reliant on Hamanoha that would cause you to spend the effect as needed. Assuming we were to take this job beyond lv60, Kaiten would be the job's ultimate sword technique and subsequent Hamanoha-dependent abilities might instead deal with mitigation or other party effects.
- Yaegasumi's damage reduction only applies to special skills and spells cast by enemies. This means that it DOES NOT apply to auto attacks.
- The "perfect parry" text on Meikyou Shisui and Shirahadori means they entirely negate damage. Meikyou Shisui is subject to the same limitations Hallowed Ground has (as in, certain attacks will ignore the effect).
- The Lv3 limit break is what we know as Cosmic Illucidation in FFXI. Kachou Fuugetsu is something that refers to the beauty of nature according to the Japanese aesthetic, which IMO is fitting for a tank limit break. The alternative would be something involving spirit wards, but I couldn't come up with a name to use.

[SkornStar]

This is a damn good idea. It'd be perfect for the game. Hope Dev read this.

[Marxam]

I prefer Samurai as dps and even Yoshi stated in one of the LL's that he would see samurai as a dps in this game and the players want it apparently. I know I do. It's funny because I came up with a similar set up back in the day when people were voting for the new jobs to be implemented in 3.0. My vision of Samurai focused on "Skill Chains". It's similar to how monk currently works where you move through form or "stances" Mid, High and Low and within that the stances they draw inspiration from actual Samurai sword stances.

Skill Chains act like Wrath stacks and give you access to other skills off gcd but skills don't exhaust your entire stacks upon a skill use so it is possible to hold Skill Chains indefinitely with proper use and management. You will need to do this as Skill chains also increase your damage and the more you have the higher your crit rate.

Each stance can branch into several attacks similar to how monk works so you get a smooth flowing feel when dpsing. I also imagined that Samurai would get its own "Life Surge" in the form of "Sheathe". If you've watched samurai anime's then you know how this works. Also, I imagined that damage would be in between DRG and MNK for burst and overall raid damage. High potency moves but only if you maintain your buffs but not too restrictive like BotD.

At max level its final move is "Seppuku". This is basically a glass cannon move since if you are hit during the down time then you have double the weakness when revived and Infirmary reduces heals by 90%. It may be over powered but would be pretty cool.

Deals damage by totaling 99% of user's current hp. Additional effect: Weakness, Down for the count, Infirmary. Duration 10 secs.

[Shippuu]

Could do with having a few more skills that are throwbacks to classic FF samurai. Definitely lose points for not having Gil Toss be their ranged pull move. Also, the tank spec needs to have a better augment for the stun duration, as all tanks have significantly longer stuns than other jobs (5-6 seconds).

I prefer Samurai as dps and even Yoshi stated in one of the LL's that he would see samurai as a dps in this game and the players want it apparently.

No such thing has been stated in any Live Letter. Yoshi had a separate interview in which he explained that when he pictures a Samurai in his head, it is not an armor wielding warrior he imagines, but a cloth wearing quick-draw master. So when Yoshi thinks of samurai, he sees this, and not this. And naturally that image does lend itself more to a DPS and not a Tank. However in that same article he talked about how Samurai was the original choice for the tank for HW and in a subsequent interview he also still mentioned it's potential to be a tank.

[Duelle]

Could do with having a few more skills that are throwbacks to classic FF samurai.

I admit there's not much of a foundation to speak of from older FF games. I was originally wanting to use Cyan's sword tech skill names but those are so simple it'd be difficult to sort of work them in. That's why I took some from Auron, a lot from FFXI's SAM and sort of went from there. I also admit to throwing in references to Rurouni Kenshin (Nine Dragons = Kuzuryuusen, Howling Draw = Ryuumeisen/Dragon Howl Flash, and Alacrity's JP name would be Shinsoku which Kenshin fans refer to as "Godspeed").

Also, the tank spec needs to have a better augment for the stun duration, as all tanks have significantly longer stuns than other jobs (5-6 seconds).

Noted and changed.

I wonder if it'd be a good idea to give an actual translation of some of the kanji I've used. I'm not kidding when I said I took a lot from FFXI's samurai names, both abilities and merits.

[Donaria]

Have to say I loved reading this, my favorite job is SAM and was my main while playing ffxi. Would play either dps or tank this build sounds like alot of fun. I'm currently DRG main for ffxiv and my secondary is PLD. The parry magic kit sounds like what DRK should of had all along. Great read hope when SAM does come out it will be as fun as how you imagined it would be.

[ardrej]

I must say this is pretty interesting both dps and tank seem pretty fun, balance wise I think its ok, not because it lacks, but we now new jobs need alot of feedback to get it right and i hope the real thing be something like this

[Donaria]

Have to say I loved reading this, my favorite job is SAM and was my main while playing ffxi. Would play either dps or tank this build sounds like alot of fun. I'm currently DRG main for ffxiv and my secondary is PLD. The parry magic kit sounds like what DRK should of had all along. Great read hope when SAM does come out it will be as fun as how you imagined it would be.