Samurai Discussion

[Sai-Kon]

Some notes and observations about SAM rotation: I have seen a few people do a mistake with their rotations and it is that they try to treat SAM as a DRG in terms of lining up their rotations perfectly (as it was the case for DRG in Heavensward). SAM has a spammy rotation and the purpose of it is to build SEN and Kenki as quickly as possible. Secondly, abilities like Hissatsu Yaten, Enbi, Hissatsu Gyoten (the dash away, dash in combo) are completely situational and are to be used not as part of our main rotation, but in cases where we otherwise would have had downtime in our DPS while dodging an AoE. The reason why dash in/dash away are situational is not only because it costs us kenki and an auto-attack, it also cost us a valuable GCD towards building a SEN that would result in higher overall DPS. In the span of a fight, if we assume that someone used dash in/dash away combo 3-4 times as part of their core rotation, that equals to 2-3 GCDs of our main rotation and 1 Iaijutsu.

[Sai-Kon]

With regards to rotations, I have run numerous opener simulations and I have come down to 2 builds: First one is the same as Daioh's. The second one I came up with beats the first opener slightly in terms of potency/time and abuses the fact that Iaijutsu does not break combos:

Hakaze (5K) - Yukikaze (15K) - Hakaze (20K) - Jinpu (25K) - Iaijutsu (25K) - Gekko (35K) - Hissatsu: Shinten (10K) - Hakaze (15K) - Shifu (20K) - Kasha (30K) - Hissatsu: Shinten (5K) - Hakaze (10K) - Yukikaze (20K) - Hagakure (80K) - Meikyo Shisui (80K) - Yukikaze (90K) - Hissatsu: Guren (40K) - Gekko (50K) - Hissatsu: Shinten (25K) - Kasha (35K) - Hissatsu: Kaiten (15K) - Iaijutsu (15k)

As you can see, it abuses the fact that I don't use the first SEN right away. Instead I get Jinpu first to buff the damage of Higanbana and then I cast it slightly before we get the 2nd SEN. This opener has slightly higher overall DPS gain over Daio's but it is surely not perfect since it suffers from certain shortcomings.

[Sai-Kon]

Final Remarks: While abusing small stuff like delaying Higanbana slightly so it gets buffed by Jinpu is definitely a step in the right direction, I firmly believe that we have to look a bit outside of the box while theorycrafting. Let me elaborate: It is no secret that the biggest inflation of DPS happens during the first 30 or so seconds when all CDs are thrown to the boss. To that end, we must take into accounts the big CDs (Battle Litany, Trick Attack etc) and try to line up our hard-hitting abilities during that window because the initial DPS gain/inflation will end up being way higher than it would have been otherwise. For instance, my rotation has higher potency/time than Daioh's. However, my rotation suffers from the fact that it only utilizes Higanbana in the first 10-15 seconds when BL or TA will be up, while Guren and Midare come way later into the opener and they will most likely not be buffed by these CDs (unless communicated otherwise with your team).

[Sai-Kon]

Moreover, while looking at other dps classes' rotations and how high burst they have in their openers to inflate the DPS numbers, for instance a 9x Fire IV BLM opener, I have a strong suspicion that Higanbana's DoT will most likely be buffed by Hissatsu: Kaiten so that we can keep up with the rest DPS-wise. While simulating SAM openers I was always getting that feeling that something is missing from our rotation, something does not feel as smooth. In some simulations where I assumed that Higanbana's DoT is affected by Kaiten, the opener felt more fluid and the DPS higher (which is how it should be given that we only have 1 DoT).

Last but not least, another important thing to consider is the slashing debuff and whether we have a member in the team like WAR who can apply it for us early so we can opt for an opener starting with Jnpu buff/combo, which is comparatively superior to Yukikaze combo buff wise and potency wise (despite Yukikaze being a 2-part combo).

[VorpalSpork]

Interestingly, I didn't see any positional requirements for SAM. That's a big plus for me, but maybe I just didn't notice . . .

[Sai-Kon]

Update: Something really interesting: I looked at WAR again and now they can apply Slashing Debuff with Maim instead of Storm's Eye. Maim is casted 2nd after Heavy Swing in their rotation, which is coincidentally the same timing when we would theoretically apply Slashing Debuff via Yukikaze. What does that mean in essence is that it is pointless having two classes apply the slashing debuff at the same time so we can instead get a higher benefit by opting for Hakaze-Jinpu-Gekko first rather than Hakaze-Yukikaze. Certainly, we are going to cast Hakaze-Yukikaze eventually to unlock the Settsu Sen, however, it is really great to see that we can get the superior 15% dmg increase from Jinpu first and have the slashing debuff up by WAR at the same time, instead of having only the 10% dmg increase from slashing debuff.

[Saerk]

You\\'re not factoring the potency cost for using Kaiten. Kenki is worth potency. Your most common oGCD used cost 25 kenki and does 300 potency so let\\'s say that 1 kenki = around 12 potency. Kaiten costs 20 kenki. So that is 240 potency cost for a gain of 360 potency on an attack, that means the net gain for using Kaiten instead of using the 300 potency attack is only 120 potency. Let\\'s compare that to using the ability that converts all 3 sen into kenki. That nets you 60 kenki. At 12 potency per kenki that is a whopping 720 potency itself!

So let\\'s figure something here. While you used midare w/ Kaiten spending 20 kenki for a 1080 potency attack, that also took the oppurtunity cost of a GCD, I used the sen to kenki conversion ability which puts me at 80 kenki, so I have 960 potency banked up, allowing me to use roughly 5-6 300 potency oGCD accounting for generation from doing my combos back up to 3 sen allowing me to then do a Kaiten midare.

[Saerk]

There are positional requirements on two of your finishers, the penalty for not meeting them is you only get 5 kenki instead of 10. That doesn't sound like a big deal on paper but when you realize that 1 kenki is worth anywhere between 8-12 potency depending on a few things that's potential a 60 potency loss per incorrect usage. That'll definitely add up throughout a fight.

[PROBOUND]

Updated Opener with PoT:

[Sai-Kon]

You\\'re not factoring the potency cost for using Kaiten. Kenki is worth potency. Your most common oGCD used cost 25 kenki and does 300 potency so let\\'s say that 1 kenki = around 12 potency. Kaiten costs 20 kenki. So that is 240 potency cost for a gain of 360 potency on an attack, that means the net gain for using Kaiten instead of using the 300 potency attack is only 120 potency. Let\\'s compare that to using the ability that converts all 3 sen into kenki. That nets you 60 kenki. At 12 potency per kenki that is a whopping 720 potency itself!

So let\\'s figure something here. While you used midare w/ Kaiten spending 20 kenki for a 1080 potency attack, that also took the oppurtunity cost of a GCD, I used the sen to kenki conversion ability which puts me at 80 kenki, so I have 960 potency banked up, allowing me to use roughly 5-6 300 potency oGCD accounting for generation from doing my combos back up to 3 sen allowing me to then do a Kaiten midare.

I already factored the potency cost for using Kaiten. For Kaiten to be efficient for the Kenki that we spend on it must provide 240 additional potency. The only Weaponskill that can generate that much potency is Midare Setsugekka with which Kaiten provides +360 potency for a total of 1080. From the second hardest hitting weaponskills (Gekko and Kasha) Kaiten only give +200 potency rendering it inefficient. In other words, you want to use Kaiten only with Midare Setsugekka (and when Hagakure is on cooldown, otherwise convert Sen to Kenki for more Shinten). I did the exact thing in the opener I discussed. Maybe you were confused because I used the name "Iaijutsu" instead of the actual name of the ability. The Iaijutsu I used in the end in combination with Kaiten is Midare Setsugekka.