Studying The Blade- The SAM DPS Guide

[dragonkyn20]

Definitely gonna be bookmarking this. I've experimented quite a lot with SAM as I was leveling it (currently at 64) and most of what I read here is exactly what I found out for myself. Excellent job!

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Regarding aoe, is it best to keep both Shifu and Jinpu simply go keep Jinpu going? Been seeing a lot of conflicting theories on it and curious if anyone else has tested the damage difference.

[Ardram]

Two quick questions -

The spreadsheet at the very end of the OP notes an optimal GCD of 2.46. Is this with or without Shifu active? (if the creator browses here) This is assuming, of course, that the speed buff actually modifies our tooltips while it's active. I haven't checked that yet, but will tonight.

And then has any math been done on just how much of a damage increase the 5% slash resist reduction comes out to? Is it just a simple +5%? Or is there more to it, similar to how "armor" in a lot of games comes out to each additional percentage point being more valuable than the last. This is something else I may experiment with on a dummy later tonight, though I suppose it's something that could vary based on how much actual slash resist a given mob or boss has.

Thanks.

[Nominous]

Two quick questions -

The spreadsheet at the very end of the OP notes an optimal GCD of 2.46. Is this with or without Shifu active? (if the creator browses here) This is assuming, of course, that the speed buff actually modifies our tooltips while it's active. I haven't checked that yet, but will tonight.

I'm gonna have to remove that spreadsheet eventually- I'd like something that more accurately describes the current situation. I bolded a disclaimer with the spreadsheet that it's all based on media-tour (pre EA) builds, and isn't indicative of the current SAM. The important thing to note from that spreadsheet is the general idea of how Hagakure can work in the rotation. It's more like proof that it was slightly better than a rotation prioritizing 3 Hagakure. However, I don't have the old spreadsheet showing the 3 Sen rotation that was inferior.

That being said, the notes on the side were also untrue, to an extent. Higanbana IS granted benefit from Kaiten, and the SS recommended on the spreadsheet (probably didn't consider Shifu) was due to the 3-Sen Hagakure rotation. The rotation suggesting that 3-Sen Hagakure was the way to go had problems with Higanbana falling off, or being weirdly desynced with the rotation. This was because of one simple fact- Hagakure keeps your GCD rolling, putting you at Hakaze AND higher Kenki. Someone who doesn't use Hagakure at the same juncture (and chooses Midare instead) is 1 GCD behind. This made it so that at certain SS thresholds you'd have to potentially start doing weird stuff to keep Higanbana uptime at a maximum.

[RaizeGraymalkin]

The 35 Kenki rule is a nice little tip to keep in mind. It's been pretty helpful.

[Nominous]

Regarding aoe, is it best to keep both Shifu and Jinpu simply go keep Jinpu going? Been seeing a lot of conflicting theories on it and curious if anyone else has tested the damage difference.

I'll have to check this out more thoroughly, if I can, when friends are able to help me with the tools I need. The threshold I'm sure is going to depend on the amount of enemies. For example, Arm of the Destroyer on MNK used to not really break even until (I think it was like 5+ enemies?), so it was better to do a single-target rotation for buffs and just ending with Rock-Breaker when below 5 enemies.

This is just napkin math until someone can come in with an easier to digest spreadsheet or something, but... For starters, Kenki gain isn't something that will deviate between the two rotations (buffed AoE vs. non-buffed) by a large amount. At certain points, Fuga+Followup spam will be slightly ahead (15 GCD's is like 110 Kenki generated compared to the buffed rotation's 105 Kenki by 15 GCD's, not considering the Iai obviously), but that's about as much as it will fluctuate. Never enough to really get an extra Kenki-spender of worth. However, the way you spend it MIGHT differ.

Then you have to think about each GCD and how much potency it's worth. Let's talk non-Jinpu-buffed values. If you do one Fuga, that one GCD (let's say on 5 enemies hit) is equivalent to 500 potency. Then the followup skill (again on 5 enemies) is 900 potency (includes degradation). 1400 potency for 2 GCD's. 2800 for 4. 5th GCD (Tenka Goken with Kaiten, which is equivalent to 2160 with potency for 5 enemies, including the AoE degradation) puts you at 4960, with no buffs. That puts you at 9920 for 10 GCD's, your last being Kaiten+Tenka Goken. My GCD is at 2.39, so using that is an example, 24 seconds for that potency. (I might be wrong, considering GCD one is basically 0 seconds, but you just offset that by 2.39, easy enough).

One buff combo puts you at 830 for 3 GCD's. Let's assume Shifu first, which reduces your GCD by 10%, but we'll talk about the GCD at the end. Then Jinpu (which modifies Gekko to be 440 potency), making 6 GCD's worth 1700. Add in Tenka Goken, which is 2376 (on 5 enemies, after Jinpu), bringing us to 4076 by the 7th GCD. Fuga+Followup is 1543 after Jinpu, so that's 5619 by the 9th GCD. 6169 on the 10th (Fuga). 11th is the followup putting you at 7162, 12th (Kaiten Tenka Goken) is 9538.

The GCD though. Every GCD past the 2nd is faster when you put up Shifu. So (again with my terrible math), 11 GCD's are 2.15, first being 2.39. With Shifu, that's 26.04 Seconds to reach 9538 potency, compared to 24 seconds for 9920. You're ahead by barely one Fuga as far as potency goes at this juncture, compared to someone who put up Shifu+Jinpu first. At around 36-37 seconds or so (again, maybe adjusted by 2.39 seconds) is when you're going to start seeing the difference in the rotations, if we aren't counting Kenki abilities. However, since the Kenki gain is roughly the same either way, and your first Kenki-spender in both scenarios should still be Kaiten for Tenka Goken, they'll roll out similarly throughout both. It's just that the buffed rotation will have (15 from Jinpu x5 enemies =75) extra potency on your Kyutens.

I guess the TL;DR conclusion is that if you're at 6 or more enemies, no matter how long they take to die, you'll probably wanna spam the pure AoE rotation. If you're at 5 or below, and they'll die quick, you're still better off spamming pure AoE. If they're at 4 and below, you're probably good to do the buffed rotation since AoE degradation isn't hitting you as hard, there's less enemies (the AoE isn't benefiting you as much), and such. I do wonder if a Shifu only buffed rotation would be better, since you save a couple GCD's, and might put you ahead sooner. Again, napkin math, but I'm pretty confident in that.

[dragonkyn20]

Quick AoE question. Should I buff Tenka Goken at all or save my kenki for Kyuten spam?

[Nominous]

Updating the front page with the full rotation (based on 1/2 Hagakure usage, on cooldown) in video form, for those who learn more visually. Performed with just about ideal management of Kenki, and such. You could probably do striking dummy cheese to come up ahead, too. Some things to note about it, as well-

Susano Dummy
Item level is 313.
2.15 GCD after Shifu.
Melds are skillspeed because VI's are cheap, and I wanted to test if I could get more Sen in the time span of 3 minutes (still haven't looked into it).
No pot. No food. No other enhancements.
Clear time varies from 20 seconds-25 seconds, most often being at about 20.

[Nominous]

Quick AoE question. Should I buff Tenka Goken at all or save my kenki for Kyuten spam?

Well, I'm sure this one's complex too, but I'll give a shot with my thoughts.

I'm not positive on how the damage degradation works, but I'm assuming it takes the flat percentage off the top value always. So 360-x%, 360-xx%, so on so forth. As opposed to 360-x%, 324-xx%, so on so forth. So Tenka Goken, under that assumption, is 1440 without Kaiten (5 enemies), and 2160 with Kaiten (5 enemies). In this scenario, Kaiten has given you an additional 720 potency. Kyuten has no degradation, so on 5 enemies it's worth 750 potency. So as far as Kenki goes, since it costs 5 more to do Kyuten, it seems just about as efficient as far as resource spending goes.

You can use Kaiten or Kyuten, but Kyuten+Raw Tenka will do more overall damage (by 30). And even though Kyuten costs more Kenki, it's not until 4 uses that it'll have cost you an extra Kaiten. That is, 4 Uses of Kyuten requires 100 Kenki, 100 Kenki could be used for 5 Kaiten. We need to get to 100 Kenki before worrying about that, though. Our AoE combo gains us 15 per Fuga+Followup. We'd need to do that (basically) 7 times to get 4 Kyutens, or conversely, 5 Kaiten buffs.

So. By 7 reps of the AoE rotation we WILL get 4 Kyuten's (we've generated 105 Kenki). We will NOT however, have the chance to spend 5 Kaitens, in this same time frame. Because 7 reps, while gaining us the Kenki to perform that, will only have gotten us enough Sen for 3 Tenka-Gokens, max (and therefore, only 3 opportunities to use Kaiten).

Altogether... We have a few options here. 4 Kyuten+3 raw Tenka. 3 Kaiten-Tenka+1 Kyuten, 2 Kaiten-Tenka+2 Kyuten.
Option 1 is (750*4=3000)+(1440*3= 4320)~ 7320 potency.
Option 2 is (2160*3=6480)+(750)~ 7230 potency.
Option 3 is (2160*2=4320)+(750*2=1500)~ 5820 potency.

So, again, napkin math, but it would seem that Kyuten spam is stronger in situations where you have 5 or more enemies. 4 enemies or less, Kaiten gives you a better benefit (by a small margin), if I understand the degradation on Tenka-Goken correctly.

[Phobia89]

So something interesting I have stumbled on with AoE tonight while spamming dungeons.

I started opening AoEing with Gekko>Kasha>Kaiten+Tenka and then swaping to Gekko>Yukikaze>Kaiten+Tenka and then switching to Kasha>Yukikaze>Kaiten+Tenka and repeating this rotation of changing between Gekko and Kasha, keeping both buffs rolling with out any problems, spending extra Kenki on Kyuten and this rotation is actually providing a massive DPS increase over the standard rotation and I can't really put a finger on why that is.

About the only thing I can think of is i'm getting a much larger potency with Gekko and Kasha combos on single target and still getting Tenka+Kyuten AoE potency and combined is giving a bigger DPS gain then a strictly AoE rotation.

I've tested this with about 4 more dungeons tonight and i'm consistently out DPSing the strictly AoE rotation by a good 400-500 DPS.