I'm just not getting the Samurai hype, what am I missing?

[TankHunter678]

That's what I thought from reading the Sam thread on the dps forums.

Positional only affect Kenki gain, and are thus not a high priority. Damage wise SAM only cares about if the target is in range and if he is buffed up and slash debuff applied. So it is the least positional dependent class, and the best melee DPS to pick for those who hate positionals.

SAM also has higher uptime then the other melee DPS due to its high mobility so its lays out a consistent high level of damage output throughout the fight. It is the metaphorical black mage of melee DPS. Which attracts a lot of people to the class.

[Tanathya]

Positional only affect Kenki gain, and are thus not a high priority. Damage wise SAM only cares about if the target is in range and if he is buffed up and slash debuff applied. So it is the least positional dependent class, and the best melee DPS to pick for those who hate positionals.

SAM also has higher uptime then the other melee DPS due to its high mobility so its lays out a consistent high level of damage output throughout the fight. It is the metaphorical black mage of melee DPS. Which attracts a lot of people to the class.

It does indirectly have a huge impact on your damage, as that means having more kenki for extra Hissatsu: Shinten. It is a high priority, even if it does not affect the potency of your attack.

[TankHunter678]

It does indirectly have a huge impact on your damage, as that means having more kenki for extra Hissatsu: Shinten. It is a high priority, even if it does not affect the potency of your attack.

That is true when it comes to harder content like EX primals and savage raids where you need to optimize to beat the enrage clock.

But for general content? Its not a high priority.

[Cenerae]

That is true when it comes to harder content like EX primals and savage raids where you need to optimize to beat the enrage clock.

But for general content? Its not a high priority.

Still, that doesn't mean you should go out of your way to be lazy and ignore the positionals entirely. It's not like you have to keep dancing around the boss like MNK does or anything, so getting those positionals isn't exactly high effort to begin with.

It just makes it less punishing for you if you can't get into the correct position because you need to move.

[TankHunter678]

Still, that doesn't mean you should go out of your way to be lazy and ignore the positionals entirely. It's not like you have to keep dancing around the boss like MNK does or anything, so getting those positionals isn't exactly high effort to begin with.

It just makes it less punishing for you if you can't get into the correct position because you need to move.

After playing so much ninja I just do the positionals automatically. I was glad when I realized Samurai was a lot less punishing in the positional department, and that even if I was forced to move constantly out of melee range (like Susano) where my combo timer was going to wear off anyways Enpi spam was nice for building up Kenki when busy dodging aoes.

[Zojha]

But for general content? Its not a high priority.

Well, for the general populace in general content, netflix tends to have the highest priority, with discord and tumblr being a close second. Mechanics are usually somewhere in the fourth of fifth spot and rotation a distant 10th at most.

[Karathix]

Positional only affect Kenki gain, and are thus not a high priority.

5 missed positionals are 300 potency on SAM. 5 missed positionals are 200 potency on MNK. By this logic, MNK shouldn't do positionals too.

[Chronons]

Its difficult to know why it is you are not liking SAM. Without seeing your play we dont know if there is something you are missing. It could be the case that it just doesn't click with you. I love tanking and have leveled them all at various points, but PLD has just never meshed with my play style. Sometimes that just happens.

That being said at a high level of play SAM becomes more difficult than some of these posts seem to suggest. At a base level you can play the class slow and passively and pretend to do big dps because you Midare occasionally, but that is not how the class is optimally played. The Kenki management is arguably one of the most dynamic job gauges available, Sen must be generated and spent appropriately, positional requirements for dps, and you must maintain proper timing on 3 buffs and a DoT. SAM has moments where it slowy builds it resources and moments where it builds them in burst, that has to be managed so as to not overfill resources or lose buffs. Downtime is punishing because SAM requires all of their buffs to maintain their high dps and while you do have mobile abilities to help with this, they come at a steep cost to your dps.

[Esoterikk]

That being said at a high level of play SAM becomes more difficult than some of these posts seem to suggest.

See this is my thing, I'm kind of banking on having Hagakure so I can control kenki and sen for a more dynamic rotation.

I don't dislike the class right now but without hagakure it feels like 1 dot 123 hit 123 hit rinse and repeat

[Chronons]

I don't dislike the class right now but without hagakure it feels like 1 dot 123 hit 123 hit rinse and repeat

I mean, until you get Hagakure your not really wrong about that^

Once you get Hagakure the rotation becomes much more dynamic. The reason for that is that using Hagakure on 3 Sen is actually worth more potency than a Kaiten Midare. So you have a rotation where you prioritize Buffs >Kaiten DoT > 3 Sen Hagakure > Kaiten Midare > Shinten. That helps break up the feeling of repetition quite a bit, because every 3 Sen is no longer a Midare. Doing the correct positionals as well as using Hagakure on the three Sen will give you a huge number of Kenki to spend on Shinten. You will weave these in as you re-build your Sen.

Whenever people ask my how the job plays I describe it as playing WAR at NIN speed. However, it is obvious that SAM is finely tuned for lvl 70. It didnt feel right to me either until 68-70.