Samurai's 5.05 "Hagakure" Dead on Arrival

[wereotter]

I haven't touched SAM since Shadowbringers launched, but why would you need to use Hagakure like this? Iaijutsu doesn't interrupt your combo and you'll have more than enough Kenki for Kaiten, so it shouldn't be a problem to land Higanbana between Jinpu and Gekko.

In Stormblood, you'd want to get both your buffs from Shifu and Jinpu before applying your DOT at the start of a pull, so it either meant cutting one of your three move combos short, or using hagakure to convert one sen into kenki before applying your dot. Additionally you wanted the shifu buff first so that you could more quickly get to the other buffs and get the increased auto attack damage going, but that buff wouldn't apply to your DOT, so you needed to then get the jinpu buff before applying that.

I admit I only leveled up samurai to get all the leveling striking gear out of my armory chest and have no intention of touching it again.... the constant sound effect on midare was giving me migraines. So I am not at all up to date on how to play the job optimally since the expansion. So I'm legitimately asking if this isn't now the same moves in the opener again.

[Rosenstrauch]

In Stormblood, you'd want to get both your buffs from Shifu and Jinpu before applying your DOT at the start of a pull, so it either meant cutting one of your three move combos short, or using hagakure to convert one sen into kenki before applying your dot. Additionally you wanted the shifu buff first so that you could more quickly get to the other buffs and get the increased auto attack damage going, but that buff wouldn't apply to your DOT, so you needed to then get the jinpu buff before applying that.

I believe you're assuming that using Iaijutsu (Higabana in this case) removes your combo progress, forcing you to start with Hakaze again. It does not; You can pick up right where you left off.

Example: Hakaze -> Shifu -> Kasha -> Hakaze -> Jinpu -> Hissatsu: Kaiten + Higanbana -> Gekko

Doing this opener in this exact order will always grant you both your Jinpu and Shifu buffs, one Sen for Higanbana, more than enough Kenki to empower it with Kaiten, and will still allow you to finish with Gekko.

[wereotter]

I believe you're assuming that using Iaijutsu (Higabana in this case) removes your combo progress, forcing you to start with Hakaze again. It does not; You can pick up right where you left off.

Example: Hakaze -> Shifu -> Kasha -> Hakaze -> Jinpu -> Hissatsu: Kaiten + Higanbana -> Gekko

Doing this opener in this exact order will always grant you both your Jinpu and Shifu buffs, one Sen for Higanbana, more than enough Kenki to empower it with Kaiten, and will still allow you to finish with Gekko.

No, I realize it didn't interrupt your combo. I seem to recall doing it this way also ensured that your buff from jinpu was applied server-side when you executed higanbana. This was the same reason you waited an additional GCD at the time after applying your slashing debuff in the opener before using guren, you wanted to make sure that the server registered that debuff in order to get maximum damage.

If this is no longer a concern, then so be it. Like I said, I only just pushed the job to 80 and haven't touched it since, and haven't seriously played it since 4.2 (I did deltascape savage on samurai then switched back to monk once they fixed all the issues that job had)

[Quor]

I believe you're assuming that using Iaijutsu (Higabana in this case) removes your combo progress, forcing you to start with Hakaze again. It does not; You can pick up right where you left off.

Example: Hakaze -> Shifu -> Kasha -> Hakaze -> Jinpu -> Hissatsu: Kaiten + Higanbana -> Gekko

Doing this opener in this exact order will always grant you both your Jinpu and Shifu buffs, one Sen for Higanbana, more than enough Kenki to empower it with Kaiten, and will still allow you to finish with Gekko.

I think he's talking about the old 1-Sen opener, where you ate the Ka Sen in order to provide enough Kenki for Guren, Kaiten+Higan and Kaiten+Midare within the space of your opener. I get what he's saying, but as it stands now, Ikishoten fills that gap just fine. Sure, it's a 60s CD vs. the old Hagakure 40s CD, but that's fine too because I like SAM more as an Iaijutsu class instead of an oGCD spam class. As it stands now, if old Hagakure were to be re-implemented, it's value would go up drastically. Old Shinten was 250 potency, which meant 20 Kenki was 200 potency, allowing us to assign a very easy value conversion to Sen. At 20 Kenki each, one Sen was worth 200 potency. Given that you always wanted to Kaiten+Midare, this meant that Midare would "cost" about 80 Kenki, which under the old values came out to 800 potency. Now, a Kaiten+Midare was 1020 potency, so clearly it's better in a straight up contest, but the devil came with the loss of auto-attacks, the self-root from casting, and the potential combo cost from using Midare in place of something else. So the average potency-per-GCD wasn't as clear cut a gain as it appeared. Eating Sen on CD allowed us to stay mobile and deal damage that - in most cases - was better than what Kaiten+Midare could offer. But at a 5-per Sen conversion, Haga is only useful now as a pre-fight or mid-fight reset when you need to re-apply buffs, or in really niche situations where another 5 Kenki lets you drop a big move or sneak in a bit more damage before a jump or something.

And that's fine, because we wouldn't want old Hagakure back anyway. As it stands now, with Shinten at 320 potency, each Sen under old Haga would be worth 256 potency instead of 200. That's more than a 25% buff to the relative value of Sen. In other words, if old Hagakure had been brought back, then there would be even less reason to Midare than there already was. You would want to do it when it lined up with raid burst windows and when Kaeshi was off CD, but that would be about it. Old Haga would actively disincentivize SAM from using Sen on Midare in every other situation, as the conversion would be so skewed in favor of Shinten that spending the 60 Kenki you would get from 3 Sen would grant more raw damage than an unbuffed Midare once you factor in AA's and average PPGCD.

Anyway, that's a rather long-winded way for me to say I like the new Haga for what it is. Yes, it doesn't really change openers and probably won't have a great mid-battle effect, but it certainly serves as a great QoL tool to make phase transitions or downtime between battles much nicer as a SAM.

[wereotter]

I think he's talking about the old 1-Sen opener...

Yes, thank you. This is the opener I was referring to.

Also while I'm happy it's more enjoyable for you now, I have to say that the more frequent use of iajutsu is what killed this job for me this expansion over being able to convert sen to kenki and do more OGCD moves last expansion. I found the spamming of moves and lots of OGCD attacking to be a lot more fun, not to mention the high pitched squeal on using any iajutsu is migrane inducing for me, especially at it's now higher frequency of use.

And thank you for the answer that the reintroduction of this skill does not change the opener, with that detailed explanation.