Quote Originally Posted by Xtro99 View Post
FR, mechanically, SAM is leagues better than it was in SHB. The only problem I see is that SAMs damage is subpar compared to other melee jobs that do as much if not higher dmg AND have group utility, basically making SAM an irrelevant job.
SAM literally has the highest rDPS Ex1 parse in the game right now. There's just a huge difference between the best SAM player and those behind them at the moment. If Bagel were to give the Ex2 another parsed go with a good group (the current leads have no one under a 97th percentile, and only one person under 99th, instead of multiple below 30th), you'd likely see SAM neck and neck with or surpassing the current lead, a Monk.

Ideally, SAM should slightly surpass Monk, as the latter has Mantra (Brotherhood is already accounted for in rDPS; SAM already has a ~4% lead over RPR and ~6% lead over MNK for aDPS), but SAM is far from having been made "irrelevant"; its rDPS, even down at the 80th percentile, is barely over half a percent from Monk's, which is smaller than the typical difference between any two runs by the same player on the same job in the same party.