Samurai Skills and Concepts (Up to lv 40)

[Galanth]

I like how you are getting on him about throwing a sheath isn't viable.

GLD/PLD have an attack called Shield Lob. Since when does throwing a shield across the room and it magically returning to your hand make sense?

[Kitru]

I like how you are getting on him about throwing a sheath isn't viable.

GLD/PLD have an attack called Shield Lob. Since when does throwing a shield across the room and it magically returning to your hand make sense?

Shield Lob at least exists as a cultural landmark, what with Captain America having spent over 50 years throwing a shield having it bounce around like a pinball before returning to his waiting hand. A Shield is also shaped/weighted well enough that it could actually be seen as a feasible throwing weapon. A sheath, on the other hand, has no real cultural status as a throwing weapon and is ludicrous on the face of it as a throwing weapon.

Shield Lob is weird, but Sheath Shot is just outright absurd.

[Tyger]

@kitru

If you would recall (assuming you're familiar with FF), "great katana" is the term in final fantasy for the 2-handed sword used by SAM, whereas "katana" was the 1-handed sword used by NIN. But it was a poor of me to say a wakizashi would be "used as a two-hander". The wakizashi would not graphically be wielded with 2-hands; but "used" like a 2-hander "mechanically" in that it wouldn't come with an off-hand. I didn't expect the focus to be on the animation, more so on the proposed game mechanics.

Samurai throwing blades are not really a thing, yet a ranged attack is needed for the game and a small blade makes the most sense; leaving a tanto or the smaller sword, and wakizashi makes more sense on review. This ultra-realism of yours is a bit silly though. The idea is to take the key class identifiers and build a series of fictional attacks surrounding those class identifiers. Thanks for the history lesson, but discussing the proposed mechanics would have been far more welcomed.

[Kuwagami]

To be fair, every weapon-throwing attack doesn't really make sense as you would lose you way to fight the monsters after that. ^^

Though, as every other weaponed job has a their weapon throw (can't say that monks have a weapon, technically it's their bare fists), wouldn't it will be called "Kozuka" ? (ref. to Yojimbo's attack in FFX, throwing 3 little knives)

[Ramsey]

Took a crack at a Samurai design out of boredom, you can view it as a spreadsheet on Google drive. For those who do not wish to view an external link, I've dumped everything below, I apologize for the rough formatting.

• This design is based on a unique TP management principle, Samurai does not regain TP naturally, but can use meditate along with focus to regain TP at will. This creates more deliberate play, where rotations are planned more carefully. Think of it as the melee equivalent of a Black Mage in some ways.
• Samurai is designed in this case as a tank. The base class would be Parivir / 刀術士 and is designed to split into Ronin (DPS) and Samurai (Tank). Ronin job abilities are not included.
• Some names are placeholder.
• Cooldowns have not been assigned to buffs, would take playtesting or a lot of unnecessary theorycrafting. Use your imagination based on equivalent buffs from other classes.
• TP values have not been assigned, there's a lot of math to do for balance considering the class's unique interaction with the resource.
• Damage values are probably not 100% balanced, however keep in mind the intent is for Samurai to be less spammy, and more deliberate, and the Samurai must lose a WS every few WS to meditate.

Level Name Type Description
1 Enpi Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Grants Focus.
2 Meditate Ability Instantly restores 100 TP and an additional 100 per focus.
4 Tsuki Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Enpi. Combo Potency: 200. Grants Focus.
6 Hamanoha Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increases the damage the target takes from your next weaponskill by 100%. Duration: 3s.
8 Enhanced Strength Trait Increases Strength by 4.
8 Third Eye Ability Evade the next physical attack.
10 Seigan Ability Increases parry rate by 40% and lowers damage received by 10%. Cannot be used with Hasso. Ends upon reuse.
12 Strengthen Ability Increases damage dealt and reduces damage suffered by 15%. Duration: 10s. Grants three units of focus.
14 Enhanced Third Eye Trait Extends the effect of third eye to the next two phyiscal attacks.
15 Yoshin Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 140 to all enemies in a straight line before you.
16 Enhanced Vitality Trait Increases Vitality by 4.
18 Mineuchi Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Stun.
20 Enhanced Strengten Trait Extends Strengthen duration to 20s.
22 Hasso Ability Increases damage received by 30%, while increasing damage dealt by 30% and attack speed by 15%. Cannot be used with Seigan. Ends upon reuse.
24 Enhanced Yoshin Trait Adds +40% heavy to Yoshin.
26 Goten Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Tsuki. Combo Potency: 300. Combo Bonus: Reduces damage taken by 10%. Grants two units of focus.
28 Superior Focus Trait Allows the stacking of up to 6 focus.
30 Bushido Job Ability Increases focus gain by 100% every time you suffer physical damage. Duration: 10s.
30 Iainuki Ability Sheath your weapon to charge an attack. Activate again to deliver an attack with a potency of up to 500. Grants Mushin. Duration: 5s.
32 Enhanced Hamanoha Trait Extends Hamanoha duration to 6s.
34 Harae Ability Removes a single detrimental effect from yourself.
35 Challenging Strike Job Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 40 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effect: If the target engages another player they will be dealt large damage with increased enmity. Duration: 15s
36 Enhanced Harae Trait Reduces the recast of Harae to 30s.
38 Kagero Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Additional Effect: Fire damage over time. Combo Action: Tsuki. Combo Bonus: Increases critical rate. Duration: 15s.
40 Enhanced Goten Trait Increases the damage reduction bonus granted by Goten to 20%.
40 Hold Fast Job Ability Reduces damage taken by 50%. Can only be executed under the effect of Mushin. Duration: 5s.
42 Shikikoyo Ability Grants nearby allies the effect of Regain, refreshing their TP over time.
44 Superior Focus II Trait Allows the stacking of up to 9 focus.
45 Power Break Job Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Additional Effect: Lowers the target's damage dealt by 30%. Duration: 5s.
46 Konzen-ittai Ability Grants healing over time effect to yourself. Effect increases for every unit of focus. Cure Potency: 100. Duration: 15s.
48 Jinpu Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 180 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effect: Decreases target's slashing resistance by 10%. Combo Action: Yoshin. Combo Effect: Grants Focus.
50 Shirahadori Job Ability Any attack that would deal damage removes one unit of focus instead. Duration: 10s. Grants three units of focus.
50 Meikyo Shisui Ability Allows execution of weaponskills without expending TP. Duration: 15s.


Job Abilities
30 Bushido Job Ability Increases focus gain by 100% every time you suffer physical damage. Duration: 10s.
35 Challenging Strike Job Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 40 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effect: If the target engages another player they will be dealt large damage with increased enmity. Duration: 15s
40 Hold Fast Job Ability Reduces damage taken by 50%. Can only be executed under the effect of Mushin. Duration: 5s.
45 Power Break Job Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Additional Effect: Lowers the target's damage dealt by 30%. Duration: 5s.
50 Shirahadori Job Ability Any attack that would deal damage removes one unit of focus instead. Duration: 10s. Grants three units of focus.


Weapon Skills
1 Enpi Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Grants Focus.
4 Tsuki Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Enpi. Combo Potency: 200. Grants Focus.
6 Hamanoha Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increases the damage the target takes from your next weaponskill by 100%. Duration: 3s.
15 Yoshin Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 140 to all enemies in a straight line before you.
18 Mineuchi Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Stun.
26 Goten Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Tsuki. Combo Potency: 300. Combo Bonus: Reduces damage taken by 10%. Grants two units of focus.
30 Iainuki Ability Sheath your weapon to charge an attack. Activate again to deliver an attack with a potency of up to 500. Grants Mushin. Duration: 5s.
38 Kagero Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Additional Effect: Fire damage over time. Combo Action: Tsuki. Combo Bonus: Increases critical rate. Duration: 15s.
48 Jinpu Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 180 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effect: Decreases target's slashing resistance by 10%. Combo Action: Yoshin. Combo Effect: Grants Focus.


Class Abilities
2 Meditate Ability Instantly restores 100 TP and an additional 100 per focus.
8 Third Eye Ability Evade the next physical attack.
10 Seigan Ability Increases parry rate by 40% and lowers damage received by 10%. Cannot be used with Hasso. Ends upon reuse.
12 Strengthen Ability Increases damage dealt and reduces damage suffered by 15%. Duration: 10s. Grants three units of focus.
22 Hasso Ability Increases damage received by 30%, while increasing damage dealt by 30% and attack speed by 15%. Cannot be used with Seigan. Ends upon reuse.
34 Harae Ability Removes a single detrimental effect from yourself.
42 Shikikoyo Ability Grants nearby allies the effect of Regain, refreshing their TP over time.
46 Konzen-ittai Ability Grants healing over time effect to yourself. Effect increases for every unit of focus. Cure Potency: 100. Duration: 15s.
50 Meikyo Shisui Ability Allows execution of weaponskills without expending TP. Duration: 15s.


Traits
8 Enhanced Strength Trait Increases Strength by 4.
14 Enhanced Third Eye Trait Extends the effect of third eye to the next two phyiscal attacks.
16 Enhanced Vitality Trait Increases Vitality by 4.
20 Enhanced Strengten Trait Extends Strengthen duration to 20s.
24 Enhanced Yoshin Trait Adds +40% heavy to Yoshin.
28 Superior Focus Trait Allows the stacking of up to 6 focus.
32 Enhanced Hamanoha Trait Extends Hamanoha duration to 6s.
36 Enhanced Harae Trait Reduces the recast of Harae to 30s.
40 Enhanced Goten Trait Increases the damage reduction bonus granted by Goten to 20%.
44 Superior Focus II Trait Allows the stacking of up to 9 focus.

[Kitru]

This design is based on a unique TP management principle, Samurai does not regain TP naturally, but can use meditate along with focus to regain TP at will. This creates more deliberate play, where rotations are planned more carefully. Think of it as the melee equivalent of a Black Mage in some ways.

It wouldn't work since it would screw over anyone at low levels (THM gets Blizzard at level 1 so, from the start, their resource model is fine) and is entirely arbitrary: it doesn't serve a purpose other than justifying its own existence. If you want to have a mechanic like focus act like a secondary resource, you should have it behave as such. If you want its main purpose to be TP regeneration, just make the t3 combos cost a crapton so that the "enforced" cost only occurs once you've actually gotten high enough level to actually put it to some use.

Furthermore, forcing someone to use an attack that prevents them from doing anything on a regular basis is bad design. The Pacification on Berserk is bad enough and that's 2 GCDs out of every 18 (at most, if you use it on CD, which I don't actually know anyone that does). You're basically enforcing *more* loss than that and *requiring* that it occur on a regular basis. If you're going to have something like that, it shouldn't be on the GCD.

[*]Cooldowns have not been assigned to buffs, would take playtesting or a lot of unnecessary theorycrafting. Use your imagination based on equivalent buffs from other classes.

You really need to assign CDs just to provide a given frame of reference for your intent on the ability, especially given how hugely powerful some of your choices are. For the attacks, it's impossible to know whether you intend them to be long CD, short CD, or no CD, all of which can drastically affect their purpose/effect. Even if you don't want to assign explicit numbers, you should, at the very least, assign a descriptor, like "short CD" (Brutal Swing), "medium CD" (Infuriate, Internal Release), "long CD" (Vengeance, Rampart), or "very long CD" (Hallowed Ground, Sentinel).

Hamanoha Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increases the damage the target takes from your next weaponskill by 100%. Duration: 3s.

Assuming you meant this to not break combos (since otherwise it would be worthless), it an arbitrary pseudo-combo. Since it's on GCD, you're basically just including it as an arbitrary combo attack you use right before any t3 attack so you have to wonder what the point even is since you might as well just make all of them t4 combos. Also, the 3s duration is redundant because it's consumed so there's no reason to attempt to limit it to a single attack through duration, which is what you're doing here. If anything, the baseline duration should be long enough so that it's not wasted if you don't immediately follow it up (like if you're stunned, you/the enemy is knocked away, or it disappears).

Third Eye Ability Evade the next physical attack.

Broken as hell since you're providing explicit immunity to an attack on a regular basis. Hallowed Ground's immunity to all damage is only balanced because it's on a 7 min CD. This would either be basically worthless, if it were given a long CD, or hugely overpowered, if it were given a short CD. If you want it to be a baseline CD, just make it a high parry chance increase with an explicit duration.

Seigan Ability Increases parry rate by 40% and lowers damage received by 10%. Cannot be used with Hasso. Ends upon reuse.

Hasso Ability Increases damage received by 30%, while increasing damage dealt by 30% and attack speed by 15%. Cannot be used with Seigan. Ends upon reuse.

You shouldn't provide the tank and DPS stances to the base class. They belong as part of the job. Seigan should be in Samurai and Hasso should be in Ronin. Also, they're both disgustingly strong: Hasso is a ~53% increase to damage dealt, and Seigan provides the rough benefits of Shield Oath without any commensurate reduction in damage dealt.

Goten Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. Additional Effect: Increased Enmity. Combo Action: Tsuki. Combo Potency: 300. Combo Bonus: Reduces damage taken by 10%. Grants two units of focus.

Horribly overpowered. Inner Beast provides 20% DR but can only be used every 20 seconds and comes at an explicit cost. This would basically be all that a tank uses because 20% DR is absurdly strong, especially since it's also your strongest Focus generator.

Iainuki Ability Sheath your weapon to charge an attack. Activate again to deliver an attack with a potency of up to 500. Grants Mushin. Duration: 5s.

Hold Fast Job Ability Reduces damage taken by 50%. Can only be executed under the effect of Mushin. Duration: 5s.

Bad design here, once again. Even if it's thematically appropriately, Iainuki is just a strong attack that requires 2 clicks instead of one. On top of this, a single ability that generates a single buff with a short duration that activates a single CD is bad design because you're creating a single forced usage path. Aetherflow works for ACN because the stacks last a long time and there are multiple consumers for both SCH *and* SMN; Wrath works because lots of abilities generate/maintain it and there are multiple options for consuming them. My guess is that you intended for Ronin to have its own Mushin consumer, but, even so, it wouldn't work.

The two abilities should be separate, and Iainuki should require a single click to activate it. Just replace Mushin with full Focus or something similar.

Harae Ability Removes a single detrimental effect from yourself.

I'm reasonably sure that the devs avoided self-cleanses for a reason. Cleansing isn't needed often enough that it's something that you have to worry about a lot. A self-cleanse with a 30s CD basically renders the need for a healer cleanse redundant.

Power Break Job Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Additional Effect: Lowers the target's damage dealt by 30%. Duration: 5s.

Ridonculously strong. Even if you give it a long CD, you're basically providing them with a craptastically strong Virus/EfE. Burst damage would be a joke with a couple SAM tanks.

Shirahadori Job Ability Any attack that would deal damage removes one unit of focus instead. Duration: 10s. Grants three units of focus.

Broken as hell again. Immunity to attacks/damage is ridiculously strong especially since it's not like you even have to worry about getting hit more than 4-5 times over the course of 10 seconds unless you're in an AoE scenario (and the situations you'd want to use this are pretty much all ST burst situations). Since you can still generate Focus while it's active, it's not even costing you appreciably, especially given Bushido which is basically a free 9 Focus.

It doesn't help that you're providing it on *top* of Third Eye such that you're providing an insane amount of outright damage immunity to a single class.

Jinpu Ability Delivers an attack with a potency of 180 to all nearby enemies. Additional Effect: Decreases target's slashing resistance by 10%. Combo Action: Yoshin. Combo Effect: Grants Focus.

AoE damage debuffs are pretty friggin' strong. It should be noted that only BRD gets access to one and, even then, it's of limited uptime and doesn't apply to their own damage. Yours is part of the optimal AoE damage rotation for your class.

Enhanced Strength Trait Increases Strength by 4.

Enhanced Vitality Trait Increases Vitality by 4.

I realize you want the base class to flow into either a DPS or tank job, but the class itself has to have a defined role. ACN gets INT traits even though its built to stem into either a DPS or a healer because ACN is a DPS class, not a healer. Furthermore, it's standard for all classes to provide 3 attribute traits (that stack, I believe, so you actually get 12 points), and you've only got 2. Either way, it doesn't work.

Enhanced Yoshin Trait Adds +40% heavy to Yoshin.

Yoshin itself is fine, but a 40% heavy on an AoE, even for a melee, is more than a bit much. Flash works with Blind because it deals no damage and Blind is a relatively weak mitigation mechanism. Blizz 2 works with Bind because it's low damage, has a non-trivial cast time, and can only be used by squishies in melee.

Loads of problems with your design. You instituted a lot of arbitrary design choices that serve no practical purpose and actually detract from the build as a whole, provided a lot of abilities that shouldn't be provided (either at that point or at all), and tried too hard to design a class that could turn into either a DPS or tank job without actually considering what the class should actually be.

[inkuzen]

Shield Lob at least exists as a cultural landmark, what with Captain America having spent over 50 years throwing a shield having it bounce around like a pinball before returning to his waiting hand. A Shield is also shaped/weighted well enough that it could actually be seen as a feasible throwing weapon. A sheath, on the other hand, has no real cultural status as a throwing weapon and is ludicrous on the face of it as a throwing weapon.

Shield Lob is weird, but Sheath Shot is just outright absurd.

What if there were a Windslash? It would have some for of cultural relevance in a way, having the Samurai slice fast enough to create a wind projectile. I did kind of enjoy the gil throw you had proposed earlier. Though a wind slash would be the same animation wise as the Tomahawk ( which kinda looks like you're just throwing the axe head IMO :P)

[Kitru]

What if there were a Windslash? It would have some for of cultural relevance in a way, having the Samurai slice fast enough to create a wind projectile. I did kind of enjoy the gil throw you had proposed earlier. Though a wind slash would be the same animation wise as the Tomahawk ( which kinda looks like you're just throwing the axe head IMO :P)

I could see a Windslash-type attack being the SAM ranged attack, but I always felt that those types of attacks should be super attacks, like a 60 sec CD 20y cone, which is the model that Howling Fist follows. It's possible that it could have 2 separate levels, one of which is gotten at low level and acts as the tank ranged attack and a second at a higher level that acts like the uber-cone.

[Nalou]

I like the idea of using enmity as a ressource, but then I thought about something: enmity NEVER decreases (unless you die, in which case it resets to 0). It always adds, no matter what you do (except shroud of saints).
The percentage view in party window represent the percent enmity of the player with most enmity. So a MT can only be at 100%.

Plus, the enmity raw value can change from 0 (start) to millions (depending on how much damage is dealt and how much modifiers are applied).
It means you can have 1 enmity and be 100%, or you can have 500k enmity and be 1% of MT.
How can you scale abilities based on something that varies so much ?

What about mobs that resets enmity ? What do you do ? What about the times you die as well ?
It sounds like a tank trying to get back into the fight with only a RoH combo (and even a gimped RoH combo if I understand well because "potency lowers as enmity lowers")

Another thing, you probably noticed that the longer the fight is, the more Pld and War make a gap with the rest of the party, to the point they could even stop using enmity generation abilities (ex: #2 player on enmity list is barely 20%).
The players able to reach spots 2 and 3 are usually offtanks, or healers (that forget to pop shroud).


Also, this sheathing aura is NOT a tank ability, because it's the best and most cheated offtank ability ever.
Keep the samurai enmity just a little bit under Paladin or Warrior, and you just gave warrior and paladin 34% extra mitigation on top of their own. Why would anyone want you to get on top of enmity list and have "only" 35% damage reduction ?

[Ramsey]

It wouldn't work since it would screw over anyone at low levels

To be clear, they would still regain TP out of combat. Additionally, as Meditate states, it restores TP regardless of focus. So you'd simply need to activate it more often at lower levels. That said, most fights are shorter at lower levels, and damage scaling on most classes raises with level naturally or due to passive traits. You are right that it would need to be carefully balanced in order to not be too strenuous at low levels, or throwaway at high levels.

entirely arbitrary: it doesn't serve a purpose other than justifying its own existence.

The mechanic creates the following effects:

• Less frequent weaponskills (hence why they are balanced to be more powerful, no damage down scaling in tank stance, damage up in dps stance, with the same base numbers as other classes.)
• More deliberate planning with TP usage. You will have to take into account how much TP you have before you begin a series of attacks, as Meditate will break combos.
• A sharper drop if you screw up your rotation. The class is designed with a little more finesse in mind, because of the way that TP works, and because meditate would have a small cooldown and interrupt combos, you have more time to think about your next move, but if you do screw up your DPS will suffer more sharply.

Furthermore, forcing someone to use an attack that prevents them from doing anything on a regular basis is bad design.

I'm not sure what you're referring to? Perhaps you're assuming meditate needs to be channeled? I probably should have thrown some baseline CD values on these abilities, and also marked whether or not they are on/off the GCD.

You really need to assign CDs just to provide a given frame of reference for your intent on the ability

Yup! Can't agree more.

Assuming you meant this to not break combos (since otherwise it would be worthless), it an arbitrary pseudo-combo. Since it's on GCD, you're basically just including it as an arbitrary combo attack you use right before any t3 attack so you have to wonder what the point even is since you might as well just make all of them t4 combos. Also, the 3s duration is redundant because it's consumed so there's no reason to attempt to limit it to a single attack through duration, which is what you're doing here.

Correct, you throw this in a la Life Surge before a powerful attack, however the short duration is actually intended, it's meant to synergize with Iainuki directly, though the duration should really be more like 5s, not sure why it was set as 3.

The intended synergy is such that Iainuki's strength increases up to a maximum of 500 the longer you charge it, and the most powerful way to utilize it is to expose the enemy with Hamanoha and follow up with Iainuki, waiting for the last possible second Hamanoha is up to deal the most efficient damage.

Broken as hell since you're providing explicit immunity to an attack on a regular basis. Hallowed Ground's immunity to all damage is only balanced because it's on a 7 min CD. This would either be basically worthless, if it were given a long CD, or hugely overpowered, if it were given a short CD. If you want it to be a baseline CD, just make it a high parry chance increase with an explicit duration.

Totally valid, the CD probably needs to be adjusted or the effect, as you said. Or this could simply be adjusted to dodge only auto attacks. Do keep in mind though, that the job design lacks the native damage reduction or large health pool of warrior. This job is meant to excel when the player anticipates correctly, perhaps slightly edging out its competition in those situations, but perform significantly less well if the player fails to anticipate attacks. (A la XI's Ninja.)

You shouldn't provide the tank and DPS stances to the base class. They belong as part of the job. Seigan should be in Samurai and Hasso should be in Ronin. Also, they're both disgustingly strong: Hasso is a ~53% increase to damage dealt, and Seigan provides the rough benefits of Shield Oath without any commensurate reduction in damage dealt.

Really they belong? There's no precedent for this. In fact, the only job with two equivalent stances is Paladin, which has both available on the job.

The idea is that Samurai can slightly edge out Paladin and Warrior in terms of providing DPS as an off tank, making up for their weakness in other areas. But because their enmity generation is native to their weaponskills, they have to worry about their threat in those situations.

Unlike Paladin and Warrior which have their threat generation tacked on, the equivalent DPS job would have a threat dropping mechanic.

Moreover it's important to realize that the classes' weaponskills are inherently weaker by default because they are using them less frequently. Essentially they naturally have the same damage reduction overall that Warrior and Paladin experience in their respective tanking stances. Without the reduction benefits. Basically, without Hasso or Seigan up, Samurai is quite weak. But they unlock fairly quickly, and it's certainly not unplayable at low levels given how stats scale.

You are absolutely correct about Hasso being overpowered though, it was meant to be -15% attack speed, but likely became a typo when I converted from rough tooltips to using the game's tooltips as a style guide. Either way I adjusted it to -50% attack speed. The idea is that attacks are more powerful, but slower and more deliberate. And that weaponskills make up a larger portion of the class's DPS when in DPS mode or compared to other DPS classes.

Horribly overpowered. Inner Beast provides 20% DR but can only be used every 20 seconds and comes at an explicit cost. This would basically be all that a tank uses because 20% DR is absurdly strong, especially since it's also your strongest Focus generator.

Duration is important here, the duration would be short, it would essentially encourage the Samurai to time his combo so that Goten activates immediately prior to periods of high damage. You're right though that this is going to be the go to combo finisher, and that was intentional. You'd want to roll Jinpu combo and Kagero to keep the buffs up, but this is definitely the default combo.

Bad design here, once again. Even if it's thematically appropriately, Iainuki is just a strong attack that requires 2 clicks instead of one.

Refer to my previous response to Hamanoha, and the intended synergy. That's really the important thing with this attack, the way you'll use it together results in you essentially playing a quick draw timing mini game whenever it's up (not literally.) The damage and TP consumption would be balanced so that essentially you wouldn't want to use Iainuki without Hamanoha in most cases.

The two abilities should be separate, and Iainuki should require a single click to activate it. Just replace Mushin with full Focus or something similar.

Mushin literally just acts as a combo without being subject to other combo rules. Because its follow up move Shirahadori is not meant to be able to be used without activating Iainuki first. You are correct that Ronin would have its own Mushin consumer.

It's much more like the "enraged" state or a monk's "forms" than aetherflow. It's not meant to split into multiple moves, although that would be a possible expansion given a cap raise.

I'm reasonably sure that the devs avoided self-cleanses for a reason. Cleansing isn't needed often enough that it's something that you have to worry about a lot. A self-cleanse with a 30s CD basically renders the need for a healer cleanse redundant.

Having a Paladin in the party renders Ruin II redundant. You're right, you wouldn't need to cleanse a Samurai in many situations. But that's intentional. It's just makes managing a Samurai tank slightly less strenuous in one area as a healer. They'd still need cleanses during some fights, and so would the rest of the party.

Ridonculously strong. Even if you give it a long CD, you're basically providing them with a craptastically strong Virus/EfE. Burst damage would be a joke with a couple SAM tanks.

You're correct that the intent for this is a long cooldown. The duration is extremely short, you need to use good timing (yes it's a theme) in order to make good use of this. Keep in mind that Samurai does not have access to things like Sentinel, nor does it have the natural high HP or healing received as a Warrior. They can't tank on the same level without hitting the right timing.

You are correct though that this ability does help even as an OT, this was an intentional boon to bringing a Samurai as an OT. (And there are similar boons for PLD and WAR already.) However it would definitely need testing against encounters.

Broken as hell again. Immunity to attacks/damage is ridiculously strong especially since it's not like you even have to worry about getting hit more than 4-5 times over the course of 10 seconds unless you're in an AoE scenario (and the situations you'd want to use this are pretty much all ST burst situations). Since you can still generate Focus while it's active, it's not even costing you appreciably, especially given Bushido which is basically a free 9 Focus.

First I want to address Bushido, which you may or may not be interpreting incorrectly. This basically provides you with double focus from weaponskills as long as you've gotten hit recently. It's a passive that you leave up, it does not provide instantaneous focus, and in reality it may be too strong as is. It might need to be adjusted to granting focus when hit with an internal CD of X seconds.

Basically the intent is that Samurai cannot become an amazing damage dealer when in DPS stance for long periods of time, because it will not be able to maintain the necessary TP as well. Ronin would have an equivalent DPS focused passive focus generation source.

On Shirahadori itself: This would have a long cooldown, equivalent to Invincible, and considering it has a duration of 10s, I don't think it's quite as powerful as you're interpreting it to be. It's basically an invincible that you must plan to use by either generating focus ahead of time, or popping alongside meikyo shisui and then blowing all your focus generators (assuming they are up.)

AoE damage debuffs are pretty friggin' strong. It should be noted that only BRD gets access to one and, even then, it's of limited uptime and doesn't apply to their own damage. Yours is part of the optimal AoE damage rotation for your class.

There was no uptime listed on this, but the duration would have to be carefully balanced against Samurai's normal tanking rotation, as they'd want to keep this up even on single targets if possible. You're right that this could potentially be a problem, but playtesting or blocking out an AoE encounter would be required to know how harshly it needed to be nerfed.

I realize you want the base class to flow into either a DPS or tank job, but the class itself has to have a defined role. ACN gets INT traits even though its built to stem into either a DPS or a healer because ACN is a DPS class, not a healer. Furthermore, it's standard for all classes to provide 3 attribute traits (that stack, I believe, so you actually get 12 points), and you've only got 2. Either way, it doesn't work.

Not all classes get 3, Arcanist gets only 2, because they also have Aetherdam, not to mention Arcanist simply has more traits than a normal class. Also, considering they've already announced they plan to have hybrid spots in the future, I'm not entirely sure if that's true.

That being said, if you consider the overall damage dealt, and the fact that many of the base classes' attacks have enmity generation, you'll see that the base class is actually a tank. You could easily tank 1-30 with the skill set provided. You could probably DPS adequately too, but only as adequately as ACN 1-30. Definitely it would queue as tank.

Yoshin itself is fine, but a 40% heavy on an AoE, even for a melee, is more than a bit much. Flash works with Blind because it deals no damage and Blind is a relatively weak mitigation mechanism. Blizz 2 works with Bind because it's low damage, has a non-trivial cast time, and can only be used by squishies in melee.

One thing to keep in mind is that the heavy would DR itself very quickly if you spammed the attack. So you have to choose between using this as a CC tool, or using this as an AoE damage source.

I'm not convinced that this would be a problem.

Loads of problems with your design. You instituted a lot of arbitrary design choices that serve no practical purpose and actually detract from the build as a whole, provided a lot of abilities that shouldn't be provided (either at that point or at all), and tried too hard to design a class that could turn into either a DPS or tank job without actually considering what the class should actually be.

I appreciate the critique, and you definitely had a lot of valid concerns as to what skills might be pain points with the design. I also left a lot of room for assumptions by not including cooldowns and TP costs (and in one case a duration), which was problematic to understanding the intent.

That being said, feel free to look over my responses. I think some of the clarifications might make the intent of the design more clear. And how in some cases, abilities that appear at first glance to be dramatically overpowered, are not actually broken, or at least as broken as they might appear out of context.