Please make Samurai the next Tank class.

[Kaonis]

I love the idea of SAM as a counter/parry/partial evasion tank.
But it would suck if the skills and survivability of the class were particularly reliant on the parry secondary. Gearing would suck, because parry would become essential.

Basically, keep the primary tanking mechanic in the stance/skills area. Don't have more than one parry proc skill. Use skills/buffs to create automatic parries that don't rely on the RNG. Have the stance do minor constant mitigation and some % for partial evasion.

If you really want it to be based on parry you need it to be able to make up for the damage potential lost to required gear. Which, I think, becomes very hard to balance.

Well some ideas I had for SAM as a parry tank would be basing the parry more off of abilities/tank stance rather than the actual stat. So for example they enter their tank stance and they get say a +20% chance to parry and maybe a small % increase to how much damage they can deflect with a parry to try and be about the same amount of mitigation as WAR's +healing and PLD's damage reduction. Then give them CD's like LNC's keen flurry, and a big ability (Deflect? Third Eye?) that 100% parries the next non-auto-attack as their holmgang-esque big saving move.

I think there's a number of ways to do it without needing to rely on the parry substat though.

[Empressia]

bear in mind though there's never been existed a RNG MAGICAL INVULNERABLE ARMOR tank class which can do the same against heavy magic damage fights

[abzoluut]

I have yet to see this concept for an evasion tank: do a series of abilities which allows the player to do X (X being an evasive move). Like WAR has wrath now, a SAM can have something which if he has 2 (or whatever would be balanced), he can evade. This is just a very raw concept, but I think SE could manage to pull this one off.

Let's not forget thy might change the whole job system in order to have hybrid jobs and implement other jobs much easier.

And yes, I just want SAM in this game, DPS or or Tank, I don't really care about that as long as it works good wich the other jobs.

[Ramza_Wyvernjack]

Samurai was the only reason I put up with FFXI's clunky interface and launcher. The animations alone...

Want that so bad in FFXIV.

[verislie]

Yep, this is something I was thinking along the lines of. Much how archer/bard is a proc based dps, the samurai would base damage mitigation and evasion stacks. And depending on the stance, could also have a counterattack proc which has an additional chance to chain into more powerful slash if proc\\\\'d additionally based on crit chance or something, maybe like this:
Each successful evasion procs an ability "be like water" which increases physical and magical damages capping at 30%
Stacks of water can be used up to heal the characters health or tp or mp. I\\\\'m tired now.

[verislie]

Counterattack: cast time instant, recast 2.5. does an attack after a successful evasion/parry much like the shield bash skill for say 100 or 130
Enhanced counterattack (chained combo) allows an additional chance to counterattacking again at a decreased chance of 30% - 10% for 200 - 300 damage repectively
Then again this sounds more damage dealing but should they implement hybrid rolls a samurai could fill the dps/tank/debuffer roll very well

[Reynhart]

It's not really Final Fantasy, but the Swordmaster in Bravely Default can be an interesting concept.
Active counters, for several types of attacks.

You could do combos that each end in a short counterstance for one type of attack (Auto, Physical skill, Spell, etc...) while reducing damage from that type of damage.
You'd have to time your combo preparing for the incoming attack.
I'd really like preparing a big counter for each Death Sentence

[Rhaja]

I'm still hoping that however SAM is brought into this game, they give it Kiai's. Those roars are integral to the Samurai, and could make the class standout from the other Melee's.