Studying The Blade- The SAM DPS Guide

[Nominous]

Why does everyone seem to want to start with a shifu opener?

Check out the videos on the front page.

There is a video that shows how they react with raid buffs going up as your rotation is performed. There IS a yukikaze opener that's shown. But... For one, you're likely to have a source of slashing debuff SOMEWHERE in your party (whether it be another SAM, NIN, or WAR), so applying it that early won't help you. In the unlikely case that you ARE the only source of slashing...https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...otation_guide/.

Check that out. CTRL+F: Igshar.

Unfortunately it seems they don't make an appearance on these forums often. I'm gonna shoot him a message one day soon here, see if he can't chime in on this thread to help with certain aspects I'm terrible at explaining, or showing work for.

[Ryaz]

It gets weird if you have Sen in a dungeon before the boss is pulled. Once you get Hagakure, you can just use that to wipe your Sen clean before the pull. If you don't... It gets stickier.

Once your rotation starts, you want to avoid overlapping any Sen already gained. If you're doing your rotation perfectly, you never will. If you find yourself in an unfortunate situation where you don't have Hagakure, and you have no buffs (but you DO have the corresponding Sen), you have one of two options. Overlap Sen is option one. Or you do Hakaze>buff (insert Shifu or Jinpu)>Iaijutsu>ender. That way, you aren't overlapping Sen, because you're consuming it to cast an Iaijutsu first.

Yeah, I didn't even think at first about using Hagakure between pulls to wipe Sen until a fellow FC member mentioned it. It's useful, especially on boss fights.

[DarioGlenn]

The start with shifu is simple because it gives you skill speed + auto attack speed.Were not for the auto attack buff, yukikaze + jinpu first would give you more damage until you get all 3 together (yuki + jinpu + shifu).

The hagakure is 20 free sen for a shinten or kaiten since you re gonna use meikyo afterwards and , as a dps, you want to burn all of your off cooldowns asap to make it reset timer so you can use again since the fight has time limit.

If you open with yukikaze + higanbana you wont have enough sen for Kaiten + higanbana, forcing you to use in midare (which gives you a HUGE increase in dots, especially crits).

[Neri]

What about open with Enpi when you are running toward the boss after the tank? That would give you extra Kenki?

[ItaruKarin]

So I was just in a Susano ex party with another SAM, and his damage came as a bit of shock to me. I'm used to doing around 4200DPS with little to no melds and full blue gear + Susano weapon, but he just blew everything out of the water, reaching 4800 overall and 5100+ on specific phases like the sword.

I was a bit shocked, so I examined him and his rotation. Turns out the only major differences were his melds (Tier 6 crit on pretty much everything, which is a lot), but mostly a difference in the rotation, when he used Hagakure... Well, pretty much never outside of his opener. Not on 1, 2 or 3 sens, as far as I could see he just kept the Sen for more Midare (He actually used Midare more often than Shinten, which was another thing that surprised me.).

Sooo... Am I wrong in still using Hagakure pretty much on CD (Except when I need to refresh higanbana) to spam Shinten at 35 Kenki? Or is it just the tier 6 melds justifying that huge difference?...

(I tried a SSS parse with both rotation, and came around 20secs left on Susano EX for both rotation, with 1 or 2sec left on the no-Hagakure rotation, so maybe the difference, if there is any, only appears on longer fights?)

[SuJung]

Im sorry to bother people but i have a stupid question...

at the end of your rotation you write "So on and so forth" ummm... what does that mean? because when i start from the beginning some skills are still on cooldown.

[Jarinolde]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...rect_hit_data/

Specifically going to quote this person

Direct hit is, based on these numbers, ROUGHLY 150 points to 1% damage increase. Crit, bases on another post is ROUGHLY 166 points to 1% damage. Determination, again from here, is roughly 170-190 points per 1% damage.

And also this person

They're really close in the current stat ranges, but direct hit is better until you can get 2722 crit.

So it seems for SAM, Hit > Crit > Det/SkS is the stat priority for now.

[Nominous]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...rect_hit_data/

Specifically going to quote this person



And also this person



So it seems for SAM, Hit > Crit > Det/SkS is the stat priority for now.

Yo thanks. I was checkin' this earlier. Updated the front page, quoting you for reference! Appreciate it.

[Uriel_Kross]

What about open with Enpi when you are running toward the boss after the tank? That would give you extra Kenki?

I generally do this as it allows me to pop higanbana sooner but I don't believe this counts as part of your opener.

[Jarinolde]

Enpi in the opener is only as a safeguard against missing positionals. If you know you'll hit all of them in your opener on a boss, then there is no need to do Enpi.

EDIT: I took some time to redo melds on my gear, and with it calculated what I would reasonably get for max crit if I melded that over hit. It was roughly 1660. If we see a similar stat cap increase from HW (87% from i180 to i270) We can expect at the earliest to be able to hit 2722 crit during the 2nd raid tier, with full savage/upgraded tome gear with meld priority to crit over hit.