Studying The Blade- The SAM DPS Guide

[Nominous]

Quick AoE question. Should I buff Tenka Goken at all or save my kenki for Kyuten spam?

Well, I'm sure this one's complex too, but I'll give a shot with my thoughts.

I'm not positive on how the damage degradation works, but I'm assuming it takes the flat percentage off the top value always. So 360-x%, 360-xx%, so on so forth. As opposed to 360-x%, 324-xx%, so on so forth. So Tenka Goken, under that assumption, is 1440 without Kaiten (5 enemies), and 2160 with Kaiten (5 enemies). In this scenario, Kaiten has given you an additional 720 potency. Kyuten has no degradation, so on 5 enemies it's worth 750 potency. So as far as Kenki goes, since it costs 5 more to do Kyuten, it seems just about as efficient as far as resource spending goes.

You can use Kaiten or Kyuten, but Kyuten+Raw Tenka will do more overall damage (by 30). And even though Kyuten costs more Kenki, it's not until 4 uses that it'll have cost you an extra Kaiten. That is, 4 Uses of Kyuten requires 100 Kenki, 100 Kenki could be used for 5 Kaiten. We need to get to 100 Kenki before worrying about that, though. Our AoE combo gains us 15 per Fuga+Followup. We'd need to do that (basically) 7 times to get 4 Kyutens, or conversely, 5 Kaiten buffs.

So. By 7 reps of the AoE rotation we WILL get 4 Kyuten's (we've generated 105 Kenki). We will NOT however, have the chance to spend 5 Kaitens, in this same time frame. Because 7 reps, while gaining us the Kenki to perform that, will only have gotten us enough Sen for 3 Tenka-Gokens, max (and therefore, only 3 opportunities to use Kaiten).

Altogether... We have a few options here. 4 Kyuten+3 raw Tenka. 3 Kaiten-Tenka+1 Kyuten, 2 Kaiten-Tenka+2 Kyuten.
Option 1 is (750*4=3000)+(1440*3= 4320)~ 7320 potency.
Option 2 is (2160*3=6480)+(750)~ 7230 potency.
Option 3 is (2160*2=4320)+(750*2=1500)~ 5820 potency.

So, again, napkin math, but it would seem that Kyuten spam is stronger in situations where you have 5 or more enemies. 4 enemies or less, Kaiten gives you a better benefit (by a small margin), if I understand the degradation on Tenka-Goken correctly.

[dragonkyn20]

important AoE thoughts

All right, so I should basically play by ear and react accordingly depending on the amount of enemies. Sounds good to me. One thing I love about Kyuten is that it doesn't degrade depending on the enemy number (and it's also flashy) but buffed Tenka just does so much damage I almost feel like a caster.

[Nominous]

Updating the front page with the full rotation (based on 1/2 Hagakure usage, on cooldown) in video form, for those who learn more visually. Performed with just about ideal management of Kenki, and such. You could probably do striking dummy cheese to come up ahead, too. Some things to note about it, as well-

Susano Dummy
Item level is 313.
2.15 GCD after Shifu.
Melds are skillspeed because VI's are cheap, and I wanted to test if I could get more Sen in the time span of 3 minutes (still haven't looked into it).
No pot. No food. No other enhancements.
Clear time varies from 20 seconds-25 seconds, most often being at about 20.

[Phobia89]

So something interesting I have stumbled on with AoE tonight while spamming dungeons.

I started opening AoEing with Gekko>Kasha>Kaiten+Tenka and then swaping to Gekko>Yukikaze>Kaiten+Tenka and then switching to Kasha>Yukikaze>Kaiten+Tenka and repeating this rotation of changing between Gekko and Kasha, keeping both buffs rolling with out any problems, spending extra Kenki on Kyuten and this rotation is actually providing a massive DPS increase over the standard rotation and I can't really put a finger on why that is.

About the only thing I can think of is i'm getting a much larger potency with Gekko and Kasha combos on single target and still getting Tenka+Kyuten AoE potency and combined is giving a bigger DPS gain then a strictly AoE rotation.

I've tested this with about 4 more dungeons tonight and i'm consistently out DPSing the strictly AoE rotation by a good 400-500 DPS.

[Nominous]

So something interesting I have stumbled on with AoE tonight while spamming dungeons.

I started opening AoEing with Gekko>Kasha>Kaiten+Tenka and then swaping to Gekko>Yukikaze>Kaiten+Tenka and then switching to Kasha>Yukikaze>Kaiten+Tenka and repeating this rotation of changing between Gekko and Kasha, keeping both buffs rolling with out any problems, spending extra Kenki on Kyuten and this rotation is actually providing a massive DPS increase over the standard rotation and I can't really put a finger on why that is.

About the only thing I can think of is i'm getting a much larger potency with Gekko and Kasha combos on single target and still getting Tenka+Kyuten AoE potency and combined is giving a bigger DPS gain then a strictly AoE rotation.

I've tested this with about 4 more dungeons tonight and i'm consistently out DPSing the strictly AoE rotation by a good 400-500 DPS.

It's going to depend on how many enemies there are.

The less there are, the better the single-target+Kaiten-Tenka will be. Which will be (most) typical pulls of 3-4 enemies. This is largely because of the AoE degradation of Tenka. At a certain point (more than 5 enemies) Kaiten gives you less potency gained than a Kyuten would, as Kyuten has no degradation.

When you get into big pull territory, that is where pure AoE+Kyuten+raw Tenka wins out.

For the buff-cycling AoE rotation, every time you do Hakaze, you could be doing Fuga, every time you hit Shifu, you could be hitting Oka/Mangetsu. When you're hitting Kasha, the pure AoE rotation is back on Fuga already. If you're putting up the damage buff, your next GCD would be Hakaze, while the pure AoE rotation would be on another Oka/Mangetsu. When you're hitting Jinpu, they're hitting Tenka, etc etc. The more enemies there are, the more each single-target GCD will lose you. You have to then work at making up that discrepancy- which can be done, but it takes a while. If you're in a pull for a god awful amount of time, yes, buff-cycling can win out because Shifu's started to gain you GCD's over non-shifu. But you probably don't hope for those situations.

It's hard to come back from if there's 5+ enemies, is the point. If you're putting up buffs, it should be in a small pull scenario, or your pull better take a while so you can benefit from Shifu. Though, again, you have to keep renewing the buff, so I'm not so sure how effective that ends up being. I'd love to be proven wrong with hard numbers though! Always open to it.

[Phobia89]

It's going to depend on how many enemies there are

Ah okay. That makes sense. So would 6+ be classified as a pure AoE pull then?

[Arkdra]

What about using Meikyo to go shifu > jinpu > Mangatsu/oka as your AE opener?

[Phobia89]

What about using Meikyo to go shifu > jinpu > Mangatsu/oka as your AE opener?

I don't see any reason not to do that. As long as you know it'll be up for the boss, it's probably a great idea to use it on AoE.

[Allyrion]

What about using Meikyo to go shifu > jinpu > Mangatsu/oka as your AE opener?

I've been doing this with just Jinpu -> Oka -> Mangetsu but I think it might be worth it to add it Shifu as you said. But it is nice to go straight into a Tenka Goten afterwards.

[TwiGz]

Why wouldn't the rotation of Hakaze>Shifu>Kasha>[Potion]>Kaiten>Higanbana>Meijyo Shisui>Gekko>Kasha>Yukikaze>Hagakure>Guren work? An 800 potency attack every 2 minutes seems worth it to use in any boss fight, no?