SAM Stats

[FoodAspectedPrimal]

As a neat little aside, if your Skill Speed on it's own exceeds 3600, it's the highest stat weight, but since that value cannot be reached at the current maximum ilvl, this is more something to be considered down the line. Skill Speed will likely be the top stat weight towards the end of stormblood.

[Aquaslash]

Can you get 1400 SS without melding?

[MajisTek]

I have 810 Skill Speed, it works fine as far as numbers. I also have 2007 DH/1663 Crit (w/ Food). Numbers are good

[LunarEmerald]

I feel that crit is more important than people realize because samurai's dps is quite front loaded with midare. Critting midares makes a huge difference.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I feel that crit is more important than people realize because samurai's dps is quite front loaded with midare. Critting midares makes a huge difference.

Midare is neither your strongest ability nor one you want to rely on. Shinten will actually deal more damage due to its extremely fast recast hence why you always convert two or three Sen when Hagakure comes off cooldown. That doesn't make Crit builds bad by any stretch, they just aren't nearly as reliable this tier. Basically, it comes down to player choice. Do you want consistent, sustainable damage or do you want a small chance of huge damage spikes but less sustainable highs?

And I do want to emphasis that. Rose's Crit build is just as good as Dervy's DH/Det. Samurai is probably one of the more flexible jobs when it comes to stats.

[Gallus]

Direct Hit is king. After that it's arguable. Det or SkS? A bit more of flat damage. Crit? Your dps will slightly fluctuate more. Crit just doesn't combine well with SkS or Det, if you go Crit, you should stack it as much as possible (after DH that is). That's the only thing you should take into account.

What "pisses me off" are these people that come with their absolutist judgments such as "people who avoid SkS have no idea". You go DH, and then, the whole thing hardly matters.

Having a certain amount of SkS so that your hagakure and meikyo line up in whatever moment you want is nice and all, but is not required for anything. You can do Meikyo with zero letters or with one letter. Hagakure isn't a big deal either because the dps gain isn't that big, you aren't missing out on a lot of DPS (in fact, if Midare crits, hagakure is a dps loss, so in crit builds go figure if delaying hagakure a few seconds will hurt much).

[Azerhan]

I use the SkS built of the Sam, I'm bored of the Crit/DH built that most of dps jobs have.

And I feel the Sam funnier with SkS, and it works fine.