SAM Stats

[ShanaShirayuki]

People who avoid skill speed on Samurai don't understand the job at a fundamental level. You want to hit one of 2 skill speed values for lining up certain off-globals, but also because unlike other jobs, literally every aspect of a samurai's kit is gated by the frequency of their global cooldown.

With that on the table, ideally you want to hit either 1050 or 1400 skill speed. Anything in between is fine as far as damage goes, but these values allow Hagakure and Meikyo Shisui to line up very nicely with the optimal rotation.

In regards to Direct Hit and Crit, I could go into tons of numbers but to keep it simple, if the combined total of your Direct Hit and Critical hit are GREATER THAN 3000, Crit is of a higher stat weight than Direct Hit. If the combined total is LESS THAN 3000, Direct Hit is higher.

Take all this into consideration when figuring out your melds.

Many of the top Samurai have nowhere near 1400 SS, let alone 1000. I doubt the statement you made about them not understanding their class. A more accurate statement would be to just focus on DH then Det, and let the other two stats fall into place, while at least maintaining 940-980 SS for triple sen (if that's the opener one prefers).