Most samurais ive met never used AOE

[Mhaeric]

I will also make a note that Samurai, like Red Mage, has a hybrid single target and AoE rotation at certain numbers of mobs to be most efficient. At 5+ mobs they should be doing the pure AoE rotation without any of the single target buffs. At 3-4 mobs, however, they should be buffing themself with the single target Jinpu combo as needed interspersed with the AoE skills. I think also including the Shifu buff for AoE on small packs works out to a loss...? I'm not completely up on SAM dps to know for sure. Perhaps to someone not aware of how Samurai plays at all and who doesn't use a parser, this might appear to be just single targetting since there are several single target gcd being used.

[Kaitoo]

Its not hard but you are out of Tp like nothing i ever seen, so maybe thats a reason

[Rongway]

When I play DRG or SAM I can sometimes over power the tank. Sometimes they can be under gear or really don't know how to tank

Shield Oath + Flash: equivalent to a 3,240 potency attack on all targets
Defiance + Overpower: equivalent to a 2,808 potency attack on all targets
Defiance + Steel Cyclone: equivalent to a 1,620 potency attack on all targets
Grit + Unleash: equivalent to a 2,225 potency attack on all targets

Don't let enmity be a factor in deciding whether to AoE or not. No DD puts out so much AoE damage that a tank can't spend one more GCD on an AoE enmity generator to get everything back. A PLD could flash once and spend the rest of the battle spamming Total Eclipse for 300 enmity-potency per GCD and not lose a single mob. Even undergeared, the AoE generators generate obscene amounts of enmity, and they should learn to use them.

[Dzian]

I dunno invigorate isntbthat bad. Though I do notice many people use it wrong...

Seems a lot of people literally don't use invigorate till they basically run out of tp...

Generally speaking though if you pop invigorate soon as your tp hits 600 then by then time you run out of tp the cooldown on invigorate is already 30 seconds done... Which puts you 30 seconds ahead of where you would be if you didnt pop it till you were out of tp..

[duvvvv]

below level 50 you only get to 'build' tenka goten for iajutsu so basically you have a ready aoe even if you started out with single target only.
level 50 especially once you have the kenki gauge at 52, you don't have to rely on just TP.
I'm not the best SAM out there but TP management shouldn't be an issue especially for NM content. it's about the same with caster MP management.
maybe the other SAMs are not efficient with their sen/saving up their iajutsu instead of using it? or maybe ignoring procs? I could imagine some maybe just building midare and forgetting the other iajutsu, or just maintaining their jinpu and shifu at lower levels...who knows?

[Aomine1992]

Lol whut! Are people just slow becuase SAM has some amazing aoe like almost SMN/BLM level kind of aoe Everytime I run with one and I'm on SMN they can sometimes out aoe me.....u won't run out of tp as long as everyone is using aoes and maybe use invigorate the mobs will die pretty quick

[Okamimaru]

Personally I will spam my aoes in trash packs... if a particular monster is tougher I'll focus on it and drop tenka goken when it's up and build up my kenki for guren or that kenki aoe... single target for boss... if you get low in tp pop invigorate and switch to single target/tenka goken combo til you can recover...

[wereotter]

Depends on the pull, but there are times when not just using your AOE skills isn't a bad option. Almost always there's at least 1 mob in the pack that either has more health than the rest, or puts out more damage on the tank. In those instances, when playing samurai, I will use my single target GCD skills to focus that one down while using Kyuten as my OGCD skill (this is an AOE) and spending my sens on Tenka Goken. So you're still contributing to AOE damage, even if the TP bar doesn't diminish like other melee jobs.

[Mhaeric]

Depends on the pull, but there are times when not just using your AOE skills isn't a bad option. Almost always there's at least 1 mob in the pack that either has more health than the rest, or puts out more damage on the tank. In those instances, when playing samurai, I will use my single target GCD skills to focus that one down while using Kyuten as my OGCD skill (this is an AOE) and spending my sens on Tenka Goken. So you're still contributing to AOE damage, even if the TP bar doesn't diminish like other melee jobs.

This is not efficient. You're also doing less damage than you otherwise could be. AoE until the weaker mobs are down then switch to single target to finish off the sturdier one. In addition to improving your personal dps, this will also improve the dps of your tank and healer since they'll spend less time having to mitigate the damage from multiple mobs.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Because most SAMs only care about Medare Setsugeka, honestly.
Everytime I hear the sound effect for it while in a mob of like 9 things I just laugh. And god forbid you mention it to them.