SAM: What Stats to focus on

[Ryaz]

It really depends on what kind of build you're going for.

Samurai has a couple main builds.

The first, and most used in my experience, is the high skill speed build. Usually starts around 1150 and goes up from there with certain plateaus of GCD that help things align better (there's a different opener once you hit 1633+). Sks is good for Samurai for a few reasons- namely, like Black Mage does will spell speed, we benefit from it more than other melee DPS. More skill speed equal more kenki generated which means more Shintens, which is where a big bulk of our DPS comes from. For other secondary stats, DH tends to be favored because you'll be spamming a lot of Shintens. Sks isn't melded a lot because our gear already has a ton of it. I only meld it when I need to hit a certain sks time (which is usually just one materia max).

The second build is heavily crit based with lower skill speed. It does great damage, but tends to rely on a Bard, DRG and Ninja to really bring out its potential.