Thread: 5.05 "Balance" - Samurai and Ninja

Originally Posted by Niyuka

Ok, so a SAM being out of position for, lets say 30 seconds, and a Monk being out of position for 30 seconds ...lets see. Or want to make it a minute? Or want to compare 5 kenki loss vs. lost crit on Bootshine?

Or lets assume both are standing in FRONT of the boss as their individual worst-case scenario?
In which of these scenarios does the SAM get punished more heavily than the MNK?

The only theoretical example is when the SAM misses their positional, and the MNK hits each and everyone EXCEPT the one that the SAM also misses. The SAM loses 64 potency once every 10 GCDs if fighting from the wrong position. In that timeframe, the MNK has about 14 GCDs, of which half miss 20 potency (plus, if he stands on the side, crit), making it a comfortable 140 lost. Not to mention, by the way, that due to the multiplicative nature of the GL buff, MNK is more sensitive to losing base potency as he gains more damage per points of potency.

Or, simply take your SAM and your MNK, go to a practice dummy, and see it for yourself. There is a reason why bad player SAMs outperform bad player MNKs significantly.

Do remember that the 64 potency loss is a "best case" scenario. Overwriting a Sen is the worst-case scenario, and results in a loss of 360 potency. Playing SAM at level 60 content provides a perfect example of how important hitting their positionals is to the performance of the class. Nailing both Gekko and Kasha means you can always Kaiten every time you get 3 Sen, but missing one of those positionals means you are forced to overwrite a Sen in order to get the Kenki for Kaiten.

Originally Posted by Wavaryen

I spit out my coffee when you said no positional needed on sam. We are punished HEAVILY more so than Monks if we don't use ours. I'm not sure you understand sam very well.

I would say SAM & DRG would be punished heavily for hitting out of positions, but definitely not as heavy as MNK since 80% of MNK's skills require position and DRG & SAM only have about 20~30% of their skills need positioning.

Originally Posted by Mitholas

I would say SAM & DRG would be punished heavily for hitting out of positions, but definitely not as heavy as MNK since 80% of MNK's skills require position and DRG & SAM only have about 20~30% of their skills need positioning.

The math says we lose a ton more pot on our skills, yes monks have more skills they got to use, but or punishment for not doing it is huge.

Originally Posted by Mitholas

I would say SAM & DRG would be punished heavily for hitting out of positions, but definitely not as heavy as MNK since 80% of MNK's skills require position and DRG & SAM only have about 20~30% of their skills need positioning.

With the new Earth's Reply positionals on a MNK are a non-issue. You can pop TN at the start of the fight and hit RoE when you know raid damage is coming. Let's say the first raid damage hits at the 8s mark, so you get 8s of TN, then 2s where TN and ER overlap. Then you get 28s after that of ER granting you omni-positional status for a total of 38s so far. Then you hit your second TN charge which will give you another 10s for a total of 48s, by which time your first TN charge has cooled down and you can hit it again for a total of 58s of consecutive omni-positionals. Nearly a full minute where MNK just doesn't give a damn about positionals. And 10s after that last charge of TN wears off, RoE is ready to be used again.

Put another way, out of every 180s (3 minute) window of time, MNK can spend 90s of it under Earth's Reply and (worst case scenario) an additional 40s of it under True North, for a total of 130s of omni-positional out of 180s. Literally more than 2/3 of the time MNK can flat out ignore positional requirements thanks to this new RoE change.

If you think sam has no positionals..you dont know the job well. Kasha is side combo and gekko is back combo

Originally Posted by Niyuka

To be frank, if MNK SAM and NIN would put out the exact same rDPS, SAM would be meta because its easiest to play and needs no positionals.

How are people still this misinformed? SAM loses a minimum of 64 potency if missing positionals on Gekko or Kasha due to the loss of Kenki.

Monk, on the other hand, has access to 30 additional seconds of positional freedom per 60 seconds via Riddle of Earth and only loses 20 potency per missed positional (effectively 30 per miss vs. SAM's 72.3). SAM has positionals on only 2 out of 6 weaponskills and MNK has them on all and MNK a further 7% attack speed, but even then, the difference isn't huge anymore; if accounting for Riddle of Earth, SAM is actually the one with more positional concern, not less.

I dont like "buff strong, leave weak alone" at all, dont get me wrong. But in your example, if I had only these 2 choices, I would go by player skill known to me. The difference between a good and a bad player is FAR in excess of the DPS difference of their classes. I have seen insane differences in groups of Titania EX and Innocence EX, even between SAM and BLM pairs.

Personally, I would prefer classes to be closer together, by nerfing the top and buffing the very bottom. But that would make the entire game more difficult and SE is deathly afraid of that (plus the playerbase is now used to a really low difficulty level. Look how after WotLK turned most of the playerbase into wrath babies, Cataclysm was deemed too hard even though Burning Crusade was MUCH harder.)

Right now, with the possible exception of BLM vs. NIN (the two extremes) in a fight that is bad for melee, I would pick the player over the class.

Originally Posted by Chimiko

In ShB it took MONTHS for people to accept SAM in parties after the "buffs".
You're repeting the same stupid mistake as you did with ShB.

I understand it was out of rage, but you meant SB, right? ShB has been out barely for a month.

I was a bit overexcited to see Hagakure back, but its too bad that it was just a missleading announcement.

Oh well, Im still maining it, maybe also lvling MNK now that RoF has finnaly got rid of its riddling -15% sks.