Quote Originally Posted by Seabhacgra View Post
I see where you are coming from.. I have a mix of Edengate, Augmented Faceted and my main weapon is now Augmented Deepshadow and I have NO skillspeed materia on anything and still when I pop shifu I push down to about 2.07.. guess that will come up with more deepshadow gear. Sorry for this turning into a Samurai chat but I'm trying to maximize it now and I'm still baffled on how to make my AOE rotation smoother. If shifu and Jinpu drop off due to a slow tank puller I end up spending the first 8-12 seconds of a trash mob renewing those buffs and by then sometimes the pack is half health.. any suggestions?
You should always be trying to either be at one of the SKS breakpoints or .01 gcd faster to allow for errors, latency, or mechanic wiggle room. What SKS tier you go for is personal preference, but it's always better to be at a proper tier. 2.07 is a proper tier to be at though so you should be fine. The faster you get, the more optimal it will be to freestyle as needed so long as you have a strong understanding of how Samurai operates. This starts being more relevant at speeds around 2.00 gcd though. At 2.07 you mostly want to stick to rotations, going for 2.06 if you want more wiggle room.

To keep your abilities aligned, assuming you haven't had to make adjustments due to phase shifts or mechanics (I prefer to ad hoc til it falls back into realignment since it's the most natural for me), you can use a Gekko combo into Hagakure for 2.07~2.06 after your first two Midare rotations following the standard opener. For 2.14~2.13, you would do a Yukikaze combo into Hagkure instead. If you are using a non default opener via having sen pre-charged, you'll have to adjust accordingly or opt to trade them into kenki with Hagakure. If I have full sens, meditate stacks, and kenki pre-available, I actually like going into Jinpu first to have all my pre-available ogcds + Midare hit with the extra 13% dmg since the ogcd abilities don't benefit from Shifu and allows you to have a greater number of Ikishotens (and possibly Guren/Sensei), perhaps leading in with Gyoten or Shinten to avoid wasting kenki generated from your initial two gcds (although if you could ever lead in with Seigan, this would be the most ideal).