Samurai: Jinpu or Shifu?

[Garet]

Hello everyone. So am trying to make samurai my main again for the nth time lol. Always tried before but I always return to my dragoon or other jobs.

Anyway I keep hearing that shifu speed buff is better than the jinpu damage buff to get first in our opener and rotations. can someone pls explain to me why?

I have always returned to doing jinpu combo first because I think they both increase overall dps by the same amount and jinpu position on my hotbar basically makes it easier for me to relate to my gauge as well.

Thanks for the feedback guys and gals

[tearagion]

Getting Fugetsu first and Fuka second through a Meikyo Shisui Gekko>Kasha opener is more damage. The time you save from Kasha first will 90% of the time not outpace the potency you gain from Gekko first, the 10% exception is when Kasha first would get you an extra GCD before the boss phases.

[Ransu]

Its because of the meikyo changes having 2 charges now. You open with meikyo now which means you apply the dps and gcd buff in the first two GCD's so its best to immediately have a faster GCD which makes your opener the following:

Meikyo > Gekko > Kasha > Ishikoten > yikikaze > kaiten > midare > kaeshi > senai > Meikyo > gekko or kasha > kaiten > hibigana > gekko or kasha > kaiten > ogi namakiri > shoha > gekko/kasha > shinten > yukikaza > kaiten > midare > kaeshi

[Garet]

Getting Fugetsu first and Fuka second through a Meikyo Shisui Gekko>Kasha opener is more damage. The time you save from Kasha first will 90% of the time not outpace the potency you gain from Gekko first, the 10% exception is when Kasha first would get you an extra GCD before the boss phases.

Cool thanks. I will stay with Jinpu damage buff first then since I am more comfy with it

[Garet]

Its because of the meikyo changes having 2 charges now. You open with meikyo now which means you apply the dps and gcd buff in the first two GCD's so its best to immediately have a faster GCD which makes your opener the following:

Meikyo > Gekko > Kasha > Ishikoten > yikikaze > kaiten > midare > kaeshi > senai > Meikyo > gekko or kasha > kaiten > hibigana > gekko or kasha > kaiten > ogi namakiri > shoha > gekko/kasha > shinten > yukikaza > kaiten > midare > kaeshi

Even before I got the two meikyo, I recently have begun using meikyo opener to apply both buffs then yukikaze to apply higanbana. When I get the second meikyo I will probably use that for our main midare attacks.

I basically open fights now with Meikyoi>Jinpu>shifu>Yukikaze then Higanbana. Thereby applying both buffs and DoT immediately in the beginning and allowing me to do my full rotations repeatedly from then on

[yuguPixel]

I have zero idea if this is "optimal," but I honestly don't even prioritize the Fuka buff over applying Higanbana. Higanbana does 1200 potency worth damage over its lifetime (first 300 immediately, following 900 over 60 seconds), so I live and die by Higanbana. Delaying its cast in the more common openers only loses you a handful of ticks, which probably isn't a big deal, but I love DoTs, and DoT centered playstyles. So I treat DoT uptime and lack of clipping as king.

Side note, I'm remembering that Meikyo used to not have its bonus of letting your combo finishers apply their respective combo's buff (Now Fugetsu and Fuka). Thank you SO much for that change, FF14 devs <3

An opener I vibe with is
[PREPULL] True North == [PULL] ==> Enpi -> Meikyo Shisui -> Gekko (applies Fugetsu) -> Hissatsu: Kaiten -> Iaijutsu (Higanbana) -> Kasha (Applies Fuka) -> Ikishoten -> Gekko -> Hissatsu: Senei -> Hakaze -> Yukikaze

From there, I usually do my first Kaiten Midare Setsugekka/Tsubame-gaeshi, into the Kaiten Ogi Namikiri combo. I *personally* like going with my own rotations and openers and changing them only if I feel like I'm under performing, but this one does fine for me.

If you want my reasoning/brain storming:
[PREPULL] True North:
I like True North the moments leading up to the pull because the boss has a tendency to snap around while the tanks are initiating the pull. For good consistency, I use True North to get around it.

Enpi -> Meikyo Shisui -> Gekko
The Enpi -> Meikyo Shisui is my go-to for the first seconds to get me enough kenki to spend my very first Getsu on a Higanbana, while having my GCD rolling as I run to the boss. If you care about minmaxing, you probably want to not focus on applying Higanbana so fast, and wait until you have raid buffs instead, giving you an excuse not to spend a GCD on enpi that might be more useful elsewhere. But this works for me and is a good cookie cutter opener so I stick with it-- for DoTs, uptime and not clipping is king.
Another note is I never like using any Meikyo charges on Yukikaze. If I have to do this, I personally feel like I wasted some potential damage. So I only use Meikyo if I already have a Setsu charge, if I'm using Tenka Goken in AoE, or if I'm going to use one of my charges to generate Getsu/Ka, and apply Higanbana. It's my own personal rule of thumb, but might not vibe with everyone.

Alternatively, if you can get in melee range with no downtime, I suppose you could cut out the Enpi and just do something like [Kasha -> Hagakure -> Gekko], or [Gekko -> Hagakure -> Kasha]. I actually haven't mathed that to see if you lose less potency, since one of your Sen is basically 33% of a Midare Setsugekka's worth damage, and a huge amount of it is lost when you want to spend it as kenki instead. Maybe something I should check out down the line.

Everything Else:
From here it's just putting your important abilities on cooldown while being able to fit them in the opener, without clipping GCDs. You can delay Ogi Namikiri itself up to 30 seconds, as long as you make sure to use Ikishoten early.

One last note: If you do have a party doing their raid buffs on pull, then Ogi Namikiri and your Midare Setsugekkas will most likely not fit into their windows. I personally don't care about that for the % damage buffs like brotherhood and Divination, but for Chain Stratagem and Battlevoice, the chance to critical and/or direct hit with such high potency attacks is too good to pass up. The more common opener of Meikyo -> 3 Sen generators (starting with Getsu buff) + Ikishoten -> Midare/Tsubame/Ogi Namkiri is your best bet.