Explain Sam to me?

[Sawamura]

Well like I always said sam strong toolkit is sam greatest weakness. All job has unique setting. Sam just happen be caster melee. (Though I wish dev team could at least change to midare setsugekka to instant with Kaiten from Soten). Since it already lock behind Meikyo shisui and chase with soten is lol cause it change single attack to circle aoe. About Sam LB You don’t have to wait chiten up all the time you can combo with another dps LB like drg,smn,blm,war,rdm,whm,nin or dnc. If you always just wait chiten you will be easy to counter so you need to be tricky all the time.

[SilverSkyway]

Do you want me to explain how to play it or why the design is bad ?

I guess both. lol.

1. The casts are very short, and the AoE combos into another attack. The other one is straight from PvE

2. The LB would be utterly busted if you could use it at full power all the time. The LB isn't wasted if no one attacks you when Chiten is on, just don't use it and be patient.

3. It's not meant to be a high damage attack, it's meant to stun enemies even through guard.

I spam my aoe all the time. I'll agree Sam has one best aoe in pvp.
I just feel Sam lb doesn't do a lot without Chiten.

Well like I always said sam strong toolkit is sam greatest weakness. All job has unique setting. Sam just happen be caster melee. (Though I wish dev team could at least change to midare setsugekka to instant with Kaiten from Soten). Since it already lock behind Meikyo shisui and chase with soten is lol cause it change single attack to circle aoe. About Sam LB You don’t have to wait chiten up all the time you can combo with another dps LB like drg,smn,blm,war,rdm,whm,nin or dnc. If you always just wait chiten you will be easy to counter so you need to be tricky all the time.

I agree and thank you. Just the few guides for new pvp doesn't saw a lot. Just say what each abilities does. Not the idea and when best to use. To be front I'm mosty doing frontlines as I level my Sam..plus I get event tombstones.
I feel in CC, i'll be as useless as a dancer. (sry dnc)

[Novani]

I spam my aoe all the time. I'll agree Sam has one best aoe in pvp.
I just feel Sam lb doesn't do a lot without Chiten.

You'd be correct in guessing as much, Samurai is very much a surprise gimmick class with very little else to its name, note the toolkit itself is solid, however server tick will be the ultimate judge as to how effective any of that is. More so than the majority of other classes for whom there is a degree of leniency still available.

While it is intended for your LB to do damage regardless of whether empowered by an enemy's debuff (in the case they guard) or not, it's not unusual to see cases where it doesn't seem to do anything at all. Same goes for having to constantly recast your casting moves despite being right next to your opponent, or your AoE strikes missing completely despite the same situation on your screen, as the effective radius of the AoE is actually quite small.

So in a way, you can think of this class as a backup emergency tank when it's nearly at full charge. You don't want to be focus fired too early, as Samurai defense is actually pretty terrible, even with Chiten, generally it's something best done when you're already engaged and people aren't keeping an eye on your buffs, as the grace period between buff, debuff and LB is extremely slim and the source of much frustration to Samurai mains.

As has been suggested before: try to synergize with another DPS or Tank to get the most out of your melee uptime, your moves do decent damage outside of the LB phase but work best when assisting a kill as opposed to straight up DPS, as you may run into the previously mentioned issues when people move around. Also, be sure to take advantage of line of sight to avoid too much focus fire when you're not ready to team kill. Obviously less of an option for Frontline, but I hope that clears up what kind of DPS you're looking at with this kit. It needs some reworking to truly fit what FF14 is actually capable of I think, in a game with less issues over server tick rate, it'd actually be really good. Here, it's largely just average but effective when it does its job.