Criticism, Critique And Education For A New Career Samurai

Righto, I'll have to do some more research on this then, thanks so much for all the input. :)


Thank you for the pointers! So I take it that I need a more-or-less even balance of equipment in order to compliment Haste, Store TP, and Multi-Attack effects? (I assume the Attack, Acc, Str and Dex fits into a separate gear set for WSing?)

Edit: Edited the Thread Title to be more appropriate. :)

What weapon and weaponskill you want to use?

If you kinda just started playing and gearing your job Fudo might not be the right weaponskill to look at. Masamune is kinda easy to build, but it requirs still 1-2 friends who help you maybe a few days to gather the items

I just glanced at the SAM guide, it's recommended for when your Attack is capped on WS (assuming Fudo is your WS of choice). Inside Abyssea and for older content, you should likely use Gorget.

Otherwise, you'll want a STR/Attack neckpiece (such as Justiciars Torque).

I don't think why stacking so much haste is important has been explained here.

Haste doesn't give you +X% more attacks like you might logically guess it does. "50% haste is 50% more attacks, right?" Nope. Haste actually decreases your Delay value by that much, and does it without reducing your TP gain. So 50% haste actually doubles your number of attacks. 10% is 11% more attacks, 25% is a third more, 50% is double, 67% is just over triple, 75% is quadruple, and global haste cap of 80% is quintuple. I threw out some higher values there, but you should see the point that haste actually has increasing returns, which means that when you have other sources giving you haste (SAM has a natural one in Hasso), Haste does even more.

You don't see every TP set in every melee guide having 25-26% haste because "lol u swng fstr," it's because how haste actually works it makes a significant difference. If 25.some% wasn't the haste cap from gear, they'd be stacking more.

Their effect will depend on the WS in question bur in general WS with a lower fTP modifier will benefit more. As far as I know they are not optimal for Fudo but with how easy they are to get make a good baseline if nothing else.

Ah I've been playing for a number of years but I've only recently decided to try more seriously as a Samurai, hopefully making the endgame. I've got a few 99 friends who're willing to help me (we're starting a linkshell to help each other and some other new players we know), so that's not a problem. At the moment my main problem is just my knowledge on the subject, what to focus on.

But a lot of my questions have been answered during this one thread alone and I really appreciate everyone's input on that. :)

As far as weapon and weaponskills go, I don't really know, what hits the most overall damage out during the WS phase?


Wait, Attack is capped on WS? Sorry, can you explain that again, I don't quite follow.

I get the STR/Attack Neckpiece though. :)


Ah I see, I already knew that 50% more Haste meant your attack speed is doubled but I didn't realize that it was actually cutting your Delay in half, okay, now this makes a lot more sense. :)


Right, so it's basically dependent on the WS and GK used then? I'll make sure to read more into this. :)

There is a cap in ratio between attack and defense when you hit a mob, so if you reach that cap adding more attack won't actually do anything. You're likely capping attack on stuff in abyssea, in dynamis and any other fodder enemy, while you'll need buffs to reach said cap if you face stronger enemies. If you use Shoha you reach this cap fairly easily because the ws has a natural attack boost(like other sam ws as well), while Fudo doesn't have this benefit so depending on content a bit more attack will help.

Ah right, so essentially instead of just boosting Attack (and by extention, Str), I should be focusing on Multi-Attack, Accuracy and other stats instead, at least, when using Shoha, since Shoha will likely hit the cap anyways?

Incidentally, what is the Ratio Cap between Attack and Defense? Or does that change with each mob and player?

Basically, when you attack or WS, there's a stage where you have much more attack than the mobs DEF. I don't understand it completely, but I get the basics behind it, so I'll try an example :D

I'm making these values up and trying to keep them as easy numbers to work with, so ignore the actual numbers and don't assume that's what you should have/mobs do have!

Say, you have 500 attack and you hit for 500 damage every time.
Now, let's say your mob has 250 defence, which mitigates 250 damage every time.

Your actual damage every hit, would then be 250. Now, let's say your RDM friend tosses a Dia on the mob and drops it's defence another 10%.

The mob, now has 225 defence, which should mitigate 225 damage, instead of 250 - however, you still only hit for 250. That's because, the 250 is the most attack will help you - Adding anything after that becomes wasted, because it won't increase your damage.

Weaponskills have the same issue, when you get to a certain point, you stop gaining from Attack+.


Basically, you can only gain so much benefit from Attack - how much will differ by monster, other people will probably be able to field specifics much, much better than me.


EDIT: Beaten, again! D:

In ws stacking the modifier is the main aim. So for Shoha and Fudo you have to put as much str as you can, not because str increases attack, but because str is multiplied when calculating the final damage of the ws.

Okay, I'm following this now, essentially beyond a certain point, stacking more Attack (and again, by extension, Str), is pretty much meaningless and I should be focusing on other stats. :)

Right I follow, so, assuming Str is the multiplier used by the WS (which I believe it is on every GK WS besides Ageha), stacking Str is much more important than Attack, at least beyond the cap, because where Attack stops stacking at a certain point, Str works towards the WS's multiplier?

No because STR is the weapon skills modifier. Different WS have different mods on them, Blade: Hi for example uses and agl mod so it might get to a point where more str stopped doing anything for it but since STR is the mod on fudo that will not happen.

Rightrightright, I get that. What I mean is that you're better stacking the modifier you need for a WS, whether that's STR, AGL, CHR or whatever, instead of just stacking straight-up Attack.

Is that correct?

Edit: Sorry, learning new things with every post so my posts might seem a little confusing! xD

That goes into specific cases to get the optimal build, but more or less stacking the modifier is about the most important thing.

Right, so if I was to make a list in order of importance of what to cover when making a build (assuming two gear sets, one for the TP Phase and one for the WS Phase - Using Fudo and/or Shoha)

TP Phase:
1. Haste
2. Store TP
3. Multi-Attack
4. Accuracy & Dex

WS Phase:
1. Attribute Modifier (in this case, Str)
2. Accuracy & Dex
3. Attack
4. Anything which might add to the WS's effects (Aftermath Bonus etc)

Does that sound about right?

Dex for Shoha/Fudo will be useless, the acc it adds is pretty minimal. Something to note is multihits can proc on a weapon skill as well(which is why people use Brutal earring both in tp and ws sets for example).

It kinda depends on what you are planning to use sam for as well. the importance of attack and acc will be proportionate to the defense and evasion of what you are fighting.

As Seha pointed out dex for ACC isn't worth it, the main benefit of dex for WS (out side mods) is the crit rate and since sam WSs can't crit (polearm aside) it's not doing that for you.

Wait, Multihits can proc on a weapon skill? So does that hit out multiple weapon skills or a weapon skill followed by regular hits? I'm assuming the latter. :3


So essentially when using a GK I shouldn't gear myself for ACC/DEX? Just stick to stacking on as much of the modifier as possible?

Multihits from traits and gear can proc on any ws up to a cap of 8 hits(which you won't reach on sam anyway). For example double attack can proc on your Fudo if you have any source of it and turn it into a 2-hit.

So if it did proc on Fudo, would it hit out Fudo -> Fudo or Fudo -> Regular Hit?

But I definitely understand how valuable Multihit stacking is now. :3

You'd only see one WS, but you'd do a noticable amount of extra damage.

what have you been doing that would leave you oblivious to this stuff after 7 YEARS of playing FFXI, and what's changed now

Abit late but..baring in mind he's played since 2006 and had SAM since then, those sets and knowledge on the first page are absolutely ludicrous, I'm inclined to believe this guy is still trolling.

10/10 though, well done.

Seriously? You still think I'm trolling?

I've never had to switch weapons in the middle of combat so I never knew about losing TP through switching weapons. I don't really know what to tell you.

I've never been that hardcore of a player until now and the gear sets in the other thread, as good as they may be, aren't exactly easy to understand to an uninformed player like myself. For example:

What is 'Aftermath Level 3'? What does it do and how do you tell it's Level 3 and not a lower level that may do something different?

What is '+40% Tachi: Kaiten Damage'? Is that +40% of how much a WS would usually hit or just Kaiten? If it's just Kaiten and given how Kaiten is exclusive to only a few GK, why note this?

What does 'Aftermaths overwrite' mean? And why does Amanomurakumo pair off so well with Yoichinoyumi? Surely as a Samurai you need to be next to the enemy to hit it, using a bow, surely, is therefore counter-intuitive?

And that's just Empyrean, Mythic and Relic weapons. Don't get me started on the others or the gear sets.

Again, it's very well written and I can see that the author took a lot of time writing it, I appreciate that. It's just that an uninformed Samurai like myself and I'm sure, many others who are in the same boat, won't be able to make heads or tails of a lot of the jargon and ideas that are left unexplained.

It doesn't help that people like you feel the need to rip into newbies too, how many more players would be posting on these boards if they didn't have to be afraid of people like you ostracizing them?

sorry man, cant give you any higher than a 10, or I would.

If you honestly want to believe I'm trolling then go for it.

But I don't really see the point in trolling.

One of the key parts people may have missed from that line, is "on and off". It can take a couple of months to learn the intricacies of a job, along with all the recent changes.

Personally I've taken a few 6-12 month breaks over my past 9 years, I've come back and missed huge differences in gameplay. Remember back when PLD's didn't /NIN? The change from /WAR to /NIN meant a whole new playstyle and whole new sets of gear.

If I'd missed the gap where people realised that /NIN was much more effective at mitigating damage and equally as effective at holding hate, I would've been sat in my chair shouting "wtf happened?" at my screen.

You don't learn by flooding yourself with piles of information at once. Sure, you can try to learn absolutely everything there is to know instantly - it won't work, but you can try. Memory just doesn't work like that, you need time to categorise it (like you would with school subjects - Why waste time learning addition when you can jump straight in to binary multiplication, right?)

All it takes is one or two breaks and everything you knew becomes invalid. I came back, 3 weeks ago, from another 9 month break. If it wasn't for the fact that it was 9 months and not 3-4 years (say, the 80 cap and Abyssea start) then I'd be in the exact same position - especially if I hadn't been such a XIgeek back when I played more heavily and learned as much as I could about the game. Now, I rely more on what the mathletes of XI say than doing my own maths - Why? because I don't have the time to dedicate to learning everything.

Now, even if we assume that Kata had only missed say, 6 months. If he wasn't a serious player before (a "casual" as people like to toss around), then there's every possibility that he wouldn't need to know all this, to "work well". Now, his life may have allowed him a bit more time for XI and he wants to do his damndest.

Personally, I don't think it's a troll - or he's the best troll I've ever seen. Either way, I'd prefer to consider I may have helped someone who needed it, than I had wasted 20 minutes feeding a troll.

If you never read forums or never took time to study wikis it's possible to be completely clueless years later.