Criticism, Critique And Education For A New Career Samurai

Hey all! First-time poster on the forums here, I've been playing FFXI on and off since 2006 and I picked up playing Samurai a year or two after starting the game, I don't claim to be the most competent Samurai but I'm hoping in time I can really learn the ins and outs of the class to the best of my ability, I've always loved the job since I began playing it and I've always continued to try and improve my skills as the game has changed over the years.

After reading up on typical builds as much as possible, I've assembled a couple of gear sets that I think should hold up pretty well in most situations, of course, switching back and forth between phases as needed:

TP Set:

ItemSet 297996

I've stacked as much Store TP as possible and it works out to +93 if you add the +40 Store TP SAM gets as a Job Trait. With Futsuno Mitama, I believe this works out to a four-hit build but correct me if I'm wrong. I've also ensured to stack as much Accuracy as possible to guarantee consistent hits during the TP Phase. I'm aware of the lack of Haste on any of the gear but I've never fully understood the point of putting Haste into your gear set when so many jobs are able to cast the buff regardless, it's always seemed like such a waste when you could be guaranteeing more consistent hits with greater Accuracy. Again, please do let me know why I'm wrong about this.

WS Set:

ItemSet 298002

For this set I've stacked as much Attack and STR as possible in order to improve overall damage, please note that the Masamune is meant to be the Aftermath version (I can't figure out for the life of me how to show that one instead of the level 80 one displayed).

I don't claim to own all (or even most) of the items needed for these sets and I understand that some pieces are frustratingly difficult to obtain (Futsuno Mitama -> Absolute Virtue etc), but this is more of a learning experience for me, figuring out how SAM is meant to be geared.

Criticism and critique are greatly appreciated, I'm still trying to learn as much as I can to become a good Samurai.

I don't understand why you have a weapon in tp and another in ws, it makes it hard to give suggestions.

I figured if one Weapon gives better TP, why not use it and use the other for Damage during WSing?

You lose all tp when you swap weapons.

Lol

I suggest going here

Both sets are terrible and should not be used in any situation period as there are better options. There is a SAM thread started and start to look there. Most pieces in the sets you posted make my brain go wtf and make me sad to see people giving SAM a terrible name.

Oh my...changing weapon and/or sub slot makes you lose tp, so you can't do that.

First question we all should of asked is if he played a DD job in this game yet :(

I had no idea about this o o' I guess this whole time I've never swapped weapon during a battle so I never experienced this happening. Thanks for letting me know! xD Big blunder on my part there.


Thank you, I've given it a read and I'm still trying to follow bits and pieces of it I don't fully understand, I'll give it another read through, thanks again. :)


This is really harsh and just downright unnecessary, shame on you for picking on an uninformed player! I'm just trying to improve for pity's sake, you don't have to be so downright rude about it!

When you ***on my favorite job in the game, I'll be rude about it and tell you out right.

Though I should of posted on this account.

Np, if you have specific questions I can try to answer although there are better people to ask.

For starters you need to get 25~26% haste in tp gear, then focus on store tp which is not "the most possible", but rather the right amount to give you a specific hit build(a minimum number of hits to get to 100 without sacrificing other stats excessively), which varies with your weapon(I suppose Masamune in your case). Read this to understand how to calculate the tp return of weapons and how much you need(it's pretty easy).

He is so obviously a troll, it almost hurts seeing you guys falling for it.....

Never met a noob in game?

Or 90% of the player base*

While Itze's first comment was a little abrasive, this one should be a genuine question. "Why, oh why?" I hear someone cry. Well, the answer is simple! Career mages (and BRD's, and.. well, that's about it), don't always know/realise the choices a melee should make, or understand why.

BLM was my first 75 and my first "love" for XI. I played until about 70'ish on stock macros, no windower, no plugins, nada. It wasn't until I got Windower and saw TParty that I realised, my TP goes when I change weapons. Why was that? Because I'd never had to engage! Not once! All I knew, is that I should change my staves because each one was more awesome for their own spells. So, theoretically (as far as I knew at that point), melee jobs worked the same. Use a weapon for TP'ing and a different one for WS'ing.

Like I said, it was only when I got Windower and I could see my TP next to my MP that I realised, every arrow to the knee (no, srsly. I was doing Qiqirn at the time :D!) gave me TP - and every time I casted a spell and changed my stave, it got taken away.


The SAM guide has already been mentioned and linked, it really is an excellent resource - I highly recommend reading over it and deciding where you think you'll fit in. Are you deadset on becoming top-tier, highest echelon DD (If so, you're aiming for the absolute best gearsets possible)? Or are you taking a more casual approach and would you be happy just chilling, doss'ing around in mid-low tier gear with friends?


EDIT: Lots of posts! D: Must've taken me longer to write than I thought ; ;

Someone needed the concept of standing N S E or W of the mob explained in the GEO thread, this being true isn't completely outside of reason.

I was playing geo once and...I got lost. I didn't know where I was anymore and where I was supposed to go. The surroundings all blended together and as I wandered aimlessly around the mob I kept screaming "WHERE AM I???" The sun came up and down and then up again, the north, the south, all kept changing direction only to confuse my senses and never once my spell did what I expected it to do. Until the chapuli had the best on me and I was left laying down with my face in the grass. And then a blue mage came by, killed the chapuli with a few quick spells and stared at me and said words that to this day still echo in my head: LOL.

Extract from "Diary of a Geomancer".

Seriously, you're being unneccessarily patriotic over something that, as much as you love it, is something some people aren't good at when they first begin actively trying to get better at.

Someone acting in the spirit of the Samurai wouldn't mock or be rude to an inexperienced and uninformed person, they'd actively try to make them better. You on the other hand just want to go against this, I think you're being patriotic in the wrong ideal completely.

Devotion to fantasy is meaningless, devotion to ideals are all.


I'm not trolling, it's really sad how frequently people assume this on forums when a new player comes along. On the Halo boards for example, whenever someone asks what RoF or Bullet Magnetism is, every other person assumes they're trolling and the higher caliber players like myself end up seeing that it's just an inexperienced player needing a little help and explanation, it's not a fallacy to be naive or uninformed, it is a fallacy to ignore an explanation however.


Thanks again though, I really appreciate the info. :)

I don't really understand gear alignment all that well either, that's the other big thing I don't particularly get.


Awesome stuff, I've given the TP Calculation a bit of a read up and it makes a lot of sense, I think I have pretty much got it down now, and it makes more sense why Haste is important too. But surely you can still get a lot of Haste from other jobs casting buffs and the like? Thanks again. :D


I'm hoping in time to go top-tier in Samurai as a Career SAM. I understand how much time that takes however. In any case, thanks a ton for your post, it really helped me to see how the job classes are viewed. :)

Gear haste, JA haste and magic haste all stack together up to their caps. For gear you have to aim for the cap which is about 26% and it is the most important stat for a meleee job cause it's a drastic increase in attack speed, which means you'll ws more and do overall more damage.

By gear alignment do you mean the ele belts/gorgets?

Haste for gear, JA, Spells etc stack.

Edit: Beaten :(

Ah I see! So it's separate caps from separate sources which add up to the 80%. Right, that makes a lot more sense. :)


I mean when I go on the wiki and look up Weapon Skills, Fudo for example, I can see:

"Aligned with Light Gorget, Snow Gorget & Aqua Gorget.
Aligned with Light Belt, Snow Belt & Aqua Belt."

I don't really understand what this means or how it affects me? :/

It means that those gorgets/belts give you a bonus to Fudo if you decide to use them, while other elements don't.

Right, but what sort of bonus? Damage? Effects? Or does it vary?

I guess the most important question is, is it important for me to take these into account or are the effects so negligible that I shouldn't worry?

Those pieces of gear will only work with a WS that has their element in it's skill chain affinity. So if yo used a breeze gorget for example it would not work how ever the breeze gorget would work with Shoha.

Edit: Acc and ftp modifier... ftp is beyond my ability to explain properly.

http://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Attack_speed

if you want to read more about haste and attack speed.

In general you want to add to your TP Setup:
1.) haste
3.) enough store TP to get to a reasonable store-TP setup (pick the weapon of your choice and then calculate the Store-TP required for it)
2.) Multi-Attack (Double, Tripple, Quadruple) this means you will atack twice.. instat of once when your hit will happen.
3.) Attack, Acc, Str, Dex

you will never have 100% Acc, you allways have a 5% chance to miss. If your great Katana skill is capped you probably wont need much Acc for the things you will do.

They add a static amount of accuracy and damage. I'm not sure if they're optimal for Fudo, for that I would simply refer to the sam guide which lists the various gearsets to aim for.