Samurai Guide

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Long ago, when the great lords of Hingashi sought to conquer the land, Samurai were employed to wage bloody battle in their names. After the land was united under a single banner, the Samurai became its defenders, protecting the peace they had fought for. Now, few cling to the "Old Ways", remembering their reason and purpose for picking up the sword.

Unlock

In order to unlock the Samurai Job, players must first have the Stormblood expansion purchased, as well as a Disciple of War or Disciple of Magic at at least level 50. Players will then be able to pick up the quest The Way of the Samurai in Ul'dah from the Ul'dahn Citizen. Upon completing this quest, players will be able to equip Soul of the Samurai Soul Crystal.

Attributes

Samurai, like most Melee DPS jobs, use Strength as its main attribute upgraded through their gear. Secondary stats are Critical, Direct Hit and Skill Speed (to the players comfort). These are the most important stats to focus on to deal the highest possible damage.

Gearing Up

Samurai use a katana as their main weapon, and equip gear from the Striking gearset. Players will be able to purchase gear from vendors every few levels, but gear from dungeons and raids is preferable over this, however. If players are able to afford purchasing the Tomestone gear from the end of each expansion, they will not need to upgrade gear nearly as often, with Tomestone gear being more than enough to carry them through each 10 level gap. If a player is using Samurai as their main job, the Main Scenario Quest rewards should also provide ample gear to get players through to endgame.

Materia

Affixing Materia to gear will greatly augment its stats. Having gear properly melded with Materia will make the leveling process smoother when running dungeons and is practically a requirement to run endgame level content. Players should focus on affixing Materia that buffs their Critical (Savage Aim) and Direct Hit (Heaven's Eye) stats, while increasing Skill Speed (Quickarm) to get their skill rotation to a point that is comfortable to them without having skill effects overlap too much or run out before they can be reapplied.

Leveling

With Samurai unlockable as soon as players have a Job at level 50, there are plenty of methods available by that point. If players haven't finished the Main Scenario Quest, this is a fantastic way to both level and gear up, as the rewards for the main quests offer plenty of EXP and gear, saving players a good amount of Gil as well.

If players have finished the Main Scenario, then running dungeons is a fantastic alternative. Players can run these through the Duty Roulette for quicker queue times and large EXP bonuses and Tomestones, or they can run them with their Squadron, if they have that available to them. Note that running dungeons with a squadron does tend to take a bit more time than with a party of other players.

Players can also access the Deep Dungeon content, Palace of the Dead or Heaven on High. These offer a great way to level the job up from lv.1, and also let players learn how best to use their job. There is also the option of Guild Leves and Side Quests, but these don't offer quite as much EXP as the other options listed above.

EXP Buffs

Players can gain increased EXP through various stacking buffs:

  • Food: Food offers a 3% EXP buff as well as a boost to certain stats. It is recommended that players consume food that offer a bonus to the main stats of their job, in this case Strength.
  • Armory Bonus: the Armory Bonus is a buff that is given to make leveling alternate jobs easier. If a player is using Samurai as a secondary job, this buff will be applied as long as there is a discrepency in levels between Samurai and a higher level job.
  • Rested EXP: Rested EXP is given when players spend time in a city state. The EXP bar will fill with a light blue color, indicating that players have at least one level's worth of EXP that will be given out in a percentage bonus to each bit of EXP earned.
  • Grand Company & Free Company Buffs: these buffs are the same with slightly different names. If players are in a Free Company with the requisite level, they can activate this buff. Alternatively, if a player has unlocked Squadrons in their Grand Company, they can undertake various missions to receive a Squadron Battle Manual as a reward, offering another EXP bonus. Note however, that the EXP buffs from the Grand Company and Free Company can not stack.

There are other methods of receiving an EXP buff,such as certain gear from the Collector's Edition of the game.

Class Guide

Samurai has a very flexibile toolkit that revolves around managing its two resources, the Sen Gauge and the Kenki Gauge. Players will rotate through their different combos to accrue 3 different Sen (Moon/Getsu, Flower/Ka and Snow/Setsu) and the various buffs that come as part of their combos while also building the Kenki gauge to perform Hissatsu skills to buff themselves further to allow for higher damage output and continuing to loop and rotate through these combos. The goal is to line up buffs with raid-wide buffs to maximize uptime and damage output without gathering the same Sen or using combos and building excess Kenki instead of optimizing Kenki usage. It is a simple to use, hard to master job that has a delicate balancing act to optimize its resources and maximize DPS.

Important Skills & Buffs

  • Yaten-Enpi-Gyoten: This combo lets players leap away, use a ranged attack and charge back in. While this is tempting to use for avoiding short-range AoEs, this generally results in a DPS and Kenki loss. These abilities are somewhat situational that are generally useful when players couldn't reach the target quicker by sprinting, or if the enemy is out of range of normal attacks, or if a boss requires a player to stand away for longer than 2 or more skills. It should be noted that Enpi breaks combos, so if it is possible to wait or continue a combo, it is not wise to use this skill.
  • Meikyo Shisui: Allows for the use of 3 weaponskills without meeting combo prerequisites. This skill is especially useful for filling the Sen gauge quickly while having fresh buffs up at the same time to get access to Iaijutsu quickly. It should be noted that Iaijutsu skills don't count as a weaponskill against Mekiyo Shisui, meaning they can be woven in to set up Damage Over Time and Meditation stacks.
  • Kaiten: Adds a 50% buff to the next weaponskill. This skill is especially useful for Iaijutsu skills like Midare Setsugekka and Higanbana. It is generally more useful to use with skills with a higher base potency versus using it to boost weaker skills and not having it available to use on heavy-hitting attacks.
  • Meditation: Requires players to stop moving and using skills to slowly fill the Kenki gauge and grants up to 3 stacks of meditation as well as triggering a cooldown on weaponskills. Meditation stacks can also be ontained by using Iaijutsu. Medtation stacks will show on the Kenki gauge and are expended using Shoha.

Rotations

The key to playing Samurai well is being able to choose the opener that is appropriate for the situation, move through the cooldown phase while waiting for buffs to come off cooldown, use a filler phase if needed to fill the Sen Gauge to convert into Kenki with Hagakure, then move into a burst phase to take advantage of buffs to deal massive damage, then loop back into a cooldown phase and repeat from there.

Openers

Depending on what opener is chosen, this will also dictate what burst set is used later. You will start a fight with an opener, then not use it for the rest of the fight, instead looping into a cooldown phase.

  • Higanbana Opener: This is the standard opener. It is most useful due to the application of a Damage Over Time skill:

Cooldown

This is the point at which the rotation will loop and repeat after the burst phase. Players will use this phase to gather resources for the burst phase.

Filler Phase

The filer phase is placed in your rotation at a point where Hagakure won't overwrite any Sen after a cooldown phase. Which filler you use is dependant on what your GCD is after using Shifu. If a players GCD is approximately 2.14, they can use the Setsu Sen combo followed by Hagakure. If the GCD is approximately 2.07, they can use the KaSetsu combo followed by Hagakure, and if the GCD is approximately 2.0, they can repeat the Setsu combo into Hagakure twice.

Burst Phase

The burst rotation players use is entirely dependant on what opener they chose:

  • If players opened with the Higanbana opener:
  • If players opened with the Midare opener:

As mentioned before, players will then return to the cooldown phase and begin the rotation anew.

AoE Rotation

This rotation is most useful in dungeons when multiple mobs are pulled. The AoE rotation is fairly simple and straightforward. The goal is to build Sen and use Hissatsu: Kaiten to strengthen the following Tenka Goken:

Depending on how strong the mobs are, players can also apply the Higanbana Damage Over Time to them and use single-target combos to build Sen, then use Tenka Goken to deal damage to all enemies while burning down a stronger foe.


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