Version Update 8/27/07

[Sho]

Hagun is pretty shitty for DoT. Not relying on it for awesome WS damage would be a huge buff for sam.

Holy crap, someone that agrees with me.

I agree with you guys, too... although we are probably in the vast minority here, lol. I never liked the Hagun's relatively low damage rating compared to the other weapons, even though I've heard it gives great WS damage. (Have people completely given up on DoT being at all significant?) Also, I'm taking an "economic" relic upgrade path (i.e. invest lots of time and some sponsor money in Dynamis instead of massive gil, and hope your lucky on the 100 lots), and the Hagun's current 1 mil price tag would take away two Dynamis half-sponsors... I have to save whatever gil I can get. I've been using Shinsoku until I get relic upgraded to stage 4. I figure I can "skate by" until then.

Am I completely wrong in not getting a Hagun months ago?

Yes, since it was the strongest weapon to use in most regular usage. In the time where it reigned supreme, you could have wielded it to great effect. Nothing came close, except Amanomurakumo, or decked /RNG. I suppose from an economic standpoint you now come out ahead, but you gimped yourself to do it assuming Hagun isn't the godly weapon it used to be (I'm not going to be the one to test by reactivating my account 4 days before the billing cycle...).

By the way, I fail to see how your weaponskill damage doesn't count as damage over time. Lowering one end of your output to severely increase another has been a viable samurai damage strategy since Hagun (low regular swings for remarkable ws output, team with store tp for even more success) and Soboro Sukehiro (poor gkt damage for huge tp generation, mainly for sidewinder) were introduced. Restoring a damage balance is just going to change how you play, for no real benefit... right?

You're not in the wrong at all. Even though I will admit Hagun is great for /THF HNMing, it's pretty shit everywhere else, even moreso for /WAR. Nodachi of Ragnarok "skated by" with Shinsoku as well til he got relic, and out DD'd a bunch of Hagun users along the way.

The sword isn't the only thing that defines the job. I don't think Nodachi skimped on the rest of his gear, but I haven't read up on how he beat them specifically. It's entirely possible that Hagun is the piece of the crap you make it out to be for /WAR, but I don't think it is.

Well if you are on point with your gear choices, merits (and general SAM play), Hagun becomes pretty lackluster on /WAR, when paired up vs Soboro (for obvious reasons), Onimaru, and Shinsoku. The low DMG rating just doesn't cut it in some areas. I will again say that Hagun rapes just about everything /THF, however.

Edit: Changing up what I said-- from "/THF Hagun" to "most things HNM".

[Retrieving/C.D/Searain]

I would like to see how a relic g.axe WAR stacks up against a decked ridill WAR post update.

this was pre-patch but
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/7374/warmc8.jpg

the one under me is maruniku, armadaberk/ridill/duskgloves+1/speedbelt war
the last guy was a random nin first voking

Seems like you were on Colibrì and he was using Axe/Ridill. If he was smart he would've used Rid/Joy and won the parser by a bit, unless I'm mistaken, am I?

[Mayareira]

Check Version > OK > Play > Accept > Select Character
-=Area: Wajoom Woodlands=-

/ws "Empyreal Arrow" <t>
*pray for an acceptable damage*

[RKenshin]

Detonator gogo.

[Garrin]

Yeah, I'm a stubborn SAM set in my ways too, to a degree, on more things that just weapon choice. Maybe if I could get a friend to parse shin vs. hagun to actually see the difference, I could be convinced to get one... but of course, we'll have to wait and see what the patch changes first.

[Sekkite]

Speaking of the /sit nerf. Is there a dat swap one can do to go back to the good ol' days?

http://www.neko-sentai.com

(NSFW)

[Shadida]

Check Version > OK > Play > Accept > Select Character
-=Area: Wajoom Woodlands=-

/ws "Empyreal Arrow" <t>
*pray for an acceptable damage*

I'm really not holding my breath lol

[Beckwin]

Check Version > OK > Play > Accept > Select Character
-=Area: Wajoom Woodlands=-

/ws "Empyreal Arrow" <t>
*pray for an acceptable damage*

I'm hoping it still blows because I really don't want to unlock it >.>

[Max™]

/SAM, he has a counter % implying that Seigan was used. It would appear it was used almost full-time to get a counter % of 5%.

Right-o, right-o. Friend of mine is almost finished with Bravura, getting curious about how to best utilize it since we've been bickering back-and-forth for ages now about /SAM vs. /DRG

IMO using Hasso full-time, /SAM would win for damage output by a good margin.

Although I'd love to see some crazy Jumps for like 500-1.2k. Imagine a triple proc on two crits in a DA Jump!

Guy that was my Great Axe mentor for a while finally leveled up /Sam and tested it after I bugged him about it long enough.

He basically compared it to Mnk/War and Mnk/Nin, except add the ability to get Berserk on Mnk/Nin sometimes.

War/Drg with Triple Dmg procs, Acc+20, Impaired Evasion, and previously the only worthwhile spammable 100 Tp ws would be absurd, but you die so fast it's silly.

War/Sam in some cases (like melee's not getting hasted properly, or not having full haste builds yet) could provide better survivability than /Nin, since you never stare at recast timers, and multi-hit WSes=1 eye, but that means you aren't riding Hasso for the silly damage boosts.

Either way, both should be monstrous.

[Jkun]

Soultrapper and Souplate...

Holy shit, Fatal Frame XI, I LOVED THAT GAME

Also, PUP headsl ook like a quest, ugh, you get the turban, or craft it, and bring it to the Galka? We'll soon find out.

Notice on the POL update page, the BLM head gives "High Level BLM Spells, and Drain and Aspir", purty neat~

In before woosh. I just got home from work and this forum is tl;dr

[netz]

Well if you are on point with your gear choices, merits (and general SAM play), Hagun becomes pretty lackluster on /WAR, when paired up vs Soboro (for obvious reasons), Onimaru, and Shinsoku. The low DMG rating just doesn't cut it in some areas. I will again say that Hagun rapes just about everything /THF, however.

I did notice that Soboro Sukehiro seemed to be inordinately strong while on /WAR a couple times, but I always thought it was a fluke. Oops. Well, maybe I'll come back to play sometime in light of the new changes >.>

[Sho]

You're not in the wrong at all. Even though I will admit Hagun is great for /THF HNMing, it's pretty shit everywhere else, even moreso for /WAR. Nodachi of Ragnarok "skated by" with Shinsoku as well til he got relic, and out DD'd a bunch of Hagun users along the way.

Honestly he did it out of being stubborn, not because the Hagun was "shit", it still pretty much stomps HNMs even /WAR anyway due to the inherent stability of 1 hit weapon skills. He didn't out DD SAMs with his caliber of gear, he outparsed meritmonkeys who didn't put in the same effort he did. Granted Hagun is a pretty lolworthy EXP katana, but it was a staple to any HNM SAM for a reason.

Bah, slow to editing. I agree on the fact that Hagun is a HNM stable weapon to all SAMs; pretty silly EXP wise (the point I was speaking from). As for Nodachi, it goes with merit however, because those that merit really should have aimed for the best gear, and not be subpar. I guess grips and this general 2handed update will flip it on some SAM tho, eh?

[Toth]

Looks like a great update! Nice hands for PUP and the new heads look very useful. We'll find out soon HOW useful...

[Jkun]

Looks like a great update! Nice hands for PUP and the new heads look very useful. We'll find out soon HOW useful...

DRAIN AND ASPIR BITCH DRAIN AND ASPIR!

Do you think the adjustments to Howling Fist and Dragon Kick mean they're good for PUP now? oh ho ho ho.

And yeah definatly gonna macro in thos heads and hands for Ventriloqy.

[underscore]

Relic GA WAR/SAM is actually like a relic GK SAM/WAR+1 IMO minus a few buffs like Meditate/6 hit setup, but they have their own advantages in greater amounts of haste/acc/att/DA/etc.

Always wondered why there were never any good postings about its damage potential though because of that, aside from the obvious Ridill > all mentallity most people have. But I always thought that it could possibly come close at worst with ideal gear, if not match/surpass it. But good to see it really does have great potential that could possibly surpass using Ridill, especially after this update.

bravura can get 6hit setup btw, you need +5 store tp outside of rajas/brutal/samsj which leaves you a choice of using askar body or carbonara(i've never done nyzul because of the ~1.5year break so i use carbonara), also that parse was /sam on g.colibri and i used hasso whenever seigan recast is up so i could switch if/when i pulled hate.

now that i think about it more, there's really only 3 gear differences between your sam/war and my war/sam.
adaberk vs haub+1
fire bomblet vs tiphia sting
dusk gloves vs hachimankote+1

and merit wise it would be:
store tp vs DA merits
meditate recast vs berserk recast
+15%ws dmg on every ws vs. guaranteed double attack every 10 mins

to searain: yes it was on colibri, he does have joyeuse but he seems to like axe/rid more for some reason. i tried to find a rid/joy user on sylph with adaberk and speed belt but couldn't so i just picked the next best thing

[Yutuyu]

Hagun is simply better, just mathematically. Think about it.

You have 6 swings per WS (technically you should have less considering meditate, but lets go with 6). In those 6 swings you need to make up for the damage difference between Hagun & Onimaru on WS. Hagun adds an extra pDIF*.5*(D+WSC+fSTR). D=75, say you have an STR of 130, fSTR of 12, and an average pDIF of 1 (average). That's gonna be like, 85 extra damage per WS (more if pDIF is higher). And if your pDIF is one like discussed, you'll only see about an extra 7*6 + 7*1.5 damage done in each melee hit in the 6 hit TP gain and the WS, which only comes out to be about 52.5. Hagun is better.

EDIT: Just for the record this fails to take into account the slightly lower delay that Onimaru has, it's attack, and ACC. But I think all 3 of those are negligable at best considering I didn't take into account the fact that you'll be WSing more than once every 6 hits on average due to meditate.

EDIT2: It's obviously a different case for Soboro. I don't even want to get into the math there, especially post edit, soboro may be better. But Onimaru/Shinsoku DEFINITELY isn't.

[Therin]

Is it possible to search through the Nashmau data and find what that new NPC sells?

[Jkun]

Is it possible to search through the Nashmau data and find what that new NPC sells?

I hope it's more attachments. None this update so far and they ALWAYS release them.

Not that I'm complaining.

DRAIN AND ASPIR

[Kenai]

Looks like a great update! Nice hands for PUP and the new heads look very useful. We'll find out soon HOW useful...

DRAIN AND ASPIR BITCH DRAIN AND ASPIR!

Do you think the adjustments to Howling Fist and Dragon Kick mean they're good for PUP now? oh ho ho ho.

And yeah definatly gonna macro in thos heads and hands for Ventriloqy.

I can't see them messing with HF and DK for any other reason than Pup, hope it's noticable. Still expecting more pieces from that set though, a 2 piece set with a set bonus is just weird.

[Flarega]

I like hagun, it's nice to have one be all end all weapon instead of having to carry around like 5 different situational GKs. Although I usually have soboro on me as well as hagun.