Sam merit priority

[Keston]

I'm only SAM72 now, but often find that I end up saving 200, and in some cases 300TP waiting for the right time to WS, as If i WS too often or too soon, I end up getting pummeled. I sub /THF mostly now, and even then when I split TA on the tank, move behind mob and SA-WS etc. I still start getting raped. My main weapon is a Hagun now (tho I've had to use Tachi of Trials to gimp dmg on purpose somewhat sometimes). Main xp now has been Nyul Isle so mobs don't last that long, but I've still died a few times to pulling hate halfway through.

So far its seeming like I have more TP than I can use, at least in xp ptys (haven't done any SAM AF yet, not even AF weapon believe it or not). I've settled to get the AF1 set at 75 after some merits, as maybe then the extra TP from Helm will come in handy for events/HNM. I'm guessing SAM's TP mastery comes more into play/handy in event/endgame usage.

Any advice on how to make use of TP, or more appropriate times (aside from the obvious don't WS right at start)?

[Yutuyu]

I'm only SAM72 now, but often find that I end up saving 200, and in some cases 300TP waiting for the right time to WS, as If i WS too often or too soon, I end up getting pummeled. I sub /THF mostly now, and even then when I split TA on the tank, move behind mob and SA-WS etc. I still start getting raped. My main weapon is a Hagun now (tho I've had to use Tachi of Trials to gimp dmg on purpose somewhat sometimes). Main xp now has been Nyul Isle so mobs don't last that long, but I've still died a few times to pulling hate halfway through.

So far its seeming like I have more TP than I can use, at least in xp ptys (haven't done any SAM AF yet, not even AF weapon believe it or not). I've settled to get the AF1 set at 75 after some merits, as maybe then the extra TP from Helm will come in handy for events/HNM. I'm guessing SAM's TP mastery comes more into play/handy in event/endgame usage.

Any advice on how to make use of TP, or more appropriate times (aside from the obvious don't WS right at start)?

WS immediately when you can. Then tank with Seigan until someone else rips it back. Also build a damage resistance setup you can sub in for when your seigan's down. Works well considering how much damage %- gear SAM gets (arhats, gavial, etc.).

NEVER SUB THF ON SAM IN XP.

[Shoju]

I'm only SAM72 now, but often find that I end up saving 200, and in some cases 300TP waiting for the right time to WS, as If i WS too often or too soon, I end up getting pummeled. I sub /THF mostly now, and even then when I split TA on the tank, move behind mob and SA-WS etc. I still start getting raped. My main weapon is a Hagun now (tho I've had to use Tachi of Trials to gimp dmg on purpose somewhat sometimes). Main xp now has been Nyul Isle so mobs don't last that long, but I've still died a few times to pulling hate halfway through.

So far its seeming like I have more TP than I can use, at least in xp ptys (haven't done any SAM AF yet, not even AF weapon believe it or not). I've settled to get the AF1 set at 75 after some merits, as maybe then the extra TP from Helm will come in handy for events/HNM. I'm guessing SAM's TP mastery comes more into play/handy in event/endgame usage.

Any advice on how to make use of TP, or more appropriate times (aside from the obvious don't WS right at start)?

stop failing the job

[Yutuyu]

I'm only SAM72 now, but often find that I end up saving 200, and in some cases 300TP waiting for the right time to WS, as If i WS too often or too soon, I end up getting pummeled. I sub /THF mostly now, and even then when I split TA on the tank, move behind mob and SA-WS etc. I still start getting raped. My main weapon is a Hagun now (tho I've had to use Tachi of Trials to gimp dmg on purpose somewhat sometimes). Main xp now has been Nyul Isle so mobs don't last that long, but I've still died a few times to pulling hate halfway through.

So far its seeming like I have more TP than I can use, at least in xp ptys (haven't done any SAM AF yet, not even AF weapon believe it or not). I've settled to get the AF1 set at 75 after some merits, as maybe then the extra TP from Helm will come in handy for events/HNM. I'm guessing SAM's TP mastery comes more into play/handy in event/endgame usage.

Any advice on how to make use of TP, or more appropriate times (aside from the obvious don't WS right at start)?

stop failing the job

What a totally useless comment!

[Shoju]

lol i couldnt help it, you already gave the pointers and im feeling spiteful cause i cant stand to see crap sams ; ; (i may be considered an activist >.> lol)

**edit: id go into much more menacing detail about my comment, but i dont want to sound to mean lol

[Keston]

lol i couldnt help it, you already gave the pointers and im feeling spiteful cause i cant stand to see crap sams ; ; (i may be considered an activist >.> lol)

**edit: id go into much more menacing detail about my comment, but i dont want to sound to mean lol

One person asking advice to improve as they progress, other one contributing nothing useful in response to a post, going so far as to make a nasty comment. Advice to better oneself, That is the reason this forum exists, does it not? Perhaps you should stop failing humanity.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=21424
In case you missed it.

[Keston]

WS immediately when you can. Then tank with Seigan until someone else rips it back. Also build a damage resistance setup you can sub in for when your seigan's down. Works well considering how much damage %- gear SAM gets (arhats, gavial, etc.).

NEVER SUB THF ON SAM IN XP.

Problem with a dmg-resist build for me, is that I have no room/inventory for it (I can barely take out AF sets from storage without being 59/60 or 60/60). In certain slots I even have to compromise and use not the best item for there simply because to save space, use another item I also use on my other jobs. I do however, macro some of my evasion/parry items on my seigan/3rdeye macro (boxers mantle/ohat/musical ears(from my brd)/ethereal ears/fortified chain).

What sub would you suggest? I've tried /WAR, as well as /DRG (with the haste earring) along the way. Consistently getting raped with those. Going to Nyul now/Thickets, most of my tank's have been ninja lately, and DD wise, I usually pty with DRKs, other SAMs, RNGs, DRGs, or WARs. If I don't hold back, the mob always seem to develop an attachment to me. I've tried the route of WS'in immediately (and generally doing as much dmg as I can), often ends with me face down. My best hope is usually that the mob dies before it finishes me off lol.

[Alibeemac]

WS immediately when you can. Then tank with Seigan until someone else rips it back. Also build a damage resistance setup you can sub in for when your seigan's down. Works well considering how much damage %- gear SAM gets (arhats, gavial, etc.).

NEVER SUB THF ON SAM IN XP.

Problem with a dmg-resist build for me, is that I have no room/inventory for it (I can barely take out AF sets from storage without being 59/60 or 60/60). In certain slots I even have to compromise and use not the best item for there simply because to save space, use another item I also use on my other jobs. I do however, macro some of my evasion/parry items on my seigan/3rdeye macro (boxers mantle/ohat/musical ears(from my brd)/ethereal ears/fortified chain).

What sub would you suggest? I've tried /WAR, as well as /DRG (with the haste earring) along the way. Consistently getting raped with those. Going to Nyul now/Thickets, most of my tank's have been ninja lately, and DD wise, I usually pty with DRKs, other SAMs, RNGs, DRGs, or WARs. If I don't hold back, the mob always seem to develop an attachment to me. I've tried the route of WS'in immediately (and generally doing as much dmg as I can), often ends with me face down. My best hope is usually that the mob dies before it finishes me off lol.

This is the way SAMs are in exp. /WAR all the way. I didn't even level THF until I hit 75 and for HNMs only. Stick up Seigan/Third Eye after WS if you take hate and the mob should be dead before you are. If you die and you have used Seigan/Third Eye, it is your healer that fails and the rest of the DDs who aren't doing enough dmg to kill the mobs quick enough and keep up with you.

[Max™]

Keep Seigan up.

WS Gear
WS
Pop Third Eye Now
Tp Gear

A fresh third eye is always better than one that is 10-15 seconds old, so keeping Third Eye up constantly is just not a good thing.

Using Hasso constantly is great in theory, but you get faceraped a lot, suck it up, deflate the epeen a little, and use Seigan more often, it really does help.

[ronin sparthos]

Meritwise, the priority of what to merit is probably based on what you intend to do with sam. If your gonna jump straight into the HNM scene 5/5 meditate and lvl3 Overwhelm are probably a good place to start. Shikikoyo is the next best cat. 2 merit to work on since ive found many times that throwing a DD some free TP turns out to work for me when i skillchain off their WS and boost my own damage. (Shikikoyo is pretty underrated imo, maybe its just me)

5/5 Store TP like said above helps toward a 6hit setup so thats the best route of choice, though i have seen people merit out third eye recast (for obvious reasons)

5/5 Store TP, 5/5 Meditate, 3/3 Shikikoyo, 3/3 Overwhelm.

GKT skill 8/8, Capped STR, Capped Crit Hit Rate - thats the best you can get for sam

On Exp: Dont be pigeonholed into going war sub to every exp pt, and while people may want to crucify me for saying it - it depends on your party big time. Being an mp sink with /war isnt helping your party if you are the lone 'good' DD not even Seigan will save you. (Trust me, sometimes you will wonder why your the only one sharing the pain so to speak) If the party seems competent sub /war, if your dealing with one of those 'questionable' tanks sub thf. Once you get merited up quite a bit eating meat for exp becomes second nature for either subjob selection.

[Amele]

WS immediately when you can. Then tank with Seigan until someone else rips it back. Also build a damage resistance setup you can sub in for when your seigan's down. Works well considering how much damage %- gear SAM gets (arhats, gavial, etc.).

NEVER SUB THF ON SAM IN XP.

Problem with a dmg-resist build for me, is that I have no room/inventory for it (I can barely take out AF sets from storage without being 59/60 or 60/60). In certain slots I even have to compromise and use not the best item for there simply because to save space, use another item I also use on my other jobs. I do however, macro some of my evasion/parry items on my seigan/3rdeye macro (boxers mantle/ohat/musical ears(from my brd)/ethereal ears/fortified chain).

What sub would you suggest? I've tried /WAR, as well as /DRG (with the haste earring) along the way. Consistently getting raped with those. Going to Nyul now/Thickets, most of my tank's have been ninja lately, and DD wise, I usually pty with DRKs, other SAMs, RNGs, DRGs, or WARs. If I don't hold back, the mob always seem to develop an attachment to me. I've tried the route of WS'in immediately (and generally doing as much dmg as I can), often ends with me face down. My best hope is usually that the mob dies before it finishes me off lol.

I'll be controversial and suggest that you seem like a candidate for sam/nin - you like hasso and you don't like holding back; but you don't really have room for a full 'ohshit' macro.

play sam/nin like a cotank. use your weaponskills to rip hate, hold onto it a bit with the current ichi, recast ichi, hit seigan, hit third eye, etc.

your recast on ichi will be pretty bad (about 38 seconds even with haste) but you're getting lots of hasso out of it. at 74 you get :ni and while that will have an even worse recast; you can probably afford to drop hasso to cast it, then put hasso/seigan back up later.

personally, I'd consider trading 10% haste for 15%(normalized) attack. although this is largely dependent on whether or not you get away with using hasso/berserk much on sam/war.

in short, if you feel that you're not able to use berserk and hasso and meditate enough on sam/war for fear of death; consider sam/nin as an alternate sub. sam/thf is hnm only really.

[Keston]

Thanks for the helpful advice guys :D. I will start trying /WAR again for Nyul/Thickets xp and opt. for using seigan/eye more often... if it doesn't work out, i'll give /NIN a try.

[Voullab]

I may be a bit late here, but still I wanted to add something that I didn't see in other posts (perhaps I just missed it). Working on a secondary weapon is just a as important as working on your GKT. Of course, this is not an option for everyone, because some will have more then just SAM at 75, and the other jobs may use a weapon which is incompatible to SAM. In my case, it's easy cuz I'm just BLM and SAM. So my plans was the following (of course at some points there are understandable divergencies):

GKT => Meditate => Shikikoyo => Archery (which was more recently replaced by PLM for SCing reasons) => Store TP => Overwhelm => PLM (replaced the 8/8 of Archery) Criticals => STR (working on it at the moment).

- I worked on each till cap before moving to the next one.
- In a few points of that plan I stoped it to meri BLM.

Note that the sequence chosen has an end game event focus. The Archery/PLM had strategic use, for mobs that were weak (or not immune) to piercing; and more recently, after I obtained Love Halberd, it had a very special use for Gimpulse Drive => Tachi: Gekko spam on HNMs with a SAM SC partnership.
That's a different matter tho, just wanted to show why I chose to fully merit those weapons before finishing SAMs merits, and even before finishing boosting DMG (through Overwhelm and STR).

[Shoju]

my apologies to all, shouldn't have let my temper slip.

[Lain_Iwakura]

GKT > Meditate/Overwhelm > Meditate/Overwhelm > Store TP > Iki..whatever > Shik..whatever is probably the best order overall. Obviously you'd want crit+ rate and STR merits at some point too.

Fixed
I've done Critical + after Meditate/Overwhelm and STR and the end.

[Ryko]

A fresh third eye is always better than one that is 10-15 seconds old, so keeping Third Eye up constantly is just not a good thing.

Disagree, the closer to the end of the timer (within reason) your third eye is without you actually having taken hits before you pull hate the better you can mitigate damage instead of using it after the fact as itll eat those 2-3 extra hits then you can just pop it again, it's actually more pragmatic (assuming you're just going to keep seigan up full time) to have it be 15 seconds old, since I can't count the number of times I've pulled hate only for it to drop in like 2-3 hits with like 20-24 seconds to go.

[Churchill]

^Agree, it seems since I tank so much now, if I know I'm about to WS, it's better to pop Third Eye and keep Seigan active, so that when I do WS my timer is almost up again once my shadows go down. Saves mp, and my xp.

[Max™]

If you're tanking constantly, yeah its different.

Most of the parties I've been in lately have been like Sam, Sam, War, Nin or something similar, so the mob isn't really looking at anyone for more than a few seconds.

I've got really bad luck with 20 second old Third Eye's giving me one anticipate, and know that while it's longer til the next recast, you on average get more anticipates out of brand new one.

Generally unless everyone just dumped their TP on the last mob and it isn't going to be dead in 10-15 seconds, I have more luck with a fresh one, than sitting through 10 seconds of a 1 Anticipate while the mob chews on me.

[Ganzar]

I've got really bad luck with 20 second old Third Eye's giving me one anticipate, and know that while it's longer til the next recast, you on average get more anticipates out of brand new one.

Just curious, have tests been done on this at all? Would be interesting to see.

[Max™]

I have soloed a lot of exp while skilling weapons/parrying/farming keys.

I /Sam because I prefer it over /Nin when soloing, and I've always noticed that Fresh eyes give more anticipates.

It's fairly random, but I rarely pop Third Eye and get a single Anticipate (though I suspect the rate was ninja nerfed back when they patched it for ballista, seems like it was MUCH better than it is now) within the first 10 seconds up.

The feel I get is that there is a decreasing chance, fairly smooth one, Going from almost 100% of 1+ if you immediately anticipate after using it, and decreasing maybe 3% per second of having an additional anticipate after the first.

So at 20 Seconds, roughly a 2 out of 3 chance of getting a second eye, 50% at 15 seconds, so on so forth.

THEN, for every anticipate you get, it seems like it knocks off a certain percent chance too.

You almost never get two+ Anticipates with a 20 second old Third Eye, you almost always get two+ with a fresh Third Eye.

I miss how it was, I remember getting strings of 5 anticipates and a counter or two.

Oh yeah, before the ballista update, Counter seemed to prolong the effect, whereas now it is the same as an Anticipate and can use up the last Eye. Previously I do not recall ever having a Counter take the last eye.