90 Keitono Vs 85 Masa

Polearm is still good for some events like Nyzul where mobs aren't extremely tough. Need to merit Stardiver though.

If you're close to capping attack (eg: /war with Berserk up on not-too-difficult mobs), spamming Fudo with Masa 85 will do better, though if you're commonly losing Aftermath due to lots of running around, they'll be close to tied.

If you're fighting stuff that's a bit more difficult, or Berserk is down or whatever, Keito +2 spamming Shoha will do better.

Pretty much every comparison between Masa using Fudo and a TP Bonus GK using Shoha comes down to how much benefit you're getting from Shoha's attack bonus. If you don't need the bonus, Masa/Fudo pulls ahead. If you do need the attack bonus, the TP bonus GK will win, unless you can get 300 TP Fudos and ride the aftermath with Shoha.

Any of the events your mentioned is better done with a Draca Couse and Stardiver. The only place I use GK is VW, really.

Time to skill my pole, then.

Tier 4 and below use stardiver. Good gear and just a chaos roll with normal buffs can bank you over 3k a ws. Does for me. And why the hell are people purposely making gimp jobs. It would take you 2-3 days, or a week or 2 max to complete a damn weapon to it's 90 stage. Do you really not have time for it?

with justification for polearm sam would any of you mind tossin up some AH/Bazaar gearsets for it ? i always felt a couple of Saotome +2 piece would be great penta/stardriver pieces but wasnt sure how viable polearm sam is now a days .

btw this made me lol . on my phone too sorry for the double post , shitty Pantech =/

I started playing MNK mostly for the proc and just began liking it, So after capping all the weapons for procs i made WoE h2h and loved it so made vere. I was also the first to have Fudo on any server due to already having all the coins turned in before the WS update lol so i had NQ/HQ Masa and Vere which i STILL have for some reason >.> Now as to the reason of why i put SAM away was it was 85 cap or so and i had been back like a week and i busted my *** Duo to do Masamune. And i ended up getting it done fairly quick. So i took another break after finishing Mandau for my wife and came back to Shoha stomping Fudo's *** and it was just massive discouragement at the time :(

Anyone want to brief me on modern day SAM? Please? 2 year break, just returned ~ and my only crowning achievement thus far is WoE GKT +2 and a few AF3+2. So far, I know I need to ditch the WoE weapon. Not entirely committed to building an Empy weapon just yet, so here are my choices.

I have a Keitonotachi +1 (Store TP +10 GKT) which I can finish off into final version Store TP +12 w/464 delay. Should I go this route and try to piece together a 4-hit? Is it worth it to build a mediocre 4-hit with this weap? Maybe this will be a good temporary alternative to tide me in until I get my hands on the 480 delay Kikugosaku and create a stronger, more worthwhile build?\

Any input will be much appreciated. I've played FFXI since PC launch and this is the longest break I've taken so far, and would like to create a smooth transition back into the game. Thanks ppl!

The other route I see is making TP Bonus GKT. Since Shoha is superior to Fudo, my WoE GKT +2 will likely be collecting dust, and the TP Bonus GKT look to be the stronger choice.

-start by getting the 99 tp bonus weapon.
- Finish any Af3+2 you need
-merit shoha 5/5
- Make the best ws set you possibly can for Shoha
-work on getting a 4hit if possible (yes a 4hit)

- Congratulations, you are now better than most Empy Sams. (provided they didn't go past level 90)

To aim for: Masamune/Amanomurakumo

Alternative: Kantanotachi(99) Draca couse (Stardiver 5/5)

Straight forward and to the point, thanks. You would make Fairy's legendary SAMs of yesteryear proud.

I would like to take a second and reiterate what Kenrusai said for a second.

He mentioned going 5/5 Stardiver and using polearm. Now I for one fully recommend doing this, as you can 4hit much easier with the 480 delay, and stardiver on sam just rapes. but only so much.

stardiver on sam should be used on anything that isn't high tier endgame. (the only thing that comes to mind, are some* vw fights, and legion) so pretty much everything else is polearm safe for sam.

just keep that in mind in case you are ever in a real endgame ls or anything, you might wanna keep that gkt around just in case.

but why you ask?

well there are several factors to this, mostly is the accuracy issue from the loss of skill. sam's polearm skill is nowhere near their gkt skill, even with merits sadly. this creates an accuracy issue on any high tier mobs / bosses. (remember, stardiver is a 4? hit ws, and if you miss on a multihit, then its going to reduce your overall dmg entirely)

it also doesn't help the fact that, stardiver tiers off on higher def mobs due to the lack of attack compared to what shoha gets. shoha gets innate attack bonus (think y/g/k) while having the same 100% STR wsc mod that stardiver has. hopefully you see where this is going xD

but yea stardiver has some serious potential if geared right, when i played i used to dualbox dyna with a 4hit stardiver build (used it over my 95 amano and my 90 masa)

my highest ws dmg spike is over 5500dmg in dynamis.

my highest ws dmg spike in abyssea with stardiver is over 12k lol.

i even used polearm a few times during my neo-nyzule sessions. cleared just fine with it.

so definately don't pass up the chance on trying out polearm. but if you're not into the whole polearm thing, then my above advice about 99 kanto stays. lol. Goodluck in your future endeavors as a Samurai.


- may the grammer nazi's forgiveth my soul.

Definitely taking your words to heed! Stardriver sounds like total win. Heh, I'm overcome with a bit of nostalgia after reading your post, as my days of spear-raping with Gondo-Shizunori, before Tomoe or Magian Trials were even around, are being relived in my head. I have the utmost respect as to the power of the spear, and have no doubt that the numbers you speak of are achievable.

I loved the polearm-play of SAM back in the days, pre-Abyssea. It was very fun. Aside from this, I am a traditionalist role player and stuck by my GKT to no end :) I took pride in SAM's GKT potential and dominance vs. high-stat'ed HNMs, while still making sure not to neglect my polearm builds, and proved to even the most hardcore DRGs and polearm-SAMs that the GKT is almighty.

This discussion reminds me of a gleeful time years past during meripo G. Colibri when my Hagun SAM/DRG outparsed a Gungnir DRG. I was a bit suprised. Though I had a lot of trust in my GKT performance (at a time when SAM/DRG and capped haste was an invaluable asset) even vs birds when polearms clearly have a powerful edge.

Here's the blog post recalling this event, if you're bored, followed by amusing comments of said relic holder defending himself: http://cinnabun-ffxi.blogspot.com/2009/02/red-mage-stuff-and-znm-solos.html Man, I really miss meripo! There's basically no competitive edge in this game anymore (aside from SE's silly excuse for PVP I guess).

You misspelled Grammar Nazis; no forgiveness for you, ONE YEAR!

In which case it would lean even harder towards Masa, so you could drop Shoha.

I personally wouldn't do it, but if you had Masamune and were seriously hard up for Merit WS space, there are much worse candidates.


One of Masa's biggest selling points for me was the fact that with AF2+2 hands and AF1 helm, a SAM can get to 300 TP with a Meditate in the time it would take him to get 100 without it, and the beefier K-I ends up covering a lot of the damage you'd lose by not using Meditate to kick out another weapon skill. This obviously doesn't cover 100% of your uptime but gives you a solid 90 seconds of Shoha.

Even if Shoha outperforms on higher-defense content, I would argue that's less important due to group size; maximizing the throughput of an individual DD is way more important in content where there are only 3 or 4 of them rather than 12, assuming the content itself is equally difficult.

All that said, Kanto* is a great weapon and it's certainly nice to not have to pay attention to whether you need to be using Shoha or Fudo at any given moment. For most jobs that's an inconvenience, but for SAM it's pretty meaningful if you end up "losing" a hit due to hesitation.

Most jobs would give up their firstborn to be faced with the dilemma of whether a rather powerful job-specific Empyrean was outclassed by a weapon that can be soloed by fighting EPs for 8 hours.



*don't just leave it at 90, man

All this poleArm talk has me laughing. Sam was my toau days job so I never even bothered getting tachi kasha till yesterday so I could finish tp bonus trials. So I am poleArm Sam at heart. After I finish tp bonus 99 tonight I'm getting a draca couse and meriting stardiver. Nothing was more satisfying then out damaging drgs on birds with their own weapon.

Also curious about some star diver ws sets and 4 hit to sets if anyone has anything nice they use.

You want a hipster bandwagon badge? I could mail you one.

This is why I don't ever post thanks. I was being lighthearted and joyful and you had to go and ruin it.

No offence, but you also took offence way too fast :P

You were being annoying as far as I could tell. Play victim much?

You will be punished for your impudence.

;(


explaining why Polearm is superior to Great Katana in x situation to a whole new generation of SAMs.