Samurai Polearm Guide

LEG SWEEP

had to have the stun for abrasive tantara a couple times there; works out better when your other dd's can all ws and murderrape it, simply (as much as my pentas on those were averaging like 1.4k) :S lol

RICE

TP feeding =/= good mage can fix.

Completely mob dependant of course, but mages cannot fix amnesia nor can they put food back into you, nor can they replenish your TP feather tickle takes, all of those things drastically slow down an exp party, and at least for those mobs... soboro is a *** joke, and i want to /wrists everytime i have a soboro sam/thf in party at imps.

TA Gekko with a soboro is garbage, it doesn't even come close to what a thief can do in terms of helping me keep hate so whats the point mr soboro sam who can't WS everytime your uber fast tp set is at 100?

It's a useless weapon for higher levels. period.

No just because you can gain fast tp doesnt make it a viable option at imps, you need a strong WS because you cant WS every time you have 100 TP.. n00b sams are quite the trend these days. Gotta love all the bandwagoners who jump onto trendy jobs.

Not sure but on penta itself I'd think AF+1 hands were better? I'd probably swap ethereal for hollow/fowling/minuet/diab personally.

The only GK anyone should ever use on Imps is Onikiri.

That being said, Soboro is one of the top 5 or so GKs damagewise at 75, no matter what you're doing. The fact that it gives TP fairly fast is a bother but honestly the reason people party at birds is because they have worthless TP abilities.

meh, im not a main samurai but i've never been impressed with a soboro sam at 75, hagun sams always seem to blow them off the parse easily.

1) You're using Peacock Charm, not even a Al'taieu Elemental Gorget (formerly for Penta Thrust should be Shadow Gorget if without L.Torque)

2) You're getting a better combination via Bandomusha Kote and Cuch. Mantle compared to Usukane Gote and Cerb. Mantle +1, but this is beside the fact that Ulthalam's Ring is terrible.

Personally, the only thing I'd change really in my set would be the head to Champion's Galea with STR4/WSACC15/AGI4/WSDMG+2% augments, and the belt to Warwolf Belt with an augmented +3 ACC (I HAVE seen this before, I'll try and dig up a screenshot of it later if you don't believe me; friend of mine has it).

Of course, Mars' Ring over Toreador's Ring, but yea.

Oh, and M.Kote+1 are perfectly acceptable on Penta Thrust, yes, but honestly, unless you're sporting a superb amount of +ATK already for Penta Thrust (pretty much impossible outside of Minuet x1/Chaos Roll), Bandomusha Kote help your average much more than those.. though, as always, keep in mind that's one slot out of fifteen.

Yeah lol, I've been trying to get a +acc one too. I want it for MNK really but would be nice for sam too, espc penta/rana. Best one I've had so far is +15 wind +12 lightning D:

Simple solution to colibri: buy more food.

Solution to Amnesia: stop meriting on Imps already.

Solution to anything that does damage: learn to properly use MP.

i didn't give the warwolf with up to 6 acc much of thought until i remembered how great it'd be for sammy. yeah, up to 6..

hate fov augments though. don't like mini expansions either <. <

speaking of that, i got a soboro sukehiro the other day, as i had stranded sam at 52 for months because i felt like a scrub not getting to play with the thing..

so i go out to hit some ladybugs and it's fun and stuff, yeah! glad i got that over with, cool sword, hits a lot and stuff..

take out my kamayari and unleash a crushing 950 penta and it's like :O

*now* i'm excited to play sam again

Low manned on what job? Your rdm?? Were you the one taking the TP moves to the face? I personally know when i go to fight Charybdis or Bune or anything like that, the LAST thing I want is someone feeding it TP, getting my shadows raped and then me. Saying TP feeding is obsolete is like capping Slow II merits and Ice Acc merits... What you trying to land Paralyze 1 better? LRN2SORO LRN2PLAY

Stop failing

also let a sam bring soboro on birds when your ninjer is higher lvl'd that will blow your mind :P

If anyone thinks that TP feeding or Subtle Blow are BS, I encourage you to go duo the NM Bugbear that drops Rutter Sabatons. It's a very simple test (though about 50-100k for Air Tank to pop, or 1% drop rate from Hobgoblin Blaggers.)

He's a lvl 67 Mnk NM that can use an AoE TP move, Flying Hip Thrust, that will go through shadows for between 400-900 damage.

I've seen full parties with Drks, Soboro Sams, Thfs, and Wars backed by Whm and Rdms in their party get wiped in under a minute on this guy. They feed TP to him too fast and he just spams Flying Hip Thrust over and over. The mages then Cure Bomb, get hate and die, then DDs feed more TP and die.

Yet this NM can be duo'd easily by a Nin or Mnk/Nin and a healers. Why? Subtle Blow. It makes the TP moves controlable to the point that it becomes a joke. Same thing with many mobs.

Oh, and yes, the Nin will hate your guts if you go w/ a Soboro to a bird party. Not because your doing crazy damage (you not really), but because now the bird is spamming Feather Tickle (TP that the Nin uses to keep hate) or Pecking Flurry (good by all shadows, now taking damage and losing more enmity in the process.)

What is the base damage of a Soboro? What is the base damage of a regular GK you could be using? almost double? so that's about 2 hits from your soboro to make up the damage.

Oh, then there is the WS. You're spamming WS @ 100 for 200-500 damage? When you could be spamming WS on a Hagun @ 100 for 800-1500? Remember that your main WS, though high Str mod, needs a good base damage.

Not every party is a merit party. Fact.

What better place would you suggest at lvl 70ish? The exp is phenomenal in a good setup for that level.

If you bothered to even look at the time i made my post about imps I was level 70 ninja, so yes I was currently exping and I have every right to *** about weak *** soboro sams constantly causing us amnesia meanwhile providing a very lame trick attack that didnt help me for ***.

You have many valid points but you blew them all way out of proportion.

1)Subtle Blow does not help that much. A MNK/NIN has 20% Subtle Blow, which it needs because it still gives more TP than most other jobs due to low delay and fast hit rate.

2)The reason they wipe is because they have so many people hitting it. The same amount of MNKs and NINs all attacking would get killed just as fast.

3)Soboro, over any period of time, would be doing about as much as Hagun. It does give a lot of TP, but that doesn't matter in merits where birds die in 30 seconds or less. So really the only major difference is that it's 10x as fun to use.

4)If you had counted the numbers of a GOOD Hagun SAM and a GOOD Soboro SAM, there would not be a 1000-damage difference. Hell, even my Soboro WSs do 700-800 whereas Hagun does 1300-1500. That's like a BLM comparing his nukes on Ebony Puddings to a different BLM's nukes on a RDM Ominous Weapon with Shell 4 up.

That being said, Soboro is a serious pain on anything with dangerous TP moves, but at that point, no one would be using Soboro anyway because it would be doing 0 damage on the LV90+ HNM you're fighting.

while i'm aware this isnt the thread for it >.> i dont want to start a new one for a simple question.. would you provide a short explaination on the duoing of this? take a look at my nin item sets would it be possible?

Sorry again to ruin your thread.

Get as much EVA as possible and find a RDM and you can quite literally duo anything below LV85 or so.

thats a good enough guide. thanks lol :p

My gripe with soboro, especially in merits, is that in order to take full advantage of it (WS'ing near 100%, not constantly stocking to 150-200) is you're constantly WS'ing throughout a fight. Likely at beginning, middle and end and if you're maintaining 700-800 per WS then you're definitely going to be holding the lion's share of hate throughout the entire merit. SAM's great at mitigating damage and all, but for berserk SAM/WAR, even one flurry getting past TE will put you in the yellow at the very least. Literal numbers would be that each hit offers 14.5 TP, so by the time Soboro is ready to WS, the enemy only needs 1 more hit, or to score about 3 melee hits of its own. More common than not is a case where Soboro doesn't land exactly on 100TP and now the enemy is WS'ing as often as you. Not my style. lol

Another annoyance would be that Soboro needs time to work to actually break even with higher-damage weapons and in merits that just doesn't happen. Over time this may even out, but I imagine many cases where you're either WS'ing very late and wasting damage (SAM parse hax) or stocking up TP to make a pretty negligible difference in WS damage for the next mob.

Anyway, I'd argue that any "good" SAM, regardless of gear probably has a WS average closer to 500-600, spiking around 700 and 800, but definitely not the norm, along with Hagun averages being around 1k, with upper damage caps and DAs spiking much higher.

It just seems like there's a lot of wasted damage and inefficiency with it. I just can't see even wanting to bother with this when not only normal GKs perform better (my opinion), but Polearm itself exceeds any need to touch Soboro with birdies/piercing.

Not even close. I can get 2 ws off easily soloing on MNK w/o even using Chi Blast for Penance.

Stating that a job feeds tp faster because it hits faster is naive. You hit faster, you give less tp per hit.. You hit slower, you give more tp per hit. Someone with Subtle blow will give less tp than someone w/ lower or no SB. So I can't even see how you can say a MNK and NIN will give tp faster just b/c they hit faster.
^ Soboro is ok, but I've never seen anyone pull out consistent dmg over 600 on birds with soboro w/o going to 200 or 300 tp at least.

Actually, that's not quite correct, while your tp is based off your delay, the mob gets your tp + 3, so subtle blow aside, more hits = giving more tp in comparison.

bleh nvm

My SAM/DNC (Darkmoose - Odin) can merit and parse very nicely with Soboro + Platinum Grip. I wouldn't do it with just anyone, but my friends and linkshell mates have no issue at all with me meritting that way. In fact, they typically ASK me to come /DNC.

What the parse doesn't show, is that my Samba has everyone constantly draining HP, which saves the mage a crapload of MP. Additionally, anytime I get a multi-hit that drives me to 140+ TP, I automatically Divine Waltz, then WS. My Soboro WS on Colibri and Mamool are typically in the 500-650 range, with the DA procs ending up near 900 or so.

Add that to 20% Haste + March + Haste spell, and the fact that grip stun effect procs fairly often, and it's really nice.

Again, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but it works for me, and it's fun! (Oh, and I have solo'd Chain 4 on Ul'Phuabo SAM/DNC, and they have nasty TP moves, so it's still a good thing if you know what you're doing)

Thing is, if you're in a well balanced party to begin with, there should be no need for any dd to sub dnc, and them doing so would add absolutely nothing to the party, since your mages can already manage their mp just fine without the need to break chain so they can regain mp.

As far as birds go, its not a comparison vs hagun, its a comparison vs polearm and it loses, badly (so does hagun).

Even if you're gonna use soboro (again my post isn't about soboro vs hagun) at the very least you should be subbing drg for DD purposes. Any party that needs a DD to /dnc though, is a poorly built one to begin with.

Oh, I get where you're coming from, but it doesn't slow anything down in my experience (chains over 300) and it's a lot more fun. If I'm not /DNC I like to /WAR for merits, but alas, don't get to do that much. Again, it's functional and it's fun, and with my merits and gear, it works.

Having a COR meleeing Joy/Kris and dropping massive slugs while a BRD pulls doesn't hurt, either.

Pole SAM is fun, too, but I prefer my GK, and my other merits are in Archery for SAM/RNG, so my Polearm lacks some.

Even w/o merits polearm kills GKT. As far as yor exp goes, chain means nothing, unless you break it. You can keep chain at 18k/hr and you can keep chain at 30k/hr and that is certainly a large gap in exp/hr. Simply reaching chain 300 does not mean that your exp wasn't slowed.

Just to add in, and not that there will always be a COR with joy or kris, but COR/DNC has been shown to be really useful and seems like a much better option in that situation to allow DD sub for SAM, especially if they aren't pulling anyway. COR certainly doesn't need a DD sub to fire off huge Slugs so it's something to consider, at least.