Samurai Gear (Tired Of The Questions Yet?)

I'd just ask Vegetto on your server. That's one guy who doesn't screw up on any job.

*Is at work at the moment.* >.>

ugh, I see a thousand responses so I'm sure this will get looked over but my fingers are twitching and I'm bored.

Main and sub
You have Hagun and Pole grip(i think that's what it was), keep on keepin on.

Ranged and Ammo
Tiphia Sting. Black Tathlum if you can swing it. I say either of those over whatever the bow+1(3dex) is called because you can swap to str satchet if hume or elvaan. or to smart grenade if you aren't either and you feel like your attack won't be capped. 2att is obviously very little but still worth mentioning, imo.

Head
W.Turban. This most of all if you're not running low on acc which isn't all that hard to do. If you are running low on acc but you're getting haste, marches still use turban. Any other time when you don't have these buffs and can use acc, Ace's Helm. For ws's use wyvern helm, shura bucket, or the new expansion helm (str+4/wsdamg+2%, if you can show me where +1[2 if you happen to have wyvern/shura+1/scnm helm] str can make even a 2% difference, I'll take that back and say str+6).

Neck
PCC. Chiv chain is very respectable and I certainly will not dog anyone for not having a pcc. However if your main reason for using it is how much extra damage you can do with 3str while tping, you're doing it wrong. Chiv chain is ok for ws's, but get a gorget. if its gonna be a while before you can obtain a gorget, work towards bull necklace or whatever that thing is. imo though, you'd spend less time to get a gorget if you put your time campaigning into farming organs.

Ear 1&2
Fowling and Brutal, keep on keepin on. Good for tp, good for ws. If you have your Bushi tied up elsewhere, triumph>fowling if you can swing it for ws's. If you're trying to maximize, snag a minuet earing for when you have a brd, lol1dex, but its still a tiny bit better than fowling when active. Keep brutal on, always.

Body
Hauby for tp, in almost every scenario Osode for ws's.

Hands
I use hachi hands and fuma to tp in, which leaves me open to use rutters on ws. Can also do dusk, hachifeet(tp and ws), but I like hands better. Alky bracelets for ws. dont use af+1 for gkt ws.

Ring 1&2
Rajas/acc ring for tp. Iota is good here too if you dont have a +7acc ring or divisor ring. rajas/flame or triumph for ws(or the +4 is just fine too if you just can't swing it. there is nothing at all wrong with +4 until you can get the gil to upgrade such a small thing.

Back
I bought a Cuchulain's Mantle and haven't ever looked back. It's amazing. Not everyone has +\-4M to drop on it though so Cuch>Foragers>Amemet+1 is fine if money is better spent on upgrades which offer more bang for your buck. amemet+1/foragers for ws's. smilodon+1 is also good in most situations since gekko takes relatively little att. to cap.

Waist
Swift belt. Speed/Vbelt if you've got it. Warwolf for ws's is good, nothing else you can do here.

Legs
B.Haidate for tp, you can't really get better. AF+1 are ok for ws's if you don't have shura+1/hachiryu. if you don't have shura legs at all yet, do not uncurse them unless you are +1'ing them, there is no bonus for nq shura over af+1. hachi beat the piss out of both of them though. just info, of course, those legs are hard to come by for a person without a very dedicated ls or very deep pockets. so you're good there.

Feet
As i've already said, i use Hachiman/fumas. I like this combo best for me. ws's, use rutter sabotons if you don't have any stp problems(where you would need hachiman). Other alternatives are askar or mithra rse feet. imo, rutters>askar>mithrastuff.

That's my OPINION on the matter. here are some visuals.
SAM - TP
SAM - WS
there are a couple other sam sets there if you care to look.

If u can get Usukane Sune-ate (the best TP feet for SAM) for TP build u can change hachiman hands to dusk gloves for extra haste, with usu feet u can very easly get 6 hit build ;)

^ yeah that. not sure why i left it out.

Well, the OP did specifically state "Any thoughts on better gear for TP/WS aside from Usukane and Hachiman +1?" when talking about feet on his first post, hehe.

fair enough, but i was just listing possible combinations and just forgot to put that in there cause im HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE or something. i didn't even see that part of the post >.>;;

This actually happens to be the best pre-usukane 6hit option.

Imo only if u have DA coming from somwhere else, cuz you dont want 0 DA :/

If you don't have DA coming from anywhere else, 2% alone isn't going to matter compared to being able to ditch Hachiman for both WS and TP. lol Most would likely still have Brutal on ears, but still, the haste gain is exponential and always in effect as opposed to percent chances. Little jealous of non-Usu SAMs because of it! /somanybees

2% DA from base (0) is going to be a 2% increase in DoT and WS frequency. 3 haste is going to at minimum be 3% increase, the more haste you have the more befit you get.

Using even NQ haub over askar is going to be about 13-14 acc, 6-7% hitrate, we'll count it as 6

Let's say you're at 92% hitrate and only benefit from 3% of the hitrate

3/92 = 3.26% increase.

In actuality though, you get even less of an increase from DA, provided you have brutal.

Let's say we attack for 1 dmg per attack and gain 1tp (works w/ any number using one for simplicity)

100 attack rounds, 5% da, 100 attack rounds, 7% DA

105 dmg vs 107 dmg
107/105 = 1.9% increase from the pole grip now.

Now if subbing war and using brutal

115 vs 117
117/115 = 1.74% increase

The more DA you have the less of a benefit you get from it in terms of TP gain and direct damage.

Rose strap is going to offer more haste and more acc, which will beat the 2% da w/o a prob even before adding brutal or /war. Once you add those, then the pole grip offers even less in terms of damage gained.

Basically Brutal is the only form of DA you need, it's one of the most needed items for SAM and one of the best you can get behind hagun and rajas(pre usukane).

Rose strap + brutal + hauby + rajas with chiv chain and set up for a haste build = win imo.

Ecphoria is a better option for the last point of stp so that you may still use Ancient Torque, Pcc, Justice torque ect. You gain more going from Chinv chain to one of those three than you do on going from ecphoria to any other ring you could put in its place.

Are there a lot of instances where for 480 delay Polearm, different grips excel over Pole? I'd think between sword/delay, Rose or an accuracy bonus grip there would be, but the gear can be so random. I'm currently using Usu feet/Rajas and Dusk hands while praying Penta fulfills enough hits on WS to keep a consistent 5-hit, but I can imagine a combo of Rose/Ecphora/Brutal giving a full buffer against any variety of TP from Penta hits. I'd assume this would be a better route than using sword grip as it'd at least require Hachi hands, Usu feet and possibly more. Or would ensuring highest overall acc be a greater benefit? For me it's never completely capped, even with crab-spam. What's the predominant thought here?

I use full usu on my sam and it barely gives me 5hit. I can't see any viable situation where you can use sword strap w/o breaking 5hit. I use pole grip for polearm sam but I can see sword strap for a true 5 hit working well if you have enough stp w/ it to reach a true 5 hit (0 to 100 in 5 hits, regardless of how many hits landed on penta)

Rounding down to 465 from the -3% delay would mean +29 in addition to natural and merited traits, so yeah, I guess that can be thrown out considering you'd be trading out Dusk at the very least in addition to more, defeating the purpose.

At what point, if at all, does a +2/3 accuracy from grips benefit Polearm more than the 2% DA? I want to ask about critical grips with unlocked Gondo-Shizunori, but I'd imagine the accuracy lost from Tomoe would make it a less desirable option altogether? Gondo/crit%+ as opposed to Tomoe/DA%+

Sorry for all the random grip questions!

I personally prefer Tomoe to gondo, seeing as crits only affect melee damage where as the acc will increase your melee damage AND your ws frequency. I generally do a 40/60 DoT/WS split on tomoe sam so I prefer to buff the 60% portion more than I do the 40% portion.

Well yeah there are better options for neck lol but justice/ancient are not easy to get items by a long shot for the average player. PCC is perfectly reasonable if you do enough ISNM these days.

I never gave it much thought given that crits didn't effect Penta, but the base damage is so friggin high and per-hit damage (on birds) so massive that criticals seemed sort of viable, I guess. I doubt I'd ever make the effort to unlock the damn thing, but I was curious to see what you thought anyway. lol Thanks!

Yea, was just pointing them out but pcc was my main point. Someone who may be technical may have came in and said oooh the torques are better than PCC!!!, so I was just covering my bases, lol.

But, that does bring up a good point, in any situation where your acc is uncapped, PCC is actually better than Justice torque, that being said your acc should be capped from pizza on most things, but if you haven't converted yet (or are on colibri) and your acc does happen to be uncapped, PCC will be better than justice torque.