Is Koga Really That Sick?

Most people just want the tried and true easy and reliable way to get things done. When in doubt, throw another SAM at it. They're not really wrong, MMO's are about finding the most efficient way to utilize you and x-number of other people's time for the greatest benefit. That's not to say that throwing more SAMs at it is often, if ever, the actual most efficient or reliable solution, that's just the way things get done. Besides, change SAM for any of the other FotM jobs we've had in recent memory, and it's basically the exact same thing. It goes in cycles, based on what is strongest, or perceived strongest, at any given time.

At least in keeping with the thread topic, Koga SAM will be a solid DD in basically any content that doesn't heavily favor magic damage. It was a top end DD when everything was "Bring more WARs" and when it was DRK and when it was MNK... it was never DRG, just saying.

so if you compare someone's who's really good on some job and compared that to someone who's really good on sam. will the sam win the parse the majority of the time? or will the actual results be closer than one would expect?

Glad to see SAM is doing well again.

I guess that depends on your expectations. I've seen greater spread between SAM's than between SAM and BLU, for example. People look at parse % and spreadsheet DPS, what they don't look at is damage spread, accuracy, WS frequency, and overall damage. Over the course of a Wopket run, the spread between a good SAM and a good DRK could be as little as 40K damage or less. That's not things, but 40K out of millions of damage isn't the same as 40K out of 100K. SAM isn't as far ahead as people perceive it, and party synergy is something people don't consider much, either. 2 SAM's using Fudo are going to generate nonstop light SC's. Add a DD with complimentary WS properties, and the difference in minimal, add a DD with contradictory WS properties, and it starts to fall off pretty quickly. So people just throw SAMs at it. It's just the way the game works.

The hexaboxing / 132+ incursion crowd that declares this game ezmode that says samurai is the only dd and omgkoga so OP just amplifies the perception to the masses that sam is the only dd option.

Yes bad sams are bad. My point is that most sams in general after lots of parses/pugs/etc is that they arent better than say a spharai mnk.
The top .1% that does perfect defense+VD battlefield zergs with SAMs blowing their SP wad in youtube videos massively inflates the perception sam is godmode and that it takes no brains to play it well and do 'tonnes of damage'.

We seem to have stopped caring if people are playing other dd jobs properly and just advocated building legions of faceroll samurais that are assumed to be good because we cant be arsed to figure out if/which non-sams are worth bringing or what their gearing baseline is that needs to be competitive alternatives.

If you take that bad guy on any other job he'll be just as shitty, still don't see the constructiveness in this.

okay if we take 1 shitty sam and another shitty dd who will win?

When you add a non samurai dd to a party and they start crapping all over the samurais in the parse, that's pretty damn constructive in terms of making a bad (sam) player less bad.
Suddenly dd's want figure out if they are playing the job properly instead of assuming stuff.

I dunno about that, i'm a terrible samurai but i'm good on other jobs.

So what you are really arguing is that there are more bad Sams than there are bad other jobs, which is something I highly disagree with. Overall there are more Sams in general, but as a percentage I doubt there are any more bad Sams than Bad Drks or whatever. Due to the easy nature of actually playing Sam and the wealth of resources provided (like an updated guide) I actually feel there are likely LESS bad Sams than other jobs. When a job has an active community, people tend to learn more about it also. For instance if I wanted to play Drk well I would head over to the Drk forum and see gearsets that haven't been updated in months, a bunch of shitters yelling about Apoc, and people complimenting Urteil for his infernal scythe strategies. None of this information helps a Drk become any better, in fact it may make them worse if they start emulating these players.

I agree that it would help if people learned more about other jobs but that isn't a very easy topic as even the best player isn't going to agree exactly with how good every job is. Spreadsheets and parses can help us approximate job worth but are far from perfect for this and really I bet if everyone in this thread made a "job tierlist" no ones would match up.

1. Sam
2. Everything else
3. lolPup

You can probably compare SAM with another physical DD then tell everyone "SAM is the best", but it's a lot harder to compare it with COR lol, since COR DD can shine in very specific situations, while in certain situations it's a lot weaker. Sapphire didn't say what buff/debuff they were using, if SAM in Sapphire's pt isn't getting enough acc/attack buffs you get whiffing fudos while leaden salute still do 7~8k(without indi-malaise) regardless of the attack or acc.

For meripo/cp, Double march double mad, boost-str, firestorm +str, everyone eating sushi, even against the capped acc sam, Cor wrecks serac rabbit and metalcruncher worms.
no excuses, target isnt magical weak.
brd whm sch sam sam cor, all mobs dia'd, I even did haste samba and wasnt getting fulltime haste.

Cor+Samurai roll, I was even locking my backpiece to mecisto mantle for melee tp and ws.

The thing is, 2 SAMs with rolls and a COR standing on it's hands is only slightly inferior to 2 SAMs and no rolls, so if the COR is contributing to DPS with steps/samba and even pathetically weak WS, it's still a net gain. It would be a better argument if it was an actual DD and not a hybrid buffing class in place of an additional SAM. The fact that COR outpaces many DD's is proof enough that more diverse setups are useful, but a party with 2-3 COR's isn't a viable alternative to a party with 2-3 SAM's for MOST content.

What was your SAM's WS avg? If done right, Fudo should be able to avg 6~7k np in Woh gates.

you don't even what, see the trend of SAM>ALL?

Most of you seem to have started playing during the Abyssea era, or reached end game during.

You got anything to base this wild theory on? I doubt many people here started during Abyssea, or reached end game during.

I would say most sam are 5-6k with that setup, when I close darkness on fudos its 7-10k leaden with 10~14k darkness. I would really love to find a kogasam to parse against for this, or more sam to compete against :3

When i'm doing these I don't have tp moonshade, the sch is triboxd so I dont get voidstorm to use an obi, and the sams are prioritized on haste, and with mecisto mantle locking out the back i'm not even tapping my own full damage potential. I don't feel like i'm stacking anything in my favor here when I argue that people should be at least considering a cor instead of a 3rd samurai for stuff.
I just wanna be able to log in and do crap and not have everyone go 'we need another sam' ffs.

I've been thinking of switching from sam roll to allies roll for merit/cp party, but so many things die from 2nd ws so the skillchain damage never does off its probably pointless except for epeens sake.

"I just wanna be able to log in and do crap and not have everyone go 'we need another sam' ffs."

This will probably be the downfall of ffxi. And it's completely the community's fault.

Doubt it.

taking every SC and giving yourself credit for all of the damage doesn't make you a better DD, even if you score higher on the parser

you think you'd beat the sam if they were closing off all of your ws? or how about 2 koga sams doing 5 step lights(with 2000-2500 tp on every ws due to TP gain speed)?

how much of that damage is spillover? would the mob have died any slower if you did 5k+7k instead of 10+14k?

tldr; you're winning parses because you're using a situation that favors you heavily, if you were fighting a mob with more HP than exp mobs COR SAM would be nowhere near SAM SAM.. and vs those exp mobs the majority of the damage you're crediting to yourself is past the mob's max HP and only due to you being chosen to close the SC

Nah DP cor is pretty broken too. People just don't see cor as anything but a buffer.

I use melee COR in my party at all times(since level 75, barring a short stretch in abyssea) and am picking up death penalty sometime in the next month. I don't think COR is useless, nor do I consider it 'only a buffer'.

This isn't a question of understanding, it's a simple concept: If you close the skillchain and attribute all of the skillchain damage to yourself, you'll win the parse. That doesn't mean you're the best DD in the group by any stretch of the imagination. If you changed to the COR opening and SAM closing, the SAM would be winning by a hell of a lot more than the COR is in the proposed situation.

The sam could be doing the same? They are probably doing so more than the cor.

I most certainly don't think cor as only a buffer, and still I don't pretend cor is as strong as sam.

Right, but I'm talking about the whole population.

2 DD closing skillchains at once isn't viable for a merit party, as a 2-step SC should be killing the mob. If the COR is consistantly closing the SC, they're attributing a lot of damage to themselves that only one DD will ever be claiming.

It might even be better to have the COR close in a COR SAM situation, but that doesn't mean the COR is a better DD than the SAM. It takes 2 to skillchain, attributing all the damage to one DD is laughable at best.

No, I mean given Sam's ws frequency aren't they more likely to be closing SCs with the cor? Not the other way around...

The person claiming to outparse a SAM outright stated she holds her TP to close darkness. So no, the SAM isn't closing the core SCs in this situation. If they were, the COR would not be outparsing them.

Simple.

I don't even that you actually said a Koga Sam should be doing 45% of a PTs damage and a mythic Drg or War would be at 20%. Hell I doubt that kind of spread would even happen with a Koga Sam vs a equally skilled but ***geared Pup. The ONLY reason a parse should look like that is if the other player is absolute trash or you have unfair variables like death or the Sam getting to solo 4 step on mobs while the other player kills adds. Koga is good, Koga is not even close to that good, Sam isn't even that good. Also I've been playing since the start but I don't think any less of players that did start at any later date, most of them would probably see how hilarious of a statement you made.

Also Cor is an amazing DD but why are we even talking about it? Cor doesn't compete with Sam, Cor compliments Sam.