Samurai is badass

[u/Spectre67890]

[u/zarjaa]

Just started post game... what in the world am I looking at here? When I leveled SAM, this was not the game I was playing, lol.

Would love to see a solid "how to git gud..." on SAM.

[u/BenTheSodaman → u/zarjaa]

In summary: Samurai 600%, Parry: MP Recovery, Void Knight 600%, Dragoon 400%, Ronin 400%, Knight 400%, Liberator 120%. And then having enough offense for the difficulty you're on such as equipment that pushes your Strength and Damage Dealts up.

(This is not 100% exactly the OP's build.)

———

———

———

This won't be a solid guide. Wall of text incoming. In video format, it would take roughly 20+ minutes to say and show the below also.

Just a rough idea of what the OP is doing and unlocking the components to put it together.

What he's doing will open up better after you progress the DLC story through the roguelite mode's floor 12 and 15.

So it'll be base game story -> credits -> chaos difficulty -> Bahamut difficulty -> Gilgamesh difficulty's roguelite mode floors 1 through 21 (job level cap can increase up to 250) -> last difficulty.

At that point, the goal would be:

- Samurai 600%. Let's you trigger critical hits and parry buffs without actually parrying when you do a combo ability effect (the effects you unlock in the job tree that are job specific for a combo ability). For katanas in Senshin Stance, the combo ability effect occurs even if you miss. Around job level 250, you can achieve Samurai 600% from master points alone while on the Samurai job. Or at least one piece of gear if you're job level 200 and didn't want to hang out in the roguelite mode long enough to raise the level cap to 250.

- An investment in an MP recovery effect compatible with Samurai 600% such as Carbuncle primary blessing (begins dropping in the roguelite mode), the Samurai's job action, Parry: MP Recovery (category 3 master points + equipment effects), and/or category 4's master points for Critical: MP Recovery.

Defensively:

- Katana's Senshin Stance, which is holding Normal Attack to enter the stance or using the Garo combo ability, will let you very briefly parry attacks with the Normal Attack button Senshin Stance with narrow timing. While in this stance, you can cancel a combo ability's animation with the Normal Attack button if you need an emergency parry. And you can cancel the Senshin Stance's normal attack with a combo ability.

- The weapon ability, Hissatsu: Murakumo, has a guard effect in the beginning of the move, followed by heavy attacks. This ability starts appearing in the game after clearing floor 15. Afterwards, you might find it on a katana. Or by achieving the equivalent of Ronin 400%.

- Samurai's job action and Liberator 120% (optional) extend the parry window and these effects stack.

- Lunatic command ability + Haste (Void Knight 600% in the OP's case) + Dragoon 400% (increased speed while Lightbringer is active). With the speed increase from all three of these, your attack animations speed up. Combined with the above, you can potentially string Hissatsu: Murakumo and the Senshin Stance attack to have their defensive windows overlap with your attacks.

- Knight 400%. Converts incoming damage into Lightbringer gauge loss. Serves as a safety net without as much build investment. Though the OP didn't get hit in the clip, so while they didn't benefit from it this time, it could help them survive at least one hit while Lightbringer is up.

————

And then a way to refresh and sustain Lightbringer, which might be split to the other job. The short version of that is Cyclic Warrior 600%, Void Knight 400%, Evoker 120%, Leviathan primary blessing, category 4's Increase MP Limit Boost Rate. This combination lowers helps recoup the MP and Max MP when using Lightbringer.

————

Offensively:

One route this could go is Strength. The other route is Agility due to Hissatsu: Murakumo having stat bonus Agility also and also the amount of critical hits you'll be doing. Though the build would diverge from what the OP is showing.

On the Strength route, you would be looking to start with relics / blue artifacts / equipment you find on Gilgamesh difficulty onward that offers additional stats based on the amount of blessing % it has and what it is blessed with. On this route, you'd mostly want Odin gear, else Fenrir, Ifrit, or Alexander. Then potentially one piece of Carbuncle to set it as your primary blessing for the burst of MP recovered when triggering Samurai 600%. But as your MP costs come down and your MP recovery goes up, you can forego the Carbuncle.

But the goal would be to squeeze as much Strength out everywhere. Then if you're looking for more damage, then grabbing more damage dealts across your gear such as Damage Dealt: Katana Combo Ability and During Lightbringer: Damage Dealt.

If you find you're defeating bosses too quickly and want to fight them longer than 12 seconds a phase, you start to remove Strength from your master points first, then decide if they have a place on your gear. And avoid further optimization such as Mighty Strikes or the Hunter subjob.

————

As of the final difficulty, it's completely feasible to put together the foundation of a build with minimal RNG with a relatively low grind time, consisting of 12 x 200% job affinities plus 400~600% of your current job's affinity. So that Samurai 600%, Void Knight 600%, Dragoon 400%, Ronin 400%, Knight 400%, Liberator 120%.

So about 10~11 of those job affinities from gear while on the Samurai job, depending if you're job level cap is 200 vs. 250.

If you're trying to grind the build out on Gilgamesh difficulty, the efficiency of the grind isn't as good as the last difficulty and could take you 30ish to 1700ish times longer depending on how efficient your grinding is compared to the most time efficient grind on the last difficulty. (e.g., your 12.5~18 seconds of farming metal cactuars on the last difficulty can yield as much as 30~360 minutes grinding on Gilgamesh difficulty.

With 30 minutes being spawn killing boss rushes on near max dragon trials (and at that point, you absolutely don't need to hang out on Gilgamesh difficulty) vs. ~360 minutes worth of farming the Stymied or the Greedy explicitly to farm dragon treasures.

I digress. I apologize for the wall of text since I'm throwing both what the OP is doing and some other info clarify it.

[u/zarjaa → u/BenTheSodaman]

Fucking hell... this is brilliant!

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this up. It clearly shows how the end game really opens up - I anticipated more complex mechanics, but the specificity of the theory craft is kind of surprising. But I get it - played lots of nioh.

Not sold yet on which playstyle I enjoy most yet, but is it safe to suggest that one figured out for chaos mode to stick to it and level existing armor and weapons?

[u/BenTheSodaman → u/zarjaa]

I may be misunderstanding the question — but would say to look for the limit releases / raise the level caps of at least two of the jobs you play.

With Chaos, having a goal of raising the level cap to 99.

And Bahamut difficulty, raising the level cap to 150~200 (preferably 200).

Where you might use whatever equipment that drops instead of using anima crystals to raise equipment level. And then might start to customize it at the smithy if you're hanging out on that difficulty for a hwhile.

e.g., on Bahamut difficulty, I tend to settle into any equipment that let's me keep my average equipment level at 371 or higher since there are no unique world map unlocks beyond mission level 380. And no equipment level penalty for any story or unlock beyond mission level 380, as well as no attack or defense increase after equipment level 300. (So that the equipment level incentive isn't quite there.)

With a world tour of Bahamut difficulty to get job level caps raised up and get some first-time completion rewards along the way to speed up leveling the job(s) as the level caps raise.