I think the primer yesterday about SAM 5-hit builds was too vague, so I am going to use my own character as a model to show just how you would create a good 5-hit build with a 464 delay Great Katana and what different options you have available.

These sets use gear I currently have or have relatively easy access to. It may require work for some people, and it may be gimp to other people. The point is that there are many different paths you can choose. Let's take a lot at what I can use right now to get to a 5-hit build.

Cheap and easy:

This is the set-up I could use today without spending anything or doing anything different.

TP
Main: Kokushitsunotachi
Sub: Rose Strap
Ammo: Goblin Cracker
Head: Walahra Turban
Neck: Unkai Nobowa
Earring: Bushinomimi
Earring: Brutal Earring
Body: Usukane Haramaki
Hands: Hachiman Kote
Ring: Rajas Ring
Ring: Adler Ring
Back: Forager's Mantle
Waist: Swift Belt
Legs: Byakko's Haidate
Feet: Usukane Sune-ate

WS
Main: Kokushitsunotachi
Sub: Rose Strap
Ammo: Thew Bomblet
Head: Varangian Helm
Neck: WS Gorget
Earring: Bushinomimi
Earring: Brutal Earring
Body: Usukane Haramaki
Hands: Myochin Kote +1
Ring: Rajas Ring
Ring: Flame Ring
Back: Forager's Mantle
Waist: Sentry Belt
Legs: Usukane Hizayoroi
Feet: Perle Solerets

Under TP build I have +34 Store TP from gear which gives me 20.6 TP per swing, and for WS I have +16 Store TP from gear which is 18.4 TP per swing. That is 100.8 and more than enough for what I need.

Of course this is not optimal. It gives up a bit of haste in the hands for the huge bump in haste from dropping an entire attack round to get to the next WS. There are other ways that this can be approached as well as using the Store TP +5 Keitonotachi. This is just the most simple route for me at this time.

I would actually suggest that people get both the Kokushitsunotachi and the Keitonotachi. The Koku is used for situations in which TP spam is ok, but the Keitonotachi is essentially the new Hagun, the main new go-to GKT. This is simply because while it is lower base damage, it will let you get to 5-hit very easily and it has a high base damage.

My Koku is almost complete and I will be working on my Keitonotachi soon. Next week before the update I will be going over some alternative 5-hit builds and look at some other GKT. And then I will cry as it all changes again after the next update.

It has come to my attention that there are several viable options for 5-hit builds with several of the Magian Great Katanas. In general, these are only possible with a few requirements. The Great Katana needs to be of at least 464 delay and you are going to make some new trade offs to get to the Store TP required. Assuming you have all of the necessary merits, you will require an additional 29 in Store TP. The problem for doing this is not that the gear doesn't exist, but that there are a lot of ways to get to the goal of +29 Store TP and almost all of them require giving up additional gear.

Now, I know the knee jerk reaction to this statement is why would I ever want to give up good stats for Store TP? The answer is simple, you don't UNLESS you can save a swing in getting to the next WS. For SAM (and for almost all jobs) a WS is always to going to be the most damaging attack you can do. This means that the more WS you get the more damage you will do. The reason people use Haste is to do the same exact thing. If you swing faster, you will get to the next WS faster. The problem is that people don't think of Store TP as Haste, but they should. It just comes in huge big chunks of Haste, rather than small slivers of Haste. Everyone should know the value of Haste by now. It has a multiplicative effect on your damage, which means that every bit of Haste you can get and use effectively will be of more and more value.

The options that I have found so far the Kokushitsunotachi and the Keitonotachi. There are obviously different approaches for each considering the Keitonotachi has +5 Store TP of it's own, making it easier, but still requiring trade offs. In general, you are going to need to keep your normal Store TP gear that you are currently using. Things like Rajas Ring, Usukane Sune-ate and a Store TP body like Usukane Haramaki or even Askar body are acceptable options. After that the trade off's start coming. Rose Strap is an obvious first pick because it replaces a relatively unimportant slot and has a big chunk of Store TP on it. The new Unkai Nodowa is a good option for the neck piece because the next closest option is Chivalrous Chain and it doesn't give nearly as much. White Tathlum is another option, it makes me cringe because it doesn't do much at all to help out with anything else besides the Store TP. After this point you need to start thinking about big sacrifices. Hachiman gear has a lot of Store TP on it. The hands can be used for TP and the feet can be used for WS. These should be your last resort options, but they may be necessary depending on your gearing.

The one shining light out there is the Goading Belt. While this may not seem like the best possible option compared to the Bullwhip Belt, you need to look at the differences in terms of total Haste. A Bullwhip Belt has 2% more Haste, but if a Goading Belt helps you keep other gear you want to be using like say Dusk Gloves or a good WS piece then you could actually gain more from using the Goading Belt than from the Bullwhip Belt. It's a tough balancing act that requires a complete look at all of your gear and options, but it is worth the effort because the difference between a 6 hit build and a 5 hit build is about 17% haste. There is no piece of gear that gives you that much haste.

Yes, of course they are beautiful new weapon skills. Yes, everyone loves new and shiny stuff. But the question I have to ask is this: Do we really need more WS?

We got new WS in the last update, and for the most part they kind of sucked. Some were interesting but most were complete busts. I am left wondering after years and years of wishing that SE would give us more meaningful updates and just more stuff if we have gotten to the point where we don't need a whole lot more stuff. What we need is refinement, and we got a lot of that in the Job Adjustments update notes, but outside of the absolute beauty of these new weaponskills, is there anything substantial to them? The question boils down to this: Is it going to beat the WS I use right now?

What SE needs to show is a little less flash and a little more finesse. What is compelling about these new WS? After looking at a couple WS worth of butterflies, I haven't used Tachi: Ageha outside of testing and goofing-off. The problem is that the level of commitment in testing and figuring things out just isn't as high as it used to be. If there are any little tricks to these new WS then most people aren't that willing to put a ton of work into finding them out. I would like for SE to look over old WS's to make sure they were all usable, even if just situationally.

So, I guess what I am saying is that we have matured past candy and sweets and what we really want is meat and potatoes level improvements. The move to increase the level cap was a meat and potatoes improvement. New Job Abilities (as long as they are useful) are meat and potatoes improvements. New WS are just sugar and spice and everything nice, but they won't sustain you. At this point, a lot of new WS are all flash and no substance. Keep giving us meat and potatoes improvements. Give better ways to move around, give us more storage, give us more JA's (that don't share timers), don't give us more pretty stuff we are never going to use.

I am getting too used to SE giving us good content. I feel like I am looking a gift horse in the mouth.

The update notes on Wednesday were vanilla. I don't know if they rushed something out to make sure we had a decent teaser, or if they enjoy teasing us, but Wednesday left me a little flat.

Friday, gave me a raging hard-on.

Let's get down to business.

Job Abilities:
The quality of new Job Abilities now runs the gamut from interesting to jaw-dropping.

1. Divine Caress - Interesting, but probably of limited usefulness. This is probably only really helpful if it completely prevents the enfeeble from landing. If you use Divine Caress before removing paralyze or slow and it prevents them from landing again, then it is great. If it just increases resistance like a normal job trait then it isn't really useful at all because you will still need to remove the enfeeble. You are not often in a position where you would not remove a enfeeble because you know that it will wear earlier than a full strength one.

2. Saboteur - Jaw-dropping, but dependent on potency. If this ability helps RDM to increase their potency enough then they can use more skill and accuracy to make sure they land. If this ability increases the duration enough then it can be used with Elemental Seal. If this ability increases the potency over current effect caps then it will just be incredibly strong. That is a lot of if's.

3. Spur - Interesting. My guess is that this will be nice, but it will really depend on the strength of the pet's attack and how much the extra TP can benefit it.

4. Tenuto - Standard of Living. Bards will finally be able to give themselves the songs that they want instead of constantly overwriting their own songs. The delay and duration look like they match Pianissimo.

5. Soul Jump - Interesting. Shares a timer with High Jump. Has the same effect as High Jump. Looks like this is just the same thing as Spirit Jump and Jump. This one is kind of vanilla unless the effect provided by the Wyvern is huge.

6. Blood Pact: Ward "Earthen Armor" - Interesting to Jaw-dropping. This really depends on if it is a mini-Perfect Defense, or if it is just a bit of damage reduction. The wording gives me hope that it is used against something like Meteor or 10,000,000 Needles or whatever.

7. Blood Pact: Ward "Tidal Roar" - Interesting. Attack down is something that is handed out left and right by SE. This may have it's uses especially with how well effects seem to scale for Summoners now. Right now, it just sounds like any other attack down effect.

8. Efflux - Who cares. It's a Blue Mage JA. No one cares. At least no one should care. I suppose it is one more thing to stack on before Cannonball. :)

9. Courser's Roll - Jaw-dropping. Increase "Snapshot", which for the uninformed is Ranged Attack haste. Sounds awesome, but also probably the death knell for many a Ranger out there. More speed, more damage, more hate, more death. Thank god for Animus Minuo.

10. Blitzer's Roll - Jaw-dropping... or not. Decreases swing delay. This could be amazing if it doesn't cause a decrease in TP per swing. Hopefully it is like Hasso and Haste Samba and not like Sword Strap.

11. Feather Step - Interesting. This has to be pretty strong to be of interest, especially considering not a lot of people put DNC on high level mobs. DNC already has a lot to do, so I don't know if this is going to be of much interest at all.

That is it for today, more on the spells and traits soon.

This is an illustration of when ingrained learning kicks in. :)

I love Abyssea. It is really fun. There seem to be so many aspects to it. So many things we can't even really explain yet. Like, why did Turul and Ovni start aggroing all of a sudden? Are the "!!" really random? How do all the Abyssite drop? At some point though, all of this information just gets to be overwhelming. Why are there so many questions that remain unanswered? What are we supposed to do to try to figure all of this out? Why can't SE just give us some straight forward content.

I am not saying that there is something wrong with Abyssea itself. As I have already said it is challenge and rewarding content. I am just concerned that instead of content we are getting randomness. One of the reasons that I liked Salvage so much was that it was a riddle but it was one that we could figure out. Sure there was the normal drop rate issue, but it felt like if you did it long enough it would all average out in the end.

I look at Abyssea and I see a huge jumble of events. A little Limbus, a splash of Salvage, the old Sky/Sea combo, finished with a dash of Kings. It's very interesting and fun, but it seems all a bit scatter brained (not like I am one to criticize, my posts can end up rambling on forever). The tiers don't seem symmetrical. It seems more like a hodge-podge of previous end-game content mixed with something all new.

It's not bad at all, it can just get confusing sometimes. Sometimes it's nice to have content with some obvious solution to it. There is some comfort to be found standing on a dragon's feet. It's a whole new world, but that doesn't mean that SE has to steal my security blankie. :)

Soloing, Low-manning, efficiency. It seems to me that these words have lost all meaning. Soloing doesn't mean soloing anymore. Today it means finding a slow, glitchy or bindable mob, and then casting Poison and Bio II for hours at a time. That's not soloing. That doesn't take skill. It just takes an anti-social personality type and a lot of patience. I respect people that solo things as a test of skill. Soloing Limbus back in the day. Soloing anything where if a spell fails to land you are pretty much dead. That takes skill in my eyes. Boring a mob to death is not skill. Stop acting like it is skill.

If you take longer to kill a mob than it's respawn time, then you suck. There is nothing more to it. You don't suck at playing the game. You suck at soloing. Soloing used to be about efficiency. After the test of skill, the reason people soloed Limbus was to collect coins faster than with a group. That doesn't apply to Chukwa. If you are soloing Chukwa, then you are just wasting time. You don't have proper TH. You don't have friends.

Yes, yes, there are always exceptions. You work nights and don't have any JP friends. You just changed servers (though it does beg the question). You really are testing your skills. These are all fine exceptions. And everyone uses them as an excuse, but I think for the most part these are just covers for two things: Greed and Anti-social behavior.

Here is my real issue with soloing a lot of things now: You aren't just fucking other people (you obviously don't care about them already if you are taking 50 minutes to kill Chukwa), you are fucking yourself over. If you just ask a couple of your friends (if you have any), you can kill most mobs ten times faster, with a much higher drop rate, if you just agree to do the same thing for your friends.

Maybe I am just lucky and have amazing friends. Friends that don't just want to do stuff with our LS, but also want to do things just as a group. Friends that are just as happy when I get gear as they are when they get gear. I do have amazing friends, but I don't think it is a special circumstance. I think many people can have friends if they want them. But greed leads to anti-social behavior, and that is what soloing means to me now (with the previously mentioned exceptions). Soloing is about greed plain and simple.

Anything that can be soloed can be done far more efficiently with a small group. And anything that can be done with a small group can be done more efficiently with a larger group. Yes, there is absolutely a point where having more people becomes less efficient when it comes to gear, but I don't think most people that "solo" are even close to that balance.

I have never really wondered what NM's think when I kill them. They usually have stuff I or my friends want, and we aren't going to let them get in between us and our most desired bling. I still don't really care, but after killing a few Minhocao and Chukwa's to get some gear I started to almost few bad for them. I mean how would you feel if you were tortured by some gimp RDM "soloing" you for hours on end? I would just be wishing for a quick end by an alliance that could actually kill me in a reasonable amount of time. I pictured their feelings would be hurt at the very least. I think there needs to be a new rule, if "soloing" a mob takes longer than the respawn of that mob, then you need to get a new hobby.

I might have mentioned that I don't understand some people. Ok, so I talk about it all the time. Some people get so obsessed with some gear that they don't know when to give up on it's pursuit. Some people get so used to doing events that they don't realize when it's time to move on. Some people don't realize that just because they have the gear from an event already doesn't mean that everyone does, and that sometimes you need to do things you don't want to do anymore to get people to help you. These things can even contradict. One person's treasure is another person's trash. But none of this is what I really want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about Magian weapons.

A common topic? Yes, definitely. I have talked a lot about Magian weapons, but I don't think that some people even get the point right now. I think the problem may stem from the lack of difference there really was from level 75 to 80. The problem is that you can't just look at a Magian weapon and say "Well damn, I have to have that or I am gimp" because the increase in damage is just the next step up, it's not a paradign shift in game mechanics. I think most people (myself included) thought that the jump in level from 75 to 80 was going to be accompanied by the same jump up in stats that happens from 1 to 75. That wasn't to be the case. The only really consistent increase came in the form of skill increases (which arguably is even more important than raw stats but that is a discussion for another day). Instead of the exponential increase in damage most people expected to see from a higher damage weapon and 5 additional levels, it instead turned out to be more of a linear increase in damage. Nothing ground breaking, and a lot of time that is the only thing that will get people out of their rut.

I think there are more than a few reasons to move on Magian weapons now, instead of later.

1. With the rare expection, they really are the best weapons in the game. Outside of a very few number of weapons, there is nothing that can beat a Magian weapon. All jobs now have access to weapons that have higher damage or more attacks per round than anything else available. Relics and Mythics generally excepted, I believe that Ridill is the only weapon that still can make a claim to being overpowered. And that is arguable...

2. Outside of Mythics and Relics, Magians will definitively be the best weapons in the game after the next update. While one could argue that we still don't know what is coming for upgrading weapons in the future, we can look at the end-point Empyrean weapons and say that they are obviously not complete. Also, it is undeniable that the base damage has to increase as the level cap increases. All of the old weapons just can't keep up with the march of progress.

3. You are going to have to do more work to upgrade your weapons in the future. If you fall behind now, you just have more work to do in the future. It's not like the trials are going to get easier. SE is just going to add more and more trials onto the end of the ones that already exist. And they are going to make Magian weapons even stronger. When the next update comes, are you going to want to be killing Treants in Grauberg? Or are you going to want to finish off your Indra Staff to get the next step in Lightning Damage Potency?

4. If you aren't working on upgrading your Magian weapons then you really are gimp. This is one of my unapologetically elitist moments, but in the end it's not elitist at all. Up to the penultimate Empyrean stage and up to the final stage of the rest of the weapons they trials just aren't that hard. Sure getting some of the 20 drops for the high damage OAT weapons can be a bit of trouble, but there is nothing that is stopping you from doing it besides yourself. The problem might be that for almost the entirety of FFXI people had to work with other people to get the best gear, but instead of working as a motivating factor this actually just encourages people to be free-riders. But now, when faced with a set of quests that require individual action for the most part, the free-riders are left out in the cold. And they should be.

I might be an elitist dick, but this isn't about criticizing gear because it's hard to get or because it takes a lot of time to get. In this case, I am not the elitist dick, other people are just lazy dicks. And I would much rather be just about any kind of dick than a lazy dick. :)

I am getting cranky. Cranky is a good place for me. I have been dealing with the two-headed beast of camping near irrelevant NM's and a horrible internet connection. I have lost at least two, if not more, Okyupete kills for my second Magian GKT because of my internet connection taking a dump all over itself. You might remember me mentioning how much I love the Magian system because you can do it yourself at your own pace, and it's relatively easy to get an amazing weapon. Yeah, well if you add in a crappy internet connection that all goes out the freaking window.

Ok, so it's not the Magian system's fault that my internet connection is worse that two tin cans and a piece of string, but I am cranky so logic doesn't matter! I will be less cranky once I have killed 6 more Lamprey Lords and then 8 more Chesma's and then collect 50 Carabosse's Gems... wait, what the fuck? Are you fucking with my mind? 50 Gems from a tier 2 Abyssea mob? Now, the kick in the balls that my internet connection has been giving me over the weekend suddenly feels like a gentle cupping compared the giant black dildo that SE has inserted into my rectum. I don't want to hear about how you can farm the pop items for Carabosse in an XP party, and I don't want to hear about the fact that there are a ton of far more difficult drops for other weapons. I just don't want to hear it, I just want this giant black dildo out of my rectum.

Speaking of annoying, I can't wait for people to finish leveling their jobs in Abyssea and realize that there is actual real gear in there. I know people that have spent 16 hours in Abyssea leveling and have somehow not leveled everything they have, merited everything they have, and flipped their XP like the score in an Atari 2600 game. Yeah? You don't know what an Atari 2600 is? Too young you say? Fuck you. Go to a fucking museum and check it out, you can find it right next to the Magna Carta, the Rosetta Stone, and the skeleton of an fucking Allosaurus.

Did I mention I am currently working on something like 5 different Magian weapons right now? I have killed every single moronic NM that SE has ever added to the game. Some of these NM's have to be a freaking joke. Okyupete? Ankabut? Where do they come up with these names? A three-year-old's first illiterate Crayola scrawl? Jolly Green? Killed it, and the fucking thing doesn't even have a last name, and it's not even a fucking giant. Hey, SE, you already have freaking green giants in the game, why don't you call one of them Jolly Green? You know the worst part? I am doing Great Katana and Bow, and they both perfectly overlap, so I have committed genocide against the peace loving Treants of Grauberg, not once, not even twice, but three time, and it's going to happen again because of that Plantoids under weather thing. I make Pol Pot look like Strawberry Shortcake. You don't know Pol Pot, you say? What? You don't know fucking Strawberry Shortcake, either? Get the fuck off my lawn!

And Yilbegan can get the fuck off my lawn too! Fucking shadow-less, but fucking cool looking dragon, that's like the anti-dragon. Tank it on it's rear feet? Only damage it when wings are up? What the fuck? It's like everything is backwards because of some little in-joke at SE headquarters. "Oh, we so funny!" Yeah, fuck you too, buddy! Oh, you dropped a Platinum Ore and a Platinum Ingot? How generous! Let me show my appreciation by jamming a fork in my ear. Oh wow, the fork in my ear does nothing to minimize the pain of the brutal dildo assault...

Internet connection problems make the Old Man Ring pretty cranky. I am sure it's because my roommate is simultaneously uploading and downloading every episode of Top Gear ever created, in every language known to man. My poor GB's and Wifi's don't stand a chance against a full frontal assault from Jeremy Clarkson. You don't know Jeremy Clarkson? Great, you just gave me an aneurysm.

Stop XPing. It's not worth it. There is no amount of XP you can get in the real world that justifies doing it anymore. No time investment is worth it. No dual BRD parties can keep up. There is nothing you can do to XP anymore.

You have to go to Abyssea. Abyssea is the best XP in the game, and it is not even close to being a competition. If you are XPing in the "real world" then you are doing it for one of three reasons. 1. You don't have time for a full Abyssea alliance XP run (which can be very time consuming). 2. You don't have enough people for a full Abyssea alliance XP run. 3. You are out of Traverser Stones (though this might never be a problem again for those that are good at XPing in Abyssea).

The History: The last few years has been about the specialization and at the same time marginalization of certain jobs in XP parties. SAM, WAR, DRG and DRK are the main DD, RDM was the main healer. BRD was the buffer and puller. COR was the secondary buffer, and was poor at pulling and DDing. This was moving in the opposite direction of the value of jobs at non-XP events. PLD were the main tank, MNK tanked Salvage, RDM was a healer, but WHM was the go to for the most part. BLM was very valuable, as was SCH. BRD was still very important. Melee DD were either critical or useless.

Abyssea comes along and turns all of that on top of it's head.

The Set-up: Balance is critical. While in the past people wanted to have a high concentration of buffs and DD, this isn't as required now. You still want to have a high rate of damage, but you need a variety of damage. Melee, WS and magic damage are all critical to get the balance in "lights". There are also new roles. Now you will need people that are pretty much dedicated to opening chests. Two people is probably best because you start to get a whole lot of chests after a while and you can't open everything with one person after a while.

The most important thing is to have a variety of kill-shots. Some melee kills, some WS kills, and especially some magic damage kills. This will give you pearlescent, ruby and azure light, respectively. The idea is that you want to build up these lights as quickly as possible, so you want to kill things with your different damage sources. Personally, I think it is a little better to go on streaks. Kill a few with melee and WS, then kill a few with magic, and go back and forth. The point is that you need all three sources of damage to make sure you are getting the most sources of light. While the message will never say anything more than "you gain a feeble amount of X light" you will still be building them up behind the scenes.

The beginning: Some people say to go with all magic kills to get to time first, and some say all melee to increase your drop rate of chest, but I have to say that mixing it up is probably the best. I don't know the exact way the system currently works (no one does) but I have found that going on little streaks seems to be the best for me so far. Kill about 5 with melee to up your pearlescent light, then kill 5 with magic to up your Azure light, and toss in some WS and Elemental WS kills to increase your Ruby and Amber lights. The important thing at the beginning is to just focus on killing, don't worry about chests too much and having a good assist.

The mid-game: Don't freak out! That is the best advice I can give. The XP doesn't start rolling until you are well into the time chests, but the time chests usually don't start rolling until about an hour into the run. The worst thing I have seen done to runs so far is people start freaking out about an hour into the run and over focusing on one type of kill. Remember, balance is the most important for good chest generation. You need high tiers of all the different lights on a good run. If you start freaking out and don't keep things balanced, then you end up ruining the run by not getting enough chests or not getting time chests. Once you start getting time chests it's time to relax and enjoy the run.

The end-game: Put on some music, get used to your assist macro and go to town! You still need to keep a balanced light progression because things can still go out of wack if you are not careful. Additionally, the longer the run goes the more likely people are going to cap out their levels and merits, or get tired and want to go to bed, or shave their cats or AFK banging hot chicks, etc, but the important thing to remember is that lights are saved individually. What does this mean? Normally, if you are there for the whole run you are capped out on lights and will be getting the top tier lights all the time, but if you leave and come back or if you are new to the run then you will have zero light and need to build it up again. It appears that the person that kills the mobs determines what the light level is for the chests. That means if you have someone new get a kill shot the chest, if one even appears, will be at the low level. In general, if you are coming into or back into a run in the middle then you want to avoid getting a kill shot for at least a half hour. Also, if you have to swap around quite a few of your melee or BLM then you need to consider the fact that it could take quite some time to rebuild their lights to the point that they are worth anything.

A final note: Bring Forbidden Keys! You don't want to lose a time chest just because the Random Number Generator doesn't love you (the Random Number Generator doesn't love anyone, everyone is the bitch of the Random Number Generator). Don't forget about Ruby and Amber light! Ruby light comes from WS kills and give you other lights for the most part. This is nice at the beginning to get more Azure, Ruby and Pearlescent lights, but later in runs you need the Ruby lights to boost your XP and Crour per kill. XP caps around 300 per kill without Ebon, Silver and Gold lights, so you will definitely need them toward the mid to end of the run. Amber light gives you more treasure chests with potential pop items in them, so they are worth it if you are doing it as a group of friends, but less important if you are in a pick up group.