Samurai Melding, Stat Priority, and Consumables — Dawntrail 7.1

This page covers a general stat/melding priority and the best consumable choices for Samurai. If you'd like to get more involved in seeing which pieces or melds may form a better upgrade path for you, we recommend using the Gear Planner.

If you're just looking for the current best-in-slot gearsets, you can find that below:

1. Weapon Damage;
2. Strength;
3. Skill Speed to your desired GCD tier;
4. Critical Hit;
5. Determination;
6. Direct Hit;
7. Skill Speed above your desired GCD tier.

The two highest priority stats for all jobs are pretty much the same - Weapon Damage and Main Stat. For Samurai, that Main Stat is Strength. Weapon Damage, as the name suggests, is only found on our weapons, and is the largest single damage increase of any other stat. Strength is found on every piece of gear we're able to equip, so there should never be any worry of equipping a piece of gear with the wrong Main Stat. As both of these stats scale with item level, while gearing you should almost always aim for the highest item level you can obtain.

Samurai's base rotation functions on a loop, with three main viable GCD tiers: 2.14 (677-783 Skill Speed), 2.07 (1361-1467 Skill Speed), and 2.00 (2046-2152 Skill Speed). Because of this, Skill Speed to your choice of GCD tier is the priority among substats in order to keep things such as Higanbana aligned with your party's raid buffs. Because of how Skill Speed is tiered, we generally want to stay as close as possible to the lower end of each GCD tier.

Critical Hit effects both critical hit chance and critical hit damage, so even with our burst phase of multiple powerful guaranteed crit abilities, Critical Hit is going to be the substat with the most impact. Skills such as Kaeshi: Namikiri and Hissatsu: Senei with their high potency are examples of two skills that take advantage of this. Early on in an expansion with limited gear options, Critical Hit can be worth less than Determination or Direct Hit.

Rounding out the available substats, Determination and Direct Hit are both very close together in terms of value, with Determination barely leading. A safe rule is to keep the two at similar levels, with Determination a bit higher.

It's also worth noting that this priority may not always be reflected on a best-in-slot list due to the way substats are tiered and what is available naturally on the gear available. Low Critical Hit is a noticeable example of this in the 2.14 Economy BiS.

Potions come in many types and flavors in Final Fantasy XIV, but the best choice for Samurai will always be the one that helps us do more damage. Sometimes referred to as tinctures or gemdraughts, these potions increase your Main Stat for a duration of 30s and have a 4m30s cooldown. The best one to use will always be a High-Quality version of the highest grade available for our Main Stat - Strength.

Food choices however can be a bit more nuanced, and the food chosen for a particular best-in-slot gearset may not necessarily be the best food while working your way up to that gearset. Due to how the Samurai rotation interacts with Skill Speed, while gearing up you may need to use a food that gives Skill Speed (if you are below your target) or does not (if you are already at or above your target).