Invest In SAM Amanomurakumo, Masamune Or Dojikiri

Go for Melon slicer, it will look a little odd on your WHM but after the first ??? moment they'll still invite you.

Please forgive me for the Necro but I figured this might be the most appropriate place to ask this question:

How much of a lead does Kusanagi have over Masamune? I’m considering making a Prime but it’s a LONG Time investment so I want to know what I’m looking at before taking the plunge here, if it makes any sense.

What are we looking at? 10% Better? 20%? Moot-Point because even Masa is Capped at High-Buff?

Or if this was already discussed at length elsewhere, if I could have the link, I’ll pipe down and go read there.

Thank you

The plunge is just grinding points/psyches, which is time gated. Deciding to start down this path now has no bearing on how strong the weapon is, you can just grind the points and decide later what you want to do with them. Don't have to decide right now.

absolutely destroys massa

My Doji, 500jp, ambu gear Sam can probably do 20k fudo. I saw some prime geared sam doing 35k on the same mob. Big difference but probably not that big.

With all respect, this anecdote is meaningless without context. No idea what buffs were run, how well geared the players were, what you were fighting, was attack capped, what TP value the WS were used at, was def-% on the target? 35k is quite low for a Prime SAM, but if we are talking about a Limbus mob or something, that changes everything.

Anyways, from my observations from other SAMs who have it, it's at least on par with Masamune at 4 (I beat a P4-SAM in Segs with Masamune, but I have R30 Nyame vs his R25, so that's not really a 1:1 comparison), and is much stronger than Masamune at 5. I'd say you're going to be like 15-20% higher WS damage using P5 Mumei vs Fudo.

Kusanagi makes Masamune a mannequin piece. Literally.

Its not close as stated. It also has a huge macc advantage for hybrids. I've even learned to appreciate the DA10, a 2k WS is better than a miss, especially in the middle of a SC.

I’ll elaborate. My group will be finishing their weapons in a couple months or so and wish to stop at that point but they agreed to continue if I wanted to pursue a weapon, hence the question.

I originally only wanted to finish my AF more quickly but after seeing a few of the weapons in action, I’m intrigued. So I came to ask the experts their opinions.

As for the investment thing, it was my understanding that the weapon parts will not drop unless the appropriate weapon is present and at correct stage? So I would need to be steadily upgrading the weapon? Or is that incorrect?

With all respect your anecdotal observations are as meaningless and you provided almost no information too. Sim says 20% higher dps with capped attack. No skillchain included. No SPs. 10% when attack uncapped. AM3 for both. Spamming Fudo and Mumei.

Putting the numbers in the crunch-o-matic 9000 sim, Shinsoku is still tops when you have enough dCHR

It's really not all that complicated
Whatever your fudo does with masa it's about double.

In limbus it's 22-30k vs ~52-62k

Sortie upstairs is easily 52k vs 99k

Its nowhere near that lol

If you want mesos to drop, you need a stage 4 in your inventory.

Capped attack, max buffs, no SP, median is 56k Mumei to 48k Fudo when spammed. It's 116k at 3000TP vs 82k Fudo, so that would be 58k in Limbus like you said, but vs 41k Fudo. On normal mobs its 96k (hit rate cap drops capped WSs to ~96k) vs 82k though. Uncapped attack it's ~42k Fudo when spammed and ~72k fudo at 3000TP vs 45k Mumei when spammed and ~93k at 3000TP.

Mumei is stronger, but nowhere near double damage. Depends if attack is capped it's more like 7~15% on normal mobs and 7~40% stronger on Limbus mobs (or in general on mobs with more than 25%DT)

As a Samurai DD, you need to think about your damage from a different perspective than other DDs. You have:

1. White Damage
   

2. Weapon Skill Damage* (Single Weaponskills)
   

3. Weapon Skill Damage* (Skillchains, especially if Light vs Dark SC properties matter in a given fight)
   

(*) Notice how I put asterisks for each line of WS Damage? That's because Physical/Magic/Hybrid also matters and can multiply your damage (Skillchain) options. You should also consider if the mob your fighting is particularly weak to physical or magical Weaponskills (Hybrid weakness is less likely these days, but they have their place in a few specific fights).

You will rarely find a weapon that checks all 3 of the above boxes.

Assuming equally high-buff scenarios (and the monster/fight is your variable here):

1. Masa will give you white damage with AM3 (#1) and (#2) but less of #3 (because of Fudo's misses).
   

2. Relic has great Accuracy (less relevant with MLs), ok white damage (less than Empy) but Tachi: Kaiten's properties are eclipsed by Fudo and Shoha (which you should have merited as a SAM).
   

3. Prime Stage 5 copies Relics white damage procs (or is better? please correct me!) and gives you a pretty powerful Darkness SC (that doesn't involve Rana, which is terrible).
   

I would put it this way: If you need white damage or a specific Light-SC then use Masa. If you need high single WS frequency, then use Doji (SC damage here is good but only if it can be taken advantage of. Not all fights allow this). For all else, use Stage 5 prime.

(If your situation/fight especially benefits from Skillchain damage, I would assume that Stage 5 prime comes out ahead of Doji).

thank you all for the input and information. I think I'll go forward with pushing Kusanagi.

Prime stage 4 gets double damage first hits about 30% of the time.
Stage 5 is triple damage first hits 30% of the time.

Emp AM3 is stronger for white damage but Prime is way better than Relic.

Once you have Stage5 GKT you can put all your other GKTs in storage:

alright i might as well ask an odd question here:
what if you arent attack capped? or at least not able to trigger the PDL from the prime? is stage 4(or i guess stage 5 as well) still going to hit harder(i'd imagine skillchain would add more dmg alone?) with mumei compared to fudo with masa?
<<< is lonely solo man sam. so PDL does nadda for me

Why do you ask question, which I answered with details..

i.. have no idea how i missed that.. ty

Almost. Doji is used in instances where WS dmg is low and you want to maximize SC damage. Eg Kei and that frog ambu that you can't use buffs on.

Other than that, yes.

One simply doesn’t talk about SAM with out talking about foot wear.

Depending on where you're at in gear does doji give much of any sc bonus? SAM gets 24 in trait+gift, 11 with nyame legs/feet, and 10~15 in mpaca head depending on ranks. Also some 7 from JSE earring if you can luck into a high roll on a +2. the SC bonus on doji doesnt break the cap so its potentially next to pointless

I've not done Kei with Kusanagi to say for sure, no idea.

Radiance is pretty at least.