Samurai Class Build.

[Proto]

Trying to figure out a build for Samurai as it's skills are a bit interesting where it has both ATK and MND skills and it's growth deviates from that.

Wonder if it would benefit from Warmage growth rate or should it just focus more on ATK?

[Conan The Librarian]

Mugenmori-

Basic advice I can give with Samurai:

1. Focusing on EITHER Attack or Magic will probably result in the best throughput.

2. Notice how some of the Samurai skills are "Range = Weapon", so this class pairs very well with things which have ranged weapon options (Scoundrel / Ranger / Gunner / Assassin / Wrangler / etc)

[Mechalibur]

Yeah, I personally prefer Samurai as a secondary ability set. The strongest ability in their arsenal is definitely Finisher, and it counts as a Regular Attack which can be pretty easily exploited. For example, you can run Ranger/Samurai with Know Weakness II and Leech Mana. That will give you a huge critical chance and enough MP to use Finisher every turn except the 1st. You can always give yourself immunity to ATK Down to mitigate the downside.

[wolff_laarcen]

Samurai also has some potential as a sub for Demon Knight or Lord Cleave builds. Finisher is slightly cheaper than Righteous Blade from /Templar, and Spirit Sword gives you an alternative nuke, even though it's MND based.

Also, don't underestimate the Samurai's ability to set up back and side attacks for your ranged shooters with Spirit Bow and Wind Spirit.

[Fusei]

Probably don't want to use samurai as the main class. The equipment selection is very limited and the passives aren't that impressive.

The kit is very interesting though, as other have pointed out you can go magic or attack.
More importantly most abilities of the kits count as regular attacks : able to inflict elemental damage and crit without the fellblade's passive.

I reckon a crit build would do really well especially with the very high damage modifier of finisher (2.4). Catch is, mana cost and inflicting atk debuff on use. Equiping an item with permanent atk buff (cap of age) should make you immune to the debuff. Mana cost is probably manageable with a gadgeteer support.

Main class : Lord (very good passives : cleave / equip all)
Passives : Know weakness I and Know weakness II (+25% crit chance each) or if you got enough crit chance you can go exploit weakness (+50% crit dmg).
Weapon : Scythe (reaper is very good 162 atk +7 crit chance +25% crit dmg)
Mandatory gear: Cap of ages (permanent atk buff = immune to atk down)

For the rest of your gear try to get some crit chance bonus, Everspring would be pretty good (accessory +2mp / turn + crit chance).

Play this toon as you would play a lord/warmage, wrecks anything but needs support.

If there's not many enemy units (boss fights, hunts) you can drop the lord for warmage. DLC brought a new earth elem scythe, the damage can thus be boosted by warmage's elemental mastery.
Same idea behing the build go crit, the mana issues would probably not be that big of a deal with the leech mana passive. This build would be a lot less effective on patrols though (no cleave).

[jakew42]

I'm at about Temple 4 on Very Hard and have found my Samurai/Duelist to be one of my strongest characters this run. Razorwind + Flourishes in particular is quite strong. Only 6 mana for a range 4 and 1.55x attack with a chance of a useful debuff is very nice. Especially when there are monsters with elemental weaknesses about.

Build-wise, I've just focused 100% on ATK and let the MND scaling abilities go mostly unused. I grabbed ATK UP and Concentration for my passives for the time being, since I got tired of nearly losing fights due to missed 85% chance attacks haha. I may switch out Concentration for a mana passive to build up Finisher faster or Cleave or something else moving forward, not entirely sure.

It's also worth noting that Adrenaline is amazing for picking off weakened enemies and getting ahead on action economy. Self-inflicting bleed is also nice with the Samurai's bonus. It only takes two debuffs for the STR bonus to be on par with ATK UP.

[Fusei]

Also Spirit bow (inflics def/res debuff) and wind spirit (cripple on a large area) are really good for a support character. Used them on a tank to great effect.

[Doom_Cookies]

I'm honestly feeling a little confused on whether some of the Samurai skills inflict the debuffs on the target or the user.

I did find that Razor Wind works amazingly with the Duelist toolkit w/ Cleave. I made Anadine a Demon Knight/Duelist using Razor Wind + Boon as optional passives, and Razor Wind increased her efficacy multiple times over. Her lack of ranged damage option always seemed to be her biggest weakness, and this immediately and easily fixed that entirely. She ended up so strong that I had to start avoiding killing things with her every other turn because she was becoming dramatically overleveled (8 levels above the rest).