Shiou
Race: Beastfolk
Gender: Female
Type: Air
Personality: Neutral
Starting Class: Samurai
Class Change:
Role: Damage
Portraits
Skills
Unique Skill (Inheritable)
Increases Atttack Power and Surety for 3 turns. For 1 turn, the user becomes more likely to be targeted by enemies, and if they would take damage that reduces their HP to 0, they might persevere once with 1 HP. If the user perseveres, their Evasion, Attack Power, and Surety are increased for 4 turns. Chance of persevering and chance of being targeted are greatly reduced, and Evasion, Attack Power, and Surety increase amounts are also reduced if learned by anyone other than Shiou. Chance of becoming more likely to be targeted, Evasion, Attack Power, and Surety increased even futher based on skill level.
Unique Skill (Not Inheritable)
Enters the Ephemeral Illusion Stance for 1 turn and performs a massive air-type physical attack that bypasses Defense Power on 1 enemy. Increases own Action Speed and increases damage taken. Stance is cancelled if damage is taken during stance. Can only be used once per battle when own HP is 30% or under. Efficacy increased based on skill level.
Discipline Skill
Continuously increases each stat, with Attack Power and Surety increased even further. Attack Power and Surety increased further based on skill level.
Adventurer Reviews
TheAxolotl's Analysis
Shiou, our first legendary Samurai, has the potential to be an incredibly powerful damage dealer with a high risk and high reward play style. We won't see her true potential for a few days at least since Samurai seem to be following the Ninja's advanced class experience trend, so this review is very subject to change, but at an initial glance, I absolutely love her kit and play style.
First, let's talk about her non-inheritable skill, Ephemeral Illusion Stance. This is our first "massive" type skill, which presumably is going to hit extremely hard with good gear. It does have some pretty big limitations, but it is complemented extremely well by the rest of the Samurai kit in general. Speed tuning your party will be quite important for this, since the 30% HP requirement can put her in "one more hit will kill me" range, so being able to heal Shiou up after she attacks but before the enemies attack will be helpful. In addition, there is a bit of anti-synergy with Lana's post-battle heal if you're looking to use this skill when farming, however it should be a non-issue during Sentry or boss fights.
Moving on to her inheritable skill, Lingering Blossom is interesting. At a glance, it's a souped up Warrior's Battle Cry in that it provides an Attack Power boost, a Surety boost, a Savia-like taunt, Shelirionach-like protection from dying due to damage, and further Attack Power, Surety, and Evasion increases upon not dying. The additional functionality in this skill is much harder to evaluate since we are unable to see the actual magnitude of stat changes in combat, however it has great synergy with Ephemeral Illusion Stance, as well as a couple other Samurai passives. One thing to note is that the Attack Power boost seems to be roughly comparable to a level 1 WBC, however WBC is going to be much easier to inherit to higher levels, so it likely won't stay competitive from a pure Attack Power boost perspective. The value prop here is in the entire host of buffs that the skill provides. If inheriting to another adventurer, the skill wording implies that the only reduction is going to be on the proc component but not on the initial Attack Power + Surety boost. That needs to be verified for sure, though. Inheriting this to another adventurer probably won't be that useful given the easier accessibility of WBC as an inherit, but it has the potential to be incredibly powerful on Shiou herself, as long as you're willing to spend a turn on it.
Regarding buffs, the Attack Power and Surety boosts from Lingering Blossom each take up one of the buff slots, so be careful if you're using this in combination with MACALDIA or Prayer of Rebellion, as you can inadvertently push off a buff you don't want to. The increased chance of Shiou being targeted appears to act as a self-affliction and does not go against the buff count, which is an important consideration. Casting MACALDIA first and Lingering Blossom second results in Shiou having 2 Surety buffs and one Attack Power buff, which is pretty much ideal for her.
Samurai in general appear to be at their best when actively using skills, so they might potentially be weaker than Fighters if you're just doing auto-attack farming, however there are some reports of Shiou (or Samurai in general) being able to put out FPS levels of damage every turn, which is quite substantial.
One thing that we still need to determine is if the normal attack that comes with Cresting Wave Stance triggers Follow-Up Attack. The wording implies that it would, but that's still to be determined.
Regarding her Discipline, you can't do any better than Attack Power + Surety for a physical damage dealer. That being said, I personally think saving any dupes for inheriting to her own Lingering Blossom is likely going to be the stronger option overall, just due to the high value prop of her self buff. We can't see the magnitude of the increases, but it should be much more substantial than the paltry increase to Attack Power and Surety that Discipline provides.
There are a few important legendary inherits to consider for her, as well. She will greatly benefit from Alice, Debra, and Adam inherits. The latter is least important, but can be quie nice since Ephemeral Illusion Stance is locked to the Air type.
All in all, this is probably my favorite kit for a single purpose damage dealer. In many cases, Ephemeral Illusion Stance skill will not be seeing use, but the synergy she has in her kit as a whole is really exciting to me, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with her over the next couple weeks. Keep in mind that many people will not like the high risk nature of her kit, so before pulling, consider what you want from a physical damage dealer.
Frobro's Analysis
Karkarov's Analysis
"At long last the Samurai Class is revealed with a new Legendary to boot! But does it suck? No. However if there are two words to sum up this character and maybe the Samurai class on the whole they would be ""It's complicated"".
Shiou though her unique skill Lingering Blossom gains an attack power and surety buff for 3 rounds, with 1 round of inceased aggro. If in that round she is attacked, and dropped to 0 HP, she may ""persevere"" and tank the hit gaining a stronger attack, surety, and now evasion buff as well for 4 rounds not 3. The surety buff after persevering is also so strong it all but guarantees every hit while the buff is up will proc surety. Combine this with her once per combat unique uninheritable skill Ephemeral Illusion Stance that can only be used when below 30% HP and well... You get a character that can do damage on par with Full Power Strike level 3 from a well geared fighter with strong stats and some reasonable skill inherits. Except she herself can get to that damage while wearing ""ok but not great"" gear, has decent but not impressive stats, and has no skill inheritance or discipline levels at all.
TIME TO OPEN OUR WALLETS BOYS! Hey, hold up now, I said ""It's complicated"" right?
Samurai as a class has a stance dancing system that requires different stance moves to be performed to really get her set with her best possible attack buffs. This is beyond needing to prep with her inherit skill Lingering Blossom AND be below 30% HP to use Ephemeral Illusion. This of course assumes you do Lingering Blossom, do get hit, do get knocked to what would be zero HP, and persevere it to get the max buff too. There is a lot that can just not work out in the process of setting up ""the moment"" to unload with some insane 4-5k+ damage bomb (or maybe even 9k plus if you are a whale). Fortunately even if it does go wrong you can also just Bamboo Splitter to win (a default Samurai Skill) that already does near Full Power Strike damage, but does not need a ""charge"" round, only a round to set up a stance first.
You also need to consider that Samurai gains extra damage from their Magic Attack Power stat as well thanks to the Divine Path default skill, which sounds great, except they also gain less damage from normal Attack Power than say a Fighter. In fact on many attacks without special set up or prep Shiou with a similar Attack Power to a Fighter, despite also having Magic Attack Power support, will probably do slightly less damage. Again, without some stance work and proper set up. This means gearing a Samurai has more options (both plus Attack AND Magic Attack are viable) but it also means they get less bang for buck from those stats. For Shiou at least this is offset by her Lingering Blossom skill which enables her to worry a little less about Surety than someone without this skill would.
Ok great but what else is there to consider? Well Samurai by default have skills to let them buff their weapon with different elements, enabling them to target all elemental weaknesses except Light and Dark. Her Discipline greatly boosted traits are Attack Power and Surety, can't beat that. She by default has fantastic traits for the class especially if you pull a copy with a Strength boosted to 13 due to high default IQ, Dex, and Speed. Her Neutral alignment gives her access to the most alignment based buffs. Her Wind element (at least at the time of writing) is not often exploited by enemies in the current high level content, outside of a few easy to kill normal mobs. The only glaring disadvantages are the class and skill set up complexity, needing a Katana which is very limited on her release (7/10/25), and being an advanced class that needs over 10mil exp to reach 60.
TLDR? Shiou (and Samurai as a class) has a very real learning curve, needs a lot of set up, but when set up correctly has the potential to be the best DPS in the game. So again, ""it's complicated"", but also very worth it."
Adventurer Pull Plans
TheAxolotl's Pull Plan
I pulled 4 copies so far. One copy went to the OCD Discipline, and the others took her Lingering Blossom up to level 3. I might pull more later, too, but we'll see!
Karkarov's Pull Plan
"This one is tough. Shiou has an extremely high potential value ceiling, but is very complicated to use correctly, and has a lot of risk required to activate her true damage potential. If the game slogan ""Savor the Risk"" where a character, it would be Shiou. This may be a little too high effort for some, and is certainly harder to impliment in your team than a Fighter or Ninja. So, here is what I think:
If you are at a point where you just dont want another melee DPS, or you are just starting out and can't support the EXP / Katana investment the character needs, or maybe you just don't want to think a ton while playing.... You should probably pass on Shiou.
If you are a person that doesn't really do much auto farming, likes more engagement with their characters and party strat, loves risk based classes and gameplay in RPG's, and just want an absolute DPS beast on your team extra effort be damned.... Shiou is a highly reccomended pull for you. Very highly recommended."
Duplicate Usage
- Inherit on her own skill will increase her self-buff.
- Increasing her Discipline to increase her Surety.