Since getting Monk to a decent gear level, I’ve been having so much fun on it that I haven’t even played Ninja at all, and it’s actually in the running to become my de facto main moving forward in Stormblood. Out of loyalty to Alahra’s canon, I’ll probably still be focusing on Ninja for Eureka, of course, but at least for now it doesn’t look like I’ll be playing Ninja much when it comes to DPSing. Monk is just much smoother to play than Ninja on almost all fronts (except for perhaps in AoE gameplay, where Monk has always been a bit awkward), especially when I think on how annoying Ten Chi Jin is even after all of this time with it.

Along with this newfound interest in Monk has come the loss of nearly all interest I once had in learning Samurai, too. I played Samurai quite a bit during the 4.1 Patch while trying to get various drops from Drowned City of Skalla, and as much as I wanted to click with the class, it never really happened. While Samurai is plain lovely in terms of aesthetics and animations, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired for me, and playing Monk at 70 has only emphasized how much I don’t have fun on Samurai. But before I said good-bye to the job, I wanted to set up a glamour for its Artifact Armor, since my current Monk one uses job-specific gear that left Samurai looking rather ridiculous.

Glamour Components (Required Level: MNK/SAM 60)
Weapon: Halonic Friar’s Katana
Head: Elegant Rimless Glasses (Ul Brown)
Body: Chivalric/Griffin Leather Coat of Striking (Pure White)
Hands: (Common) Makai Manhandler’s Fingerless Gloves
Legs: Scion Liberator’s Pantalettes
Feet: Saurian Boots of Striking (Jet Black)

I decided I’d take the opportunity to do something I’d been meaning to do for a long while and use the Chivalric Coat in Pure White. For Alahra, I’ve always preferred to dye the various versions of the coat white for obvious reasons, but I’ve largely been shying away from the model for quite some time now. I’ve fallen out of love with my standard look that paired the Coat with the Light Steel Subligar, and for the most part I haven’t found many options for the Legs slot that I like to replace the Subligar. We’ve gotten an important new option since the last time I gave the Coat serious thought, though: the Pantalettes from Lyse’s first Stormblood outfit.

Though they aren’t dyeable, that’s not a problem for a white Coat, and they work pretty well with the Striking model in particular because of the brown leather straps on it. While the brown on the Pantalettes is hardly ever visible with the coat, I always find that level of coordination pretty satisfying. Something similar is going on with the Saurian Boots of Striking, which have white laces on the back, which matches the coat but is otherwise hidden by it. Even without that being visible, the gold plates on the knees match the gold accents on the Coat (which makes them a much better choice than the Expeditioner’s Thighboots, which I might have otherwise used here).

Only the gloves took some real thought for this one. My go-to option for Hands alongside the Saurian Boots are the Replica Allagan Gauntlets of Striking, but I’ve never really been a big fan of using over-the-elbow stuff alongside the Coats. Ideally, I would have gone with something else that had gold on them, but I couldn’t find any solid bracers or wrist gloves that had what I needed. At least with the Makai Fingerless Gloves, plain as they are, nothing clashes or seems out of place.

So with that, I’ve probably put Samurai on the bench for the foreseeable future, at least for Alahra. For now, the class is still going to serve as Lynahra’s main for lack of a better choice, so I don’t expect that this will be my last Striking glamour with Samurai in mind just yet. Of course, sometimes I glamour things I don’t play much just for fun, too, so Alahra might end up with something new even if I never look back from Monk!