Why does everyone think that Battlemaster is better than Samurai?

[Ryuu Hayato]

Everytime that I see a guide about fighter, I see BM better rated than Samurai, and I just want know why. For while, I just think that people overrated the subclass. Can anyone explain it to me?

[CTurbo]

I have not actually seen the Samurai in play yet so I can't comment from experience about it, but it's easy to see why the Battle Master is so popular.

It adds so much versatility to your actual fighting abilities. You have so many maneuvers to choose from. You start with 4 d8 superiority dice and you eventually have 6 d12 dice in which to use. Most of the maneuvers add the dice to the damage. Getting to add an extra d12 to damage 6 times is huge by itself, not to mention the effects of the actual maneuver.

And to top all of this off, it's a short rest class. That's awesome.

I've seen people completely live off of Riposte and Parry alone. You could ONLY use Riposte all the time and it would still be a great subclass.

[djreynolds]

Well samurai grabs basically resilient wisdom free at 7th level and that's really strong

At 3rd level. Fighting spirit does eat up a bonus action that really you may not have use for anyhow except for second wind.

My issue is if you grab GWM at 4th level, killing someone gets a bonus action attack with GWM, but you now you cannot use it.

Obviously versus a tougher opponent you may not kill a frost giant with 130hp and just being able to land GWM and get that sweet +10 damage and have resistance to mundane damage is worth it

Now if you are S&B, I like fighting spirit, but if you have shield master your bonus action is gone but you have advantage anyhow and can use you bonus shove on other turns to get advantage then

I think I would need some play time with the archetype, because fighting spirit is three uses during a long rest means you can save it when you need to turtle up and stand strong for you party. This is a plus.

Now at 10th level, tireless spirit is quite nice as it becomes encounter based, this is strong

Rapid strike is nice also, you can use fighting spirit to gain the resistance but give up the advantage to land an extra strike, nice if you have a magic weapon or grabbed hex from magic initiate, maybe the cleric has bless spamming also

Definitely the samurai can really be a very good archetype, its just doesn't use the typical PAM, GWM, or shield master as battlemasters or champions would.

Because of the free wisdom saving throw proficiency, it does free another pick of resilient, say dexterity and you could make a very cool dex-based skirmisher who just wants to hit.

I might be inclined to go dex-based samurai with the duelist style and maybe with a shield, this way you wouldn't miss PAM, GWM, or shield master.

[Sage Tellah]

It's worth noting that Fighting Spirit was nerfed in its official publication in Xanathar's. It's now 3 per LONG rest, the advantage only lasts the current turn, and the BPS resistance became a few temp hp which lose relevancy into high levels, but do at least last until you long rest if they're not wiped out immediately.

[mephnick]

Fighting Spirit with Action Surge once per short rest is some pretty amazing Nova for a SS or GWM character. An Elven Accuracy Sharpshooter can annihilate anything in the game in one turn 3 times a day. I think Battlemaster is overrated a bit, but I think the attractiveness of the class is how you can customize it to suit your character. You can take riposte and disarm for a duelist, trips and frighten for a brute, rally and commander's strike for a leader etc etc. It's a flexible subclass.

[Finney]

Everytime that I see a guide about fighter, I see BM better rated than Samurai, and I just want know why. For while, I just think that people overrated the subclass. Can anyone explain it to me?

There's a statistical analysis floating around somewhere (can't remember the URL or I would link it) that compares the battlemaster and samurai archetypes.

The short version, which assumes a typical adventuring day of 6 to 8 encounters with two short rests, is that the battlemaster is superior until 10th when the samurai gets the Tireless Spirit feature. At that point, the two are roughly equal, but the samurai pulls ahead again at 15th with Rapid Strike.

If you don't expect your campaign to reach the third and fourth tiers of play - pick battlemaster. If you do expect to reach high level, pick samurai.

[DeAnno]

Precision Attack and the variants that all the superiority-die users get are very strong when combined with a -5/+10 feat. The reasoning is that if you always apply the -5, you only need to actually use Precision Attack to fix your attack roll when it seems to have just barely missed (usually it's not too hard to guess AC within +/- 1 or so.) The Samurai has to choose to use his advantage BEFORE he rolls his attacks for the turn, so he can't hoard his resources against misfortune while still recklessly gambling in the same way.

[Chaosmancer]

It's worth noting that Fighting Spirit was nerfed in its official publication in Xanathar's. It's now 3 per LONG rest, the advantage only lasts the current turn, and the BPS resistance became a few temp hp which lose relevancy into high levels, but do at least last until you long rest if they're not wiped out immediately.

I think even without this Battlemaster might have ranked higher. The extra damage from the superiority dice make it so every strike is essentially 2 with a rider. Plus the issue with bonus action overload mentioned above.

What I don't understand is why the samuria and cavalier were nerfed with these long rest resources. No one has ever given an answer either, and it just puzzles me.

[Finney]

Precision Attack and the variants that all the superiority-die users get are very strong when combined with a -5/+10 feat. The reasoning is that if you always apply the -5, you only need to actually use Precision Attack to fix your attack roll when it seems to have just barely missed (usually it's not too hard to guess AC within +/- 1 or so.) The Samurai has to choose to use his advantage BEFORE he rolls his attacks for the turn, so he can't hoard his resources against misfortune while still recklessly gambling in the same way.

It is not much of an issue for a samurai, since they should always be using their Fighting Spirit feature in conjunction with Action Surge before level 10. They don't need to wait for the die roll like a battlemaster - the optimal time for Fighting Spirit is always in tandem with Action Surge.

Before level 10, the samurai has 3 uses per long rest which lines up perfectly with the suggested adventuring day: 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters with two shorts rests. Action surge resets on a short rest, so they can expend one use of Fighting Spirit for each Action Surge.

That nets them advantage on all of their attacks, including their Action Surge attacks. It only gets more complicated for the samurai at level 10+ when the Tireless Spirit feature gives them one use of Fighting Spirit when they roll initiative, if they have none left.

Fighting Spirit and Tireless spirit also have amazing synergy with Elven Accuracy.

I really need to find that link with the statistical analysis between the two archetypes. The battlemaster is definitely better for play at tiers 1 & 2, they are even for most of tier 3, and the samurai pulls ahead at 15.

[bid]

Before level 10, the samurai has 3 uses per long rest which lines up perfectly with the suggested adventuring day: 6 to 8 medium to hard encounters with two shorts rests. Action surge resets on a short rest, so they can expend one use of Fighting Spirit for each Action Surge.
4 attacks with advantage is roughly equivalent to using 2 SD. The BM can keep on using SS on the next turns while it's risky for the samurai. Fighting spirit is not enough to match combat superiority.
Here, samurai is nice because you don't have to look at what you rolled and think. It plays faster but not better.

If you are an elf with the accuracy feat, you'll have an incredible nova. Enough to simplify the rest of the combat and make samurai better.

I'm pretty sure with elegant courtier and tireless spirit, samurai gets the edge.


So it comes to this:
- are you playing an elf archer?
- will you play beyond level 10?

[Finney]

4 attacks with advantage is roughly equivalent to using 2 SD. The BM can keep on using SS on the next turns while it's risky for the samurai. Fighting spirit is not enough to match combat superiority.
Here, samurai is nice because you don't have to look at what you rolled and think. It plays faster but not better.

If you are an elf with the accuracy feat, you'll have an incredible nova. Enough to simplify the rest of the combat and make samurai better.

I'm pretty sure with elegant courtier and tireless spirit, samurai gets the edge.


So it comes to this:
- are you playing an elf archer?
- will you play beyond level 10?

Right. That's what I said earlier.

In tiers 1 & 2 the battlemaster is better. If your campaign will go to high level, the samurai and battlemaster are roughly equal in tier 3. The samurai is better in tier 4 .

[sambojin]

Precision attack is nice, as mentioned. Plus there's some other cool stuff that is otherwise hard to do in 5e (Manoeuvring Attack and Commander's Strike come to mind).

But for me it's the humble Trip Attack. Not for actually tripping stuff, it's for air-proning flyers (thus dropping them like a stone from the sky), for things that are otherwise hard to deal with in some parties. Early level or late, it's "the thing you do". Can a Samurai air-prone stuff with a bow, repeatedly and somewhat reliably, each short rest?

No? So therefore a Battlemaster is better. They have a short-rest combat "spell" that helps solve difficult encounters. And it can blow through legendary resistances as well. Pity it only goes up to large size, but it's still very handy, because flying is a thing Fighters often can't do something about easily (other than applying damage to it. But BMs get cool effects on top of that too).

Samurai work with all parties because they're absolute meat blenders in combat. BMs work with all parties because they solve problems with superiority dice, while still being slightly smaller meat blenders. I like the latter, though the former is fine too (HP damage actually works pretty well in 5e. But I like my gimmicks alongside plenty of attacks and feats. Plus, they came first, so people are just more used to min/maxing them. There's nothing "wrong" with Samurai, but BMs are "better" at heaps of stuff that Samurai have only one option for. Puree).

[EvilAnagram]

Everytime that I see a guide about fighter, I see BM better rated than Samurai, and I just want know why. For while, I just think that people overrated the subclass. Can anyone explain it to me?

I don't rate Battle Master higher in mine. Mostly, Samurai gets the leg up because its later features all feed into the core Fighting Spirit, which ends up being quite impressive. However, the versatility and capacity for personalization makes the Battle Master perennially popular.

[sambojin]

BMs also tend to be a better dip for other melee/shooting classes as well. Yes, it's a 3 lvl dip. But Samurai would be as well.

But getting short rest combat options on top of an already feasible combat class is grand. Really rounds out plenty of character concepts well (with most combat classes looking for a heavy dip after about lvl6-11 anyway, it's really good).

[Jerrykhor]

I've seen BM rated better than every fighter subclass.

[sambojin]

Yep. Air-proning with Trip Attack (or giving a Rogue a second stab with Commander's Strike, or saving your squishies with Manoeuvring Attack as you kill/wait to pummel on the enemy with PAM/Sentinel, or hitting with GWM/SS with Precision Strike, or dodging big attacks with superiority dice) is just that good.

I'm not saying that Samurai are bad. I'm just saying that there's reasons why BMs are rated so highly. The consensus is that all of the above is *so good* that losing out on the advantage sometimes or an extra attack from Samurai doesn't compare to the regular short rest goodness of any/all of these abilities, so BM are "better".

It's kind of rare that advantage and extra attacks is considered "worse" than anything else in 5e, but there's reasons beyond DPR to be able to do stuff in DnD. Especially because your DPR isn't exactly low as a BM anyway.