I used to think Samurai was garbage but he’s a lot of fun if played to his strengths.
I use:
Net gun primary
Katana secondary
Healing kit, motion trackers, audio decoys
Adrenal boost, large pouch, fast hands
Basically you have to stay mobile, forget about just hacking down FT. That only works if they are alone. Best bet is to find one, run up behind him and do a heavy slash and run off. Heavy slash does a lot of damage and the bleed effect helps.
You’re basically relying on a stab and run away playstyle so the damage over time does it’s thing.
I thought about just putting a katana on my hunter build but you really begin to appreciate the Samurai’s extra health and he’s kind of middle of the road as far as speed. He’s definitely faster and has more stamina to play with than the Berserker.
For a long time I just thought the Samurai was a worse version of the berserker but really he’s a slightly heavier version of the hunter. You won’t be able to just stand there and kill everyone with the katana but if you play a stab and run game you can make their lives hell.
If you do manage to get one FT alone, a double heavy stab, single light slash combo will usually put down anyone other than OWLF trained support.
Another thing about the Katana I appreciate is it’s so fast, the timing of when to parry is hard for some FT to master compared to the much slower combistick they all seem to know.