Blitzer's Roll

Blitzer's Roll (COR Lv.83)
Reduces melee attack delay for party members within area of effect. Lucky number: 4. Unlucky number: 9.

Seeing as this is the only interesting thing from the update as far as TP-burning for one-handed melee DD vs. Hasso (you self-identify as WAR/DRK/DRG/SAM? Are you a tool? It's either piercing Hasso or non-piercing Hasso) is concerned (although that supposes anyone still cares about FFXI), let's anticipate what the effect might actually be.

Thoughts:

• If this really reduces melee attack delay a la Sword Strap, maybe it will be exactly the same form of delay reduction as that from dual wield. (Why not?) If Blitzer's Roll actually stacks with dual wield and the bonuses are good, this would benefit dancer and ninja the most.
• One-handed melee jobs get more from Blitzer's Roll even if it reduces weapon delay separately from dual wield, but it doesn't mean it'd be bad for two-handed melee jobs (depends on the actual bonuses), just that Fighter's and Samurai would be better. n-hit builds are overrated.
• What if it's "job ability haste"? Wouldn't it be funny if the bonuses were large enough to obviate the use of Hasso and Haste Samba? Among other things that would follow: why are we using two-handed jobs for TP-burn then?

Samurai Roll and Fighter's Roll... for ninja

Having shown in the past that Fighter's Roll can be better than Samurai Roll for increasing warrior's damage output (despite the lack of consideration of WS delay, which actually would favor Fighter's Roll), I thought it might be nice to have a worked example for ninja (this time accounting for WS delay).

This image (Imageshack host) summarizes the computations, based on 95% hit rate, 15% DA rate, 55% haste, 40% dual wield, and a "cRatio" of 1.5, with a 10% critical hit rate, with Blade: Jin as the weapon skill. The specific katana combination is Hochomasamune/Uzura, which is something I would consider getting as a "high-value" option, meaning that it's a highly effective option that I don't have to waste as much time doing boring shit to get this as I would for other options.

First, let's start with Samurai Roll (augmented by the presence of a samurai). The following is a table summarizing the relative increase in the (theoretical maximum) rate of damage from each of several desirable Samurai Roll outcomes.

Roll total      Bonus     Damage/second     Relative efficiency
---------------------------------------------------------------
 -              -               113.607                       -
 2             42 STP           123.979                   9.13%
 7             26               119.672                   5.34%
 8             30               121.410                   6.87%
 9             32               121.414                   6.87%
10             34               121.458                   6.91%
11             50               126.684                  11.51%

The relative increase for each store TP bonus is decent, but not as high as you would expect for two-handed weapons since the proportion of total damage from Blade: Jin for katana is realistically never going to be as high as the proportion of total damage from the (generally) best weapon skills for two-handed weapons (e.g. Drakesbane, Raging Rush, Tachi: Gekko).

In contrast, Fighter's Roll (here augmented from the presence of a warrior) increases auto-attack damage, weapon skill frequency, and weapon skill damage, so it's not a surprise that Fighter's Roll is generally easily superior to Samurai Roll for increasing rates of damage:

Roll total      Bonus     Damage/second     Relative efficiency
---------------------------------------------------------------
 -               -              113.607                       -
 5             15% DA           129.567                  14.05%
 7             11%              125.291                  10.28%
 8             12%              126.358                  11.22%
10             13%              127.427                  12.16%
11             19%              133.857                  17.82%

Note that these are supposed to be the actual DA percent bonuses after the infamous August 2007 version update (source), you know, the one that resulted in ninja being disregarded as DD. If they were what they were before that update, assuming there was a change (higher than what they are now), Fighter's Roll would be even better.

So, if Fighter's Roll can be shown to be better for the job that gets the least relative benefit from Fighter's Roll (warrior), as well as for ninja (though this could be considered self-evident), are there even any legitimate reasons to use Samurai Roll? No, "TP overflow" is an incorrect and stupid answer that betrays a lack of conceptual understanding.

Now, that's not to say Samurai Roll has no application. Maybe it would be desirable to maximize the ratio of damage efficiency to TP "fed" to a mob rather than consider damage efficiency in isolation. I doubt Monk's Roll would do the job, but a case could be made for Samurai Roll.

Also, if it is desirable to maximize weapon skill frequency, Samurai Roll would generally be better for that purpose than Fighter's Roll. (Also related is maximizing TP per hit, which would be desirable for dancer.)

Also, Fighter's Roll can be said to be "contraindicated" for use with multi-hit weapons (that don't use virtue stones) such as Magian multi-hit weapons. (But this assumes Magian multi-hit weapons are actually good, which is not necessarily true.)