Compiled SAM threads against 6.1 changes / Kaiten removal

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I don’t really understand your point. Thematically, sure, the name Kaiten may have some deep connection to the concept of a samurai, but that’s not what I was referencing.

I’m saying that having a button that can massively boost the potency of any GCD action you’ll ever create does push the design of the job in a corner as you have to consider how that influences the jobs rotation from multiple angles every time you add a weapon skill to it. There may be actions the design team wants to add to SAM but can’t because it messes up their rotation considering how it will increase the demand for Kaiten and this increase the amount of Kenki you spend every minute.

But again, even if that’s true, there was no point in sterilizing Kaiten now when those design ideas are not yet being implemented.

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that Breath Argument was something I discovered from looking back at my Aikido Training:
I paid attention to breath into my Technique to make them more effective.
now let's look at the Samurai from FFXIV:
The Samurai pays 20 Kenki to use Kaiten for the next Weaponskill to boost the damage.

which for me explains the Reason for Kaiten to exist. About the corner that you mentioned, I'd say it's less a Corner and more a Pillar of the Samurai Gameplay, since why shouldn't be Kenki there to boost weaponskills? Instead of a Corner I see it more like that You're supposed to use Kaiten on Weaponskills and not on Abilities. If you could boost everything with Kaiten, I would see it more as a Corner aswell though currently Kenki is just there to gate Shinten Spam.. yay.. and yeah removing a Skill with no alternative (outside of Auto-Crit.. lol) is sloppy. Rather than removing Kaiten they should've changed Kaiten so the next Weaponskill would've been a guaranteed Direct Hit. That way we would've kept our Skill and Resource Management and the devs got their wish of balance, i guess.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

if you need yoshi to tell you the philosophy behind the design of every job instead of being able to piece it together by looking at how the jobs are designed, idk what to tell youthe shohas

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Unless Square and Yoshi/Dev and co specifically state so? it's speculations and assumptions. Unlike what you wrote? Everything I wrote is what Square stated.

They announced SAM development being restrictive which is an excuse since SAM didn't need any changes, announcing Kaiten to be removed with Patch 6.1 release. " Give it a try and give us Feedback " Square said. Samurai mains warned Square to not do this, 6.1 became Live and Kaiten removal was met with heavy backlash that made Square respond with " Changes made to Samurai was made due to Button Bloat issues ". Another excuse since no Samurai complained about having Button Bloat issues prior. And if Kaiten was removed for something in the Future? why not keep it since its non-problematic until they have something to show for it to replace it with? We might as well wait until 7.0 to see something... but our Kenki gauge feels lacking in comparison.

They asked for Feedback? We gave our feedback, and Ignored us.
They removed Kaiten to practically fix nothing, only dumbing down the job.

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Originally Posted by Melethron123

during the course of building stickers you'd get around 60 kenki and kaiten costs 20. so nobody who's even trying to do a somewhat decent rotation would ever see themselves running out of kenki to use kaiten.

also, you don't use your shintens "willy-nilly" because you want to maximize the number of shintens during buff windows

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Yes we do use Shinten " willy nilly "... do we play the same Job xD?

The point is to balance Kenki near 100 for maximum damage output yes which you will unleash at " Raid buffs ". Kaiten made this quite interesting, forcing players to at least use 1 braincell to pull off, and it was satisfying. However? majority of the players will Kaiten whenever they please which is still fine and still requires more effort... but now with all of this gone? it has devolved into Shinten spamming. Shinten Shinten Shinten Shinten Shinten Shinten <- you do not manage Kenki thoughtfully anymore its made thoughtless and actually effortless. So yes, it is just casting Shinten willy nilly now vs casting Kaiten during buff windows with Shinten's.

Completely agree with CelestiCer
The deletion of Kaiten was and has been a detriment to the class as a whole.
The new skill doesn't even come close to adding the same layer of depth Kaiten provided.
I did give the new SAM a fair try and so far i'm dissapointed, some players will argue that one skill is not such a big deal, but in the case of Kaiten, it was, if Kaiten doesn't come back then something else needs to be added to the rotation to replace it, otherwise, just rename the Kenki bar to the Shinten bar

The only Way of finding enjoyment in Samurai Gameplay after 6.1 lies in PvP.
Seriously PvP Samurai is so much fun! It even has still Kaiten! Though I sincerely hope we do not get the PvP Kaiten in PvE, since that would be a new low of dumbing down the Game, but for PvP it works just fine now if only the PvP Battle Pass wouldn't be FOMO.. aww well..

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Originally Posted by Mithron

Damage is what determines "reward" in this game. Yes, you'll have fun on any job the first few hundred hours you play it simply because it's fresh and new and exciting, but when you have thousands of hours in different jobs, you look for mastery, and the only true metric of mastery in this game as it's designed is damage dealt. I agree that playstyle is much more important than numbers for job design, but both must be addressed for a job to truly feel rewarding after the "fresh" feeling wears off. Otherwise you will always have a nagging feeling of "I could be contributing so much more on a better job, but I choose to suffer because this is the playstyle I like" and that drains your soul over time.

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I mained SAM in Stormblood when it was one of the "worst" dps in the game, and i also enjoyed it the most out of any job i've played since.

In my opinion, playstlye matters quite a bit more than effectiveness. Mastery of a certain playstyle is all you need for that kind of enjoyment. Playing a job just because it's optimal isn't fun if i don't enjoy how it plays.

The only time it's fair to feel like you're bringing down your group by playing a sub-optimal class, is if you're going for world 1st or a top of the charts speedrun. It really doesn't matter otherwise.

there are 2 things that annoy me about the current Samurai:

of course the Kaiten Removal, they just could make Direct Hit the next Weaponskill thus making Direct Crit Midare/Ogi be the reward because the Player would be responsible due to Kenki Management.
No no no just hammer down your Rotation and Spam Shinten like a Bitch.

and the Circle Goken.. seriously Iaijutsu should require to target the opponent, Throwing Circle Goken willy-nilly just feels unrewarding and scrubby.
Same with Warrior's Overpower because now Warriors fart everytime they use Overpower instead of just switching the Skills: Getting Mythril Tempest at lvl10 and an stronger Cone Overpower at lvl40, no Warriors should fart for enmity now.
So yeah I want Cone Tenka Goken back.

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Originally Posted by JakkuPM

I mained SAM in Stormblood when it was one of the "worst" dps in the game, and i also enjoyed it the most out of any job i've played since.

In my opinion, playstlye matters quite a bit more than effectiveness. Mastery of a certain playstyle is all you need for that kind of enjoyment. Playing a job just because it's optimal isn't fun if i don't enjoy how it plays.

The only time it's fair to feel like you're bringing down your group by playing a sub-optimal class, is if you're going for world 1st or a top of the charts speedrun. It really doesn't matter otherwise.

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I completely agree.
Picking a class that will result in overall better party performance (and I deliberately say party performance because higher personal damage doesn't mean shit if it drags combined party dps down) is a thing that is completely understandable in world first races and speed runs - or in cases of poor boss HP & class balance very early into the tier, which is why I completely understood any WAR main going DRK for part 2.
But outside that, raw damage in itself isn't a reward. It's not even a reward in the abovementioned scenarios, it's simply a necessity and the reward is the successful clear/ speedrun rank.

Because what would happen if a class had hilariously high damage but accomplished it with a very barebone and repetetive rotation? People would drop it.
Generally, players choose to play a class that's fun for them to play first, something they like the gameplay style of and then look at damage but only if they're noticeable behind and doing content where it matters. They usually don't look at "Oh, but this class is 5% ahead of me, I could be contributing more by just playing that class". You still had a reasonable amount of BLMs in ShB in PF doing Savage even when SMN was so hilariously far ahead it was basically a BLM but better in every single way including raw damage which was supposed to be BLM's defining feature as a selfish DPS.
It's fairly rare for people to pick a class for raw damage, not even after hundreds of hours of gameplay. Gameplay becomes even more important the more you play it which is why so many veteran healers are salty about the lobotomized healer gameplay.

Of course reasonable DPS balance is important but I disagree that raw damage itself is a reward.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

I completely agree. / Of course reasonable DPS balance is important but I disagree that raw damage itself is a reward.

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Very well said.

Square fixed Auto Crit performance after 6.1 Kaiten removal and with it? our protest increased to wanting Kaiten back. Chunk of the Community actually thought we wanted more DPS, failing to understand that we wanted our permanently lost Gameplay back.

Square silenced our critique by essentially cutting the damage we would deal with Kaiten? and integrated it passively across our entire skill kit, indirectly saying " Take the dumbed down gameplay with buffs and Stfu ".

Quite the contradiction, that the Dev's state " DPS performance is based off of Job difficulty " yet having done the following...

• Seigan removed
• Positionals give DPS bonus not Kenki anymore
• Senei/Guren Kenki cost reduced by half
• Third Eye duration increased by 1 second
• Fuga Cone becomes Fuko Circle AoE
• Tenka Goken Cone made a Circle AoE
• Iaijutsu Range increased
• Enpi cast does not disrupt combo
• Lastly " Kaiten removed "

While not all changes were without rhyme nor reason? plenty good QOL changes? They simplified Samurai's gameplay while making it easy to perform the same amount of DPS or more - contradicting their statement.

I agree with you and somehow it will never sink in with a lot of players. DPS isn't rewarding when it's made shallow. The Execution of doing something " right" constantly... possibly throughout an entire fight lasting minutes... and seeing high DPS? is rewarding. Fk'n it up because I can now indefinitely Fk up for exactly the same or more DPS? will never make it as rewarding as Kaiten did.

Agreed. Kaiten did a great job at making abilities flow together. The overall changes has made the job feel incredibly clunky for me, and not satisfying at all to play.

This is just me posting in solidarity that yes, I do still hate the change even two full patches.

Still waiting for my feedback to be acknowledged, SE. :^ )

Had a weird day dream where I was thinking of movie and show names, but replacing 1 word in each title with the word... " Kaiten "
https://i.imgur.com/qT2UyEx.png

- Attack on Kaiten
- Mission unKaitenable
- 00Kaiten
- The Walking Kaiten
- Superman, Man of Kaiten
- Fresh Prince of Kaiten
- The Theory of Kaiten
- The Dark Kaiten Rises
- Kaiten Forever
- The Last of Kaiten
- Memoirs of a Kaiten
- A Scary Kaiten
- DeadKaiten
- KaitenCock
- Kaiten, Miracle on the Hudson
- GreyKaiten
- The Danish Kaiten
- 10 Things I hate about Kaiten ( ...wait wha? )
- Call me by your Kaiten
- The Train to Kaiten
- Big Kaiten 5
- It's Kind of a Kaiten story
- A Kaiten's Life
- Portrait of a Kaiten on Fire
- Top Kaiten: Maverick
- The Kaiten League
- The Kaiten Squad
- Kaiten Begins
- Jurassic Kaiten
- Me Before Kaiten
- Captain Kaiten
- Kaitenception
- The Kaitentanic
- Kaitenator II
- Star Wars: Revenge of the Kaiten
- (500) Days of Kaiten
- Agent Kaiten
- The Kaiten Saga: Breaking Dawn
- The KaitenBook
- 8 Kaiten
- Crouching Kaiten, hidden Kaiten
- Saving Private Kaiten
- The Last Kaitenbender
- Guardians of the Kaiten
- The Matrix ReKaiten'd
- The Lone Kaiten
- Pirates o the Kaitenribbean
- The Last Letter from your Kaiten
- The Kaiten of Life
- The Last Kaiten

We have reached Maximum Copium...

I wanna cry for this

you could make a indian reality tv show over the drama this has caused, and i mean that in a good way.
but at the same time, i completely agree with the fact that current Samurai is just...there. its existing, but its not living. yeah, there's theoretically a more streamlined damage output, but what's the point? nothing's difficult anymore, you could probably play it with one hand cut off if you were fast enough with said hand. Samurai right now has a body, that moves, talks, and does everything the other classes do, but it doesn't have that soul anymore. surviving isn't living, and we're still REALLY damn close to not even surviving anymore

Damn, I miss Kaiten.

As a mostly healer main that dabbles in melees, I still play SAM for dungeons and most MSQ content. I went back to some TEA prog vids from a year and a half ago when I played SAM in TEA. Just seeing Kaiten there makes me sad. It improved the hype build up to Midare. It's a "feel" change more than anything, but I want a reward for stamp(Sen) collecting!

Proposed change:
Have Shoha I improve into Shoha 2, return to us Hissatsu: Kaiten.

All those links and not a peep from SE, I'm starting to think that the shoe swapped, and Blizzard is now the 'humbled by their hubris, working hard to restore trust' company, and SE believe themselves to be 'the untouchable king of the scene'

For SAM I'd merge Shoha2 and Shoha1, so Shoha1 just becomes AOE with X% falloff
I'd change Guren/Senei from 'costs 25' to 'generates 25', and 'grants Ogi Ready', this kenki change is functionally equivalent to Ikishoten (+50, 25 of which goes straight on Senei)
Delete Ikishoten now that it is not needed
Probably make Ogi replace Senei on the bars

That gives three bar spaces to put new stuff, something to replace Kaiten so the gauge actually means something again (either return Kaiten or a new gauge spender of some kind). And if they want to go with the circle for Tenka, change Fuga/Fuko so that instead of 'cone that upgrades to circle (level sync feels jank cos of it), change it to Fuko at early levels, and upgrade to Hyosetsu from the trailer/PVP. This would generate a Yukikaze sen, and change the AOE rotation from 1213 Tenka to 12T13T, which would also allow for a lot more uses of Shoha 2 in AOE which would feel cool.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

All those links and not a peep from SE, I'm starting to think that the shoe swapped, and Blizzard is now the 'humbled by their hubris, working hard to restore trust' company, and SE believe themselves to be 'the untouchable king of the scene'

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Radio silence was their tactic, and it clearly worked. They know that change was unjustified and that it only hurts the players. They know that both their button and APM bloat makes no sense, since there is same APM in burst and there are many better buttons to remove/merge. They just want simple jobs without any significant damage fluctuations, since then they would need to put more than bare minimum while designing encounters.

They definitely didn't expect such a pushback so they postponed DRG and AST reworks and finally gave everyone cheap bandaid for quaranteed crits. But that is all. When you speak about Kaiten now, year after its removal, people will just parrot SE's excuses, not knowing that they're nonsense. Can't wait for 7.0 where we get Shoha III and SE going "Based of player feedback, players felt like Kenki had no use but for Shinten, so we're removing Kenki gauge altogether. Please look forward to it.".

'We have data showing that a significant portion of the playerbase has trouble maintaining DOT effects. As such, Higanbana will be removed, it's DOT effect will be moved over to Midare, and spending 1 Sen will now summon that one roegadyn from the questline to laugh at you for holding the sword the same way he did'

No seriously the job master chewed him out for it, so why do we still do it as male character?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

'We have data showing that a significant portion of the playerbase has trouble maintaining DOT effects. As such, Higanbana will be removed, it's DOT effect will be moved over to Midare, and spending 1 Sen will now summon that one roegadyn from the questline to laugh at you for holding the sword the same way he did'

No seriously the job master chewed him out for it, so why do we still do it as male character?

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Not entirely sure honestly... We know players use 3rd-party applications to take certain idle/combat poses/posture or walk/running movements of a completely other Job or Gender and apply it to whatever they like. Sometimes with Clipping issues apparently. I don't personally see the problem of Players given the choice to take the posture of a the opposite sex, at least regarding jobs.

So we know its possible? but players aren't granted that option because... it costs Square probably money to not really solve a problem worth the money solving or improving. There are also players who like tradition a lot? where they want to clearly see who is female and who is male based on how they move as it affects their gameplay...somehow...in someway... I guess...

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

'We have data showing that a significant portion of the playerbase has trouble maintaining DOT effects. As such, Higanbana will be removed, it's DOT effect will be moved over to Midare, and spending 1 Sen will now summon that one roegadyn from the questline to laugh at you for holding the sword the same way he did'

No seriously the job master chewed him out for it, so why do we still do it as male character?

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To this day the idle pose cracks me up because that scene always pops into my head.

Ready for some 6.38 Copium :/

Surely Kaiten's return will be in 6.4 live letter part 2...

Only chance of it coming back is in 7.0, and even then it will likely be something different if it did. I basically refuse to play SAM because of it and will see what they do for 7.0.

we're gonna get fuck all, lol. better to just wring out whatever enjoyment you can while you can before they inevitably gut pve even further in 7.0

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

we're gonna get fuck all, lol. better to just wring out whatever enjoyment you can while you can before they inevitably gut pve even further in 7.0

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What do you mean? I love sitting inside the boss and not having to work for uptime or positional and acting like I deserve to be doing 100x the damage of a phys ranged :)

[That was me being sarcastic and salty at the lazy fight design that's been prevalent since Eden's Promise where melee uptime is just given to us for free and I really, really miss having to eke out that extra GCD of uptime before having to disengage for mechanics and such]

https://i.ibb.co/mS1MKWb/Whaa.png Wait..................

https://i.ibb.co/n8LQYTx/Kaiten-GPT.png

https://i.ibb.co/NFhPHGn/What-Da-Hail.png Waddaya-mean-though !?!?

Who wants to break the bad news to the AI? Poor sod's still playing Shadowbringers by the looks of it

https://i.ibb.co/HHMmJ70/kaiten.pnghttps://i.ibb.co/Q67vX04/X.gif https://i.ibb.co/HHMmJ70/kaiten.png

New Live Letter... And No Kaiten

https://i.ibb.co/mRHMkd7/Kaiten.png

https://i.ibb.co/1Rh2H7y/Gee-No-Kaiten.png

" Click here for Patch 6.4 Notes " - with Samurai gaining 6 buffs...

I mean I guess w-we'll take it, b-but where's my Kaiten though... I thought we asked for Kaiten aren't we like top DPS already like... why am I being rewarded for turning on my PC? I wanna be rewarded when I execute something right with more damage. Not cause I... " breath ", what's so rewarding about that?

W-wheres my Kaiten I just want Kaiten, what about it is so much to ask omg!!!

https://i.ibb.co/FhvyGV1/Q-Q.gifhttps://i.ibb.co/FhvyGV1/Q-Q.gifhttps://i.ibb.co/FhvyGV1/Q-Q.gif

Rest in piece, Kaiten

https://i.gyazo.com/08a9ccaf1e6cd1ad...9a3c4f1b65.png

they could just, y'know, stop putting in monsters with fuck huge models that end up colliding with each other into a disgusting mess. or just disable monster collision at this point since it's not like they put any actual thought in dungeon/fate mobs.

GMBTW (Great Melee BTW)

https://i.imgur.com/clcrfQS.png

So are we going to get ranged taxed now?

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Originally Posted by Deo14

GMBTW (Great Melee BTW)

https://i.imgur.com/clcrfQS.png

So are we going to get ranged taxed now?

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At this point just give us braincell tax...

Tenka Goken mentioned so many times as Cone... is so much better... forcing Samurai to move based on dealing optimal Damage vs a Circle to deal optimal Damage by not moving in the center of a pack. I hate having to move to dodge AoE and then when I do move I hit less mobs. The Animation is just copy pasted as well and it looks lazy. Darting in and out with Kaiten made Dungeons and Fate farming so much Fun, to the point I genuinely did this for hours... and it was relaxing.

Square however wants to make everything dumber, players also want things to be easier and comfier... specially with players who do not take Samurai into high-end Content, and Parsers on the Balance Discord love this cause it optimally hits all the mobs better cause why does some of the Fun we had matter with this... its about maximum damage for least amount of effort...

This ultimately just is another change that makes Samurai more hollow.

pArSeRs LoVe tHiS

who even gives a shit about dungeon parses.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

pArSeRs LoVe tHiS

who even gives a shit about dungeon parses.

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Just finished the new Dungeon testing the new Tenka Goken... like I am not missing any mobs anymore but the size is so freakingly massive... ( do not say that's what she said... ) it is just dumb now...

• Tenka Goken no longer Cone now Circle
• Kaiten no longer needs to be applied
• Tenka Goken radius increased

You'll have people on the balance actually caring more about this being 100x more boring? but twice as functional to miss the minimal amount of mobs with least amount of effort which is " Optimal ". But something that is optimized isn't automatically fun... and can bordering being bland and boring. If they kept it a Cone and mimic the size of Ogi Namikiri I would have preferred this with Kaiten... it's just flavorless now.

I can't believe the experience I had with " Black Desert " AoE in grinding which is a a PvP focused koreangrind game... is more interactive now then my Samurai AoE in " FFXIV " which is PvE focused... that's sad. Omg I,.. oi.. I am actually coming to that realization.

https://i.imgur.com/8Jbkskr.png

Writing here before my sub runs out from housing maintenance. My feelings haven't changed on the matter and I'm glad that the subpar combat experience (for the entire game) is being looked at by the community more closely. Whether that actually amounts to anything, who knows.

I still miss Kaiten immensely. Staying quiet on the issue may mislead developers into thinking I've become happy with the changes. I'm still upset about it. Circle Tenka Goken also feels stupid, but if they just brought back Kaiten, I could just stick to boss raids and never have to use it.

Hakaze > Yukikaze > *Crickets chirping* > MIDARE!

Although, the following may be more accurate:

Hakaze > Shinten > Yikukaze > Shinten > Shinten > MIDARE! (Shinten) > Hakgh—SHINTEN

If you are reading this and miss Kaiten like me, *gives hug*.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2KjHapb...jpg&name=large

From the fan fest

https://i.ibb.co/m8HSp3b/BRINGBKKAITEN3.png

Bring it back DX<

Out of curiosity, I made short script which takes all mentions of Kaiten/SAM from twitch chat, from LL 68 to 78 and patch notes reading streams 6.1 - 6.4. It's really primitive script which just checks if there is mention of either "kaiten", "回天" (Kaiten in JP), "sam " (with space to prevent catching words like "same"), "samurai" and "shinten". So it's very primitive, and unfortunately it seems that youtube deleted old chats, so it's from twitch only, which is more skewed towards EN playerbase. Not like it matters, it's just for fun. I tried some auto translation for JP comments, which as you would expect, is terrible. Things like "return the heaven" or "motions in the sky" seems to refer to Kaiten in this random translator I was using.

Some notes:
Announcement that Kaiten will depart from Grey Heavens was at LL 70. You can see than nobody was talking about SAM in 68 and 69. Almost as if everything was fine and dandy. Oh boy, we didn't know what was coming. LL 70 had 48 mentions of SAM (some of them were about Sam Carter, it's really just primitive 30 lines short script). Comments were pretty mixed. Comment "Ok kaiten removed....dont know what to think about that..." describes that situation perfectly.

6.1 Patch notes reading stream comes. 199 comments, alot of them japanese because EN coverage in these stream is even worse than in LLs. Keep in mind that patch wasn't even live, and yet people came to better solutions. Solutions which are still proposed today:

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how to remove button bloat on SAM: combine shoha 1 and 2 with aoe fall off, combine senei and guren with aoe falloff, make ikishoten change to ogi namikiri. Devs: Nah remove Kaiten LUL

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Well, LL 71 comes, and people had more than enough time to try out the changes. 133 comments, which are clearly skewed more into the negative territory. LL 72 comes, with 119 comments and similar vibes, there were even some signs of discussions:
https://i.imgur.com/fw64PLJ.png

After that, copium runs out and then there is usually just 40-50 comments in the next LLs. Which is still much more than before the changes, but well, it just shows that SE's tactic of ignoring issues until majority gives up works.

Anyways, here is pastebin with the comments, if you want to check them out.