New Missaphenchair video makes great point about the direction of job design

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Originally Posted by YellowLine

I wouldn't go as far as saying that Yoshi-p is trying to ruin SAM on purpose. That's just a bit too much tinfoil for my hat, personally. But it does feel like there's some favoritism to me, even if it's just a smidge. I mean, when's the last time you heard a large chunk of BLMs complain about their gameplay becoming worse? The only complaint I ever hear repeated is that the levelling rotation is boring and clunky until around lvl 60-ish. I don't play BLM, so I don't really know for sure, but it seems like tone-deaf changes never seem to happen to them. It could all just be a very big coincidence, or it could be the BLM designer putting extra care in (without Yoshi-p requesting it) just because it's the director's favorite job and they don't want to get fired. Regardless, it's hard to avoid believing that there isn't something at least a little fishy going on. So I don't exactly blame people for starting down that line of thinking. Some other jobs can feel just as untouchable (like I thought SAM was), so I'm not gonna hyper-fixate on pointing fingers at BLM.

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the thing is.
Yoshi-P is an BLM main and an good 1 at that. (parsing in the 95%+ rankings)
he knows what the job needs and absolutely can't use, there for BLM in general doesn't get bad things often, since Yoshi is basically 1 of the best BLM players out there, on top that he knows their fight design to the details, so he really knows what the limitations and strengths of BLM is.

now move that to SAM, Yoshi isn't an SAM main, they supposedly have some SAM main as their job balancer, but i somehow doubt this since we never see or hear from these people.
Yoshi in the end is still the person who says yes or no to an specific change. (as he had stated in the 6.1 patch reading when the entire chat was DEMANDING the person in charge of SAM job balancing to explain him or herself, he is the 1 greenlighting the changes in the end)
he greenlit something he has no idea about, he doesn't know what makes SAM exciting to play for example, sure he has played the job, doesn't mean he knows what makes the job appealing.
i'm not an BLM main, i have it lvl 90, but no idea what makes it fun for example.
this also comes with how the Japanese culture is in general, especially work culture, where if he would admit fault, he has "failed" SE and us the player. (although this in the west seems stupid, it's an big thing in Japan)

Hopefully we'll get some concrete reasoning and maybe even an fix to SAM.
the thing is, removing Kaiten was as pointless as it can be because Kaiten gave multiple things.
1. Kenki management.
2. the animation was cool.
and 3. the animation felt empowering.
what they could do to combat the problem with Kaiten being an flat 50% potency increase was make it so that Kaiten makes the next weapon skill do an 100% crit or maybe even 100% crit and DH (like Inner Release with Warrior)

Depending on what the planned crit/dh changes are, guaranteed direct crits aren't necessarily bad.
I think that it's also worth mentioning that kaiten gave some structure to the job's business if that makes sense - rather than pressing shinten whenever because you don't want to overcap you were buffing the next iajutsu. It might sound like a very slight difference, but giving some purpose and integration with other parts of the rotation helped it feel cohesive.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

They did not ignore the devs' request to leave specific feedback. That some among them may toss out one-liners did not remove the dozens of thorough, specific, and well-reasined threads discussing the pros and cons of changes going from Shadowbringers into 6.0, nor the problems in the 6.1 changes

If the devs realized from SQM responses that changes to DRG and AST should actually match what players are requesting and should not gut systems core to those jobs... good. Such seems to have been exactly what SAM players were going for. Much like the swath of responses to AST changes, NIN changes, MCH changes, WAR changes, DRK changes, SMN changes, BRD changes, and the changing design and contexts faced by healers as a whole.

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if this is the case then yeah, this is an victory, unfortunately they never explain why.
so now it's speculation on why they're delaying those DRG/AST changes, it is reasonable to assume it's because of 6.1 SAM having an massive ripple effect in the forums itself (if not more)
but unfortunately we can't make an concrete statement on that. (they did mention they would give more reasoning behind changes, so guess there's that)

I'm still on the strong opinion that FF14 job balance testing should go through an PTS.
not an traditional PTS of "test content here" just old content (so older fights or current fights) but with the job changes present and also that we can see what those changes are.
this way we would take a load of the devs (Which they always seem to like) and we get more accurate job balancing, since if they tried an PTS for 6.1 SAM, people would've given it a chance and before the worst case scenario happened, they could scrap it, hell even ask the forums for feedback on it.
be more open to us and the majority will give good constructive criticism, sure you got a few bad apples, but you gotta look past that.
for example, if they mentioned that 6.1s PTS would have the removal of Kaiten, people could play around, see it was wrong, give feedback and ask why this was done.
then we would get an legit answer (not "button bloat" or "action bloat") and we would give legit feedback, for example, make Kaiten instead of giving 50% potency increase, make the next weaponskill do an crit/DH (or just crit)

it would make everything so much better (obviously anything that happens in PTS wouldn't reflect in the main game)

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Originally Posted by darkdyllon

for example, make Kaiten instead of giving 50% potency increase, make the next weaponskill do an crit/DH (or just crit)

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Forgive me my flight of fancy as your example has inspired me. In light of everything that's happened, I say FUCK IT, it's time to go big.

I want a completely different Kaiten, something far more interesting and certainly more complex. Start off with the OG Kaiten at level 52, but this time granting a 20% potency boost instead of a 50% boost, largely to keep balancing issues from getting out of control. Sometime later, likely in the early 80's or late 70's, we add a trait to Kaiten called "Tranquility." In addition to the normal 20% potency boost for 20 Kenki, Kaiten now also does the following:

Grants 3 stacks of Tranquility, increasing the potency of the next three Gekko, Kasha and/or Yukikaze attacks by 20% (stacks with Kaiten) and is factored as a buff separate to Kaiten. Once Tranquility is applied it cannot be re-applied for the next 30s, even if Kaiten is used again (probably tracked as a separate cooldown via the buff bar, or perhaps the job gauge).

• When used under the effect of Tranquility, Gekko and Mangetsu grant the "Stillness" buff. Stillness increases the potency of the next two weaponskills by 40.
  
• When used under the effect of Tranquility, Kasha and Oka grant the "Peaceful" buff. Peaceful causes the next Iaijutsu used to refund the most recent one Sen from any Sen that are used via Iaijutsu or Hagakure.
  
• When used under the effect of Tranquility, Yukikaze grants the "Silence" buff. Silence causes the next three weaponskills used to generate an additional 5 Kenki per weaponskill (including Iaijutsu and Ogi Namikiri).

This has a number of synergistic effects. Yukikaze effectively provides a near-refund of the Kaiten cost, which effectively adds oGCD damage or can be looped into another Kaiten very quickly. Gekko is just a flat potency boost. Kasha is the wild card in some ways, as you ideally would want it to refund a Kasha or Gekko Sen, but there might be niche situations where eating a Yuki would be better due to the potential for short-term boosted Kenki gain, like if you knew an invuln phase was coming soon (*cough* DSR *cough*), allowing for the SAM to "pool" damage more easily via stored Kenki. Tranquility stacks would also last until they are consumed, adding another measure of protection against regular boss invulns/jumps.

Fundamentally, the rotation doesn't change much. You still want to pack stuff into your typical burst window, so this doesn't address that problem, but it does re-align SAM towards the more cerebral style it had prior to today. Finishing a 3 Sen combo on Tranquil Gekko > Kasha means a nice 40 potency boost to Midare, further enhanced by Kaiten with one of those Sen immediately refunded for a Higanbana or to lead into another Midare. The 30s internal cooldown on the Tranquil status means repeated Kaiten's don't constantly buff the hell out of everything SAM does but it also creates a 30s mini-loop that would keep SAM's engaged, instead of the mindless 1:40-45 braindead comboing followed by 15-20s of frenetic activity that we have now. The cut to baseline Kaiten potency also smooths damage out by spreading it more evenly across the entire rotation. Tranquility then creates micro-buff periods where the net gain on Kaiten far exceeds what it normally is.

To keep the value of using Kaiten on Iaijutsu we would have to re-balance Shinten (aka nerf it's potency) but not by a lot; I'd like there to be periods of time where a choice is presented for the player to choose less long-term damage in exchange for more short-term gain, and keeping Shinten at the right spot is the key to this. As it stands now, with current numbers, Kaiten would boost Midare by 20%, which amounts to a 128 potency gain, or slightly more than half of a Shinten. Boosting both Kaeshi (which will be changed to it's old version of repeating the recent Iaijutsu with boosted potency) and Midare puts that ahead of current Shinten, but only when factoring in Tranquil Kaiten, so in order to preserve regular Kaiten use either the numbers for Midare needs to be boosted or else Shinten needs to be dropped a bit to compensate, but those are numbers that are easy enough to adjust in order to hit appropriate balance goals.

The big takeaways from all this is to bring Kaiten back, give SAM something more engaging beyond a 15-20s window every two minutes, add innovation and variety of moveset usage with the goal of creating alternative combo approaches for niche situations and iterating on what makes SAM great without changing the core of how it plays.

I caution anyone who wishes to criticize the numbers that this is literally just a spitballed idea I came up with. Don't focus on the numbers as the numbers are the easiest thing in the world to change and balance. Instead, focus on how this would affect the playstyle of SAM. Would it enhance it? Would it detract from it? Is a 30s micro-loop too much, not enough or just right? Does the niche combo approach idea need to be expanded on or abandoned? What about the Tranquil buffs themselves? Could they be handled another way? What of the idea of specialized attack-specific buffs in general?

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Originally Posted by Quor

something far more interesting and certainly more complex.

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Pipe dream, unfortunately. Great read though, you have some solid ideas. I also think 30 second loop could be great for Samurai though this is something we will likely never see anymore.

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Originally Posted by YellowLine

Why do people have this weird grudge against SAM players anyways? We complain too much? So what?

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I don't have a grudge against anyone, I mean I agree with most of the criticism.
But I do think a lot of the tone issues on the forum is a problem and actually counter-productive.

I know I am a broken record on this but the needless vitriol needs to stop and people need to behave like adults.
The devs have even said before that if something includes words directed at them like '' stupid '' or '' incompetent '' then they just stop reading, which is common with pretty much all dev teams.
The reality is that all of the completely needless ad-hominem attacks are doing more harm than good and make it less likely they'll listen.
Some people seriously need to relax, so much of the posts and threads on this forum is loaded to the brim with personal insults and no one in their right mind would ever sit down and read through all that every day for years on end even if it was their job.
So often I see threads or posts and it's like 50-80% or even more of just personal attacks and often it's like two or three paragraphs of insults before even getting to the point.

Imo I do think calmer voices should call it out more often and push back against it, because the people who do this are screwing it up for everyone else.

For reference Yoshi-P and Toshio saying it themselves but they've said this before too as well as other devs for other games too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y1xkegnEf0

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Originally Posted by Quor

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I wouldn't mind more to do and juggle on SAM. Interesting ideas that I wouldn't mind seeing. If they could implement some of the button consolidation ideas presented back when 6.1 was dropping, that'd be even better.