Bring Back Kaiten

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Originally Posted by Tint

And that's why it will never come back: The devs don't want to balance it. There are too many variables going on. Buff the potency of a GCD skill and suddenly Shinten becomes useless.

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No. That's like saying you can't have Senei be powerful or Shinten would never see use. Kaiten was stronger than Shinten/Kyuten only when buffing certain skills.

An ST GCD skill originally needed at >480 potency for buffing it to outpace Shinten and an AoE GCD needed >240n potency for buffing it to compete with Kyuten. That left only the Iaijutsu (940, 360n, 720).

And since the frequency of those spenders' use was constrained, so too was Kaiten's (just as Guren/Senei's and Gyoten/Yaten's are).

As for now, they could absolutely re-add Kaiten at whatever degree of reward over not bothering with it they want just by adjusting the %damage bonus and/or the Kenki cost.

If still at 20 Kenki, and if they wanted, say, Kaiten-Midare to go back to a ~50% effective-potency-per-kenki gain over Shinten (per pre-EW Samurai), they'd need only reduce Kaiten to a 40% bonus even with its now-bloated effective potency (640*1.5 = 960). Done.



(No, the bigger issue, if anything, is simply in flavor -- from Tenka Goken being reduced to a wet fart and base SAM AoE skills in general being diminished so greatly in favor of Shoha II and Ogi Namikiri.)

But you describe precisely why it wasn't a useful ability. It was a rote use, it had no meaningful interaction with anything, it was just a semi-fixed drain on the gauge for a semi-fixed gain in potency.

It wasn't like you had a mechanic that'd suddenly leave you flooded in gauge and you'd be using Kaiten on ~every GCD to not overcap it, the way Dancers semi-spam Sabre during burst. You might as well just fold the potency into the skills and remove Kaiten, you leave the amount of brain required to play at the exact same level but reduce RSI inducing mechanics in your players.

If Kaiten had an interesting interaction with the kit, again, sure. But it didn't. I'm not saying plenty other skills don't also lack interesting interactions (in fact that is the primary problem of FFXIV's job setups, they're all extremely boring static-rotation jobs with no flexibility, interactivity or challenge because 100% of that has all been pushed into the fight design instead of the characters). But Kaiten surely wasn't one, either. There's no loss from it being removed. At all.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

But you describe precisely why it wasn't a useful ability.

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I also described why being rote use doesn't necessarily mean that a skill isn't useful as an addition to the gameplay of a given kit:

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

In itself, it doesn't enhance "agency", no. The better way to look at it is that it accentuates skill expression among other, surrounding parts of the kit, helping to tie the Kenki gauge together (alongside the old varied Kenki costs, likewise removed).

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Originally Posted by Carighan

It was a rote use, it had no meaningful interaction with anything, it was just a semi-fixed drain on the gauge for a semi-fixed gain in potency.

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Effectively, not semi-fixed, but simply... fixed. Each skill had its own fixed ppk via Kaiten. Kaiten-Midare is, for all intents and purposes, not Kaiten-Higanbana or Kaiten-Tenka, just as Life Surge-Heavens' Thrust is not Life Surge-Raiden Thrust.

But let's consider:

Shinten is likewise "rote use". It is objectively a fixed drain for a fixed gain in potency. You use it when you would otherwise overcap Kenki, including over the 2 GCDs before Ikishoten, and during raid burst, as SAM's lowest priority oGCD outside of a preemptive utility buffs needed for less than their whole duration (Third Eye, Arm's Length, Bloodbath) and True North.

Kaiten was SAM's highest priority oGCD except where able to double-weave (in which case driftables took the lead, especially if a fight would go over 7 minutes). It was therefore a fair bit less lenient about when it could be hit and therefore about preemptively reserving weave space. It also meant that Kenki amounted to more than just 4-generic-spender-charges a la DRK MP if TBN's MP cost were removed.

There objectively was loss to SAM's depth of resource it being removed, just as there was from Senei being 50 gauge while on a separate CD-interval from Ikishoten. Whether the single button saved (a bit laughable an excuse at the time, though, when Ogi Namikiri remained separate from Ikishoten) was worth the loss in complexity or not is debatable, but there was a loss.

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It wasn't like you had a mechanic that'd suddenly leave you flooded in gauge and you'd be using Kaiten on ~every GCD to not overcap it, the way Dancers semi-spam Sabre during burst. You might as well just fold the potency into the skills and remove Kaiten, you leave the amount of brain required to play at the exact same level but reduce RSI inducing mechanics in your players.

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Again, see Shinten. In fact, see APM existing for so long as there are rote rotations.

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If Kaiten had an interesting interaction with the kit, again, sure.

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It had, by consequence of its requirements, kit-interaction more interesting than some 80% of extant Samurai skills and a good two-thirds of skills in any other job kit more broadly. It wasn't great individually, but virtually nothing in this game (or arguably any game) is. Such is scarcely possible, after all.

Now, to be clear: I don't hugely care whether Kaiten had stayed, as I still mostly enjoy Samurai so long as a fight gives me things to Gyoten and Yaten and occasionally Ogi-cleave, but let's not ignore how kit synergy actually works. It has at least as much to do with what constraints they impel upon the other kit and what cognitive load that introduces (potentially an "anti-synergy" in ease of output but a synergy in gameplay produced) as, say, how it removes a challenge in order to "shore up" a weakness (a synergy in ease of output but potentially an anti-synergy in gameplay produced). I just find the reasoning typically given for its removal rather ludicrous given what all else would then fall under the same warrants.

If skills can generally be described introducing directly or indirectly...

• a fair bit a depth (see Flare in the context of double-quickenings, pre-ShB MP costs, or Despair/Flare among nonstandard lines despite being very simple in itself),
• a little bit of depth (Fuma Shuriken in the era of oGCD mudras and DoT management to perfectly no-clip if its tuning had been even a sliver higher; Fracture among HW or ARR Monk when usable to avoid positional requirements while maintaining rhythm),
• a sliver of depth (e.g., Fracture on HW Warrior),
• or virtually no depth (Ikishoten / Ogi Namikiri / Namikiri-Gaeshi; etc.)

...Kaiten would have still been solidly in the upper half.

Oh, I see where the disconnect comes from.

I see them all as adding ~0 depth, simply because all of the examples you give merely ask for a certain amount of digital dexterity (as in, your fingers) while going through a pre-solved rotation that is optimized for you. All actual modifications to this happen only as a result of either a) the fight forcing more than a workaround, some deeper break like delaying a whole burst window and this messing with certain jobs that rely on gauges or cycles or b) messing up, drifting, and then depending on the job being more or less able to rectify this.
Which are both, importantly, external to the actual job design. They're not part of the job itself, they only interact with the portion of the kit "vulnerable to" drifting or delaying.

Now don't get me wrong, static rotation type classes can be really well-designed. They just always tend to be shallow in their gameplay, as nowadays we can simply look up the optimal rotation and then it's all just about honing said dexterity to never fumble your buttons. At which point the entire gameplay is a physical exercise, with its difficulty scaled on how often you have to press buttons (so lots of oGCD weaving = more difficult).

A form of difficulty for sure, but sadly not at all the type I personally enjoy. :'(

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Originally Posted by Carighan

I see them all as adding ~0 depth, simply because all of the examples you give merely ask for a certain amount of digital dexterity (as in, your fingers)

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Name any rotation in any game and chances are that all depth amounts simply to, again, digital dexterity and quickness to respond to visual cues.

Every risk/compromise has breakpoints before which A is better and after which B is better. Every RNG output still has an optimal action (not necessarily the roll that one, but always the roll that has the greater effective probability of winning, the 1-99 in a 99% chance, rather than the 100 that may have ended up the output despite all odds). One can be forced to memorize a greater number of situations, but there is still ultimately a best output for each.

At best, such therefore shifts which is easier between complete memorization and memorization of guidelines/breakpoints/rough_estimates only.

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They just always tend to be shallow in their gameplay, as nowadays we can simply look up the optimal rotation and then it's all just about honing said dexterity to never fumble your buttons.

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I'd agree, but at the same total complexity against a striking dummy, etc., the same could be said of a kit firmly in the cult of RNGesus. So long as there are no varied encounter opportunities from which to revalue skills, a chance-based job will nonetheless follow a strict APL (action priority list).

Yes, a RNG-varied kit provides a greater number of exact situations (even if they might easily be boiled down by math into a much smaller number) per action than a chance-less kit, but both require shifting parameters (effective mob count, TTK, positional access, etc.) to see variance between combating a striking dummy and doing a given encounter.

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All actual modifications to this happen only as a result of either a) the fight forcing more than a workaround, some deeper break like delaying a whole burst window and this messing with certain jobs that rely on gauges or cycles or b) messing up, drifting, and then depending on the job being more or less able to rectify this.
Which are both, importantly, external to the actual job design. They're not part of the job itself, they only interact with the portion of the kit "vulnerable to" drifting or delaying.

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Yet those are no less, fundamentally, than the impacts incurred within nonstatic rotations.

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A form of difficulty for sure, but sadly not at all the type I personally enjoy. :'(

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Same. I prefer having to do quick maths than to just have quick hands. (A bit of chance tends to help with that, aye, and varied situations in each encounter even more so.) And for that reason, losing Kaiten wasn't all that impactful to me, personally.

My point is, though, that Kaiten did maintain most of the qualities generally associated with "decent" or even "good" skill designs: It vitally enhanced surrounding systems (for which it was neither unique nor quite sufficient but still necessary), added stress to surrounding weaves enough to increase threat of drift, etc. and thereby incentivize a bit more forethought and raise cognitive load in a manageable but subtly noticeable way that lent SAM a bit more its persistent but readied vibe, held iconic flair and flavor, and doubled down on what to many felt best about Samurai.

For that reason, it was certainly a loss by nearly all criteria firmly and broadly held in consensus (i.e., as close as we can get to "objective" in an experience), including those usually held by players defending its removal.

What if Kaiten just became Samurai's version of Reassemble or Life Surge?

The skill itself leant into the job's overall fantasy, and even came with a measure of skill expression, but Samurai as a job always felt like there were too many buttons for what the job ultimately wanted to do. I don't think the issue was ever Kaiten itself, but the superfluous additional buttons.

I feel like that'd offer far less to gameplay than it did before, all while still costing the same amount of buttons again. If anything, the most superfluous addition we've had of late (apart from the thankfully removed Shoha II)... is probably just Ikishoten, at least if the plan was always to drop Senei/Guren down to a mere Shinten of cost. It compels us to drop down to 40-45 Kenki before it refreshes, but it no longer has anything excusing its original implementation (in place of old Hagakure to quickly gain enough Kenki for 2 Kaiten and a Senei). Tbh, the new skill by which to instantly spend and then forget about the 50 Kenki generated seems to make it even worse in that regard, especially in that it then prevents Ogi from being consolidated into Ikishoten despite being equally strictly dependent on Iki to be castable. 🤔

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

What if Kaiten just became Samurai's version of Reassemble or Life Surge?

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That's what Kaiten was ^^ just that it costs 20 Kenki and being the First Skill to spend Kenki on.
Kaiten was the Skill that introduced Samurai to the Kenki Resource, basicly:
"You know your lvl50 Rotation, here have something cool to boost your stuff even stronger!"
now with Shinten.. uhh an Attack for 25 Kenki.. accelerating.. not really though..
and come on, easy would it have been for the Devs to cut Kaiten's 50% Boost and make it give Direct Hit Instead!? Yeah DPS ppls may've cried for a week but the Gameplay would still be there especially at lvl100!!
I mean.. think about that, what if Kaiten got a buff at lvl100 to not only give Direct Hit but also Tendo:
Tendo for 20 Kenki I would love that!

But there's no factual difference between Kaiten and Shinten. They both transform gauge into damage. They have minor implementation differences but those would be sanded off by job balancing anyways as they only affect the damage profile. Mechanically they have no difference, you just deal damage.

wouldn't having the flexibility to shift when you boost your damage be more useful if raid buffs came in more varied timings than 2m or when you want an extra push near the end of an encounter?