Trying to explain why Kaiten was so important (Yet another SAM post)
I'm seeing a lot of casuals who are supportive of the Kaiten removal making the same vapid statements about how Kenki didn't mean anything, as it was required to be pressed before every iajutsu anyways. And they reduce the arguments most are making as stuff that only concerns hardcore players (eg. kenki gauge dumb-ification). In this, they're completely missing the point to why Kaiten is so important, to BOTH casuals AND hardcore players.
Let's look at NIN and DNC for a clearer example. The core of NIN is its mudras, and the core of DNC, its dances. They both require quick presses of different buttons in succession in order to successfully cast abilities that are the main part of the damage output. They both punish you if you happen to press the input incorrectly as well. I could claim that simplifying dances/mudras to a single button to be pressed multiple times, or perhaps just a single button press altogether, would improve these jobs by "reducing button bloat", and that mistakes in executing them are "unnecessarily punishing"
Of course noone is making those arguments, because that's insane. Also what NIN and DNC have in their favor to prevent anyone from saying this is that the buttons that are used to execute Mudras/dances require different combinations of the same 3 buttons, or the temporarily buttons replace already existing abilities respectively, therefore they aren't perceived as taking up much space if any at all.
Kaiten's purpose was just as important to making iajutsus the star of SAM's kit. Removing it has pretty much gutted how it feels to cast them. It really does feel like if we were to reduce dances to a single button to press supposed X number of times, or if mudras were just turned individual Jutsu abilities to press. Castbars alone are not enough to make iajutsus feel remotely satisfying to cast. Midares only felt as good as they did because Kaiten was there to make it have any sort of buildup
The whole point of Kaiten was that it was a part of every Midare. Imagine if Cross/Void Reaping was removed altogether and we just had 2 Communios to cast each enshroud window instead. That would be similar to how SAM feels right now. There is no emphasis anymore, no more weight. Just an annoying castbar.
The only counter is that Kaiten took up its own unique slot and doesn't share a keybind with any other actions like Enshroud to Cross/void reaping, or Mudras and Dances. That doesn't change that Kaiten was integral to SAM's burst and was a core part of what made SAM feel like it had anything going for it. It really does feel like if the core of these other jobs were gutted for the sake of "bloat".
You have to press 4 inputs every time for technical step. You have to press Grim Reaping with Void/Cross reaping 2x before every Communio. You have to press Kaiten before every iajutsu. It's not bloat, it's the core of the job.