Samurai PvE Feedback

I've been raiding since Eden's Verse, where I started as Red Mage. When Eden's Promise came out I was asked to switch to a Melee DPS due to the static gaining/losing people, as we got a new red mage in and they were better geared. That's when I picked up Samurai and my friend began to mentor me in the class. I soon grew to love it more than I already did (it was my main melee class I'd play whenever I didn't feel like casting) and mained it ever since. When Pandaemonium Savage came out I was thrilled to jump in when I was told P1S essentially had 100% uptime. I pretty much got to never worry and just do the sole utility Samurai had: DAMAGE. I was having fun chasing a 50k Midare/Ogi Namaki, since I'm not BIS, seeing that floating number go up.

That's where 6.1 comes in, and my feedback.

Hearing I was losing kaiten, I was not doom and gloom. Losing Kaiten was something I knew I could get past eventually. The stutter in my rotation I'd fix and such. The issue became the class fantasy of winding up for this huge massive hit was absolutely taken away, not by Kaiten's removal, but by the frankly overzealous nerfing of Midare and Ogi's potencies. The loss of Kaiten did hit the flow and fantasy of Samurai, but it was the nerfing of Midare and Ogi and putting that damage on Gekko, Kasha, and Yukikaze that led me to start gearing up Dancer for my static.

I was doing 30-35k midares a go, seeing those huge numbers floating gave me a lot of joy. Stuttering my rotation, delaying something to make trick attack, chasing that 50k as we got better at P1S (we raid once a week so our prog is very slow) and trying to smooth myself out and be better gave me a sense of accomplishment. Sure, my parses were green, but they kept getting higher and higher greens. That's progress and I enjoyed it.

6.1 rolled around. I did the new dungeon and that's where my worries came to pass. Auto-Crit was what I hoped would balance the numbers so I'd do the same, as the Chief Napkin Mathers said it would. And sure, the numbers MIGHT say we're barely doing less damage.

Every midare hit for 20k. Every ogi namakiri hit for 20k. I hit maybe one 23k Midare. I once hit a 19.4k Ogi Namakiri. I went into Aglaia as Samurai and hit a 35k Midare thanks to dance partner during Byregot. Fantastic. None of my Ogi's got that close. I barely did close to 30k with Ogi Namakiri and Midare now.

When I hit a 34k Technical Step at level 88, as Dancer, in Kitesis. that solidified how bad my main felt. That's my midare numbers. My ogis. I couldn't even hit that as a level 90 Samurai.

The anecdotal type feedback above is meant to illustrate how I feel about the job now, and how it's fun as been ruined for me by not feeling like my big wind up casting attacks do literally anything.

Automatic Critical Hits mean absolutely nothing if the attack itself does not have the potency to back it up.

Midare and Ogi hit like soggy spaghetti. The automatic critical hits do not bring those abilities back up. The damage that was spread out to our base combos of Gekko, Kasha, and Yukikaze might bring us up towards our old numbers but that's compounding the issue: Hitting a 10k Gekko, seeing that floating crit go up, and then my midare crits for 20k? That just feels so bad. Our big hits, that we have to build up for, that have a cast time, barely do more than my base combo in the end? Even if it's always been somewhat balanced towards that, it never FELT like that.

The job doesn't feel fun. It might not be nerfed numbers wise, but it has been nerfed fantasy wise. By nerfing Midare and Ogi's potencies so drastically, the job does not feel like it does damage even if it does. Those attacks always felt like I'm ending a mob's entire existence.

Please, revert the changes. Hell, just give our hits way more potency. We lost Kaiten, and instead of gaining that damage elsewhere we outright lost it and even more with the nerfs to Midare and Ogi. Visually, looking at the patch notes, it was a nerf. In practice, playing Samurai in the new content, it was a nerf. To our morale, it was a huge nerf. Numbers can say we do the same damage over the fight, but to me, the numbers on spreadsheets don't matter.

I can move on from Kaiten. I can't move on from my auto-crits doing less than my uncrited base attacks pre-patch.

Don't really care if people respond. I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus, in hopes they do something sooner, rather than 4 months down the line in 6.2, where all us Samurai mains are just in PVP because, somehow, PVP Samurai is more fun than PVE samurai.

Pve 90 Sam feels like a level 62 job.

Agree. Iaijutsu feels so weak it's almost better to pull the hagakure thing. It's what I ended up doing in the new dungeon to make up for how utterly pathetic Tenka Goken is now.

I expected a reduction in potencies to make up for the auto-crit, but a crit barely matters if it does the same as a normal gcd. This needs to be changed. Seems most don't care about the cited criteria variance the devs mentioned. It's just a part of the way the job performs.

Not a fan of weak iai and ogi. Hope they put it back.

I'd like to hear an explanation from whoever does SAM design/balance as to why damage spikes are such a bad thing to begin with. Should it not be a general rule of thumb that any job's biggest and flashiest abilities should also have the highest potencies, so they subconsciously feel good to press and have a tangible effect that matches their impressive visuals?

I maybe all alone by saying this, but since the beginning, Kaiten give me a taste of "Dark arts" kinda...

BUT, the overall gameplay was good for most player (Even if I don't liked it personnaly), removing Kaiten without doing much change is actually more confusing than anything else.

What happens (if we don't take potency into account) with that removal ? Kenki is just a ressource used for Shinten / Sen'ei. Which is a pretty bad thing actually because the Kenki, as a ressource, make absolutely no sense now.

The potency nerf out of this patch is clearly absurd. Kaeshi Namikiri got a huge drop of Potency (550 potency down) that cannot be compensate by auto-crit, exactly like Midare Setsugekka (which got a 390 Potency down). In my opinion the potency of samourai should have been nerfed because of Auto-crit, but not that much... This is too much.

In any case, Kaiten has hidden another flaw in the samourai kit : Kaeshi Higanbana.

This spell, with or without Kaiten present in the kit, makes absolutely no sense at all :

With Kaiten, Higanbana got the same potency as the Kaeshi Version, which make that spell unusable

Without the Kaiten : Higanbana got buffed with the patch, and match perfectly the Kaeshi Version, giving even less reason to use that spell afterwards.

Let's make some suggestion now :

First, the samourai got quite the combo button, to a total of 6 button.

We can effectively reduce this number down to 3, just like the Reaper, let me explain

First, the samourai got 3 ressource to manage : Sen, Kenki and Meditation.

By erasing the Sen, we can make quite a few change :

Make Shifu a passive buff like the monk that allow to get 10/13% attack speed on GCD (Effectively suppressing Shifu into the hotbar)

Replace Jinpu by Yukikaze into the Gekko combo and keep everything that Jinpu had to offer (Buff included). (Thus, an other button is suppressed)

Allow Kasha to replace Gekko after a successfull Gekko has landed on the target, keeping the positionnal identity of the jobs (Suppressing a button by hidding it behind an other) (Making the combo like 1-2-3 in the rear followed by 1-2-3 on the flanks)

By suppressing the Sen, the Iajutsu could have no sense... Therefore, Make Meditation the ressource used instead of Sen. Make Shoha and the AoE Version an oGCD with shared Cooldown.

Replace Higanbana in the Iajutsu by Shinten. Making Higanbana a GCD by keeping everything it had before, except for Meditation stacks.

Change the method to build Kenki to make it slower, and allow to use Kenki to launch Sen'ei / Guren as usual, but also allowing to boost the damage of Ogi Namikiri and/or Kaeshi Namikiri by taking the Kenki gauge to 0 after use (The damage boost depends on how the gauge was stacked up)

Transform Hagakure into a Selfbuff of damage that burn Kenki will using (and can be disabled at will) (The activation need to be on CD tho, otherwise it will just be spam the buff thing...)

Transform Meikyo Shisui into something that help build more Kenki (Like x2 the Kenki on the next attack)

Replace the +50 Kenki of Ikishoten by allowing to use a free Midare Setsugekka (No meditation cost) and allow to use Ogi Namikiri like usual.


I may have forgotten some ability. Of course, everything that i've mentionned there must be taken with care, as I didn't mentionned any modification in Potency or other thing like that because I'm not a math expert. As for those Main Samourai, maybe those "change" are something you can actually welcome (All of them, Some of them, or none of them), let me know about what you think of that.

I could see where you're coming from in the first part of your post, but I'm gonna a have to respectfully disagree with your suggestions here. Sen generators aren't the problem with the kit. It also seems like you'd prefer the pvp auto-combo which is frankly boring. I'm all for consolidating certain skills to free up space, but combos don't need that.

imo, Kenki was in a good place during SB and and ShB. We had different abilities that varied in cost and with potencies to match. Expanding on that should be the goal on the matter of resource management.

I do think meditation stacks should matter and be altered as well. Though I'm of the opinion that meditation could have it's own changing button similar to iaijutsu is in regards to Sen. I think a maximum of 5 or 8 stacks would be interesting to work with, but if I'm to look at what EW gave us and remaining in the confines of that idea, 5 meditation stacks should do nicely.

Ikishoten can proc Ogi and the Meditation stacks can proc Shoha at 3 and Shoha 2 at 5 stacks.

But I think to make meditation and kenki and sen more involved, they should work with Shinten/Kyuten and Senei/Guren as evolving attacks based on status procs like WAR relies on for their gauge spenders.

Let Ikishoten or possibly even Hagakure(though I think Ikishoten would work best) to change Shinten into Senei and Kyuten into Guren and let those upgraded forms build Meditation alongside Iai and Ogi. With more stacks, it would build relatively as quickly as it already does now and it frees up space on the bars without removing any of the existing skills.

But the potency thing and the Tenka Goken rework definitely need to be fixed, I will agree there 100%

Of course, I wasn't expecting any sort of agreement right of the bat. I'm not even Main Samourai.

Sad thing to say but true, no matter who make suggestion or what they involve, people will still agree or disagree with it. It's hard to come with idea that will be welcome by the largest number in the community.

To expose my way of thinking through my suggestion, I took the "Sen" like if it was just a "Combo" thing, and it's exactly what it is, you just have to combo in order to make your sen, which make me think that the Sen is actually irrelevant and can/must be changed. Sen and Meditation are kinda the same thing, and I think that's too repetitive, that is why I proposed to switch on Meditation and delete Sen. Because they took off some complexity by removing Kaiten, we need to add some by other mean, even if it mean sacrificing some features.

Your idea of changing Shinten into Sen'ei by using Ikishoten is a "Kaiten-like" thing : Press a button of reinforce the next one. Because of that, I can't agree with you.

But I can agree on the fact to make Meditation and Kenki must be more involved in the kit, but instead of a Gauge Spender, what about a Gauge Burner ? With that kind of Gauge, Samourai will no longer be braindead spam-shinten and will have a unique way of playing.

Either way, If the Samourai keep going with Sen, Kenki and Meditation, sooner or later, a wall will be reached, and the class will no longer evolve in term of gameplay.