My thoughts on 6.1 SAM changes (spoiler: I don't like them)
Here we go.
So no, I don't like the 6.1 changes for SAM, and for 2 major reasons.
1. Brainlessness of kenki management.
Kaiten made us think about our kenki. If we used shinten at the wrong time our dps suffered substantially. Now that kaiten is gone, that decision matters far less. Instead of losing 300+ potency on Midare, which is something we simply could not get back, our worst mistake with kenki management only causes us to delay Senei by a few GCD's. This results in a loss of engagement with the job as it's played, because I'm longer thinking about what I'm doing as much.
2. Fun/Satisfaction.
This stems from the guaranteed critical hits on the Setsugekka and Namikiri skills. As a dps player, and particularly as a SAM, the big honking numbers are the point. Our raison d'etre, if you will. Every time they pop up, we get excited. Our eyes light up and we make a little "oooohhh" noise. Seriously, the most fun I think I ever had in this game was dropping nearly 1 million damage in 2 GCD's back in Delubrum Reginae last xpac. But this only happens if we are not expecting them. When we know they will crit, the numbers become mundane. Everyday. Ordinary. And that's not what we want to think of our Setsugekkas and Namikiris as.
This leads into another factor that is central to the very concept of an RPG, character building. Those numbers are special to us, we craft our characters to get them as big as we can. We enjoy seeing the numbers get larger and the crits more frequent over the course of an expansion. I know that as things stand in 6.1 we will still see them get larger over the remainder of the expansion, but without seeing them also increase in frequency as well, we lose half the incentive for proper character building.
In short the guaranteed crits are double blow to our fun in the job by normalizing the big numbers and by reducing the impact of proper gearing and melding.
I will admit that not everything done to SAM was bad. I personally like the AOE changes, and the Meikyo Shisui and Third Eye changes are nice QoL changes, and I hope they get kept. But the other changes should be reverted at the earliest opportunity.