I gave the SAM changes a shot, but I can't do it

I usually lurk the forums and scroll posts every now and again, however I've decided to finally make an account just to give the devs their feedback they asked for. I've played the game for around 18,000 hours and I'm worried about the direction the game is taking so I guess it's time to start trying to speak up.

Issues with the 6.1 changes:

1. Kaiten removal

Why? It has a functional purpose as a kenki spender and it's a cool wind-up leading into a powerful attack. It requires some player input to achieve and it gives you a fantasy feeling of being able to unleash more power. I'm now no longer in control of making my hit powerful anymore, and it sucks. I liked the interaction it had. There was some form of thought needed to keep 20 gauge to use for Kaiten. Now all we do is just spam Shinten 5 times in a row brainlessly. The ability has existed for such a long time and has never really been an issue before... It is ingrained in my muscle memory from Stormblood, and I've still yet to remove it from my hotbar because I'm pressing it every time I would have pre-patch, regardless of it being gone.

Ogi Namikiri doesn't need to be its own button... why doesn't it replace Ikishoten? Guren and Senei could be merged into one (I thought the addition of Senei was silly from the beginning, although the animation looks pretty badass), and Shoha & Shoha II could be combined and turned into an ability similar to PLD's Expiacion, or straight up removed. I never cared for Shoha ever since it was introduced.

2. Guaranteed critical hits

I understand there have been concerns with critical hits on big damage abilities giving large fluctuations in DPS, however I don't think this is how to fix the issue. Giving a guaranteed critical hit is pretty much equal to preventing it from ever critting. The excitement from landing a crit and seeing the large number is completely removed, and replaced with a dull "meh" when that predictable number shows up. I feel the same with every other job which has a guaranteed crit+/dhit button. It doesn't bring any excitement, the dopamine hit is gone.

3. Tenka Goken as a circle AoE

I'd like to see Tenka Goken reverted to its conal shape. The circle iteration of it just feels plain wrong. The animation sucks, the damage sucks and there is no longer any thought or planning needed anymore as to how to position yourself when using it other than sit inside the enemies and press the button (noticing a pattern here...). It's okay for some jobs to retain their non-circle AoE abilities, job homogenisation is going way too far and the game is starting to get stale because every job's beginning to feel like a re-skin of each other.

TL;DR:

SAM changes feel bad, revert all of them and please stop stripping job identity from the game.
Thanks!

The job is really unappealing now, feels bad in every regard. Dont know what they were thinking during the tests pre patch.

On your points:

1) Hard agree. Kaiten served a number of purposes, from being aesthetically pleasing to being the reason to manage kenki. And with its loss, I find the gameplay feels *more clunky* now, which is weird. But then, I tend to avoid the jobs that have you spamming a single button a lot (love Paladin, but hate how that rotation has you spam Atonement, Holy Spirit, and Confiteor button).

2) Again, hard agree. If the variance in critical hits was accounting for too much rng in top level parses, then it's the whole critical hit system that needs a revamp. Maybe Midare and the Namakiri skills were an initial step in such a revamp, but it feels really bad when done in isolation, if so. But, who really cared about the rng in top level parses except the players that chase the pink parse? I'm not saying they don't deserve consideration, but creating this strong anti-synergy with other classes seems like a bad way to address their issues.

3) Hard agree again! As a melee dps, I actually feel like circular AoEs feel bad. It works well on tanks, which have to hit everything to get aggro, and it makes it easier for them to position the enemies (and that's their extra bit of movement skill expression), but for melee dps, the movement skill expression for us is hitting positionals. And with AoEs, I felt like lining up a good cone was like hitting that positional. I'll be perfectly honest, here, I wouldn't mind seeing all our AoEs being cones (which even essentially reverts Fuko). Lining up cones gives you something to do during dungeon pulls, imo. EDIT: then again, if they were all Cone aoes, maybe it would make it feel like we had no positionals again.

This is so good - thank you. It feels so flat, so empty. I do not understand why they took one of the best designed classes & gutted it by removing the most iconic part of the rotation. So many other abilities could have been condensed.

Circle aoes are fine for tanks, but since combined mobs circle the tank, circle dps means you basically place yourself on the tank. I didn't find positioning with a cone that difficult (I'd be happy to say goodbye to line aoes, however)

Our best samurai has set the class aside, on the forlorn hope they'll revert this miserable change. I have my bunny alt dropping it, too - back to Bard, mis-hitting WM now, but it's preferable to the disappointment of the current Samurai.

Please, please, SE - revert this back! Combine Shohas, ANYTHING - but this isn't it.

You said it best. They ultimately took away crit from samurai by making our big hitters auto crit for pp dmg. I went from criting 100k before the stat squish to criting 20k on the reg. Its so depressing.