Since the 6.1 SAM change I've hardly touched it, and every once in a while I bring myself to play it in endgame content to try and give it another chance, and unfortunately every time it just feels so monotonous to play now.
In my latest attempt to try and convince myself that I can get over the Kaiten removal, I brought it to Tower at Paradigm's Breach, since I had such good memories of keeping uptime in the final boss fight on SAM with the color rings, knockback mechanics, etc. What I found was that...SHB/Lvl 80 SAM rotation still feels pretty good! Even without Kaiten somehow.
Turns out, having to use Meikyo Shisui immediately before every midare+Tsubame Gaeshi window worked out almost like a proxy/pseudo Kaiten in terms of creating the sense of buildup and release that Kaiten served.
Unfortunately, this principle can't really work with the current endgame/lvl90 rotation as the optimal rotation that we see in the Balance involves using a Meikyo Shisui stack for Higanbana, and using the remaining two stacks with a 2 GCD Yukikaze combo to get the third seal for your Midare. With this, there is no smooth buildup and release from the Meikyo press to Midare, it is interrupted and diminished. Feels like any other skill to press
Funnily enough, this observation could absolutely explain the divide between current dissatisfied SAM mains, and casuals who don't see an issue with Kaiten's removal, as casuals are most likely still using most if not every meikyo shisui stack to build up to Midare exclusively, therefore still preserving the intended job flow of slow buildup and release that Kaiten used to support, and still making each Midare burst feel good to cast.
This disconnect between the playerbases seems to be a result of dev oversight in not having comprehensive knowledge of how the lvl 90 optimal SAM rotation and how it affects job feel, eg. like how they thought adding another charge of Tsubame-gaeshi/Meikyo Shisui would make the rotation more flexible, but ironically for anyone trying to play optimally, it's just as rigid. In this case, perhaps they intended for players to mainly use their Meikyo Shisui stacks on Midares. But in optimal play, this is not the case.
But even then, even with all of the interrupting spells between your Meikyo press and your Midare press, Kaiten was enough to make it still feel good to cast. One could argue that it's our own fault for making the job feel worse by not playing as the devs intended. However, it's the devs' responsibility in the first place to ensure that the job still feels good when played optimally.
Conclusion? Pls just give Kaiten back.
Why people still seem to be disagreeing about SAM/Kaiten
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05-09-2022, 01:53 PMYenrzWhy people still seem to be disagreeing about SAM/Kaiten
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05-09-2022, 02:43 PMcjbeagle
I'm a casual who still used Meikyo to build up for Midare instead of Higanbana and I still think it felt terrible without Kaiten, and that's not even taking into account that you're using Midare way more than Meikyo, so even if it did feel good, it'd only feel good like once a minute - that's...not great.
I miss Kaiten more than anything, but what I'd really like to see is a full reversion back to 6.08. Give back Kaiten, undo the potency redistribution, make Tanka Goken a cone again - undo everything. -
05-09-2022, 03:18 PMAlex1337
I’d actually compromise and keep the potency redistributions wherever that lands [kaiten] ogi 1200(?) but revert everything else.
Reason being; had they done guaranteed crits or potency redistribution independently of one another, the wet noodle hits would not half felt so bad, again not sure where that lands ogi and midare, unfortunately they did both at the same time which heavily watered down what I felt was a relatively satisfying aspect of SAM.
Although I still think guaranteed crits aren’t the most imaginative path for an MMO where RNG is a huge part of the game in more ways than just one. -
05-09-2022, 05:55 PMRuminousIt's to remove damage variance. If you do any log reading, you'll notice that the variance between midare setsugekka now on most is within about 4k damage difference if it's at the same ilvl. The only thing it can do is crit or direct crit, so it keeps the average between multiple samples very close.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex1337
That being said, while it's good for balancing, it's less fun for the player. The excitement of building up to a big hit is all gone. Midare setsugekka is just "another skill" that you do. It just saddens me that critical hits are the problem and the system they have for it is flawed. Seeing big numbers, no matter what role you are is definitely fun and exciting. Making it common just rips a lot out of it.
As far samurai, well, they just need to fix what they broke. Kenki management, making shinten less of a thing, making collecting the stickers mean something...Or change the system to add complexity and thought to the role. Because what they have now might be fine number wise, it just feels like a watered down monk with an oGCD to hit every 6 GCDs or so. Making shinten auto cast every 7 seconds would literally change nothing about the class other than the player remembering to hit it that frequently. -
05-09-2022, 06:04 PMAlex1337Thank you I am aware and not questioning how well it works but rather it removes an aspect of mmos entirely RNG.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruminous
Why have crit chance if you force a crit? -
05-09-2022, 06:20 PMRuminousThe answer I gave is the one they've stated. Literally, that's it. They don't like the damage variance being what it was, and that's how they chose to deal with it due to their broke-ass crit system currently. It's just putting band-aids on a gushing wound until you can treat it. But we don't know when they'll fix their system, they've never set a timeframe for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex1337
As for why they have crit at all? Probably because of their system. Shit, your answers to your questions would be as good as mine would be at this point. Maybe it's fun to hit big numbers, but too big a numbers throws off balance...Dunno! Chances are their "fix" later on in the game's life is just to remove variance entirely and just make hits do fixed amount of damage. 'course that'd probably make the game boring to play, but it's how pvp works right now. -
05-09-2022, 06:26 PMAlex1337
I just don’t think introducing a constant to eliminate a variable which you introduce into a system yourself in the 1st place is good design, I’m not sure what implying if I did any log reading has anything to do with it, I understand the maths and never questioned it
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05-09-2022, 06:35 PMcjbeagle
I think they meant 4k damage (per Midare), not dps. What I'd be interested to know is what the dps difference is between an "unlucky" clear and a "lucky" clear. Over the course of an entire fight I find it hard to believe that crit variance matters that much basically ever.
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05-09-2022, 06:36 PMAlex1337That makes way more sense!Quote:
Originally Posted by cjbeagle
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05-09-2022, 07:04 PMRuminous
Yeah, I mean 4k in variance between hits. While doing some log reading, lowest I've seen is 22k to 28k on a midare setsugekka hit with an average at 24-25k. As for the dps, it's more like 100 on variance. It's also interesting to note that for most recorded logs, ninja and samurai have swapped places. Samurai used to have a high number of representation in groups, while ninja was at the lowest for melee. Now it's the other way around. How 'bout that for changes? Seems making a class boring as shit to play has a way of fixing your problems too!
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05-09-2022, 07:06 PMcjbeagle
Let's consider 6.08 crit variance of Midare using some hypothetical, but reasonable stats.
Let's say a fight takes 10 minutes.
Let's say you Midare once every 12s on average (taking skill speed, Meikyo Shisui, and Tsubame-gaeshi into account)
Let's say you have a 30% chance to crit.
Let's say your non-crit Midares hit for 25k.
Let's say your crit Midares hit for 40k. (+60% modifier)
If you Midare every 12s on average for 10m, that's 50 Midares for the entire fight.
Worst case scenario, you get 0 crits with Midare and do 1,250,000 damage with Midare over the course of 10m, which is 2,083 dps.
Best case scenario, you get 50 crits with Midare and do 2,000,000 damage with Midare over the course of 10m, which is 3,333 dps.
Now, 1.3k dps is nothing to scoff at, but:
- the chance of actually getting 0 crits out of 50 swings with a 30% crit chance is .0000000179846504%.
- the chance of actually getting 50 crits out of 50 swings with a 30% crit chance is .00000000000000000000000000717897988%.
Now let's look some possibilities that are more reasonable:
Let's say for a "lucky" clear, you crit 40% of the time despite only having a 30% crit chance - I think we'd all agree that'd be pretty splendid.
Likewise, let's say for an "unlucky" clear, you crit 20% of the time despite having a 30% crit chance - I think we'd all agree that'd be pretty dismal.
The fight you crit 40% of the time you'd do 1,550,000 damage with Midare over the course of 10m, which is 2,583 dps.
The fight you crit 20% of the time, you'd do 1,400,000 damage with Midare over the course of 10m, which is 2,333 dps.
Call me crazy, but imo their obsession with mitigating crit variance is completely unnecessary if great luck vs terrible luck only amounts to 250 dps. -
05-09-2022, 07:16 PMAsiTsurugiAnecdotally, as someone cursed with the most horrible crit rates on midare and ogi, in P4S P2 in patch 6.08, the difference between a "good RNG" run reflected by uploaded logs vs a typical run from me with crap like 0% ogi crits, 15% midare crits was about 4%. It was miniscule and barely even mattered.Quote:
Originally Posted by cjbeagle
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05-09-2022, 07:17 PMYukiBYes, it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by cjbeagle
To their credit, it's more of an issue in short bursts like the opener and every 2 minutes after, where you have 2 Midare, a Kaeshi, and Ogi+Kaeshi for 5 big hits total. The chance of getting 0 out of 5 with 30% crit is a much more reasonable 16.807%.
To their detriment, this wouldn't be a problem if they didn't design all the jobs and all the fights to operate in these short burst windows interspersed with a "1-2-3 and 1-2-3 and follow the flashing symbols" scripted dance. It is, once again, a problem of their own making, and rather than address their job and fight design they decide to remove crits from an RPG. Insane. -
05-09-2022, 07:31 PMcjbeagleI won't get into Ogi, but for Midare specifically (and I'm counting Kaeshi as a Midare fwiw, so 3 during burst), that's still only 3 out of the 10 you're doing per 2m, so even if those did double damage from buffs, it'd still only bump the dps difference between the 20% and 40% crit rate clears from 250 to 325.Quote:
Originally Posted by YukiB
I don't know how much more damage you do during burst windows, but I know it isn't double. =P -
05-09-2022, 08:25 PMRuminousHard to get any real numbers now with the changes in, but after seeing Dragonsong War, I'm definitely in the thoughts of them trying to get ahead of any "balance" related problems samurai's 2m window might have. Still is a pretty crapass excuse to nuke the job and not compensate with another mechanic for it, but it's all I can think of.Quote:
Originally Posted by cjbeagle
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05-09-2022, 08:30 PMShurrikhanAbout 3%, iirc?Quote:
Originally Posted by cjbeagle
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05-09-2022, 08:45 PMAsiTsurugiHere's why I think their excuse in this regard is completely nonsense: they changed NIN to have even higher burst than before (while, again, gutting the core identity of the job), which is perfect for a fight with tons of short burst phases and mechanics-only phases approximately 60s apart like Dragonsong ultimate. And yet they want us to think only samurai has this "issue" with respect to "crit variance", when NIN routinely invalidates these DPS checks they thought were so sacrosanct that they saw fit to effectively remove an entire job from the game and replace it with as much of a nothing as Yoshida's apology posts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruminous
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05-09-2022, 08:59 PMAlex1337i fee like the ultimate is the reason they did this to sam when they did; nin and 6.08 Sam burst on dsu might been busted with all the breaks and they probably thought it’s easier to gut Sam burst than nin. Still shouldn’t be an excuse but whatever.Quote:
Originally Posted by AsiTsurugi
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05-09-2022, 09:50 PMxAFROxHear hear! I use Meikyo for whatever might be needed. Or rather, my opener is just not optimal.Quote:
Originally Posted by cjbeagle
Back in ShB, I would build my buffs and then use Higanbana, alongside Ikishoten and Senei, then go from there, or I'd build to Midare, use Senei, and then do the Yukikaze combo to put Higanbana, or some weird jumble of actions so long as I wasn't breaking a combo.
Then in EW, with 2 charges, I just keep one available for correction or getting he attack quickly. I didn't really try any of the current EX fights yet due to lack of playtime.
6.1 specifically, I Meikyo, Kasha and Gekko, Ikishoten, Senei, Ogi/kaeshi, shinten-Yukikaze-shinten-Midare/Kaeshi.
No idea if anything like that was optimal, probably not since it didn't involve Higanbana.
I've tried to fill the Kaiten-less void with Shinten and it's way too quick of an action to mentally buffer for Midare. It really isn't fun. I can make use of the kit without kaiten, but there's always going to be a feeling that it isn't right. -
05-10-2022, 12:25 AMKabooaI'm personally in the camp where "Criticals" should be the result of completing a conditional instead of random or auto applied.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruminous
That's a little incompatible with stats as they are currently, but outside some notable RNG situations, that's how PVP works. Every class has a few critical conditions.
Just spitballing, imagine if any Draw Attack gaining its critical bonus was connected to successfully defending with Third Eye*. Now I'm not going to pretend that's a great example, but consider how you might have to bend and change to individual encounters to land as many of those as possible. -
05-10-2022, 05:17 AMRuminousWe already do this with burst windows though. They just come up every 2 minutes. As someone pointed out in another post, 2m windows makes damage phases fairly strict. Making them more freeform might help, but also dependence on buffs in general. Sam hit high numbers with a lot of assistance, and the changes just keeps their numbers at an average that doesn't rely on as much assistance. Not saying it's right, but that's how it is. A lot of it's just changing how the critical strike stat works because as it works now, it double dips on chance and damage. That alone makes it an insanely good stat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kabooa
Yeah, I'm aware. They jumped through a lot of excuses when they removed Kaiten. They were never plain with us, they just treated us like an underpaid QA team to test their shitty changes. Probably will continue that trend and just say "Oh these changes are fine, people are still clearing content with them!" While that is a true statement, it's still completely missing the point. The fact that ninja and samurai swapped places in representation shows what people think of the changes, and I'm one of those that swapped too. But hey, my retainer is BIS, so there's that I suppose.Quote:
Originally Posted by AsiTsurugi
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05-10-2022, 11:55 AMCelestiCer
6.1 Changes were just Lazy, Negative and unnecessary
Main points I read revolving Kaiten removal would be " Less Damage Fluctuations " and " Dev Development balancing benefits ". I call those lazy excuses. I remain unconvinced that 6.1 Kaiten Removal was necessary to achieve any of it. Don't tell me its impossible to achieve both balance and keep Kaiten.
How far do we need to change SAM / Delete skills, until our Balancing and Number output desires are satisfied? how Simplistic/Homogenized is too Simplistic/Homogenized? I simply draw the line at Kaiten removal.
Kaiten provided means for Kenki Management, interactions and Depth. Execute this wrong? Game punishes you. Execute it right? Game rewards you with big hits, a flavor of great animation as a bonus with a layer of skill-expression as an icing. We got promised more, while having to endure with less. They wanna remove it? replace it with something equally satisfying and better. Did they remove it? Yes. Did they replace it with something? No.
All we got are Auto-Crits and Potencies. If you're satisfied by those changes or " Numbers " great. Crunching numbers to the decimal and how that improves gameplay? go have at it? But I am not satisfied by the Gameplay changes that are all Less meaningful now to me, no matter how amazingly calculated these numbers will be.
Kaiten removal just means Less gameplay, Less Satisfying, Less Execution, Less Depth, Less of all of it to me. End of story.