So I finally catched up on gear and beat both Ex Primals.

My conclusion is that I'm almost sure I'm jumping ship over to SAM.

As many people have said, Eye stacks are a horrible mechanic. DRG not only is bottom of the barrel in terms of melee DPS, but also requires MUCH more effort to play due to the extreme clunkiness of LOTD. LOTD is absurdly weak for the effort and time it takes to activate, essentially 1:20s to only get a 960 potency within a 20+s window IF you get the 3 Nastronds off.

Mechanics may demand you delay things here and there, effectively gimping you even further. The fact the Eye gauge only goes back to 4 make it so you can't use Jump or SD when you already have 4 eyes and GK is on 15+s cooldown due to the fact you'll waste Mirage Dive. Don't even get me started on dying. Back in 3.X the only thing you lost was potentially a Geirskogul. Here? Enjoy losing 3 eye stacks and building them all over again from the start. Another 1m+ to get to your "burst" phase. You can say "just git gud and not die then", but that's not how things work when you're progressing an encounter. It just feels bad and makes you cringe at building all those eyes up all over again, seeing as DRG has no way of fast tracking Eye gain.

Another issue: phase changes. Oh my god phase changes. On fights like Susanoo it's barely possible to keep BOTD by using the cooldown right when it's about to fall off because the animations are short, but on Lakshimi (whose animation's lenght is more in line with how boss's ultimates are), it's impossible no matter what you do. You are there lamenting losing the Eye stacks you worked so hard to gain, and on the other side you have Monks building Chakras and Samurais using Meditation to get loads of Kenki, essentially getting rewarded for downtime. It's just flawed design.

So yeah. DRG was very punishing in the 3.X series, but it was something you could easily work around by analyzing the encounter and your Geirskogul usage. Now BOTD is essentially free, but your actual damage is gated behind a system that is even worse and doesn't feel good in practice.