So hows SAM doing? Still fun?

[wereotter]

My opinion, the job is less enjoyable than it was in Stormblood.

It's almost like if you look at Samurai, Dark Knight, and Warrior they looked at them and thought "oooh you like this one big move we gave you? What if you did it like 14 times in a row??"

So they took away Hagakure (and reintroduced it in a much weakened state) to replace it with being able to do two midares back to back sometimes. The job is a lot slower and less engaging than it used to be, and I lost all interest in playing it at all before I even got it to level 80, but finished leveling it anyway to get the extra striking gear out of my armory chest.

[Naryoril]

So they took away Hagakure (and reintroduced it in a much weakened state) to replace it with being able to do two midares back to back sometimes.

No, they replaced it with Ikishoden, a flat 50 kenki buff. Yes it generates less kenki (50 instead of 60) and on a longer cooldown (60 instead of 40) and leads to more midares (due to not spending sen to get that kenki), but Tsubame-Gaeshi has absolutely nothing to do with it.