A request to the Development Team in regarding "Shoha" and "Meditation "

[gintokiygo]

During the Live Letter Yoshida stated that the Development Team predicted that Shoha would be used once every 40 seconds, however the Samurai community has already determined that with Meditation "Fishing", (using Meditation for a short period of time in between your GCD and hoping that it aligns with the server tick resulting in gaining 10 Kenki and 1 Stack) that you'll be able to use Shoha every 30 seconds. I don't like the idea of using my skills in a unintended way on the random chance that I might see a damage increase. Players on PC are also able to use 3rd party programs that make it easier to track the server ticks giving them an unfair advantage over console players. Monk also has a similar case with the skill "Anatman".Can the Development Team please do something to address this before 5.1?

[HyperiusUltima]

During the Live Letter Yoshida stated that the Development Team predicted that Shoha would be used once every 40 seconds, however the Samurai community has already determined that with Meditation "Fishing", (using Meditation for a short period of time in between your GCD and hoping that it aligns with the server tick resulting in gaining 10 Kenki and 1 Stack) that you'll be able to use Shoha every 30 seconds. I don't like the idea of using my skills in a unintended way on the random chance that I might see a damage increase. Players on PC are also able to use 3rd party programs that make it easier to track the server ticks giving them an unfair advantage over console players. Monk also has a similar case with the skill "Anatman".Can the Development Team please do something to address this before 5.1?

I'm not sure if they will, to be honest. Server Tick has always been there, and always will be as a mediator for this stuff. Still, Meditate/Anatman in particular are special cases even though SAM is now getting a chance to finally use Shoha more than once. Generally, I think it's silly that they both are linked to server tick, but I want to think that maybe they should've adjusted it to where you have to be in that state for a certain amount of time to get a stack(i.e. 3s, which is indeed the server tick)...so I guess for coding purposes they linked it to that.

If anything, these tools were intended to be downtime tools. If you want to remove them from being uptime tools for free ticks, simply remove them from the server tick. That's all they need to do and then use the Timer on Anatman/Meditate to determine where ticks happen.

[gintokiygo]

I'm not sure if they will, to be honest. Server Tick has always been there, and always will be as a mediator for this stuff. Still, Meditate/Anatman in particular are special cases even though SAM is now getting a chance to finally use Shoha more than once. Generally, I think it's silly that they both are linked to server tick, but I want to think that maybe they should've adjusted it to where you have to be in that state for a certain amount of time to get a stack(i.e. 3s, which is indeed the server tick)...so I guess for coding purposes they linked it to that.

If anything, these tools were intended to be downtime tools. If you want to remove them from being uptime tools for free ticks, simply remove them from the server tick. That's all they need to do and then use the Timer on Anatman/Meditate to determine where ticks happen.

I agree another way they could do it is to increase the cooldown timer higher but then the problem would be that you may not have in during downtime in some fights.

[Liam_Harper]

Agreed. I don't look forward to Meditate fishing. With the changes to Shoha, now it works out well over 200 potency per Meditate fish iirc, making it enough of a gain that you don't want to ignore it. It will lead to 3rd party tools being used to track server ticks.

I saw this coming when they had plans to make Shoha viable through extra Meditate stacks instead of reworking it entirely. Tying a skill to Meditate like this was a bad idea from the start. Meditate already worked perfectly fine as a downtime tool, there was no reason to force us to use it like this.

[Rongway]

In re: Meditate

The slide says

Meditate, Iaijutsu, and Tsubame-Gaeshi now grant stacks of meditation...[emphasis mine]

The implication in this wording is that Meditate grants a stack on use, something the old version doesn't do.

[Yllysviel]

remove meditate stack from meditate

[ShayLaris]

If they can't code meditate to not be tied to the server tick (I frankly dont get why it can't just work in a way similar to Flamethrower) then Shoha stacks should only be created by Iajitsu and Tsubame. Ideal world would be to have it take 3 seconds to generate a Shoha stack, and since that would likely also impact Kenki gain, raise the Kenki gained to compensate. That way meditate remains the downtime tool it was meant to be while not promoting fishing. Especially as a console player the current projected playstyle is not something I want to play with.

[Liam_Harper]

261 potency per fish then?

It's the same problem though. That second stack would have that same potency and people will turn to third party tools to optimize. I agree Sam has issues with the rotation being on a strict loop that does feel auto-pilot (and feels worse if it drifts), but I don't feel fishing for server tick procs with your downtime tool is the fix or great design.

I'm not sure what the fix is myself, I'd tie Shoha to Iaijutsu and Tsubama alone, leave Meditate as is (you can still fish for 128 if you want) and give Tsubame an 8 sec leniency, but then perhaps we could get a functional Hagakure back and a small buff to Seigan.

[Shurrikhan]

I dislike fishing, but only due to its connection with the server tick. I don't like needing external timers/trackers just to play a job optimally.

Personally, I'd most like to see the tick rate doubled but tick value halved, with each tick giving 5 Kenki and one out of 10 Meditation stacks. (Iajutsu would thereby give, say, 60 potency each.)

Honestly, I'd prefer Iaijutsu (including TG's) not to give stacks. Without that function, Hagakure would be easy to fix to exactly potency-neutral (including its GCD saved), and its return as a 30-second CD or the like would be tremendous boon for making SAM's rotation feel at least as fluid as it was in SB -- likely far more so.

Similarly, why are they even worried about Shoha (effectively, Meditation II) when TG's still such a clunky part of gameplay. Why aren't we giving it a grace period?

[Eliadil]

I dislike fishing, but only due to its connection with the server tick. I don't like needing external timers/trackers just to play a job optimally.

Personally, I'd most like to see the tick rate doubled but tick value halved, with each tick giving 5 Kenki and one out of 10 Meditation stacks. (Iajutsu would thereby give, say, 60 potency each.)

Honestly, I'd prefer Iaijutsu (including TG's) not to give stacks. Without that function, Hagakure would be easy to fix to exactly potency-neutral (including its GCD saved), and its return as a 30-second CD or the like would be tremendous boon for making SAM's rotation feel at least as fluid as it was in SB -- likely far more so.

Similarly, why are they even worried about Shoha (effectively, Meditation II) when TG's still such a clunky part of gameplay. Why aren't we giving it a grace period?

I think at this point that most of the Samuraï community is just feeling way too down after the liveletter to be angry at what was announced. We're all okay to say that the issue is with Tsubame and our lost Hagakure, and not Shoha. I feel like we wouldn't have made such a ruckuss about Shoha if Tsubame was an actually good skill. The big issue is that we spent all of 5.0 not complaining enough about Tsubame in order for the devs to actually pay attention to our concerns. And even now, there is way too few that still have the will to ask for a better rotation. I'm worried that most of the issues are still here because we didn't talk enough about them.

Sam's rotation will still be clunky as long as Tsubame will exist in its current form. Not Shoha, and it saddens me to see that the devs didn't see that. And the new "fix" for Shoha is a nice idea, but Meditate Fishing is horrible because of the way tick rate works. It's sad to see that they found a way to give us something that already wasn't working correctly for monk.