Thoughts of Samurai Changes

[Naizakane]

Hyosetsu is a bit of a weird button, really. Only 10 potency higher and no extra Kenki gain, but I'll take the extra damage in trash pulls, might even offset the loss from Guren having falloff damage. Yes, losing Meditation stacks on Tsubame and Ikishoten being moved to a 120s cooldown will affect our oGCD usage, but the tradeoff is that Ikishoten will give us access to a total of 2400 potency on the GCD on top of having an extra charge of Tsubame. Meikyo prepull looks likely. I'm sad to see Seigan go but Merciful Eyes was such a nothing button this expansion that I took it off my hotbar, so I definitely won't miss it. Anyone concerned that the new Third Eye effect will encourage people to stand in damage is kinda late to the party, that's been a thing for a while by now.

As for Enpi... I think it's still going to have use cases outside of "being in melee range is going to kill me right now." It's been an extremely useful button for me through this expansion, either as my main filler when my UCoB gearset had me going so fast I needed 4 gcds of filler, or as a backup option when I was on a 2 gcd filler gearset and had to drop a gcd. Shoha II is... okay, I think? We kinda needed a Meditation spender for aoe anyway, and I'll just put it where Seigan used to go... after making sure I have somewhere to keep the Seigan icon. RIP button that rewarded me for standing in E7S tankbuster with extra damage during the opener, you were too good for this world.

[Taranok]

It's worth pointing out that Tsubame-gaeshi will no longer generate Meditation stacks in Endwalker, so you won't ever need to use Shoha between Iaijutsu and Tsubame-gaeshi. Of course, there may still be times that you want to use Shoha (or some other oGCD) in this way.

I didn't notice that, that's neat. Now it just needs to not break on executing another GCD and it will basically be fixed between charges and such.

Hyosetsu is a bit of a weird button, really...

Shoha II is... okay, I think?...

Honestly, and I'm not a SAM main so take this with a grain of salt, Hyosetsu is such a bad ability that I'm probably not going to put it on my bars. Same with Shoha 2. I might even consider pulling Guren off but at least it has a use in level 70 dungeons. Samurai is such a heavily skill bloated class that the devs choosing to make the class actively worse will be met with me actively protesting the abilities that bloat out the single target rotation.

I really don't care about 10 extra potency and a 1-2 1-3 2-3 1-3 aoe combo rotation isn't going to cause me to bloat my bars more. I'll take the fractional loss to AoE DPS rotations.

I am seriously sick and tired of the devs taking perfectly fine ST/AoE skills like Guren, or Foul, and adding an extra button to split it from a ST-exclusive or AoE/ST hybrid button into a dedicated ST and dedicated AoE button. Nothing exemplifies the problem of skill bloat like a button you'd only press once every 20+ seconds while not making a choice but both being mutually exclusive.

Or, to put it another way, the devs when looking at RDM went: "Let's make RDM's ST combo also do aoe damage." They didn't contribute to bloat on the class, and it functions just fine in both ST and AoE. Samurai is not made better for having more button bloat, especially when in the overwhelming majority of situations, including raid situations, that bloat is a meaningless waste of hotbar space.

HW had a major amount of backlash due to having classes at or above 30 buttons per class. That's including all class skills, job skills, and cross-role skills which were limited to 5, as well as sprint + LB. I don't know why, but the devs seem hell bent on repeating this mistake, so showing them that it's a mistake by not even using it except in something like an ultimate fight that actually demands it would go a long way towards fixing the problem of unnecessary skill bloat.

[Arkdra]

HW had a major amount of backlash due to having classes at or above 30 buttons per class. That's including all class skills, job skills, and cross-role skills which were limited to 5, as well as sprint + LB. I don't know why, but the devs seem hell bent on repeating this mistake, so showing them that it's a mistake by not even using it except in something like an ultimate fight that actually demands it would go a long way towards fixing the problem of unnecessary skill bloat.

It's cool and good that some jobs have a ton of buttons because I like the jobs that have a ton of buttons. It's part of why I main samurai. It's also why even though they are condensing the gnashing fang combo on gnb, I'm still going to leave it as 3 different buttons on my hot bar, because that feels more fun to me.

That said, I do agree with you that I am extremely tired of "new" abilities that are just aoe or st versions of pre-existing skills. It's lazy, and even as someone that likes button bloat, I find this kind of bloat to be tedious. They never should have made kyuten, Senei or shoha 2. Or Hyosetsu for that matter but it's uniquely bad on it's own.

[Naizakane]

I don't know why, but the devs seem hell bent on repeating this mistake, so showing them that it's a mistake by not even using it except in something like an ultimate fight that actually demands it would go a long way towards fixing the problem of unnecessary skill bloat.

Even if I account for Merciful Eyes not being on my hotbar in the first place (good riddance to the most useless button in SAM's kit,) I can easily fit Hyosetsu + Shoha 2 + Ogi on my hotbars. Samurai doesn't have a button bloat problem, and it definitely doesn't have one bad enough to justify refusing to press damage buttons.

That said, I do agree with you that I am extremely tired of "new" abilities that are just aoe or st versions of pre-existing skills. It's lazy, and even as someone that likes button bloat, I find this kind of bloat to be tedious. They never should have made kyuten, Senei or shoha 2. Or Hyosetsu for that matter but it's uniquely bad on it's own.

Never should have made kyuten, senei or shoha 2? Do you have a reason why, or are you just saying words? Kyuten is our AoE kenki dump the same way Shinten in our single target kenki dump. Senei is a better version of Guren for us to use in single target. Shoha 2 is an upgrade in AoE over Shoha. It would be more lazy to not add new abilities, as they come with new animations, sound effects and visual effects. Adding them sounds like a lot of effort for being lazy.

[Arkdra]

Even if I account for Merciful Eyes not being on my hotbar in the first place (good riddance to the most useless button in SAM's kit,) I can easily fit Hyosetsu + Shoha 2 + Ogi on my hotbars. Samurai doesn't have a button bloat problem, and it definitely doesn't have one bad enough to justify refusing to press damage buttons.



Never should have made kyuten, senei or shoha 2? Do you have a reason why, or are you just saying words? Kyuten is our AoE kenki dump the same way Shinten in our single target kenki dump. Senei is a better version of Guren for us to use in single target. Shoha 2 is an upgrade in AoE over Shoha. It would be more lazy to not add new abilities, as they come with new animations, sound effects and visual effects. Adding them sounds like a lot of effort for being lazy.

Dude my whole point is that aoe versions of single target skills are lazy design and add nothing to the job. Why do we have Kyuten when Shinten could have just been, "delivers an attack with 320 potency to 1 target and X% less to all other targets within range" to make the math work out to Kyuten damage. The extra button serves no valuable purpose other than being an extra separate button. Which is not necessarily bad, there is some value to that sort of thing. But not when you're adding buttons to an already bloated job. I redid my sam bar for EW after the Media tour and I've got like 1 free space left on my bars. We did not really need more buttons (other than ogi namakiri which I need for the joy it will bring me) and we especially didn't need something like shoha 2.

[Naizakane]

Your suggestion would have been lazier though, you'd only make one animation, one skill effect and one sound effect rather than two. Buttons like Kyuten exist because you can end up not having enough actions and feeling like you don't have much to do, and buttons like Senei exist because they're big damage buttons that you didn't have before. I'll also have 1 free slot on my three hotbars, as I'll be taking Leg Sweep off because it's not really doing anything. Shoha 2 is a welcome addition as well, it gives Meditation stacks a proper use in AoE situations rather than just pressing Shoha and accepting that there's no spender for AoE.

[Shurrikhan]

Shoha 2... gives Meditation stacks a proper use in AoE situations rather than just pressing Shoha and accepting that there's no spender for AoE.

No, Shoha 2 doesn't. Having a Meditation spender that deals AoE damage does (at least, ostensibly).

Do you see the difference?

There is absolutely no need for twice as many buttons just to add the dry-as-dust mechanic of counting whether one's enemy is singular or plural.

There are no focus target damage requirements in this game significant enough to forfeit even 30+% total damage.
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But let's get back to that "ostensible" part. Your AoE is going to balanced either with or without Meditation stacks. If you have an AoE Meditation spender, you lose a bit of AoE ppm (in the form of potency-per-use) from somewhere else.

But not having that AoE Meditation spender means that you don't lose that bit of Kyuten/Oka/Mangentsu/HyosetsuGuren ppm, or you only face its cut of the budget proportionate to 1 in n (where n is your nominal "average pull size"), because it mostly falls outside of the domain of those AoE balance decisions.

As such, you get either free or disproportionately useful focus-target damage. If free, that's just gravy by which to make sure that last enemy doesn't die much later than the rest. If it takes some part of your budget, the ability to make up for the difference in the rate of crits and/or direct hits against the luckiest enemy in the enemy pack is still more than worth it for the pack's time-to-kill.

All an AoE-capable Shoha does is trade managing enemy health pools in AoE pulls for the slight preference not to spend Meditation stacks if there's a large AoE pull coming up before your next Meditation stack gained.

:: Personally, I'd prefer a middle-ground: 50% fall-off. Fewer SAMs would complain about being "nerfed" by Shoha in AoE when they're actually not, but I'd still actually have reason to manage on which targets I use it.

[Arkdra]

Your suggestion would have been lazier though, you'd only make one animation, one skill effect and one sound effect rather than two. Buttons like Kyuten exist because you can end up not having enough actions and feeling like you don't have much to do, and buttons like Senei exist because they're big damage buttons that you didn't have before. I'll also have 1 free slot on my three hotbars, as I'll be taking Leg Sweep off because it's not really doing anything. Shoha 2 is a welcome addition as well, it gives Meditation stacks a proper use in AoE situations rather than just pressing Shoha and accepting that there's no spender for AoE.

-We're talking about mechanical laziness, the art teams work has no bearing. Art teams going to be making the same number of animations and sound effects regardless.

-I already said that the aoe alt skills exist to fill up up space on bars and be uninspired skill design to check off new expansion skill requirements. I also said that this can have value in some cases, but it doesn't for samurai. Samurai already has 35 buttons on their bars counting role actions in endwalker. If they got rid of these pointless aoe skills it would drop to 33 which is still in the top end of button bloated jobs.

-Again, like I already said, senei being big damage is meaningless. They coulda made Gurren do 1200 potency with damage dropoff to mimic gurrens aoe damage on other targets. This is just math to work out.

-shoha could have also been given the above treatment.

These buttons all suck. They aren't exciting. They don't force me to alter my play pattern or consider anything of value other than a binary of being in ST or AOE. It's button bloat. If this were, say, machinist, a job that has about 22 buttons all told, it would be whatever. Mch could probably use more buttons, even poorly designed ones like st/aoe splits. But samurai didn't.