Hissatsu: Kaiten

[Kolsykol]

Making Kaiten guarantee a crit on the next hit is a really good idea if they do so wish to go down the crit route.
However I'd hate to see Kaiten go.
- the animation
- the fact that you have to think ( when you want to use Shinten / Kyuten so that you still have enough for a Kaiten to boost a Iaijutsu, instead of spamming it or saving the resource till raid buffs )
- the fact that it gives some sort of speed to the job

If the problem is button bloat, why not:
- turn Ikishoten when used into Ogi Namikiri and then Kaeshi: Namikiri
- merge Shoha 1 and 2 into just Shoha but AoE with some fall off
- merge Guren and Senei into one, probably Senei but AoE with fall off

Shoha is the button I feel is the only one I'd consider bloat really.
At least imo the AoE animation is better too but that's just personal preference.

Especially since it's just Shoha 2, it's not a new skill altogether it's an upgrade of another skill.
It's a bit strange thematically that we'd use a '' lower rank '' skill and have it deal more primary target damage.

[Liam_Harper]

It's nothing to do with complexity, I just don't get the SAM changes in general. Why go after Kaiten and not Shoha/Shoha II or merging Senai/Guren for a start. Next, guaranteed crits are problematic because Endwalker has focused very heavily on buff synergy and alignment and some classes have buffs that affect crit rate.

This just feels like untested changes by someone who doesn't really play SAM at a high level or know how other classes work. Ever since they revealed their dungeons are QA tested by casual players, a lot of things have made sense and I get a strong impression this applies to most of the game.

[forsakee]

Bad samurai developer bad change! Nerfing and gutting the class even more sigh... I really hope this doesn't make sam complete shit I really want to talk to the developer and ask why he thinks this is remotely a good idea.

[Arkdra]

...And not Senei? Or Shoha 2? They're arguably more thoughtless than Kaiten, why not delete them first?

Oh I've been mad at those buttons since they were shown off and I think they should get culled too tbh. Samura is the most bloated job for sure and while I generally like that, they'd still be at like 32 binds if you cut shoha 2, senei, and kaiten.

[Gemina]

I absolutely understand where you are coming from, but complexity can make something feel rewarding; like solving a puzzle.

There's nothing complex about Kaiten, and your defense is, "It looks cool." They honestly could [should] bake the animation into Iaijutsu skills to eat up the cast time.

If complexity is your angle, I would be more concerned about how a lot of SAM's skillset feels horrendously tacked on. The job going into ShB played very well, with few but livable drawbacks. I wasn't the biggest fan of Tsubame, particularly due to it being a use it or lose it skill, which drives me bat-S. Same goes for Senei (I won't get into a 120s CD also consuming kenki being lame AF). Now they have x2 charge Meikyo, x2 charge Tsubame, and a follow up to Ogi, which is another use it or lose it. You'd think with all these additional charges, that SAM would be the king of sting, but severe potency adjustments saw to it that this did not happen, so now SAM has to work harder for a damage output that doesn't justify it.

In short, fun was shunned to add complexity to this job. My issue with Kaiten is it isn't even one of the current issues SAM has. Consolidating Guren and Senei and/or Shoha/Shoah II into a single skill would have been a FAR more effective way to reduce the button bloat SAM has. Losing Seigan as a third eye skill also needlessly took away from the more complex/intricate portion of SAMs kit.

In short, it took less than one expansion to turn SAM from one of my favorite jobs, to a bench warmer. That's how it goes with MMOs though, and I find it is better to invest based on a how a job plays rather than what the job is. I know that is probably the worst news for anyone who mains any particular job due to a sentimental value it might have, but that is how the winds blow in FFXIV regardless.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

There's nothing complex about Kaiten, and your defense is, "It looks cool." They honestly could [should] bake the animation into Iaijutsu skills to eat up the cast time.

If complexity is your angle, I would be more concerned about how a lot of SAM's skillset feels horrendously tacked on. The job going into ShB played very well, with few but livable drawbacks. I wasn't the biggest fan of Tsubame, particularly due to it being a use it or lose it skill, which drives me bat-S. Same goes for Senei (I won't get into a 120s CD also consuming kenki being lame AF). Now they have x2 charge Meikyo, x2 charge Tsubame, and a follow up to Ogi, which is another use it or lose it. You'd think with all these additional charges, that SAM would be the king of sting, but severe potency adjustments saw to it that this did not happen, so now SAM has to work harder for a damage output that doesn't justify it.

In short, fun was shunned to add complexity to this job. My issue with Kaiten is it isn't even one of the current issues SAM has. Consolidating Guren and Senei and/or Shoha/Shoah II into a single skill would have been a FAR more effective way to reduce the button bloat SAM has. Losing Seigan as a third eye skill also needlessly took away from the more complex/intricate portion of SAMs kit.

In short, it took less than one expansion to turn SAM from one of my favorite jobs, to a bench warmer. That's how it goes with MMOs though, and I find it is better to invest based on a how a job plays rather than what the job is. I know that is probably the worst news for anyone who mains any particular job due to a sentimental value it might have, but that is how the winds blow in FFXIV regardless.

This is basically my feeling kn it as well. I switched to DRG for the tier, after maiming SAM since it released.

[Xenon_S]

Reposting this in several places in attempt to get traction, maybe

Kaiten is not a button bloat issue in the keybinding sense

In the slides, the JP text uses the word "操作量”, which is more equivalent to action bloat, in the sense that it is an extra action to press before iaijutsus.

However, in this vein, Kaiten isn't an action bloat issue either, and removing kaiten does NOT alleviate this issue (which doesn't really exists in the first place imo)

In removing Kaiten, the kenki will just be spent on Shinten instead, which still takes up an oGCD slot, and is objectively less interesting.
Granted, I'm not saying pressing Kaiten is some 200 IQ move, but it is still an active decision to be made, whether to spam Shinten or conserve Kenki for Kaiten.
Which is funny because, going from 4.0 to 5.0, they added Tsubame Gaeshi and the gutted Hagakure to discourage Shinten spam, and now we are going back to it.

The only time Kaiten action bloat is a minor issue is when, during a 2min burst window, you are setting up Midare Setsugekka -> Kaeshi Setsugekka -> Sen GCD -> Higanbana -> Ogi Namikiri with 1 stack of meditation. In which after Higanbana you will reach 3 stack meditation, forcing a Shoha cast, and also having to Kaiten the Ogi Namikiri. Higanbana being a cast means you cannot double weave (without clipping) during that slot thus you have to introduce another GCD to weave the Kaiten, or modify the sequence of the skills.

This can be alleviated in so many ways that does not require the removal of Kaiten.
For example, letting mediation go up to 5 stacks (with Shoha being usable at 3) as to have some buffer zone. This even adds some more optimization depth as you can choose where to place your Shoha.
Or simply make it so that Ogi Namikiri does not require Kaiten, as we got the "sword twirling powerup" with Ikishoten already.

IMO, the decision to remove Kaiten is a bad solution to an irrelevant problem, and this isn't even an agrument regarding the aesthetics and class fantasy of the skill.
For all the transparency and communication the devs do, job balancing isn't part of them.

[Mapleine]

Since ShB launched the game has undergone streamlining on the hopes that it would expand the audience. I actually think they accomplished some of this fairly well, at least on non-healers, like Reaper is brilliant and Nu Summoner is a great baseline provided they don't back down on it in the future (give me more summons with more movement contrivances, this design is good for a puzzle-based combat game.)

I know this is charitable, but I'm going to be charitable to a game I like even as a long term genre vet who knows better.

I feel like they probably doubled down on things after the WoW-implosion, thinking their game design had something to do with it and went off the deep end in a few spots. Pruning like this feels misguided, especially when it goes right down to the bone - class identity.

This is why people want MMOs to have class devs/reps, which they sadly never do so there's no one to go to bat for you on the minutiae of the job. This stuff really matters when you play it for this long.

[Gemina]

Since ShB launched the game has undergone hefty streamlining on the hopes that it would expand the audience.

And I am totally on board with this so long as the decisions made with design are sensible and lead to a benefit or QoL change. For example, changing the range on gap closers so that they all are 20y is a sensible change. Adding both benefits to skills like Addle and Feint is a sensible change. Adding audio notification to gauges capping is a major QoL change.

These are the kind of things you want to see happen. You don't want to see decisions that make zero sense, while simultaneously taking away QoL aspects to the job. And the majority of SAM's changes and additions are exactly that. A myriad of questionable decisions that make you think, "WTF?" "Are they using backwards logic over there, or what?"

Again, it doesn't make any sense, to me at least. I don't do Ultimate or Savage so maybe the players involved in that content can make some sense of it.

[Laphicet]

Nu Summoner is a great baseline provided they don't back down on it in the future

Machinist and Dark Knight say hello and have come to tell you that you're not getting this.