Hissatsu: Kaiten

[localareanetwork]

1. Downtime for melee is referring to anytime you can’t be in melee range hitting the boss this can include things like AOE avoidance which means you aren’t generating kenki then

2. Party buffs are the optimal place to use kenki shintens, so good Sam players might hold onto kenki for this, you know the resource that apparently is not managed. If you are too overzealous then you can definitely be in a situation where you didn’t leave enough for kaiten

3. I listed AST cards because it’s a party buff that you’ll get between the main party buffs. You can’t plan for it but getting one is a fantastic time to use shintens. Observant sams will take advantage of this to… manage their gauge and optimize their damage. Someone playing in a way to only use shinten in a set way to always have 20 for kaiten at all times won’t be doing as much damage and those who smartly take advantage of buffs and take risks

4. There’s also the escape button. Let’s say you use the back dash to get out of a huge point blank AOE and it’s shortly before your dot, it’s very possible to to dash back in and then realize you don’t have twenty for the higanbana that you’re about to do. Good players will have spent their kenki knowing about this ahead of time and maybe had done one less shinten.

All of these scenarios and decision making we are talking about, even if you think they are easy and you never mess up on this, will no longer be happening after the patch. Saving 20 kenki for kaiten may be easy, but that is because experienced Sam players do it so much it’s second nature, it’s rare to be in that situation where you didn’t use enough, but now that thing you were keeping track, adding engagement to the job, is gone.

There are pretty much no scenarios in the raid tier where you straight up can't hit the boss for longer than a GCD, save Act 4 if you get the purple tether or during Hippo's (not) limit cut if you get screwed over and have to run across the arena (which you absolutely cannot use the backstep in) And in those scenarios you just use Enpi, which has an additional effect for generating a lot of Kenki

Your last point is a good one and something I do for Curtain Call but I feel like you barely ever actually use the backstep for that purpose all that often since complete downtime mechanics haven't really existed in any real fight since E8S.. and if you're going to bring up causal content, you can just use enpi a few times to have more than enough Kenki for movement