Hissatsu: Kaiten

[KokaSokaLoka]

No SAM worth their salt is getting vuln stacks on purpose for a miniscule DPS increase. It's not a problem in savage because you get damage downs, and it's in savage where the defensive matters. It's been the difference between life or death for me on several occassions. Either the SAM is super casual and doesn't press third eye, or super good and doesn't feel the need to get hit on purpose for a third eye proc. It rewards fight knowledge of where unavoidable damage comes in, especially during burst windows. Any SAM getting hit by avoidable aoes on purpose for a third eye proc is actively trolling for a single digit DPS increase in normal content

So how would you change it then? Third eye currently adds another layer to kenki management with not overcapping. Ask any DRK how they feel about TBN and the answer you'll typically get is "unfun"

Third Eye is more akin to short CDs like Divine Benison, which reward the player for proactive gameplay. If you make it dps neutral SAMs will never press it because 1. The game is janky with how it snapshots damage with the third eye proc 2. it'd be a dps loss when it doesn't break. The majority of the time there's no risk of death, so besides it being a "oh no I'm about to die, hope this saves me" button you'd effectively remove it from most SAMs hotbars

[LeonKeyh]

Not saying that I would change it and not asking that it would be changed. It's a non-issue.

I'm just saying that it's kind of bad design. It's the only instance where a non-tank is essentially rewarded for taking damage (if you want to be pedantic; Yes SGE's sting charges). I know that it's not enough of a reward for (intelligent) people to purposefully take avoidable damage and I enjoy the idea behind it (i.e. you're rewarding the person for making life easier for the healer).

I don't know. Thinking through it more I actually really like the idea of rewarding DPS for making it easier on the healer. I, honestly, didn't think of that portion of it before I posted, I just looked at it in a vacuum of "Get hit->Get reward" and felt like the damage mitigation should be enough of a reward, but then realized how generally selfish people are and how they wouldn't hit it unless they were rewarded as well. Maybe it's not as bad as I initially though.

[KokaSokaLoka]

Honestly I'm in agreement, I use second wind and bloodbath to help my healers out especially when stuff starts going awry. Though I think having those tools just be there for emergencies is fine otherwise people will just press it for the DPS gain. But I think more players should try to utilize their class to help out others

[LeonKeyh]

Honestly I'm in agreement, I use second wind and bloodbath to help my healers out especially when stuff starts going awry. Though I think having those tools just be there for emergencies is fine otherwise people will just press it for the DPS gain. But I think more players should try to utilize their class to help out others

Agree 100%; I always try to pop Second Wind/Bloodbath especially when I take avoidable damage. Playing as healer though, I rarely see that being done by DPS and I'm sure it's in no small part due to the fact that they don't get anything for it.

[KokaSokaLoka]

Reposting a short version of my main thread.

Instead of bickering about subjective measures such as aesthetics or depths of the skill, let's examine Kaiten with the scope of Action Bloat in mind using CPM as metric.

In 4.x, Samurai use Hagakure to eat Sen and spam more shinten, Kaiten is not action bloat
In 5.x, standard 1 min rotation uses 4 Kaiten per min, no compaints to Kaiten being action bloat.
In 6.0, Meikyo charge adds 1 extra Kaiten on opener, and Ogi 1 extra kaiten every 2 mins.

In ShB E12S P1, top 3 SAM had CPM of 47.6, 47.8, and 47.1
In EW P4S P2, top 3 SAM had CPM of 46.1, 45.3, and 46.1

Top P4S P2 log had 33 cast of Kaiten on 6:43 kill, that's 4.9 CPM. That's equivalent to 660 Kenki or 26.4 Shiten Casts, which is 3.93 CPM. It is barely a change, and EW SAM already has lower CPM than ShB SAM, the action bloat arugment does not stand.

No Action Bloat = No need to remove Kaiten.

I do think class flavor is an important discussion, lest we just play a game where we tpose and attack an image of a boss. But thank you for putting into hard numbers what I've been thinking. None of the cited reasons from the devs actually solve what they're trying to fix. If CPM is an issue MCH, DRK, GNB, and AST are all sweating. Every person I've talked to who thinks they'll press less buttons has completely forgotten that you'll go from pressing Kaiten to pressing Shinten. The class will be just as busy but without the kenki management because there's no punishment for using it all. It also tells us that they don't plan on adding anything back because that would add more actions, so this is a plain over-simplification of the class.

Same with the crits - if the difference between the highest direct critical hit and the regular hit is so large then the answer was to reduce the potency of midare/ogi namikiri and spread the potency around the kit. Instead they just indirectly nerfed SCH/DRG/DNC and sorta kinda BRD. It feels like they looked at SAM in a vacuum and made changes without thinking about party composition. To be honest, from what I've seen from top logs is that the difference isn't that large. When you see a difference in the amounts of 300-500 dps it's because the higher dps crit an ungodly high amount, like of course the person who crits 70% of their midares and kaeshi setsugekkas is going to do a boatload more damage than the person who crit 20%. That 70% is nigh unattainable, an outlier, and should barely be considered when balancing the class.

[KokaSokaLoka]

I do want to add an extra thought - if people are struggling to play SAM at endgame, it's more than likely because the class is incredibly fractured during the leveling process and you can't really learn it til you hit max level. In my opinion, it doesn't become a playable class til around the level 70 mark. Anything sub 50 is unplayable in terms of class identity, you just hit what gcds you have and hope it's optimal. I don't think a class that starts at level 50 and requires owning stormblood should need as much hand holding in lower levels and it'd be much healthier for the class to include its base combo from the beginning. SAM at its core is a simple class for most of the leveling process: build midare, expend midare, refresh dot. Let SAM have that from level 15, and if that breaks balance then adjust potencies via traits in the leveling process. If they can do it with MCH they can do it with SAM (and just about every other class). MCH has the foundation of its kit throughout the entire leveling process. Then as they get higher levels you can introduce more complex class mechanics such as kenki management, shoha, etc etc

So if SEs concern is that people have a hard time with the class and think removing action bloat will make it more accessible - the better solution is to help people practice the class for longer via the leveling process, because right now that just doesn't accomplish it.

[LeonKeyh]

That's definitely fair and isn't the only class that comment could be made for (BLM being the obvious, PLD being on there as well).

I feel like _a lot_ of the feeling of being "hand holding" at those lower levels are for the reason you hit on; balance. It's easier to balance the class by just giving them an anemic kit at lower levels rather than potency adjustments with traits every X levels that increase those potencies.

I think people struggling at endgame is due to the game lacking things that truly foster player skill.

I'm not sure MCH is a good example of something that is "complete" though; <=50, you're using reassemble on your third combo action since Hot Shot is lower potency than it. You don't have Autocrossbow yet, you don't have the big attack CDs that MCH's core identity really is. I'd say maybe if Hotshot was actually higher potency than the third combo action that you might be able to say that the "core" of "Reassemble big cooldown when they're available + Build heat for hypercharge + use battery whenever you have it" would be there, but I'm not sure that first one is really there at lower levels. Again, IMO.

[GrizzlyTank]

Playing with controller and have had zero issues with kaiten.

What does make me really dislike samurai on the other hand, is the castbar for their finisher.
It just breaks their flow.

[Ransu]

Playing with controller and have had zero issues with kaiten.

What does make me really dislike samurai on the other hand, is the castbar for their finisher.
It just breaks their flow.

It honestly doesn't and they'd have to lower potency significantly if those skills didn't have a cast time.

[LeonKeyh]

Cast bar definitely isn't a problem and doesn't at all break up the flow. They don't really have a ton of GCDs they need to get out that you're losing out on from the cast.

It "feels" good for sure.

I, too, play with controller though and Kaiten isn't a problem. I feel like they just see a huge difference between the bottom of the barrel (No Kaiten + No crit Midare) and the best outcome (Kaiten + Crit Midare) and are making 2 separate changes to bring those together. "Fixing" the issue where people don't understand the proper use of Kaiten as well as "fixing" the randomness of the damage.

I also fear, like so many other people, that this is just the newest victim of the tidal wave of simplification (seems like my job, DRG is next) which is seemingly targeting jobs at random given the fact that there are so many "worse" jobs in terms of APM. Maybe they just don't have a good solution for those jobs though.