SAM needs to be rolled back to 6.08, its identity is gone.

[Adeacia]

How it feels is the only reason to play it, though?

But sure, I can.

It gave us something to do with kenki, previously the only gauge in the game that was something more than "dump at 50". Now we just dump at 25.

The animation flowed perfectly from the end of the last GCD into the sheathing animation of iaijutsu.

It made our big meaty attacks bigger and meatier. What we got in return, the guaranteed crits, not only hit for LESS than non-crits did before with Kaiten, but we lose the satisfaction of getting 60-100% more damage on top if we're lucky.

It reflects the class fantasy of the job, that of the patient master swordsman who waits for the perfect moment to strike. Imagine dragoon losing their jumps.

In other words you have nothing. I don't care about how it FEELS or LOOKS, I care about what it DOES. Damage is equivalent, animations are irrelevant. Kenki is still useful. It's just pressing one less key that had the sole purpose of making your next key press hit harder, making it pointless when they could just do exactly what they did.

[YukiB]

In other words you have nothing. I don't care about how it FEELS or LOOKS, I care about what it DOES. Damage is equivalent, animations are irrelevant. Kenki is still useful. It's just pressing one less key that had the sole purpose of making your next key press hit harder, making it pointless when they could just do exactly what they did.

If you think what I outlined is nothing, then your opinion is irrelevant.

[Fable_Frost]

I've been playing my SAM a lot recently when I have time to play at all, and I haven't seen what the big deal is. Can you explain how not pressing a single key ruins the entire job? WITHOUT talking about how it "feels"

Can you honestly not find another thread here where people have explained at length the question you're asking? There are countless posts. Try reading some.

[KurenXIV]

In other words you have nothing. I don't care about how it FEELS or LOOKS, I care about what it DOES. Damage is equivalent, animations are irrelevant. Kenki is still useful. It's just pressing one less key that had the sole purpose of making your next key press hit harder, making it pointless when they could just do exactly what they did.

I assume this is just trolling but you make no point at all here.

To say abilities are pointless because they can just be removed and build in said abilities to be automatic can be applied to the point of the game just becoming a single button press. Hell what's the point of even playing at all?

The look of a job and the way it plays is extremely important. If look and feel and play style didn't matter then there'd be no need for having a plethora of jobs. We'd have 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 dps because none of that matters.

That's simply not reality.

Part of the job style of a Samurai since its introduction to XIV was always this aspect of building up to big attacks. Kaiten built upon that in a meaningful way that flows not just with visuals but with the playstyle. It was very satisfying to use and one of the more fun aspects of the job for MANY Samurai mains.

So while it seems like just 1 button the many changes placed on Samurai change how it plays and feels drastically. We now are back to lame shinten spam which looks bad and lacks any sort of punch and we do less damage on our big hits making them feel meaningless.

Sure on a spreadsheet Samurai is still "fine" but that doesn't mean people enjoy it. And I'd say that enjoyment is pretty important for a game that's supposed to be fun.

Let me put it another way. Let's say one day BLM gets updated and instead of doing long, charging hits it does super quick casts that do less damage on hit and some abilities were pruned and built in automatically. Overall they still do the same damage though. I think it's safe to say BLM players would be upset. Sure their job is functional but that's not the BLM fantasy, that's not how they should play.

I'd hope that makes sense.

[SleeeeeeepySleeeeeeep]

I've been playing my SAM a lot recently when I have time to play at all, and I haven't seen what the big deal is. Can you explain how not pressing a single key ruins the entire job? WITHOUT talking about how it "feels"

This one button adds 50% potency to the next attack.

This skill, alone with enough kenki gauge is how SAM pull out the DPS in the burst/buff window. Now the damage is just flattened across all the combo hits.

In concrete terms, Midare was 660 potency. Kaiten adds 330 potency to it. ON was 900 potency and Kaiten adds !450! potency. All that damage is now just chopped up and thrown around randomly (In conjunction with the hurdur guaranteed crit). Shinten is what? 250 potency. Instead of getting the shit right and bursting really hard, we now get to spam a mediocre 250 potency wet noodle. In exchange for all other combo fillers getting a slight 20 potency buff.

How is this an improvement of any kind? It's complete and utter trash. This is why everyone's asking for a straight reverse. The numbers are completely fucked across the board. There's no point continuing "discussion" in the current state.

As well, the complete fallacy across the board for the rationale. How does removing kaiten help anything? You just replacing that weave with a shinten, with less brain cell involved. Who does this benefit?

- People who don't know about weaving kaiten > They don't care either way

- People who do know > Okay, and whether they like it or not, they still press more or less same number of buttons.

So what, again, is the point of all of this? Nothing. All this has achieved is pissed off a good amount of people while the rest hardly cares.

[SleeeeeeepySleeeeeeep]

In other words you have nothing. I don't care about how it FEELS or LOOKS, I care about what it DOES. Damage is equivalent, animations are irrelevant. Kenki is still useful. It's just pressing one less key that had the sole purpose of making your next key press hit harder, making it pointless when they could just do exactly what they did.

And you are EXACTLY THE POINT we are talking about.

YOU

DON'T

CARE.

While the rest of us are pissed. Hurray? Round of applause? Good job SE? What you trying to argue for? It's no big deal. So it's no big deal either way to you.

[Tsiron]

I don't think I have the willpower to bench Samurai because it's literally my favourite Job in this game, but I share your disappointment with Kaiten's removal. I won't pretend I know all the numbers and etc. but for me personally it was a really satisfying skill to use in preparation for Midare Setsugekka and (in EW) Ogi Namikiri

[E-Zekiel]

This one button adds 50% potency to the next attack.

This skill, alone with enough kenki gauge is how SAM pull out the DPS in the burst/buff window. Now the damage is just flattened across all the combo hits.

In concrete terms, Midare was 660 potency. Kaiten adds 330 potency to it. ON was 900 potency and Kaiten adds !450! potency. All that damage is now just chopped up and thrown around randomly (In conjunction with the hurdur guaranteed crit). Shinten is what? 250 potency. Instead of getting the shit right and bursting really hard, we now get to spam a mediocre 250 potency wet noodle. In exchange for all other combo fillers getting a slight 20 potency buff.

How is this an improvement of any kind? It's complete and utter trash. This is why everyone's asking for a straight reverse. The numbers are completely fucked across the board. There's no point continuing "discussion" in the current state.

As well, the complete fallacy across the board for the rationale. How does removing kaiten help anything? You just replacing that weave with a shinten, with less brain cell involved. Who does this benefit?

- People who don't know about weaving kaiten > They don't care either way

- People who do know > Okay, and whether they like it or not, they still press more or less same number of buttons.

So what, again, is the point of all of this? Nothing. All this has achieved is pissed off a good amount of people while the rest hardly cares.

You pretty much said what I was gonna say to reply to the dickhead. I tip my hat to you.

I miss the feel of samurai, man, I really do. Please turn this around soon SE. I don't want this falling back to the "well now everybody's used to it so we can't go back" excuse or something a lot of games pull.

[Theodric_Thorne]

I just want to continue to touch on the variance part. These changes were supposed to be eventually rolled out for everyone, but only we got changed. I think it's time to hold off on new jobs and work on the battle system in its entirety if it's going to continue like this.

I missed this part of your post earlier and meant to comment on it yesterday. Emphasis mine. SE intends to flatten potencies for everyone? This will straight-up kill the game for me. I don't want to go back to WoW, but at least they still have damage curves. At least I think. I haven't played there in over a year. I literally downloaded the BNet launcher to my new computer a few days ago just to reserve a name for a possible future Dracthyr character, but the only reason I gave the Dragonflight expansion reveal a second glance was because SE had just demolished my favorite job. If these changes come for DRG next, I will lose the will to play XIV entirely.

I'm already frustrated enough that DRG feels like garbage at level 60 because it's missing a job gauge and an AoE rotation. If SE wants to make sweeping changes to jobs, maybe ensuring they all have some semblance of a complete kit at 50 should be the goal, not...whatever this is.

[Roxus]

I missed this part of your post earlier and meant to comment on it yesterday. Emphasis mine. SE intends to flatten potencies for everyone? This will straight-up kill the game for me. I don't want to go back to WoW, but at least they still have damage curves. At least I think. I haven't played there in over a year. I literally downloaded the BNet launcher to my new computer a few days ago just to reserve a name for a possible future Dracthyr character, but the only reason I gave the Dragonflight expansion reveal a second glance was because SE had just demolished my favorite job. If these changes come for DRG next, I will lose the will to play XIV entirely.

I'm already frustrated enough that DRG feels like garbage at level 60 because it's missing a job gauge and an AoE rotation. If SE wants to make sweeping changes to jobs, maybe ensuring they all have some semblance of a complete kit at 50 should be the goal, not...whatever this is.

DRG changes are coming in 6.2 and speculation is it will get the same treatment as SAM. Yes, their entire argument for changing SAM was to get rid of "crit variance" and the "burst meta", you know, on one job and call it fixed for the time being. We are ahead of the changes and essentially an experiment. Any other outliers where you do high numbers of damage are likely to be "addressed".