SAM players are quitting

[Kabooa]

I'd be down to debate some nuance - let's hear your thoughts. fwiw I agree that it's almost entirely an issue of feel, though I do maintain that the complete removal of kenki management goes beyond feel.

This is actually my biggest problem with the changes to samurai - DPS is my preferred role and melee specifically over ranged, and samurai was the only melee I really enjoyed. I'm lukewarm at best towards most kits, so trying to replace samurai as my main has been more or less futile.

Out of curiosity, what is your favorite kit? (and why, if you care to elaborate)

It varies depending on the encounter. Less demanding encounters I will generally pick something I'm more unfamiliar with, such as Dragoon, Bard, or in some cases, Dark Knight.

Dragoon has long been a class that has been at odds with how my brain works, so attempting to get better at it is an attempt at expanding my play capability. As someone who tries to work out what works blind, the multiple timers, buffs, and now First Mind present more or less a puzzle. Simply put, Dragoon has one of the more robust OGCD kits. More classes need to be built like them if their GCD kits stay as stale as they are.

Bard is the polar opposite of what I usually play, in that it is more proc based, and more about syncing up to create powerful party windows - The actual kit itself I don't have any attachment to, but again, it's about the playstyle and doing something different. I found the appeal here tends to be more about lining up with the fight tempo, finding where the windows are to be created, and then pushing them out - It's an odd and ethereal sense that, yes, I did just line up the Radiant, battle voice window, hit everyone, and have just entered my own burst phase, but whether or not it bears fruit you'll never know without some outside help. It's weird. It's not deterministic like other jobs, and you'll never know if anyone else was actively watching for your buffs to dump in, outside of organized groups.

Despite all the ups and downs Dark Knight has had over the years, there's some childish glee about the burst window being this frenzy of every single button combined with mixing in the tank busters. It's how Stormblood Machinist used to function in some ways - Extremely high peaks of activity, and then a cooldown period in between. Nostalgia perhaps?

There are encounters that are run in this seemingly flawless beat, and to that I'll say Black Mage, but any of the classes that prefer to be stationary work here (So...Black Mage and the Healers), because lining up with this tempo creates so of the most enjoyable feedback loops once you find that rhythm. These encounters include Kefka (o8s), Shiva (e8s), and Titan (E4s). There's just enough randomness to them that you can't just do a static rotation, and the proc/swap nature of Black Mage lined up basically perfectly with them in a Call/Response method. The enemy has called, and now you respond with your toolkit to maintain your spells.

I found the same to be true specifically for Gunbreaker and E12s, and if Continuation ever did get the 6y treatment, I'm glad I got to do E12s while it was at 3y. The restriction of Gnashing Fang and Continuation added a level of tension that I frankly don't think any of the other tanks would provide there.

Apologies for going out of order, but I imagine that it helps for context - I play a lot of things in a lot of content.

I'd be down to debate some nuance - let's hear your thoughts. fwiw I agree that it's almost entirely an issue of feel, though I do maintain that the complete removal of kenki management goes beyond feel.

So, starting with Kenki - I think it'd actually be quite difficult to bottom out on Kenki that you can't use Kaiten and thus create meaningful management. It's a scenario that would take some active effort to do so, but I'll also admit that perhaps I think too highly of players in the game. Samurai is very close to having Paladin's "MP management", which is to say, they are given so much Kenki that not having the bare amounts to perform Kaiten requires quite a few conditionals that both the playerbase and the Developer team provide discouragement from achieving.

First, lets talk about when Kaiten is first earned. Your Kenki economy at this time is frugal, at best. You are taught, quite cleanly, that you get just enough Kenki to use kaiten about once per full Sen acquirement. Even when you gain more Kenki abilities this does not change. The leveling process teaches (or rather, should teach) that Kenki is for Kaiten and Kaiten is for Iaijutsu. This is the first thing you learn.

When you acquire your Kenki dump, Shinten, is when your economy grows, but the majority of your early experience in Samurai was formulating this basic connection - Kenki is for Kaiten for Iaijutsu. With Guren, you're given an immensely powerful OGCD that costs Kenki, and it is here that the Developer's lessons end, when they are done teaching your basic Kenki priority. Shinten < Kaiten Sword Draw < Big Kenki Damager.

In short, when you hit 70 and move on, you've been taught your priority, you've been taught to be frugal with your Kenki, and you've been taught to dump your excess. Moving forward, with Ikishoten, your Kenki for the burst window is basically solved. Hit Ikishoten, Senei, Kaiten Ogi. Your basic Kenki economy has been increased while overall kenki costs have been reduced (Big hits are 25 instead of 50) - Any Hakaze combo line generates 20 for Kaiten (Where as prior Yukikaze was 15 total, instead of 5 + 15), and you've already been trained not to haphazardly shinten, or at least should have been, if you've been studying your blade from the Developers before we even move into player driven rotations.

All of this combined is frankly why the Kenki management argument kind of falls short - Because the Priority the player is taught compared to the priority we now have isn't really all that different. You just use the dump more. You didn't exactly have to think about Kenki management before, because both Developer and Player encouragement was against wanton Shinten dumps. That's the dissonance I think is causing the most unpleasant feeling with a long time Samurai player.

It's a change in the direct opposite of what they've been, not so subtlety, taught this entire time. You shouldn't be using Shinten this much - Not because it's wrong, but because that's what you were taught. According to the priority, it's the correct answer. It just doesn't feel right, the same way circling "C" for twenty questions in a row on a multiple choice test doesn't feel right.

Is it "Better"? No. Is it "Worse"? Eh, technically yeah. If we work on a 10 scale, then IMO Kaiten was something like a .5 of the value to Samurai. I think a new player can level Samurai right now and frankly won't see a hole, especially if they've tried anything else. It'd still be a relatively smooth and well made job. They don't have the prior experience clashing to create that dissonance.

[Quor]

So, starting with Kenki - I think it'd actually be quite difficult to bottom out on Kenki that you can't use Kaiten and thus create meaningful management. It's a scenario that would take some active effort to do so, but I'll also admit that perhaps I think too highly of players in the game. Samurai is very close to having Paladin's "MP management", which is to say, they are given so much Kenki that not having the bare amounts to perform Kaiten requires quite a few conditionals that both the playerbase and the Developer team provide discouragement from achieving.

So an oft-overlooked aspect of the Kaiten argument, particularly here, is that Kasha and Gekko combos now generate a flat 20 Kenki regardless of positional. This was a small change that snuck in with the EW release and it didn't accrue much in the way of fanfare; after all, if you did things "correctly" then you would always have the maximum amount of Kenki available, yes?

Except this was simply another brick in the wall, although we didn't know it to be such at the time. Back when there was a variable amount of Kenki generated (50, 55 or 60 per full 8 GCD combo cycle) you had to factor this into the equation of your gameplay. You no longer were going to be guaranteed 60 Kenki per cycle. Yes, True North helped, and yes hitting the positionals themselves wasn't hard for the most part, but there were still fights that pushed you into bad spots occasionally where you would be forced to either eat 5-10 less Kenki gain or else alter your GCD flow (such as by using a Yuki+Haga GCD shift at an earlier time than you normally would).

At the time that the positional requirements got shifted from increased Kenki gain to the current state of boosted potency and a flat 10 Kenki, well, it didn't make much of a difference. Because, again, it was easy enough to rationalize "well you should always be hitting your positionals" as an excuse. Now, with the removal of Kaiten - and with the context of the apparent future of job design in this game - it's clear that the Kasha/Gekko changes weren't simply a pure "accessibility" change, but rather were the first step to the ultimate destruction of Kenki as a resource to be managed. You've no doubt seen the many comments now about how Kenki is functionally useless. Many people have rightly referred to Kenki as the Shinten Gauge now, while weaving Gyoten into the opener and sometimes even the burst window is now considered optimal due to the loss of Kaiten and the ppK nerfs Shinten received.

All of this ties into the "PLD" MP management comparison you made. But that isn't a justification for removing Kaiten or otherwise keeping the current changes; it's a justification for reverting the changes and bringing back Kenki management as a real aspect of the job, up to and including the reversion of Kasha and Gekko Kenki positional gains and the cost reduction on Senei/Guren. As it stands now, yes, Kaiten was much more braindead than it was in ShB and SB, but it still did at least require at least one brain cell to use correctly. The reason why it was so braindead was because SE changed things to make it more braindead. Whereas before you had to always keep one eye on your Kenki gauge and make on-the-fly decisions based on how a fight went (icicles in E12s, Emerald Weapon/Ruby Weapon EX's, SoS EX 5 elements, Light Rampant in E8s, to name a few) SE removed a big chunk of that with the 6.0 change. Then they removed what was left of it with 6.1.

Sure, a new player can probably pick up SAM 6.1 and play it and notice any problems, but you can make a comparison there about a lot of things. I can go to McDonald's and get a Big Mac, and while it'll satisfy my hunger it's nowhere near as good as a nice AAA grade Angus burger cooked over an open flame. SAM could be so much better. It WAS so much better. Making excuses for the current state of SAM isn't the way to go; this needs to be a moment of sea change. This needs to be the point where the players say to the devs that "easy" design for them shouldn't be the governing principle. Of course as time goes by there will be problems with iterating on jobs but that's not a reason to gut something that was fun, engaging and performed perfectly fine! Laziness is never an excuse, and I call out as much in a post I made here:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ZY.-Here-s-why

Point being there are so many people, new posters to the forums, who have never posted here before, and they are pissed about the changes. JP has had more feedback and forum activity in the past month regarding this change (and many 6.1 changes in general) than they had in the entirety of 4.0 to 6.0. This can be a turning point where we, as the players, tell the devs that not only were the 6.1 changes bad but that the general direction of job balance needs to be changed too. Not just for SAM, not just for NIN, but for MCH and SMN and tanks and healers too. I have no delusions about some kind of magical Heavensward revival or something, but the solution for a player who wants engaging gameplay should not be "go play ultimate." Perhaps that quote was taken out of context but the core gist of what underlies it still remains; jobs need to be engaging in-and-of themselves regardless of the difficulty behind any content you're doing. A player shouldn't need to seek out harder fights to feel engaged by their job as the jobs should be engaging enough at a core level.

[butchersblock]

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Excellently put, couldn't have said it better. Fully agreed on everything you detailed in your reply.

[cjbeagle]

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Thanks for humoring me on kit preference - it's good to hear that it varies, but it's also interesting to hear that bard is among your selection - it's one of the jobs I haven't maxed out yet, so that piques my interest.

As for kenki and how you're taught to use it, its priority hierarchy, etc., I have nothing to argue against in how you portrayed the onboarding as a samurai levels, and I think your depiction is a credit to the devs.

I think it'd actually be quite difficult to bottom out on Kenki that you can't use Kaiten and thus create meaningful management. It's a scenario that would take some active effort to do so, but I'll also admit that perhaps I think too highly of players in the game.

I don't mean to disparage players, but I think you might indeed be giving too much credit - there are plenty of people who will smash Shinten the moment they see it light up literally because it lit up. A dps OCGD is available? Using it. We've covered the idea that Kaiten is a non-choice, as is when to use it, but it's worth noting that there's another non-choice that players need to pass before Kaiten's is even presented, which is the non-choice to NOT use Shinten when you're about to reach your desired sen status. Players who are used to pooling resources will have no problem with this, but for those who aren't, this is a new point of mastery akin to checking your shots in an FPS that has killable friendly units. A lot of players already have experience with that and it won't slow them down for a moment, but for some players, it'll be something they haven't dealt with before. Just because it's trivial to most of us doesn't mean it can be ignored - it just means it's a point of mastery that we've already conquered. That said, even for players who this comes naturally to, kenki "management", while trivial, still required you to pay attention to the relationship between your sen and your kenki - without Kaiten there's no reason to - you can literally ignore your kenki and just hit Shinten whenever you fancy, the only exception being to pool in preparation for a burst window, and even that basically doesn't matter - an extra Shinten or two benefiting from burst window buffs is hardly noteworthy, and since Ikishoten and Senei have the same cooldown, an extra Shinten or two benefiting from buffs is all the pooling does amount to.

As for the priority hierarchy - it was simple, but it existed, and now it doesn't. It provided a non-choice on a regular basis throughout the samurai's rotation - with Kaiten removed, the non-choices are removed as well. We agree that these were non-choices, but I think it's important to acknowledge that non-choice is still better than literally no choice. Picking between A and B constantly when you know the right answer is still much more engaging than just mashing A because it's the only button you have. Also, I would argue that it's also only a non-choice once the right and wrong picks are known - until then it's a meaningful choice that serves as a point of mastery. Sure, there's still a right and wrong answer, but if you don't know which is which, it puts the onus on the player to figure that out. Some players will just read the toolips and solve it that way - others seem completely unwilling to read tooltips and will figure it out through experimentation - others...won't figure it out...ever, or if they do, actively ignore what they know. Regardless, point being that options are better than no options even if there isn't a meaningful choice involved.

I like the all-"C" analogy, but you still reference it in terms of the priority hierarchy, but that hierarchy no longer exists - C is the only option - it isn't the right answer, it's the only answer, and there's no longer a question being asked of you. The test is blank and you're just selecting C all the way down because A, B and D aren't even there. Again, non-choices are still much better than literally no choices, not only for engagement, but for variety sake as well.

Since you're keen to chat nuance, I'd like to bring up cadence. One of the "feel" points that Kaiten provided was a guaranteed non-damaging OGCD prior to a hardcast. I imagine this active downbeat was an intentional part of the original design and I'd argue that Iaijutsu is diminished without it. Samurai's tempo is one of the things that made it unique - tons of kits have tons of OGCDs, but most of them aren't actually part of the rotation - they're just extra things to do while also doing your rotation, but with samurai, Kaiten was actually part of the rotation, and without it, it's just like the other jobs in that regard.

If working on a 10 scale, I'd put Kaiten at something like a 3. I find it interesting that we have such drastically different evaluations of its importance despite the fact that we seem to agree on all the fundamentals. I suspect that the reason is that you're extremely adept at the game and are presumably playing with others who are as well. I, on the other hand, am relatively new to the game, and primarily play with people who are even newer than I am, and who aren't exactly adept. Some of the things that you see as trivial and complete non-issues are the same things I'm having to actively coach people on.

Agreements and disagreements aside, thank you for your response - it's nice to see someone engage in good-faith debate.

[Kabooa]

Agreements and disagreements aside, thank you for your response - it's nice to see someone engage in good faith debate.

Likewise. For what little it's worth, I am rooting for the lot of ya.

Just forgive the little jabs here and there - they aren't personal, I assure you.