6.1 Kaiten Changes

[Zeiden]

I recognize many people on this forum have a differing opinion, but I would like to throw mine in the mix.

Personally I like the removal of kaiten. It did mess with my muscle memory for a while, but I did not really find kaiten particularly engaging. One thing I really enjoy due to the removal is that it feels much nicer to weave other ogcds into the rotation more comfortably.

Again the people who disagree with the removal of kaitens opinion are just as valid. I just want to put my opinion out there as well.

Thanks for the read.

[cjbeagle]

Preferences and disagreements aside, the civility is appreciated. <3

[Ransu]

Weave what exactly? Third eye? I'm not really seeing what you'd find being easier to weave into given how the current opener works.

[Ruminous]

Wow, a civil opinion. Amazing.

I actually will preface this by saying that I don't mind the removal of kaiten either. I however, do mind the manner in which it was done and what was the result of it. I can see situations in which kaiten can be janky or cause balancing issues, but the way kaiten interacted with the rest of the kit is what gave the class its flow and acted as a stop-gap measure from relentlessly spamming kenki options. Likewise, shinten being a kenki ability means it's there so kenki isn't overflowing and forcing the samurai to use kaiten on more GCD actions to prevent this. With the way the two interacted with each other, if you pull one piece out of the machine, it creates a problem in the entire machine. The same situation would happen if shinten was removed in lieu of kaiten being removed - it'd just make the rotation more janky with the need to spend more of it on kaitens before every harder hitting GCD.

However with the removal of kaiten, all we got was some potency fixes to keep the numbers in line. To me, this screams like they're desperately trying to fix a problem that they created long ago (critical hit system currently) and are patching up spots in the bigger machine to keep it working. What they need is a total rework of their system dealing with hits, critical hits, and the like. For instance, why do we have hit, direct hit, crit, direct critical hit? Four, count 'em, FOUR variations on what you can do. And those variations will rise out of control the higher potency attack is applied to it. Which samurai previously to 6.1, had a lot of high potency hits at a very high amount of frequency.

With that being said, the samurai we got now is broken, not beyond repair - it needs a tune up, a rework. Something that can keep the flavor of the class and still have room to grow. Because as it is right now, samurai has a very low skill floor and a very low skill ceiling. To me, and I can't speak for any other samurai player other than myself, I find this style of play quite dull and boring. A job class should be designed to be easy to get the basics of, yet have intricacies and failure (yes, failure) states to performing improperly. As of right now, samurai lacks that beyond very basic "keep GCD rolling, push proper combo buttons, don't let kenki overcap, don't use the same sen action". Until samurai gets that proper rework, they should undo the 6.1 changes and revert the job to what it was. It actually was complete before 6.1, and with 6.1, they broke it.

I'll add more as I think of it, but that's my current thoughts.

[xAFROx]

Well that's something we don't see too often.

While I'll agree that losing kaiten isn't the worst thing about the change, it being gone did force a change to the flow and the numbers to be shifted around in a way that's against the job's previous niche of middling combo damage that builds the resource to the high burst by flattening all the damage until they're barely any different from one another.

The change to aoe I find objectively horrid for anything that casts given that it's a circle instead of a cone now, leaving us open to cleaves and other aoes from dungeon packs just for trying to hit them with something that's as strong as a combo actions. If part of the goal was to remove tenka goken from the kit, I guess they succeeded there because it seems better to just use kyuten after aoe combo instead.

As for easier weaves, I really don't see what that could be. Not a high end player personally, so I've never used potions and other items in between buttons and I tend to keep my weaving to one oGCD between any GCD actions I perform.

Shinten is too quick and jank of an animation to rely on entirely for weaving, it still leaves a good second of nothing before the gcd rolls around to do the next action like an iaijutsu or combo ender. Third Eye shouldn't have been a problem for weaving as there's typically plenty of time between mentally registering a raid wide and pressing the button between combo actions.

Respectfully, I'm gonna have to remain in disagreement on the changes.

I hope further discourse and discussion can remain as civil as the OP has demonstrated, though.

[Reese_Clairdale]

IMO the issue was not that Kaiten was a super exciting and engaging aspect, but rather it was the last bastion of any sort of nuance with Samurai. It was the only thing that prevented mindless Shinten spam, and the only thing that linked the Kenki gauge to the Sen gauge aside from Hagakure. Now we have an even more ridiculous abundance of Kenki to use exclusively on straight oGCD damage spenders.

The removal of Kaiten absolutely makes the job more comfortable in the long run, but if we continue down this path then every DPS job's rotation will be about as comfortable as a Healer's damage rotation, which will alienate more and more of the core playerbase.

The sudden uproar I think isn't just for Samurai exclusively but rather a call for course correction regarding all jobs across all roles. Samurai certainly was not the first job hit by arbitrary changes and probably will not be the last, but it triggered a massive backlash because its design was generally seen as rock solid since 4.0, mostly receiving beneficial additions and quick patches over time.

[Eorzean_username]

I 100% support you expressing your personal opinion, and I agree you shouldn't feel bad for having a contradictory opinion. It's super-dangerous any time a discussion section becomes an echo chamber because it has a danger of leading to stagnation in design, just as much as a bunch of conflicting voices can lead to confused design and excess changes. It's a balancing act, and I think that having voices both for and against change helps to find a good middle-ground. At least, hypothetically.

For me, like others have said, it's not so much Kaiten itself as the knock-on effect — Samurai doesn't 'feel' like Samurai anymore. It was about periodic spikes of burst damage, that's just... what Samurai does, it made the Job feel distinct to me. Removing Kaiten has mushed and flattened the whole feel out and now everything feels 'off' about the fantasy. Powering up a big Iaijutsu — especially in AOE — and seeing it whimper out a damage number that's barely different than every other action in the loop feels fundamentally wrong for the Job.

But Kaiten itself also provided something more interesting than Shinten, so I'm also not amused by having even more Shinten spam in the rotation. So it's less a particular love of Kaiten itself, and more a particular dislike for having a single gauge dump that (in my opinion) looks awful, sounds awful, and doesn't feel like a fit for the Job's general aesthetic or concept.

And it feels weird in a bad way to not even have to think about Kenki management any more. Ikishoten automatically fixes Senai/Guren right on cue, and so otherwise it's just Shinten all the way down without need for consideration. That's so... just... "not Samurai".

That said, I understand your fundamental point that Kaiten itself had become a relatively rote button without much interest on its own, which is why I'm trying to emphasize that it's the cascading consequences of abruptly cutting Kaiten, rather than Kaiten in and of itself, that makes the change feel awful for me.

[Daechir]

I'm glad Kaiten is gone. It was just Button Bloat for no real reason.

[butchersblock]

I'm glad Kaiten is gone. It was just Button Bloat for no real reason.

So is Third Eye, Shinten, Kyuten, Senei, and Guren. I think we should remove all of them, it's just button bloat. I'm sure you can agree with at least that much, right?

[Ruminous]

So is Third Eye, Shinten, Kyuten, Senei, and Guren. I think we should remove all of them, it's just button bloat. I'm sure you can agree with at least that much, right?

Definitely meditate, that is just button bloat. But add shoha and shoha 2 to that list. Both are redundant and worthless. Hagakure, why's it even there now? Throw that away, kenki management is meaningless so we can do away with that now. Just keep choppin', we'll eventually get down to the meat. Oh and throw that annoying meter out too, we definitely don't need that. And no I'm not even being sarcastic about the meter, it really is pretty pointless now.