It's clear SE doesn't care and Samurai will not be reverted in 6.2

[Mahimahi]

I've been following your comments, and this is the one that broke me.
You're an idiot

Sorry to offend you, you sound like a nice person.

[Mahimahi]

If you like more shinten spam - I don't even have words. That's possibly a worse take than the usual trollish 'deal with it.'

Kaiten was a LOVELY ability. It looked great, it felt good. There are a lot of abilities, in every class, that don't. That one did. But God, PLEASE don't let this game go to that abysmal level of easy-mode play. One ability spam is a nightmare. Just truly, deeply depressing.

I didn't like Kaiten and it's one of the reasons why I don't seriously play SAM today. And it actually ties in to how Iaijutsu feels, which I felt as though it was just a tad too long where you cannot move or else you interrupt the channeling. So to put Kaiten in front of every Iaijutsu and I almost feel like I'm watching grass grow. I admit it, I'm too used to the spammy dancing monkey nonsense of MNK to have the patience to play SAM, so removing Kaiten and just weaving in more instant casts just felt right to me.

Just a note to all, I am NOT SAYING that your preference to seeing Kaiten exist is wrong. But it feels as though many SAM fanatics don't hear enough from outside the job. Probably at the end of the day you'll all disregard my remarks, but at least I tried to provide a counter-opinion, hopefully as respectfully as possible.

[Mahimahi]

You cannot design a game like that. You can't just build a job, develop a fanbase who love the identity and gameplay it offers, then randomly take a dump on them and toss them out the window on a whim. Telling SAM mains to stop playing their job if they don't like the random changes is crazy.

Of course it would be crazy, but objectively did that happen? One ability got dropped and look at the number of rants on this forum.

Peoples preferences vary. Someone out there is going to like almost any change you can think of. That's besides the point, because you could make any random tweak you liked and someone would praise it. It's not an indicator of good design.
There are about 20 jobs, which means they can and should offer a variety of different playstyles for each player. They don't need to alter the core identity or target audience. It literally doesn't matter if you, as an individual player like it. It matters what the overall SAM fans like. Because that's who you should design each job for. Create 20 individual playstyles, then fine tune each to be the best experience for that specific playerbase.

I think that good design will stand regardless of whether anyone praises or hates it. If everyone hates a good change, does that make it bad? I can plainly see how many people disagree with the change, but disagreement doesn't mean change is bad. And yes, my agreement with the change doesn't mean that it's good either. At the end of the day, the devs, let's assume they truly have game design at heart, wants to ensure that the numbers don't go way beyond or below the average, so I take it at face value that the change is supposed to even out how drastic it is whenever one SAM can put out a string of direct crits on Iaijutsu versus another who is simply unlucky one raiding day.

Perhaps they should have found a way to keep the animation for Kaiten? Perhaps, but this sort of thing isn't new either where ability graphics get phased out along with the ability itself.

Lastly I quite disagree that it only matters what SAM fans want. ALL jobs are for ALL players. If you are good at any particular job you will forever shine at that job compared to any casual player, and making the design cater towards the 'casual' isn't going to make them play as well as someone who understands the nuances of SAM and who puts in the practice. Not unless the job was basically remade from something that was quite complicated to something quite simple, like SMN. So yeah, I'm happy that this is a minor change and it just so happens to agree with me... And I quite enjoy reading the criticisms as well, I'm sure that it has the intended effect of making the devs pause and rethink their major changes to the job in the future.

[Hezhi]

Just a note to all, I am NOT SAYING that your preference to seeing Kaiten is wrong. But it feels as though many SAM fanatics don't hear enough from outside the job. Probably at the end of the day you'll all disregard my remarks, but at least I tried to provide a counter-opinion, hopefully as respectfully as possible.

It's totally fine to disagree lol. It makes me retain some sanity thinking that these changes make sense and appeal to at least some people.
But again, I don't feel like they should change SAM to appeal more to MNK players for example, in the same way they shouldn't make other melees more like SAM. It's cool to love or hate some jobs, for example I don't like RPR that much, yet I see a TON of RPRs players who all love the job, and that's fine, I wouldn't want them to change it to appeal to me more. I believe there's inherent value in such variety!

[butchersblock]

And it actually ties in to how Iaijutsu feels, which I felt as though it was just a tad too long where you cannot move or else you interrupt the channeling. So to put Kaiten in front of every Iaijutsu and I almost feel like I'm watching grass grow.

...this is literally the very essence of Samurai.

[SaberMaxwell]

No, my belief that APM should be higher now, since you can perform 2 Shintens for every weaponskill and you don't have to save for Kaiten, so you should have the kenki for it. I would hardly call using Kaiten intelligent application- it's obvious you would save kenki for Kaiten over performing a Shinten. Now that Kaiten's buff is rolled into other areas to try to make up the potency loss, naturally you try to do Shinten as much as possible but more importantly as soon as possible, since there is no advantage to saving a full before spamming it.

It wouldn't be higher either because Kaiten factored into APM previously. You're not getting 2 shintens per what used to be kaiten, it's closer to 1 shinten per what used to be kaiten.

[Reese_Clairdale]

Just a note to all, I am NOT SAYING that your preference to seeing Kaiten is wrong. But it feels as though many SAM fanatics don't hear enough from outside the job. Probably at the end of the day you'll all disregard my remarks, but at least I tried to provide a counter-opinion, hopefully as respectfully as possible.

There's a lot of things I would change about MNK to suit my personal tastes, but as I have no high level of experience or emotional investment in the job, I don't feel compelled to share those opinions. I know beforehand that whatever I say will most likely catch a lot of flak because they don't come from a place of true understanding regarding the appeal and gameplay of MNK. And I would absolutely deserve it, especially if I entered a thread started by and for upset MNK mains. Even if the opinion is valid to SE for general feedback purposes, it would be completely worthless to the people that it affects the most.

Back to the topic of SAM, of course your remarks are going to be disregarded in this thread. We don't work for SE and we aren't trying to appeal to people who main other jobs. "Counter-opinions" in this context just translate to anything that attempts to further erode SAM identity. We are trying to get the job back on track to appeal to SAM mains. Everything I've seen written in defense of 6.1 SAM changes just seems to be apathy, misunderstanding, or bootlicking. There hasn't been a single argument produced that has made me stop and think "Hmm, you know, they've got a point. Maybe 6.1 isn't so bad for SAM." Meanwhile, SAM mains have produced multiple eloquent videos and thesis papers on why the changes are measurably destructive.

If everyone hates a good change, does that make it bad?

How do we define good change?

Let's say "Samurainess" is a measurable value that every job in the game holds. Naturally, SAM is at the the top of this chart. However if we compare the values from 6.08 to to 6.1, SAM's "Samurainess" value has decreased and is now closer to other jobs. I would say this is a bad change regardless of personal feelings. It reduces the game's diversity of playstyles even if it's a relatively small amount.

Lastly I quite disagree that it only matters what SAM fans want. ALL jobs are for ALL players

There's nothing stopping any player from learning any job. This isn't about selfishness. New players and veterans alike are affected negatively by nonsensical changes. A good chunk of SAM mains had no reason to visit the forums until recently, only to find that many people who main other jobs are very dissatisfied as well. We still have zero information on what compelled these changes besides the "action bloat" excuse. From our perspective, the only way they could have been greenlit is if people responsible for combat design didn't even bother running the 6.1 story dungeon as SAM a single time.

[CelestiCer]

I didn't like Kaiten and it's one of the reasons why I don't seriously play SAM today. And it actually ties in to how Iaijutsu feels, which I felt as though it was just a tad too long where you cannot move or else you interrupt the channeling. So to put Kaiten in front of every Iaijutsu and I almost feel like I'm watching grass grow. I admit it, I'm too used to the spammy dancing monkey nonsense of MNK to have the patience to play SAM, so removing Kaiten and just weaving in more instant casts just felt right to me.

I love the argument point, essentially being " But I am used to MNK ".

The dev's took away following essential things that we loved about Samurai.

• Resource management and spending
• Our big hits feeling like it has weight

Charging up your gauge, and casting slow skills? for big hits, really hard. Samurai gameplay. Essentially a " Melee-Caster ".

FYI, Kaiten can be casted on the move it doesn't require you to be stationary. Just the Iaijutsu. As for " spammy " and " instant casts ", the animation duration of Kaiten and Shinten barely differs. If you mean mindlessly Kenki-dump-spamming-Shinten as a good change to you... yeah... okey.

If you like the identify of Melee Caster to be a lot more Melee and a lot less Caster, i.e to feel like a MNK as you put it? " no patience " right, great? I thought MNK = MNK and SAM = SAM. But apparently to improve your FFXIV, everything is better if it just feels like MNK to specifically you. Such validness...

Next up hire this person to give SAM some chakra's and a Katana Pommel Slam animation with a Samurai Punch combo activation. Finally SAM is great, feeling just like MNK. Super.

[Ruminous]

I didn't like Kaiten and it's one of the reasons why I don't seriously play SAM today. And it actually ties in to how Iaijutsu feels, which I felt as though it was just a tad too long where you cannot move or else you interrupt the channeling. So to put Kaiten in front of every Iaijutsu and I almost feel like I'm watching grass grow. I admit it, I'm too used to the spammy dancing monkey nonsense of MNK to have the patience to play SAM, so removing Kaiten and just weaving in more instant casts just felt right to me.

Just a note to all, I am NOT SAYING that your preference to seeing Kaiten exist is wrong. But it feels as though many SAM fanatics don't hear enough from outside the job. Probably at the end of the day you'll all disregard my remarks, but at least I tried to provide a counter-opinion, hopefully as respectfully as possible.

I'm going to pick this comment to go with. But what you said ties in exactly to what I called samurai in other threads: A discount half-assed monk in its current iteration. And that is the problem samurai has, it lost its identity and assumed another one. Because it's so much like monk, why would you play the shittier version when the real version is available too? We have 5 melee roles, each plays differently from the other, with the exception of samurai now. Sure samurai still has little quirks, but it largely flows the same as monk. Practically down to a flowchart if someone wanted to make that for samurai. Forbidden chakra, roughly the same usage with only minor variation in timing due to chakras being gained differently. A blitz can just be an iaijutus, only less frequent and much stronger. Not a 1 to 1 copy but eerily similar.

Which goes to my second question: Why do you like samurai, because it...Plays like monk? If that's the case, then why not...Just play monk? This is the crux of your entire argument, and as much as offering counter opinions is nice, you're simply asking for one job to be too similar to your other job. It's hard to argue successfully from that position when others can simply point out you're simply aiming to copy another thing that already exists. We're looking for variety, not sameness. And that concept's worrying the community as a whole with the next round of "balance" patches coming up in 6.2.

[Ruminous]

And here's the follow up because again, 3000 characters is too little for a forum post -

So to argue the point of kaiten: It is not a big brain thing, but was meant to control the flow of kenki to avoid the current situation now, which is simply spamming shinten when you get the kenki for it, or gyoten because on a 1:1 ratio the kenki to damage is the same. And because of kaiten's windup, you were rewarded for patience with controlling your kenki uses and timing your midare setsugekka (you're allowed to time it slightly due to how sen as a mechanic works as well), in the event you need to do something like step away from the boss or do a mechanic that requires you to dance a little. The other thing is the damage of your iaijutsus, that do have a build up and cast time, feels good when you release it for that big damage. And now the build up is just...Gone. Stab every 7 seconds, tickle your enemy with a midare every 16 seconds roughly.

Kaiten being important to samurai's current iteration would be understating its value. You can see how the loss of it changed the flow of samurai. Think of an equivalent like this: Monk's GCD gets increased by 0.5 seconds, to give it a 2.5s GCD. It's a simple change, yes, but it literally ruins the flow of monk by just how slow it is now. Do you think that's a good change, or would you look at it and not be amused? Because that specific change would bring monk to be similar to...Dragoon, which has a very slow flow but very strict combo structure. And that change I would also not support, because monk is meant to be a brawler that overwhelms a foe with lightning-fast punches and kicks. But that change would make it much easier to play for everyone due to being able to keep the GCD rolling.

In close, samurai would need to be overhauled from the ground up to compensate for removing pieces of its kit in order for the class to "feel samurai" again. And given how the devs clearly don't understand class feeling with how they botched samurai now (as they've had to patch it to avoid a meme rotation of all things being more competitive than the standard, intended one), they clearly don't know how to do that. I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong, but I only expect disappointment from their balance devs going forward.