Quote Originally Posted by Amh_Wilzuun View Post
I had no problems with shinten before but without kaiten to balance it out it’s a very uninteresting gauge spender compared to what other melees have. Before it was your reward for properly saving for for kaiten but now it’s just ninki gauge but still balanced like there’s a third spender. With ninki you have one main spender (bhava) and a special one on a cooldown (bunshin), which also procs another attack (phantom kamaitachi). This is like what Sam now has with shinten, hissatsu: senei, and ogi. Except with Nin the gauge the two spenders are 50 gauge with a 100 cap while with Sam it’s 25 for each and the same cap. Some may not like this gameplay, but as a result Ninjas has to actively manage their gauge so it doesn’t overcap, especially during burst windows. You are also incentivized to save as much gauge as possible for TA because of the vuln up on the boss which is only for a limited time. Sam’s damage buff has uptime for the whole fight so pooling doesn’t really matter at all. You can just spam shintens at 25 kenki and it doesn’t take 200 iq to save 10 kenki for movement skills. It’s only relevant during the 2 min burst window and even then 25 meter means it’s still easier. Kenki simply requires little to no management compared to ninki. Before 6.1 the two gauges were distinct from each other but now Sam just has a brain dead version of ninja’s gauge. Please stop with this homogenization. No one liked when DRK got a worse version of inner release either.

Meanwhile RPR’s gauge spender procs a powerful positional GCDs which also fill another gauge with a different use. It’s more than just a damage oGCD.

Monks’s chakra gauge, while flawed, at least isn’t a gimped version of another gauge. It being RNG based makes it unpredictable and it also has a unique tie-in with Monk’s party buff. Having to quickly spend it to not lose chakra is questionable design but at least it’s not boring like shinten is.
As a NIN main who got into raiding with SAM in 6.0 this nails it. Without Kaiten SAM ends up feeling like other jobs without it's own fun factor. Mindlessly blowing through OCDs isn't enough to justify an entire guage.