Quote Originally Posted by Ceridwen View Post
All true! I would also add that they didn't replace Kaiten with something different, or a different game play or style. They just made it LESS. People may not like, say, the Summoner changes (I actually do, but I hated it before) - but it is, at least, completely changed. This isn't a change - this is reduced, flattened, and made flavorless.
This really can't be emphasized enough. It's why I maintain that the changes were a spreadsheet-driven paint-by-numbers kind of thing instead of something actually meaningful; because the changes were entirely reductive. Nothing was added in the place of Kaiten. Instead, Kaiten was seen as "simply" a potency increase with 0 consideration of it's effect on the larger meta game of resource management and burst timing. As a result the job was made lesser than it was prior to the removal of Kaiten.

Or, to paraphrase one of the posters in the JP thread, you can't take away the stairs in someone's home and then promise to put in an elevator at some indeterminate point in the future.