Comprehensive Guide to the Kaiten and 6.1 SAM rework

[ForsakenRoe]

but would be the old DRK's Dark Arts spamm, that everybody hated with a burning passion.

And could have been addressed, like Dark Arts, in several ways that were not just 'remove it entirely with no replacement'. Also, Dark Arts is just replaced by Edge spam now, no? We wanted to dump DA in raidbuffs then, and we want to dump Edge in raidbuffs now, so it's not exactly like much changed

As for this:

When you really look at Kenki historically, the spread was really:

• 10 — Gap-closers which were previously self-flagellating to use, and avoided as much as feasible. The Celestial Revolution of Kenki spends.

• 15 — Essentially a gimmick.

• 20 — The actual floor of your gauge, essentially always-available, and relatively-easy to recover from mild misplays due to its low cost, unless you really, truly botched something.

• 25 — The vast majority of your Kenki spends, since the Job's inception.

• 50 — Your big hefty burst, which previously made sense to justify banking and building to this extra cost.

The only parts I agree with is 50 and 25. There were times when you'd want to purposely spend yourself under the 'safety net' of 20, knowing you'd get back to 20 before KaitenTime, and that is what we call skill expression. 15 and Seigan was literally the skill ceiling of the class, knowing how to use that effectively was what seperated the good from the great. Merciful Eyes was the 'gimmick'. And the gap closers were useful if they gained you a GCD (in), and could be used to create a 'filler GCD' in the SHB onwards when the 60s loop enforced by Tsubame came around (dash out). Now I'm not good at SAM and haven't been ever since SB ended, but even I can see that Kaiten, Seigan, Gyo/Yaten all had their places

[Eorzean_username]

There were times when you'd want to purposely spend yourself under the 'safety net' of 20, knowing you'd get back to 20 before KaitenTime, and that is what we call skill expression.

I think that the effect of this is being overexaggerated, as well as the reason to even do it.

I'm assuming you're referring to something like getting an AST card, or burst windows, or openers, where you could push in an extra Shinten or a Seigan if you'd build up enough Kenki before your next Iai (and could guarantee the positional hits to do so).

And sure — but that is, broadly-speaking, fairly niche, and basically irrelevant outside of buff windows (ie, in a hypothetical "cursed comp" with no party support, it would make close-to-zero difference whether you performed Kaiten-budget gymnastics or not).

Meaning that, broadly-speaking, this factor added relatively-little to the Job experience, especially internally; outside burst windows, you would have a small eternity to build back up that pittance of Kenki before your next mandatory Meikyo, especially given the option to slush-up 5-10 Kenki by creeping your combo past a full Sen stack.

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You need to understand that I am not assessing this from the perspective of, for example, a Balance Discord Job Mentor — the kind of players who will hunt down and sniff out every possible tiny adjustment, because it just brings them satisfaction to do so.

I'm framing why, to a developer, certain elements seem trivial or unimportant when considering what to preserve and what to weed-out at a broader design level.

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And the gap closers were useful if they gained you a GCD (in), and could be used to create a 'filler GCD' in the SHB onwards when the 60s loop enforced by Tsubame came around (dash out).

Yes, you've described why gap closers are useful — not why their gauge cost was relevant or interesting.

And that's just a general property of DPS-affecting gap-closers across all Jobs — "if doing something suboptimal with this will increase your uptime and be a larger proportional gain, then do it". The consideration is more-or-less the same, whether the loss is from not spending all charges inside burst, or the loss is from bleeding gauge off suboptimally.

I don't think that this indicates anything interesting in specific about its relation to Kenki as a system, and like Onslaught for WAR, it actually resulted in stubborn and counterintuitive behavior — ie, while everyone else is just using their gap-closers to gap-close, you're technically-pressured to find a way not to (or just eating a loss, in which case the Gauge cost is not particularly-interesting, because it 'just happens').

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As for Yatenpi, what makes that interesting is not the Gauge cost, which is essentially neutralised anyway, but rather how it can jigsaw into your loop, or the rare cases like Shadowkeeper where it can allow you to razor-edge a GCD before some obnoxiously-massive AOE (or etc).

If you removed the Gauge cost entirely, ~nothing would change about it in practice.

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15 and Seigan was literally the skill ceiling of the class, knowing how to use that effectively was what seperated the good from the great.

Unless I am severely-misremembering something, the difference between hitting every possible Seigan and not failed to gain you much beyond what random variance could.

That a very, very small portion of people could make good(?) use of it to try to bank more Kenki going into buffs, and/or squeeze a little more Kenki into buff windows, and/or gain a chunkier boost through a combination of buffstacking and crit variance, was surely satisfying for them — but in terms of what it broadly-added to the Job's Gauge system, I maintain that it was basically a gimmick, and maximising its usage was usually akin to a self-affixed merit-badge rather than any meaningful benefit.

In fact, the removal of Seigan and the shift to raw Kenki from Third Eye actually made proactive awareness of incoming damage both much more significant, and much more rewarding.

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My points here are not trying to say, "Ha ha, see, varying Gauge costs are always pointless!"

It's: "The Kenki system and its costs were honestly never very well-explored nor realised, a lot of it is being viewed retroactively with nostalgia, and that's probably why the SE devs went on a tear ripping most of it out".

[Roxus]

I think that the effect of this is being overexaggerated, as well as the reason to even do it.

I'm assuming you're referring to something like getting an AST card, or burst windows, or openers, where you could push in an extra Shinten or a Seigan if you'd build up enough Kenki before your next Iai (and could guarantee the positional hits to do so).

And sure — but that is, broadly-speaking, fairly niche, and basically irrelevant outside of buff windows (ie, in a hypothetical "cursed comp" with no party support, it would make close-to-zero difference whether you performed Kaiten-budget gymnastics or not).

Meaning that, broadly-speaking, this factor added relatively-little to the Job experience, especially internally; outside burst windows, you would have a small eternity to build back up that pittance of Kenki before your next mandatory Meikyo, especially given the option to slush-up 5-10 Kenki by creeping your combo past a full Sen stack.

I'm sorry but I take issue with the way you are discussing this with other people, because from other threads I've seen you have only been throwing assumptions as fact while trying to downplay points. No, it wasn't exaggerated and there are clear reasons to push yourself below 20 at times. I'd have to think a bit more carefully when I'm not getting ready for bed but off the top of my head you have boss jumps, seigan correction, kb/jump cancels.

Unless I am severely-misremembering something, the difference between hitting every possible Seigan and not failed to gain you much beyond what random variance could.

That a very, very small portion of people could make good(?) use of it to try to bank more Kenki going into buffs, and/or squeeze a little more Kenki into buff windows, and/or gain a chunkier boost through a combination of buffstacking and crit variance, was surely satisfying for them — but in terms of what it broadly-added to the Job's Gauge system, I maintain that it was basically a gimmick, and maximising its usage was usually akin to a self-affixed merit-badge rather than any meaningful benefit.

In fact, the removal of Seigan and the shift to raw Kenki from Third Eye actually made proactive awareness of incoming damage both much more significant, and much more rewarding.

You are misremembering. If you could theoretically hit every Seigan you would gain roughly 16-18% over what Shinten would have gotten you.

You don't need to trivialize who utilized the mechanic to further your point. Seigan was never to save more resources for buffs, it was a reward for using Third Eye correctly throughout the course of the fight.

The Third Eye change is a straight increase comparing it to Seigan, but it essentially amounts to the same thing Kaiten changes did. That and if you weren't very good at using it before, now it is a clear loss.

I'm also going to address one thing I saw in another thread from you. Shinten was never this bad even during Hagakure days, exactly because Seigan existed and Kaiten was still there when you wanted to use Iaijutsu. Let's not forget Guren was 50 back then as well. If you question credibility you can look me up when I was actually playing if it matters. I never tried maintaining my positions but I was one of the first to invent SS tiers and have always tried to optimize for every fight.

[Eorzean_username]

Shinten/Seigan digressions

You are misremembering. If you could theoretically hit every Seigan you would gain roughly 16-18% over what Shinten would have gotten you.

Can you translate this into an actual % Total Damage or % Total DPS difference over an X minute encounter, rather than just the difference between Shinten and Seigan in a vacuum?

And then compare "theoretical every Seigan" to "actual average number of Seigans per encounter from a skilled Samurai" ?

Then further break it down by "actual average number of Seigans used by, say, 75% of the entire Samurai player population (rather than just 95+ Savage parses)" ?

...I'm not trying to be a git — I'm trying to clarify why Seigan was seen as expendable from a development perspective.

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You don't need to trivialize who utilized the mechanic to further your point.

You're imagining an agenda that isn't there.

Pointing out that very few people really interacted with a mechanic in a meaningful way does not trivialise their existence — it's just pointing out that the broader relevance of the action was dubious at best.

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Seigan was never to save more resources for buffs, it was a reward for using Third Eye correctly throughout the course of the fight.

Yes, and it was a very underwhelming reward that most players could completely-ignore and never notice any tangible difference.

As well, you absolutely could use Seigan to carry more Kenki into buffs because you only needed to drop 15 instead of the full 25 from Shinten.

Obviously this as niche as any other micro-optimisation like that, but for example, you could hypothetically end up in a situation where spending 25 to avoid overcapping would then have a cascading effect of just-missing having enough gauge for another Shinten under buffs, whereas using Seigan to bleed instead would provide the extra bit you needed to catch the window.

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The Third Eye change is a straight increase comparing it to Seigan, but it essentially amounts to the same thing Kaiten changes did.

Yes, but that's a problem with Shinten and overall design, not the generation of Kenki itself.

ie: The Third Eye change to generate Gauge directly is "neutral", and not directly related in any way to the Gauge itself being poorly-utilised.

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That and if you weren't very good at using it before, now it is a clear loss.

Yes, but that was in fact exactly the point I was making.

Someone said Seigan was "skill expression", but removing Seigan could be argued to have actually increased the gap of "skill expression" by putting much more incentive on snagging (and weaving) as many Third Eye hits as possible.

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I'm also going to address one thing I saw in another thread from you. Shinten was never this bad even during Hagakure days, exactly because Seigan existed and Kaiten was still there when you wanted to use Iaijutsu. Let's not forget Guren was 50 back then as well.

Okay, but at no point have I ever claimed that the current state of Samurai is exactly equivalent to a prior state, and if it seems that way, it's a misinterpretation of my intent.

I've simply said that (in my opinion) Shinten has always been a pox upon the Samurai Job, that Shinten spam has always been a design issue, and that I think Shinten's design is and always has been the real problem / boogeyman afflicting the Kenki gauge.

That the issue has become more exaggerated now is obviously true, but what I was saying is that "it was always an issue, now it's just been magnified even further".

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If you question credibility you can look me up when I was actually playing if it matters. I never tried maintaining my positions but I was one of the first to invent SS tiers and have always tried to optimize for every fight.

I know some posters are obsessed with "street cred", but I don't personally think that you need to flash a license in order to disagree with me or present your opinion on any topic.

I don't personally care if you were World First DSR Samurai or you've only ever used Samurai in Expert Roulette, I'll consider whatever you have to say at face-value because I'm not laboring under the idea that skill at execution automatically translates to good design sense, nor vice-versa.

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No, it wasn't exaggerated and there are clear reasons to push yourself below 20 at times. I'd have to think a bit more carefully when I'm not getting ready for bed but off the top of my head you have boss jumps, seigan correction, kb/jump cancels.

I think you're just not understanding what I actually mean by "exaggerated" in this case.

I'm not saying "Kaiten never did anything productive for anyone, ever", I'm saying that what Kaiten added is being somewhat-overblown in retrospect, especially from a broader design perspective.

Unless a Job feature does literally nothing (which would be strange), there will always be situations in which it can actually be useful — I'm sure that someone, somewhere, somehow, found a productive use for 4.00 Lilies or the current Plunge CD reduction from Unmend.

Likewise, some segment of a Job's players will always find ways to push or squeeze as much as possible out of every option available to them, no matter how small. These players tend to appreciate small details or nuances that the broader playerbase is either oblivious to, or uninterested in.

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So I'm not arguing that Kaiten actually did or provided such refinements or nuances to more detail-oriented Samurai players.

What I'm saying is "exaggerated" is how significant the broader effect of that was on Samurai gameplay, in general, and for very likely "most" players approaching the Job.

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I think there's also some confusion that, just because I'm not on my knees daily, chanting to an idol of the Kaiten icon in my basement, I'm automatically advocating for or supporting the removal of Kaiten.

To clarify, then:

I think that the entire flow of Samurai and Iaijutsu was very clearly designed with the extra "beat" of Kaiten being part of it.

Transitioning from Sen generation straight to Iaijutsu feels "awkward", like when a video buffers wrong and suddenly skips a frame; Iaijutsu somehow feels too "blunt" and "naked" without the "prelude" of Kaiten setting it up.

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Furthermore, whether it was rational or not, spending 20 Kenki to empower Iaijutsu simply "felt good" to me from a play-experience perspective.

But then, I'm someone who also enjoyed HW Dark Arts and, in general, prefers spending Gauge on functional tools rather than direct Potency vomit, so I'm probably coming from a biased perspective here.

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Also, while this is technically completely off-topic, I can't resist mentioning how utterly naff circular Tenka feels, and how godsawful it looks with the Tenka animation glued into a circle.

...Actually, while I'm here, the drop in Iaijutsu potencies to now feel like slapping the target with a pool-noodle also completely-undermined the entire "slow, steady buildup → debilitating strike" that is inherently supposed to characterise the Samurai archetype and which XIV SAM previously captured (sans Shinten spam).

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...So what I'm actually trying to point out is not that I personally think the 6.10 SAM changes were good (because I do not), but that there were actual reasons behind the changes from a development perspective — it wasn't as arbitrary, impulsive, random, or [insult to developers's intelligence] as I keep seeing thrown-around here.

ie: Kaiten was specifically-targeted because, from a broader design evaluation, too many points added up against it, and too few in its favor.

Is designing by detached pro/con lists in an Excel spreadsheet shared with the local office intranet "healthy"?

Maybe not, but you can still see that there was a clear process involved in why Kaiten died and other actions didn't.

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That Kaiten has subsequently remained MIA, with radio-silence regarding it, is probably an indicator that the developers don't see the removal as having had serious repercussions, and may even consider the effect positive, based on their own overall data / evaluation.

This actually shouldn't be too surprising, when you consider that Samurai participation numbers remain quite high — in fact, even the most rabid Kaiten advocate around here continues to play Samurai.

Which is... Let's say that Starbucks removed an ingredient that you liked.

And every day, as you buy your morning coffee, you make sure to strongly-complain to your barista about how much you liked the flavor of that removed ingredient.

Meanwhile, up at Starbucks Galactic Headquarters on the moon, Starbucks Corporate doesn't hear your complaints to the barista — they just see that you keep spending the exact same money that you've always spent, and determine that changing the ingredient had no actual negative effect.

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From the developer perspective, the fact that everyone keeps playing Samurai even while some players complain about Kaiten means that the Kaiten change couldn't have been too bad, since there was no mass exodus from the Job.

In fact, the continued high play rates would probably be seen as reinforcement that they actually made a good choice.

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Is a philosophy of, "Well, it looks like no one quit, so it's probably fine", actually a good way to design?

Maybe not.

But from the designer perspective, who cares?

You're still buying the product, you're still playing the Job, and so are a lot of other people.

Why should they worry about it?

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Don't misinterpret this as me trying to invalidate your personal complaints about how your own gamefeel was genuinely damaged by removing Kaiten.

I don't think that you can possibly be "wrong" for making an honest claim about what you did or didn't like about a Job, and I don't personally think that's irrelevant feedback.

So I'm not trying to antagonise you — I'm trying to be blunt about why things happened, and why they are probably going to continue happening.

I think that refusing to understand why an action like Kaiten is seen as expendable under the current design philosophy is only going to cause you to become increasingly-frustrated over time, and then be blindsided by even more changes in the future.

[Shurrikhan]

I think you're just not understanding what I actually mean by "exaggerated" in this case.

I'm not saying "Kaiten never did anything productive for anyone, ever", I'm saying that what Kaiten added is being somewhat-overblown in retrospect, especially from a broader design perspective.

And I think discourse is getting confused on this particular tack. I'm not seeing many refuting that Kaiten did relatively little, noncontextually, in itself; rather, their interest seems to be on its outsized contribution towards a particular gestalt: Samurai's Kenki gauge and its usage, which was crippled almost irredeemably by losing that keystone component. It was a very simple mechanic that contextually did a lot of good.

(Yes, other losses had already hurt it badly, but losing that base margining, even if less noticeable after Yukikaze's being Slashing debuff being turned into further gauge generation, means there's virtually no baseline to build from anymore to make it anything more than a Shinten or Double-Shinten counter +/- the 10 gauge of a Gyoten or Third Eye.)

Kaiten was specifically-targeted because, from a broader design evaluation, too many points added up against it, and too few in its favor.

Which seems a problematic approach if not assessing what a given mechanic may contribute outside of its own internal nuances, etc., and addressing the shortfall that would be caused by the removal.

I think that refusing to understand why an action like Kaiten is seen as expendable under the current design philosophy is only going to cause you to become increasingly-frustrated over time, and then be blindsided by even more changes in the future.

And I think the devs refusing to understand why it wouldn't be considered nearly so expendable by their playerbase, within the context of their current design philosophy or otherwise, will only cause them to become increasingly frustrated over time, and then be "blindsided" by similar criticisms to further such changes in the future.

That the issue has become more exaggerated now is obviously true, but what I was saying is that "it was always an issue, now it's just been magnified even further".

Agreed. But, then, I think the typical Samurai player would expect that'd make it all the more urgent to address that. Yet that clearly hasn't been the thought among the devs.

in fact, even the most rabid Kaiten advocate around here continues to play Samurai.

I've played SAM all of twice since, after it having been a top 2 job for me from 6.0 to 6.1 and my most played job across 5.x.

Also, while this is technically completely off-topic, I can't resist mentioning how utterly naff circular Tenka feels, and how godsawful it looks with the Tenka animation glued into a circle.

...Actually, while I'm here, the drop in Iaijutsu potencies to now feel like slapping the target with a pool-noodle also completely-undermined the entire "slow, steady buildup → debilitating strike" that is inherently supposed to characterise the Samurai archetype and which XIV SAM previously captured (sans Shinten spam).

Aye.

[Wyssahtyn]

in fact, even the most rabid Kaiten advocate around here continues to play Samurai.

i'd say a fair number stopped playing or only picked it back up after 6.2 since the developers' behavior since 6.1 has made it plainly clear that they're solely developing for their own vision or what have you. since the developers give absolutely zero shits about feedback, one's only options are to either quit outright or just get what little enjoyment is still possible while one can.