Comprehensive Guide to the Kaiten and 6.1 SAM rework

[Eorzean_username]

They cost, at release, 12 potency per use relative to Shinten-spending. Just 12 potency...

I'm trying to recall, but I think Shinten was originally 300 Potency for 25 Kenki? While Gyoten was 100 Potency for 10 Kenki.

Normalising to 12 PPK, that would have put Gyoten's 10 Kenki at ~20 potency loss relative to Shinten, right?

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Regardless, the wisdom was still "try not to do it", because it was still a Potency loss — same as "Try to do it" with Seigan, because it was still a Potency gain.

If you (in the collective, not personal, sense) are going to hold up Seigan — a pinhead-sized drop of potency gain — as some sort of epitome of true mastery and skill expression, then you shouldn't dismiss the pinhead-sized drop of potency loss from unnecessary gap-closing.

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But anyway, I'm not doing the "scream emoji" and saying, "Gap-closing Samurai RUINS DPS output with this ONE MISTAKE!"

I'm saying that the lossy 10 Kenki cost added very little over not having a cost at all, and in fact contributed to a psychological "guilt" / "pressure" over using it, regardless of how "rational" that feeling might have been when zoomed out.

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If anything, I think that Gyoten (and rarely Yaten, when a solar eclipse happens and you need Yaten but can't insert another GCD into your loop with Enpi) becoming potency-neutral to Shinten has done more to make Gyoten/Yaten's Kenki costs interesting than their "lossy" design ever did.

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Except for... playing completely differently from BLM, and quite distinctly from even any other melee?

Now come on, this isn't even fair.

You literally (intentionally?) cut my sentence in half, in order to attack an implication that I was not making:

At that time, SAM had very little else going on — it was basically "Black Mage with a Sword", in the sense of having nearly no real burst window, and most of its damage coming from just pumping out GCDs consistently and steadily.

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It... already had one, from the start, in old Hagakure -- more frequent but simply faintly less susceptible to latency, than Shadowbringer's single-charge TG rotations.

In the sense that every single Job inevitably ends up having some sort of "rotation"? Yes.

In the sense of having a complete structure and strict 60s-timing goals like the ShB changes gave it? Absolutely not.

ShB aggressively-sync'd Samurai up with the 60s burst cycle that the game broadly operated under, and in turn, gave Samurai a repeating and identifiable 60s structure to its filler cycles — which was a dramatic change, and revitalised the Job in many ways.

There was a vague feeling of this in SB — things like staying on-track so that Higanbana / Kenki-dumping ended up in Trick, not drifting Guren, etc — but it had far less structure and was, by and large, operating on the "ad hoc" model, compared to the firmed-up "loop" that became established in ShB.

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In what possible way is Endwalker's massive lulls and bloat something that'd form an objectively "more robust and matured system overall"?

I have to be honest, I am really not sure where to begin with this.

The original context that you're responding to was, explicitly, referring to the difference between the SB "just kind of chillin' " Samurai, and the ShB "now I, too, am a 60s burst Job!" Samurai (which EW modestly-expanded upon via Tsubame/Meikyo charges and the addition of Ogi to differentiate 2-minute windows more strongly).

But now you've suddenly leapt into a critique of the Endwalker design.

If you want to do that, could you start by elaborating on what you currently see as "massive lulls and bloat" ?

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That's pure opinion on your part.

I suppose if you want to attack it as "pure opinion", and duel it with your own "pure opinion", that's your prerogative, sure.

In that case, I'll try to lawyer-up more thoroughly, and say:

"I personally think that the ShB design changes significantly-matured and refined the SB Samurai design into a more robust and complete Job, especially within the broader XIV party design that has become established in coordinated content over time, and I suspect that the developers feel similarly, hence their apparent comfort with deemphasising the (ostensible) complexity of the Kenki system, which I see as one of the few 'legs' that was implemented to prop-up the original SB design."

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Then that'd be idiocy. That other jobs have increasingly come to waste their gauges does not mean that turning that entire gauge into, effectively, two Shinten charges by turning the "self-flagellating" gap-closers into 30s CD and increasing Shinten's cost to 50 would likewise be a more "mature" design.

???

Okay, now it feels like you're swinging all over the place, gluing things that I've said together seemingly at-random. This is becoming mildly-frustrating.

First of all, I am speculating about why the developers are doing things, not objectively advocating for or against any specific change.

Second of all, you're (intentionally?) taking out-of-context a comment about the fact that lossy gap-closers led to them being considered something to ideally avoid using if possible.

Thirdly, I'm pretty sure that I didn't say anything about increasing gap-closers to 30s — you seem to have just inserted that at random.

Fourth, at no point did I say that "increasing Shinten's cost to 50 would be a more mature design".

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Instead, the actual statement was:

As Samurai has evolved over time to have a true "rotation", a very definite "burst window", and a more robust and matured system overall, it may well be that the designers feel that the Job no longer needs so much detail involved in, nor devoted to, its Gauge management in-specific — ie, bringing SAM's Gauge more in-line with most other Jobs.

From that perspective, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Shinten eventually ends up becoming a 50 Kenki action.

This is a cause-effect statement.

A. Because Samurai has matured as a design over time, and added significant additional details and breadth to its rotation,

B. The developers may feel that there is no longer a need to have so much detail or attention focused specifically on its Gauge management,

C. And therefore they may continue to push Kenki towards functioning like other Job Gauges,

D. To the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually normalised Shinten to the generic "50 Gauge cost" that most Gauge-spenders use.

I did not advocate for this happening, nor comment on whether I see it as a good or bad idea, nor state that this change, specifically, would be a cause of a "mature design".

Instead, I identified it as a possible cascading consequence of developer response and perceptions related to how the Samurai design has evolved and expanded over time.

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Okay, but where does that end? It appealed to most who played it at the time --

Well, we don't honestly know that, though.

It's extremely-difficult to retroactively go back and razor-out how many players signed up for Samurai because they felt that they could achieve high levels of "skill expression" with Kenki management, or liked how many Kenki-spending decisions the Job gave them...

...versus how many just wanted to play a Samurai, because it's a Samurai, and wields a katana, and looks cool, and is accessible and comfortable to understand at an entry-level.

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If anything, I'd say that a contributor to Samurai popularity was possibly (note that I am making a speculation, not an attempt at factual assertion) due to the fact that there was actually so little relevancy to most of the Kenki system.

ie: Seigan could pretty much not exist; the gap-closer costs were basically a formality for most players beyond level 62; and just banking 20 Kenki for Kaiten at all times would rarely cost most players anything noticeable.

So, the fact that the bulk of the Job's Gauge performance could comfortably be boiled down to: "Don't overcap; save enough for Kaiten; spend on Shinten; make sure you can use Guren/Senei on-cooldown"... very likely increased the appeal to a lot of players — ie, it was intuitive, accessible, and quite forgiving outside of stubborn optimisation goals.

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certainly far more than its removal or "Do I Shoha... or Shoha II?!"

I think that Shoha 2 is indeed an utterly-underwhelming addition, right down to its comically-uninspired and frankly-inappropriate name (in the sense of not following the Samurai naming conventions / flavor)...

...but I feel like Shoha 2 is also a bit of a "decoy target" here, being an easy and recognisable "punching-bag".

Shoha 2 changed ~nothing about the rotation, it's just "there". You didn't "trade" anything core to the rotation out in order to get Shoha 2 tacked-on to Expert Dungeon clears.

Likewise, Shoha 2 wasn't a specific attack on Samurai — it's just another in a long line of semi-lazy "AOE versions" that the anxiously-smiling developers keep trying to disguise as birthday-presents each expansion (eg, Orogeny, Energy Siphon, Shadowbite, etc).

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As for the "Do I X... or Y" sarcasm, I don't honestly get it — by that same reasoning, you could ask the same sarcastic question about Fuko, Mangetsu, Oka, Kyuten and Guren.

Is the argument here that you feel that there is no need for separate AOE rotations?

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and having action only for 20s per 120s BS that's replaced that gauge management.

I'm honestly struggling to connect this one together.

The Samurai "filler" between 60s bursts since ShB is basically just what it was doing full-time in SB, except structured into more of a definite and recognisably-repeating pattern, with the additional puzzle-piece of how to arrange filler and adapt to disconnects.

Samurai isn't even on a strict 120s cycle, because you have a distinct mini-burst at 60s that you still want to build-to, manage, and then adjust fillers around.

And compared to ShB Samurai, you're still performing ~the same sort of filler loop, with the same considerations for counting fillers, adjusting for speed, and "fixing" with Hagakure.

You've now stripped 1 (one) Kaiten keypress / gauge-spend out of that filler period, and while you've lost Seigan, you've gained a significantly-stronger incentive to weave in Third Eye whenever possible, as well as the option of using Gyoten/Yaten for fine-tuning instead.

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If anything, I'd say that the loss of Kaiten has much more drastically-affected the feel of the burst windows — dropping from machine-gunning up to ~4 Kaitens in short succession, to (obviously) zero Kaitens in that same window.

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Could you elaborate more specifically on what you feel has been lost during the apparently "actionless" 100s that you're referring to?

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At what point can we honestly say, as you suggest here, "X was too shallow, so it needed to be shallowed out further"?

Once again, that is not what I actually said; that is not what I suggested here.

What I said was, to rephrase yet another way:

"I think that the depth of various components of X is being overexaggerated in hindsight, and on account of that, as well as [other factors], the developers were probably motivated to consider various underwhelming aspects of X to be expendable, when considering the Job more broadly on the whole".

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And why would Kenki, of all things, be a reasonable choice for that butcher's block?

Well, for the reasons I've outlined at length.

In case this is coming across wrong, I am not saying that you — or anyone else — are wrong for having found satisfaction, depth, or enjoyment in any of the previous tools or designs that have been attached to the Kenki gauge.

Saying, "Hey! I liked pressing Seigan!" or "Hey!! I liked pressing Kaiten!" is completely-valid, and you are well within rights — and doing exactly what you should do — by offering this honest feedback to the developers.

And Deo's thread here is a well-formatted, considerate, and legitimate way of trying to express that feedback.

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What I am instead trying to say is that, I think, a lot of these experiences were very niche and specific, and more of a manifestation of personal preferences, rather than truly being part of a particularly-deep or meaningful system compared to what Samurai has now — especially considering the mitigating (but not completely-recompensating) factors of the dramatically-increased value of Third Eye, and the new use-cases now available to Gyoten/Yaten.

And that, in turn, is probably why the developers have done things that seem incomprehensible from the perspective of players who were already eyebrows-deep in the system, and finding personal enjoyment in those niche details.

[Shurrikhan]

The original context that you're responding to was, explicitly, referring to the difference between the SB "just kind of chillin' " Samurai, and the ShB "now I, too, am a 60s burst Job!" Samurai (which EW modestly-expanded upon via Tsubame/Meikyo charges and the addition of Ogi to differentiate 2-minute windows more strongly).

It... wasn't, though? Not a single post you've responded to quoted has made any comparison between Stormblood and Shadowbringer Samurai, only between 6.1 and either 5.x or 6.0 Samurai.

So, yeah, when I see you responding to a critique of Endwalker Samurai with how the kit was "evolved" or "matured", I'm going to think you're talking about the changes brought in Endwalker, not some previous period that's not under critique.

Now come on, this isn't even fair.

You literally (intentionally?) cut my sentence in half, in order to attack an implication that I was not making:

Really? Let's read it again:

At that time, SAM had very little else going on — it was basically "Black Mage with a Sword", in the sense of having nearly no real burst window, and most of its damage coming from just pumping out GCDs consistently and steadily.

Is that not equating a job, or its identity, to solely its damage profile... while completely dismissing its differences in gameplay?

Else, wouldn't this read something like, "Samurai's damage profile was too similar to that of Black Mage," rather than "Samurai... was basically Black Mage..."?

Call me crazy if you like, but that seems the pretty obvious implication. Therefore, the disagreement.

Normalising to 12 PPK, that would have put Gyoten's 10 Kenki at ~20 potency loss relative to Shinten, right?

Sorry, yes, 20. Which would put the cost at 1/3rd of a single positional, and would mean that it'd take less than a 1/10th GCD saved in uptime via that gap-closer to make that a damage increase, etc., etc. It was far from "self-flagellation" unless spamming it from melee range (and technically a still a damage bonus over saving for Shinten if cast at the end of raidbuffs worth 20+% damage and you had a Gekko or Kasha before your next Iaijutsu or Hagakure was coming up).

Yes, you didn't use it often, but any use you'd have for it as a gap-closer, it was plenty worth. It was to Samurai's advantage that Gyoten was 10s CD at 10 Kenki's cost instead of just another 30s CD at no cost.

It's not something that would make more sense to further strip away from the gauge.

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.

That space "more or less" between a quickly-refunded action a free action, though, is still a shift in time -- the same kind of thing that previously moved the "Am I making sure I won't overcap Kenki?" apart from "Am I synced for a perfect re-Higan?" as to spread the intensity of a 1-minute burst's worth of actions/optimizations across a slightly larger span of time before every other minute was reduced to solely Higan. It's subtle, but it is impactful.

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').

They, at the time... ALL did that. All of them. But worse. If you didn't use them on CD, you lost potency.

And now? Use more than a single "free" Onslaught per 2-minute as a gap-closer, and you sacrifice your raid buff cycle's portion of 100 potency, commonly exceeding the 20-potency cost of Gyoten.

Samurai isn't even on a strict 120s cycle, because you have a distinct mini-burst at 60s that you still want to build-to, manage, and then adjust fillers around.

And compared to ShB Samurai, you're still performing ~the same sort of filler loop, with the same considerations for counting fillers, adjusting for speed, and "fixing" with Hagakure.

Except your 1-minute is now solely Higan, instead of TG, IS, and Higan together.

TG alignment now has over 100 seconds for you to sync everything up, greatly reducing the frequency and urgency of that interaction, because you just use both per a fixed string of actions at once per two minutes instead of interacting with that mechanic per minute. Add Ikishoten's CD being doubled and Senei/Guren's Kenki costs being standardized down to Shinten's, and no... it's not going to feel the same. Every other burst loop feels at most only half as involved, regardless of whether one uses the same "filler", with the job just generally seeming less interactive now between bursts.

Could you elaborate more specifically on what you feel has been lost during the apparently "actionless" 100s that you're referring to?

Primarily, the number of macrorotational elements per minute. They're less now, and the TGs stacked up just feel like they merge together into seemingly one act per 120s.

Syncing only for a rigid sequence once per two minutes into which to spend both TGs just does not feel as good to me as getting those few different CD-based optimizations to prep for --at nearly the same time though they may be-- every minute.

Would I gladly have taken something that alters, per 90 or 120s, the way I actually perform my burst? Of course.
But, in this case that's come at (to me, seemingly unnecessary) cost to the level of activity between bursts, since now we only have a single mechanic to worry about per non-RaidBuffed-minute.

This is a cause-effect statement.

A. Because Samurai has matured as a design over time, and added significant additional details and breadth to its rotation,

B. The developers may feel that there is no longer a need to have so much detail or attention focused specifically on its Gauge management,

C. And therefore they may continue to push Kenki towards functioning like other Job Gauges,

D. To the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually normalised Shinten to the generic "50 Gauge cost" that most Gauge-spenders use.

I'm not interested in how the devs reach a given decision if the premises they follow to get there are themselves flawed. There's no need to keep the same difficulty ceiling as in prior expansions (nor, therefore, to squish old elements of difficulty in order to make room for new). Nor do the simplifications to gauges seem to have been considered net positives. (Agreement that some elements of gauge spending were lackluster was not an invitation to gut them.) Nor has creating a gauge just to act as second charge for a given ability or ability pair ever gone without critique.

Warrior mains have not seemed particularly happy to have the Beast Gauge reduced to simply a second available charge of Cleave/Decimate, while most DRKs I know considered Blood Gauge somewhere between lackluster and a joke because its interest was propped up almost solely by its CD-based generators instead of any of its spending.

Inb4 'The RDM gauge changes were popular': The 50 cost, relative to the old 80, increased available burst complexity. It is not one of those simplifications.

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Tl;dr: Eorzean, I tend to agree with you on most things, but I do not see any sense in defending a removal that shows no signs of replacement, or even in explaining how the developers would have arrived at a bad decision when the steps leading there would require ignoring the broader picture of feedback or insisting on premises not held by the community.

Making room for Namikiri, for instance, did not require axing the majority of Samurai's gauge interactions (however shallow or otherwise one might may think them to be). Such didn't even require reducing our minute-between to solely Higanbana. Such did not require axing our movement during AoE (via conal AoE -> radial AoE).

None of those things were necessary, and while some were at least asked for (just like removing positionals from all melee is incessantly asked for by those who don't play melee anyways and haven't particularly started to even when a given job loses 67% of their positionals), the ways that the developers have responded to that feedback show a sizeable departure from understanding, or even seemingly an intent to understand those concerns.




Finally, though this is fairly tangential, I don't consider simple functional potency to be an acceptable replacement for gameplay components.

Third Eye is objectively more powerful a tool now than when we had Seigan, but is it necessarily better than, say, having it augment one's next Kenki spender (other than Guren/Senei) to cost 10 less potency, change its animation, and maybe guarantee your next positional?

Both versions would generate/save 10 Kenki and take no additional buttons. The difference (apart from that spitball positional element) is simply flavor, but flavor does matter.

Similarly, having two charges of TG is objectively more powerful than having one, yes, but it then means that we interact with it that much less. I'd far rather just have left TG at a single charge but let it available after Iaijutsu until we next generate Sen as to deal with the complaints of TGs lost to packet loss or latency or otherwise being slightly overly constrained (relative to SB Hagakure, for instance).

the developers have done things that seem incomprehensible from the perspective of players who were already eyebrows-deep in the system and finding personal enjoyment in those niche details

And that's, to me, the crux of the problem. The developers should be getting themselves at least very nearly eyebrows-deep or they're going to continually reduce the personal enjoyment available to those who fully appreciate the details of the job in question.

We've long since known that's an issue; there's little fruit to be born from explaining that again now. And simply lowering our expectations accordingly hasn't born fruit, either. So...?