I was almost in the mood to play FF14 again

[Deo14]

Would you just actually stick to the discussion?

The discussion was "Is there unanimous opposition to Kaiten being removed?" not "Do only people that know everything about SAM watch videos about SAM?"

Once again, since you seem kinda dense and unable to read:

I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU. THIS IS THE POST I WAS TALKING TO:

So why were you responding to me about the "unanimous" argument? Why did you give me 5 essays, directed at me? But anyways, we can start discussing the topic since you posted links.

Your first link

Author admitted that he's just level 85, I personally I'm really not a fan of people theory crafting with jobs that they're not familiar enough. This would mean spending at least few hours playing at max level. Either way, his suggestion misses the mark because he disconnected his idea of new Kaiten from Kenki gauge, so we would still have Shinten spam. It would add subjectively weird mechanic to job, but it would not fix the issue. It's also 28% upvoted, so yeah.

For your hand picked comments:

The solution to this isn't really to obsess even more over Kaiten but to develop the class further in a different direction and rebalance its power budget in a way that gives Midare more room and bigger numbers. This isn't an easy problem to solve but it's one the design team absolutely have to confront because they're painting themselves into a corner with their "just add another big finisher" approach every expansion. Kenki obviously needs a rework since it's currently just the place where SAM's leftover design points gets dumped and if we're looking for a mechanic that would reduce the number of iais, well, Hagakure is right there.
This is certainly problem. EW just gave us 2 fancy skills, 1 is AoE version of existing skill and Ogi is pretty disconnected from the kit. It does add meditation stack, but if I remember correctly, EW also removed meditation stack from Tsubame, or other skill which used to give med stack but now it doesn't.

(But in the meantime sure, just give people back Kaiten.)

[While ending with the same position I have "just give it back for now", this person seems not overly upset Kaiten was removed.]

This is certainly problem. EW just gave us 2 fancy skills, 1 is AoE version of existing skill and 2nd is Ogi, which is pretty disconnected from the kit. It does add meditation stack, but if I remember correctly, EW also removed meditation stack from Tsubame, or other skill which used to give med stack but now it doesn't to compensate for it. He has suggestions for reworking Kenki, which I guess is also one of the solution, but considering that Kenki worked better than most gauges when we still had Kaiten, then I really don't think rework is necessary.

I could not bring myself to care about Kaiten. It feels like the entire thing was massively over blown, as is the community is want to do all the time. The only real complaints I could get behind was Auto Crits lowered party syngery and even that that's an issue for parse parties only. I don't take part in parse parties. I am still on p4s.

Saving Kenki to use Kaiten on every Iuijitsu wasn't amazing gameplay for me, nor was it a detriment. It just was. The pull to the Job I found was the core rotation of generating Sen and doing Iuijutsu. Kaiten buffed Midare was nice and felt cool but I care more about how the job functions as a whole. Which Kaiten's removal didn't effect for me.

I agree with the widespread sentiment that Kenki management could do with -something- to make it a little more complex and a little less brain dead. I wouldn't know what that something is though.

[Again, person not disagreeing with Kaiten's removal, and seems to think Kaiten's removal has been overblown by the community.]

I mean, Shinten having 8 CPM is pretty overblown. If people are neutral about Kaiten as a skill, then it comes to their stance on Shinten spam. That -something- that Kenki needs is 2nd frequent spender, which was a role of Kaiten

Your second link

Simply video showcasing Kaiten. 2.8K updoots, 95% rate.

Your chosen comments:

"Lets be real, The lost of Kaiten doesn't affect SAM DPS or its job at all. (minus 3 DPS? )

You all just miss the weeb animation for it (I know I do)"
[Personally I dislike ad hominems and name calling, but pretty sure we can add this one to "doesn't disagree with Kaiten removal"]

"Doesn't affect job at all", yet we do nearly twice as much shinten as we used to. From ~4.5 CPM to ~8.5.

"Eh, I won't miss it at all, honestly. It wasn't an interesting skill to use."
[In the "wasn't interesting/won't miss" camp.]

Feels odd to call specific skill "not interesting" when half the oGCDs in this game are just "Deals X potency, 30s/60s CD".

"I will be honest I felt like it would be a loss initially, but this week I went back to play SAM some more as its not my main job, and to be honest, after a while I was convinced that it will not really be missed after we get used to it, it was just really unnecessary IMO.

I would go so far and say they could just remove the kenki system altogether and just go more into the Iaijutsu skills, its what I love about SAM after all, kenki just feel tacked into the class."
[inb4 "not a SAM main"; remember the question is do people unanimously disagree with Kaiten's removal]

God, SAM player that doesn't like Kenki gauge?

"You'd think Kaiten was the only thing that was good or fun about Samurai based on the doomsaying around here. All it really was was requiring two button presses to do one attack. The animation was cool, but the effect was boring. I'm also generally against unnecessarily keeping things complicated or difficult for the sake of it and Kaiten didn't even do that very well.

I'm sure this comment will be nuked for going against the hive mind but I think all the potency adjustments and crit changes for Samurai are way more interesting/worrying."
[Another case of "Kaiten wasn't interesting, it being removed is fine"]

Question is, how long were they playing new SAM? This post was made at the day patch went live, most comments are probably from first week of the patch. People didn't play it long enough to realize that 18% of your actions is now made out of Shinten.

"An animation. An ANIMATION. I'm both sides of this most of the time but the doomsaying I'm reading is 90 percent about the animation loss, nothing else. At least you see the design perspective. :thumbsup:"

"I was referring to the WORLD IS OVER kinds of reactions for the ones that are basing that end of the class talk on nothing *but* the loss of an animation, yea?"
[Person calling it "doomsaying" and that 90% of the complaints are about the cosmetics of it, not Kaiten actually being any good/the removal being bad.]

Both liking animation and job designs are valid reasons. Again, this post was near the release of patch, most people were only focused on shallow things, because they had no data about new SAM.

"You aren't being dickish. Those people are being insanely over the top hyperbolic to get internet points. Calling out idiots for being idiots is perfectly fine, and the people who say kaiten was the entire job to them are idiots. And just like you said, anyone that ever argues against it is getting downvoted, that's the definition of a hive mind, alternate opinions aren't allowed. Nothing you said was wrong or mean at all. They just don't like hearing it."
[Pretty sure we can include this in the camp as well.]

Mainsub is hivemind, nobody is going to argue against that.

"But it is the definition of a hive mind. Don't act like reddit isn't an echo chamber where what gets the most upvotes gets amplified. People are saying the core identity of the class is gone because you don't spin a katana anymore. That's fucking silly."
[Same]

It's internet, people go into hyperboles. But well, here we are, 1.5 years later, and this topic is still relevant, so it doesn't seem to me that people gave up just because their katana doesn't spin anymore.

"In this past week the number of people saying Samurai lost its identity is insane. One skill with a cool animation was the identity of the entire job? The job is still essentially the same, it is impossible for the identity to have changed."
[Same]

I mean, there was about 22 changes in total.

"As a DRK main who does not miss Dark Arts spam, while I am definitely no SAM main, I do feel like Kaiten was samurai's DA. As you say, useless bloat, two buttons to perform one action and illusion of choice at high levels where every use window is already predetermined. Pruning out this kind of illusionary choices to make in your rotation is only good for the gameplay.

The animation was alright and could be used for something else, but the skill itself I'm not going to miss."
[Same]

If you look at this skill in the bubble, then maybe, problem was that it was tied to gauge, which ended up affecting Shiten CPM, which in turn, is in fact not good for the gameplay

"Yeah, honestly losing Kaiten isn't as big a deal as this place as making it out to be, but we've got a karma farm going. The crit and potency changes are actually a bigger deal that "But I lost my sword spinny animation!""
[Same]

Both are bad. And circle Tenka too.

"Yep. I think the SAM mains just aren’t use to big changes/action removals that is normal with balancing online games"
[Same]

Justifying bad decisions by "other games do it too" is lame

Forum comments:

Ahh, more spam, lovely.
And no, kaiten can stay dead. What we really need is to Un-nerf setsugekka.

Rage bait

Why? Because I genuinely don't care about Kaiten I was apparently not good at SAM? Is that really what we're going to assume here?

There can be SAM players who were great that want Kaiten back.
There can be SAM players who weren't great that want Kaiten back.
There can be SAM players who were great that DON'T want Kaiten Back.
There can be SAM players who weren't great that DON'T want Kaiten back.

If you need a coping mechanism, go get a coping mechanism but don't assume how good someone was at Samurai back then based on how much they want Kaiten back now. That's a strawman if I've ever seen one.

This is just like the unanimous argument. Of course there will be variations of people's opinions, but it's clear that majority of SAM who don't want Kaiten back are pretty bad, or they don't even know what do the skills do, as was recently showcased in this thread by guy who thought Hagakure is useless.

You can also look at my history on a certain site and see certain numbers were higher with than without. I still don't want it back.

In fact, you can see I did best in 4.x, during Sigma, when sam was arguably the jankiest it's ever been.

My favorite playstyle of it is still 5.x, it was near perfect at the end of 5.5. Yet that wasn't because of kaiten.

They made sam terrible with 6.0, before kaiten was removed, not after. Nerfing setsugekka just to add it back as a 120s CD ability ruined sam.

I agree, ShB SAM felt best, but next to that was 6.08. If we can't go back to 5.5, I would at least want to get back to 6.08

Because I personally don't play Samurai as much as I play tanks. I never had a problem with playing Samurai before nor after. And as much as that devalues my previous comments, as I am fully aware - there is always the option that whoever you are looking up for their parses has more than one character which you wouldn't know unless they told you. To save you the mystery, I don't.

To the original point though, when I said "I" I meant that as a collective for players who don't miss Kaiten, not "I" myself. The point was to call out the baseless claim that it's a two-camp split between "the good SAMs who want Kaiten back" and "the bad SAMs who don't want Kaiten back". One can be biased for all I care, but this is just a strawman argument.

He just said same thing again.

That's like saying a DRK player that doesn't want HW DRK back was never really a DRK main. Is Samurai a gatekeeping club now that only cares about people who want Kaiten back and who don't?

Look, I get you guys are genuinely mad since 6.1, I well acknowledge this but does every single SAM thread have to turn into a segregation between Kaiten-loving-good-SAMs and Kaiten-not-loving-bad-SAMs? The core of the issue, before as after, is that Samurai Kenki spending has been monotonous. The difference between a Shinten and a Kaiten button press is so minimal, I literally couldn't care less.

Seigan? 50-gauge Guren/Senei? Alternative Kenki spending options that actually do something other than damage that still synergizes with SAM's damage tool kit? Maybe a reduction in base Kenki generation if its generated too much? What about giving Shinten -> Kyuten a sort of synergy? Like:

Shinten -> Next Kyuten has Shinten Potency
Kyuten -> Next Shinten is AOE

But no, it has to always be Kaiten, nothing else.

Lol what? Monotonous before and after? You spend like very roughly like 40% of Kenki at Kaiten, 55% at Shinten, rest on Senei and others. Now all the Kenki that was meant for Kaiten goes to Shinten, that's extremely monotonous. Needless to say, plenty of gauge are even worse.

At this point so do I just so they can stop talking about how much they miss it and go back to complaining about the actual issues SAM has...

Valid, but at the same time, I assume if people talk about Kaiten, they generally mean whole 6.1 dumpsterfire.

Most of the people that were mad over its removal aren't even really that mad about Kaiten itself, they're mad that SAM's rotation has devolved into Shinten spam. Kaiten itself wasn't really a very interesting button, it just offered a different button to press than Shinten. So instead of reimplementing Kaiten, why not design a better ability that uses Kenki? That solves the actual issue at hand while also making SAM more interesting than either pre or post Kaiten removal.

I responded to this in that thread. Long story short, how? What would be better than Kaiten?

I don't even really disagree with a lot of what you said in this particular post. The devs are terrible at listening to feedback. There were much more deserving targets of getting removed/changed if the reason is button bloat. But at the same time, Kaiten wasn't an interesting button. You chained it with certain abilities in literally every case possible, making it essentially a combo action that you weaved. It should have gotten reworked to be more interesting or replaced by something else. It getting removed with no replacement is the only reason why its removal is a problem other than "I think it looked cool".

Idk, relatively to other skills in this game, Kaiten seemed interesting enough for me.

As for the video:

SAM meanwhile: Kaiten was bad and should stay gone. Let the animation come back for next expansion, but the skill needs a different effect or be better tied to how the Job's played. Kaiten has been pointless since the Hagukure change. Hagakure is still good and useful in new way, but it isn't integral to the rotation like it used to be.

Well, alright, but how about this: How about devs make those changes. Period. They've just removed it without replacement, why? I could understand sentiment that it could be replaced for something better, but this something better is still not in the game, so why can't we have Kaiten while we wait for this something better to be released? How is 8+ CPM Shinten better alternative?

And I would say it was connected to job in good way (in today's standards). As I mentioned previously, Kenki is pretty solid gauge compared to others, a lot of gauges in game are just terrible 0-100, use 50 gauge for skill which does bland damage, or other skill, which also does damage, but it's AoE.

As for Hagakure, I haven't played in SB, so there's not much I can say, but from I saw other people say, they weren't very fond of the Hagakure spam. From what I'm seeing, people were most satisfied with SAM at shadowbringers era.

But seriously though, why such a huge drop for SAM? Other than the removal of cones, it's just a better Job all around. Just, SERIOUSLY PEOPLE! Kaiten was ONE skill, and it actively was equally replaced by nearly the same number of Shintens. Do that for the other Jobs and you just loose APM outright.

I mean, if it's bad skill, why did it seems like that according to this poll, people did indeed drop it? Sounds like video author is heavily prejudiced to some SB SAM. Even if it was terribly designed, it should stay in the game when it's clear that people like it. I'm personally surprised that there was noticable drop off, I still do play SAM despite Shinten spam. I don't get how he can say in straight face that it was replaced by nearly equally same number of Shinten. Like yeah, exactly, that's the problem.