I was almost in the mood to play FF14 again

[Spigg]

Thanks for the reply, and so many quotes! Interestingly, most of these quotes seem much more apathetic (not understanding why so many SAMs are soiling the bed over the loss of kaiten) than they are actually in full blown agreement that the current state of samurai is okay(Though there certainly are some that think that way).

"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.

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

This. This is basically the entirety of the conversation. The insult isn't that they removed kaiten, but did nothing to the job to make up for it. Sure, some people feel that the ability was ultimately pointless, but others miss it. If it was so inconsequential, what was the point of removing it?

"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."

I don't even entirely disagree with this comment. Overall, the core of Samurai is still intact and its gameplay is largely unchanged. But, as many of the comments and sources you have listed have pointed out, samurai has HAD issues for a while now(The youtube link you posted at the bottom said it well). This is a corner that the designers have backed themselves into, and they chose the laziest way to change the class, while not even solving the problems that had encouraged change in the first place. Something about samurai and the way it manages kenki HAS needed to change, but why they chose this option and this specific time is bewildering to me.

Not to mention, it is extremely annoying how the devs of ff14 pride themselves as being communicative with the community, but have failed to have a proper discussion to finally put the issue to rest. Honestly? The likelihood that any of the people asking for changes to Sam having any effect is close to nonexistent. SE has made their choice and it is to stay quiet. I only support these threads because I hope to create enough noise that "Staying quiet" sounds like a bad choice to them in the future. Samurai will [LIKELY] have a massive rework come 7.0, and that will be that. Whether or not they pull off a proper rework is beyond me.