Thread: Samurai 5.0 Changes

Pros:

• Double-sword thing looks cool, I guess? Even if tactically very unnecessary, give Guren already hits like a truck and could just turn truckier?
• Extra damage after Meditation? Looks cool, but it's not super applicable.
• ...I'm out of things already...

Cons:

• Losing Hagakure. I'm not sure why people are saying that its removal was a boon to Skill Speed. With its removal it feels like half the thought behind Samurai has gone out the door, all just for the appeasement of grey Midare spammers.

  I've run every amount of Skill Speed from ~500 to 3k and there's never been a point where I felt I was inescapably screwed by more than 1-2 GCDs by my Skill Speed's alignment with Hagakure. At many a comfortable breakpoint anywhere from min to max SkS, I could have it timed perfectly to the GCD. Yukikaze (and, on a fight-by-fight basis, the buffed Yaten-Enpi) are surprisingly effective tools for alignment and the greater your speed, the more modular/"building block" choices you have by which to round out your macrorotation and align it to Hagakure. And I enjoyed having to account for those things.
  
  Heck, one could easily make the point that removing the ability to Sen-shear will actually make gameplay harder and clunkier...

• The AoE changes. I hate how people describe these as "buffs, because they no longer have damage falloff" when it's just... pre-falloff-ed. That isn't what cost our potency here, but, bare with me:

  I much prefer having to weave in some single-target skills over just doing 121312131213 all day. It's also not nearly such a buff at 3-4 targets as it would first seem. Over the course of 30 seconds, now 14 GCDs, we'd be losing Shifu and Jinpu combos each cost us 4 GCDs of AoEs, now roughly 480 potency. But over the ~20 seconds of AoE remaining, the average potency difference is almost enough to offset that at lower target counts. I'd have much rather seen Fuma increased to 120 and Oku and Mangetsu maintain their fall-off but with an increased base of 220 so that we can really milk our Meikyo Shisui AoE and we could see more overlap in the 2-4 target range between AoE and single-target choices, which in turn would allow us better modular control for Hagakure.

• Shoha. I was originally of the opinion that it should be a situational skill, but I'm noticing other fun functions it could carry that would keep it feeling unique without feeling outright neglected in particular fights. For instance...

  Let Shoha be a skill of its own that you wouldn't usually bother to use. For instance, give it an effect like Monk's SSS, pacifying you for 2 GCDs after using it (preventing all but Gyoten, Yaten, Enpi, and your non-damaging abilities). Each stack of Meditate you generate (to a maximum of 4 stacks) shortens this penalty by half a GCD. Give it a 30-second CD and significant enough potency that it's a mid-combat damage gain after a few stacks, but otherwise should only be used before forced downtime or right after a jump, and can't be used both for a boss jump and the return immediately following it. It can be used for Hagakure alignment, timed to brief forced downtime with Yaten-Enpi for a net potency bonus, acts as free damage after jumps, and allows for sacrificial last-ditch burst on demand.

Originally Posted by Lilyth

This.

Honestly it still boggles my mind when I see comments like "Hagakure doesn't add any depth to the job". I mean, really? Then please explain to me why you're still having so much trouble grasping the concept and properly utilizing a skill that has no depth or complexity at all. The "but muh Skill Speed" argument is 100% invalid. As already shown, you can easily skew your rotation around it and still use Hagakure effectively even with very high skill speeds. It's just that most people can't be bothered to actually think about it and just want a button to press when it comes off CD.

Also, the Sen management changes will not only degrade Samurai's rotation back to level 60, they are also gonna make Samurai use Midare more often. Like, literally SPAM IT. More than ever with the double Iaijutsu skill. I don't know about other people but... using something so often, like your best skill, can quickly make you grow tired of it. The amount of Midare we use at the moment feels just right. More than doubling this amount will get repetitive really soon. But that final bit is just me.

It's not that Hagakure didn't add depth. It's that depth isn't always synonymous with fun, necessarily. It's that "meaningful" choices aren't always "fun" choices to have to make. And in that sense, I have more fun with Midare than I do with Hagakure. It's okay to feel differently about that, but it's not like it's hard to understand why people like it's removal.

Hagakure sacrifices the huge damage, finisher-type ability you spend time building towards, to spam a bunch of smaller hits that (even if they are a DPS gain) don't feel as impactful, and maybe less importantly, just looked lame in comparison. That aside, not even accounting for SkS, Hagakure was awkward at BEST, after your first/second use. And I don't think people viewed it as a positive experience that they could, "Just change a couple GCD's in your rotation" to make it work.

I can't see any downside with Ikishoten. It's going to line up with Meikyo, and Tsubame, and every time you can use it, Senei. We're gonna have a reliable rotation that builds to that big conclusion every 60 seconds, while still being able to shinten spam in-between every Senei.

Originally Posted by silentwindfr

not really double sword, is sword and scabbard and it's goal is to make Guren something you use while in middle of an AoE situation while Seinen (the name of the skill) will be used against mono target. leading to an increase of damage (whatever is his potency) against boss.
for the pro:
- i see a more smoother cycle with the removal of hagakure, giving us more iajutsu... making us focusing on kenki usage and use iajutsu when and how we want. instead to burn our sen for get extra damage from shinten spam.
- a better burst, tsubame-gaeshi will give us an insane burst, while used with kenki skill we can get some very potent burst that we was lacking in a sort.
- no more tp for the aoe and refresh of jinpu and shifu from the aoe combo.... honestly it's very very very strong.
- up of shifu and jinpu we have only 3% of difference in attack speed buff than with ninja and 8% for a monk in 4 gl stack and we still hit like a truck... i means it really good. it's not an enormous change, but it still there we get more faster and stronger even if it's 2%. it can make the difference...
- and one of the best pro, our job that was already really good didn't change for something weirder... no... where with the monk of SB i was unhappy by the little change it was because the jobs was very old and the change wasn't extraordinary. but here we have a jobs that is solid in his rotation and we get more tool for make it better...

the loose.... more the replacement... of hagakure is a welcome change because our signature move, that was even shown in the trailer of SB, is the iajutsu not the kenki... kenki is something here for give us something to do between gcd skill.... not the signature move of our job. and when hagakure was making our signature move less potent than something normally used between gcd skill it was a trouble.
some think it was skill to make it work, yes, it was skill to make it work... but do it was them intention to have hagakure kill midare setsugekka dps, that something we can wonder.... even if they technically answer us by the change of shb. no?

I kind of have to disagree with... each of these points.

1. Removing Hagakure doesn't smooth out the rotation. It actually just gives us fewer ways to smooth it. For the casual Samurai, it simply removes a tool by which to erase mistakes. For the intermediate Samurai, it was simply fit in when it could be, with very few esoteric breakpoints to keep an eye out for. For the experienced Samurai, it simply forced us to maintain preemptive awareness / foresight. It never really made the gameplay... clunkier. Quite the opposite. Granted, it could have hit many more perfect Skill Speed breakpoints had it been, say, a 35-second CD instead of a 40, and its skill-gap produced (if we are to treat even core, essential, manageable, and masterable skillgap as something to avoid) could be mitigated by simply increasing the damage of Midare/Tenka Goten, thus reducing the potency-per-Kenki gap between their attached Kaiten uses and Shinten/Kyuten. Mitigate to perfect equality and it's solely a QoL feature. But even as is it's not especially punishing...
   
   Hagakure didn't make our 'signature moves' less potent. Quite the opposite.
   
   Hagakure reduces frequency of Iajutsu casts as an opportunity cost for the added Kenki. For it to be balanced and a compelling tool to master, it must periods where the opportunity cost must technically be greater, however slightly, than its reward. This requires that its opportunity cost skills, Iajutsu casts, are situationally superior and thereby roughly competitive. Yes, that's right: balancing Hagakure REQUIRES that our Iajutsu are potent.
   
   Tsubame-gaeshi on the other hand, because its damage is free, REQUIRES that our Iajutsu are NOT overly potent, so the free potency is not overly effective. When a skill gives its potency for free (without opportunity cost), the less potency the skill can have available to it before needing to siphon away potency from other sources. Hagakure can feel potent precisely because it has opportunity costs, and yet because so little of that is free, it didn't divert resources from our "signature moves".
   
   Also, since when was Midare, or even Iajutsu as a whole, the be-all-end-all of what it means to be a SAM? I call them "signature" because you have, but I don't actually think they are. Midare is probably the least noteworthy of the bunch, just a ST filler for preventing resource overcap, ideally to be weaved in twice per raid buff period. It takes a Trick Attack or something evenly strong to make it remotely interesting. It looks nice, sure, like Fell Cleave does, but a couple extra casts per minute of an already frequent nuke isn't worth excluding more interesting elements and mechanics for. Contrary to what BLM and WAR recent design trajectories would have you believe, it is possible to get bored of spamming an attack over and over, to the point that rather than seeming a "nuke", all else is simply the "lull".
   
   
2. For this we need to consider power creep/expansion, but also the general concept of allocation and the gameplay impact of Tsubame-Gaeshi.
   
   It doesn't seem we've fallen too short this expansion. Our weaponskill value is up a little over 4% via the Shifu/Jinpu buffs. All other remaining 4.x damage sources are up 2%. We can further add roughly 230 potency/minute from Senei in purely single-target periods. And we get an extra 1200 nominal potency at the mere cost of merely the combo average (though one must include Kenki potency-value generated) due to Tsubame Gaeshi. All at the mere cost of the potency-per-Kenki differential between Shinten and Kaiten-Midare across 60 Kenki, once per 40 seconds.
   
   We can theorycraft from this, though numbers will be further subject to change, but we won't wholly know SAM's in-practice relative dps capabilities until we see the fights in practice and have a sense of its best possible team performance. But, let us for now assume it will be balanced, and work backward from that.
   
   That still leaves us with the larger design question -- even working backward from a balanced result, there's still the question of "Given the same final product, how much of Samurai's total strength should be invested into X part of its kit?"
   
   Don't get me wrong: Tsubame-Gaeshi is probably a good choice for SAM. Samurai has often suffered from ramp-up. Its primary alt-meta competitor, Monk, likely will increasingly suffer as well (and far worse), but its looking like plenty of DPS will be less affected as of Shadowbringers. Providing, then, a 1-minute CD of heavy value would benefit it in any fight where downtime comes no more frequently than a Tsubame-use apart and as little as possible less frequently than a Tsubame-use apart (e.g. every 62 to... 75 seconds), allowing Samurai always to essentially deal (or, "ready") even more potency when under downtime. This downtime generation is largely what, say, lets Paladins or especially Warriors outperform Dark Knight's damage in many a fight.
   
   But, my larger question is... will it be fun? Do I want to spam even more Midare? And... I honestly don't know. I doubt I'll hate it, but it just feels bland. I'd have much rather, say, seen each Iajutsu provide a secondary Sen based on the number of Sen used (Ka from Higan, Getsu from Tenka, and Setsu from Midare) or the like, that allows for more breakpoints by which to use Tenka in typical combat, so that my repertoire and available decisions feels expanded, rather than just having make sure I end each minute with Midare and hit another button after that per-minute use so I can just see... the exact same animation I already see frequently... again.
   
   And let's not forget that Tsubame-Gaeshi limits available Skill Speeds just as badly to the inexperienced player, but with zero ways to avoid its limitations, as Hagakure. You MUST now end every 1-minute interval with Midare. If Kaeshi must be used immediately after its Iajutsu (I'll double-check momentarily), then that means that 8 seconds left on Kaeshi when you just hit your last combo-ender for your final Sen means you are now obliged to wait nearly a GCD after Hakaze -> Jinpu/Shifu -> Midare as not to waste the Kaeshi and wait another 8 GCDs (17-18 seconds) to use your CD. And this is what we're calling easier, smoother play? Though a bit esoteric, Hagakure still had 1-Sen and 2-Sen uses. In single target, you will never Kaeshi a Tenka or Higan.
   
   No, if making Samurai play smoother was a genuine concern, we wouldn't give it no alternate uses by which to ease macro-rotation and then make it even more constraining than Hagakure (by removing ways of managing it and the different near-optimal levels available to it macrorotationally). We would have instead seen something like a 10-second window after using any Iajutsu that would allow for that Iajutsu to still be Kaeshi'ed.
   
   
3. This is hardly a SAM-specific point, but to continue what I started... I don't like that we've simply gone from "Casters have (comparatively) limitless AoE" to "Physical classes have (truly) limitless AoE." I don't want to merely swap one imbalance for another. And, more importantly, I don't want to be endlessly spamming AoEs. I want any big pull dependent AoEs to be a gusty, CD-filled, do-or-die venture, not just something to grind through on the heels of a turtle tank and a heal-spammer (by which I now mean literally any tank and a healer now ignoring only a twelth of its kit and at least half its value in an AoE pull, instead of a tenth its kit and at least half its value in an AoE pull, respectively). Subjective, I know, but there you have it. Meanwhile, the Shifu/Jinpu sustain just means even less tactical and button-flow variety. I'd have much preferred to keep them separate and instead see the AoEs themselves strengthed, thereby improving the AoE burst of Meikyo Shisui. That was practically our dungeon identity.
   
   
4. It's only as much difference as between one common Skill Speed breakpoint and other. I already play at a 1.8-second GCD or less. It's not a big deal. I'm glad it makes our rotation a tiny bit less constraining for at the lowest skill speeds, but in another way, that movement from where the rotation was strict and exacting to where it was freer and encouraged foresight and ingenuity, is kind of what makes (Skill Speed) gearing so uniquely fun for SAM... Overall, there's no serious difference given by the 2% further Attack Speed bonus. If there were, you'd be insisting all double-Selene double-SCH or permanent Arrow all day every day, for already 50% more effect than what we're getting. It's just going to be a bit more punishing if someone somehow fails their rotation, may slightly devalue 'overextended' situational burst (such as for finishing an add or before a period of downtime), and will increase our difference between base and ramped-up values (compared to when a Warrior was present previously so needn't apply Slashing ourselves).
   
   
5. Not being shat on shouldn't make you feel like you're basking in sunshine and clear air beneath rainbows. The poor treatment of other classes is no excuse for unnecessary downgrades, however small, in one's own.