Samurai's Battle Design

[Ksajt]

Before I begin talking about Samurai specifically, I'll start by saying that there will be a "tl;dr" at the end, since I know this will have to be across several posts.

Now, we've all undoubtedly experienced how changes to classes/jobs between expansions has left some people feeling alienated, and others feeling rejuvenated. This, I feel, is perhaps the most important aspect of discussion that we as a player-base should be having. For example, you will see what I'm referring to-- if you are not already acutely aware from your own experiences-- in discussions pertaining to 3.0's original implementation of Dragoon, 4.0's implementation of Monk (and subsequent 4.5's implementation of Monk), and so on and so forth. Some people will refer to this concept as the job's "identity," that which embodies the core values of what the job should focus on in its current incarnation and going forward.

There are, of course, jobs that have not changed significantly between each expansion, and one needs look no further than Black Mage to see the perfect idea of what a solid line of "identity" or "Battle Design" is. It is for that reason that Black Mage has merely evolved with the new additions to its kit and, simply put, stands less a chance at alienating the players that have played it since its inception than, say, those players that enjoyed 3.x Monk versus those that enjoyed 4.5's Tornado Kick-centric Monk (speaking of those who wish to play "optimally," or "to the job's fullest damage potential," obviously). One of the biggest reasons for the disparity in the reception is because there doesn't seem to be a true stated goal for some of these jobs. After all, if the Battle Design shifts unexpectedly or drastically from one expansion to another, it is almost certain to alienate players who enjoy the current incarnation of something versus its future incarnation. For example, we know that Dancer is a support oriented class, and it was stated as such during its reveal. At this point, we would expect a 6.0 Dancer to continue its current trend and provide stronger or more varied buffs and support effects in the additions to its kit. Having the knowledge of that Battle Design or "intended identity" lets you know what you're getting yourself into when you decide whether or not to invest time into the job.

[Ksajt]

Now, before I actually get into the main point of contention I have behind making this thread, I would like to preface this by stating that I am at no point attempting to assign blame or to cry hypocrisy or any such claim as that. Truthfully, I'm more or less curious to know what you guys think about the direction that-- in this case, Samurai-- is taking in its current Battle Design implementation in 5.0. To that end, I will not be proposing any "fixes," nor do I really even wish to discuss what is currently numerically wrong. Discussing those things is fine, of course, but they tend to lead the Design Team to making decisions based on the idea of the feedback, rather than on the core design philosophy that should be the determining factor of the future of the job. After all, when people said, "Monk doesn't have any raid utility," we received things like Tackle Mastery not because they lacked vision, but because they were attempting to evolve on Monk's kit naturally from what it was; it was flavorful, but added nothing based on how we as the playerbase use the jobs and subsequently care to explore the possibilities of said implementation (and thereby our view on how things should be implemented (many of us decrying things because they don't provide use in Savage, for example)).

So, finally, I will get to the main point. Samurai's Battle Design has changed from its 4.0 implementation to its 5.0 implementation. This is quite possibly the easiest one in recent memory for us to directly state that there was a change in that overall design philosophy.

When Samurai was revealed during Fanfest, we got the snippets of information that would allow us to know what we were in for with the class. One of the bullet points of Samurai's Battle Design was as follows: "Single-handedly deal massive damage." Now, obviously this is something that's open to interpretation, but that to me sounds like what Black Mage does. From that, many of were taken to assume that Samurai would be a "melee Black Mage," in terms of its role in the party; a DPS carry that could output its potential damage regardless of the party composition. You could see this pretty clearly in how a lot of its cooldowns were misaligned with the cooldowns of others. It obviously provided flexibility in how you could choose to change your rotation to better match your surrounding party members... or you could just keep doing your own thing and still do a lot of damage.

[Ksajt]

Now then, we come to 5.0 and immediately notice something: our skills have been changed such that now we are on a minute-burst window, which interestingly now lines up the burst windows of raid utility. Rather than being self-sufficient, we now gain our biggest damage spike when others are doing the same. Of course, if you've been following the Letter from the Producer LIVE, then you know that we don't need to speculate on this: it was, of course, intentional.

"Samurai’s burst is designed around benefitting [sic] from receiving party buffs from other party members. Black mage is balanced around being the only caster without Raise and party buffs, and we believe samurai is also in a similar situation so its potencies will be slightly adjusted in patch 5.08. However, please bear in mind the possibility of it being readjusted again in patch 5.1. "

I, for one, do not personally care for the decision that makes Samurai's playstyle rotate around the party composition. I played Samurai through 4.x with the idea that I can be in any party composition with my Samurai and still bring enough DPS to the party. Just as Black Mage doesn't need anyone to do its "massive damage," I liked and wanted the same for Samurai, and wanted to see that go further in 5.0.

That is why I feel this is a better discussion to have first, before we dive into the possible fixes or numerical data behind the design choices. Truly ask yourself, where do you want to see the job go in the future? Is the idea of Samurai playing around a party-centric burst window good for you? Or do you prefer Samurai being a "melee Black Mage?"

It should be clear by now that I am in favor of the latter, but this isn't something that you need to convince anybody for or against; it's merely a matter of sending clear feedback on the most fundamental level. Obviously this is something that you can have many different ideas about, and it's something that isn't just "this or that." However, given the most recent responses, let's use these two implementations as our baseline and go from there.

[tl;dr] Do you like "single-handedly deal massive damage" Samurai, or do you prefer "designed around benefiting from receiving party buffs from other party members" Samurai?

[Bonus Question]: Is being "#2 in Personal DPS because it's somewhat easier than #1" enough for a job? Does there need to be something else to differentiate the two? This may be a relevant topic that caused the shift in Samurai's design, so it definitely warrants addressing.

[Eliadil]

Well, the saddest thing is that both playstyle were viable in 4.0. You could play totally selfish and still deal a crap ton of damage, and you could also amplify this even more by timing with the raid buff window. The biggest design mistake devs made with 4.0 Samurai was to make Hagakure give 20 kenki instead of 10 or 15 per sen. The way they designed 5.0 Samurai was basically "more Midare", which is the total opposite of 4.0 Samurai, where using Hagakure on 3 sens was worth more in terms of dps than a Midare.

Imo both playstyle and design philosophy are not really different/incompatible... I just regret that they got rid of the old smooth playstyle that also worked with the raid burst window and gave us instead a 60sec rotation (which doesn't even work all that well sadly).

As for the second question, jobs should always be balanced in terms of party utility against raw damage, not in terms of "which one's the easiest". No matter what peoples say, BLM and SAM aren't that different. They both need to keep uptime, and both have a fairly simple rotation to learn/execute. One's a caster and lose uptime when force to move out of AoEs, the other's a Melee and lose uptime when forced to move away from the boss or when having to do mechanics. Tbh I would even argue that BLM has more tools than Samurai to deal with mechanics/movement. But that's not the point.

Besides there should always be a job that's a little more difficult than others, because there is peoples who like difficult things. However, this doesn't always mean that they have to do everything better. Because if that's the case then nobody will actually bother to seriously play the easiers jobs.

Jobs should always have something of value to others, either in the form of raid utility (Trick Attack is the best example here, even though it's hated and Ninja's in a bad spot, it's the best example of huge raid utility) or in the form of raw dps (Black Mage is again, the best example for this, dealing way more damage than the other jobs to compensate for the lack of utility). Still, things should be balanced correctly even between jobs that offer a few utility and jobs that offers a ton, this is why Dancer will always have a low dps, because it gives so much to the others. To get back to Samuraï, the issue currently is that we have no raid utility at all, and also lack the sufficient damage to be considered on equal footing with BLM.

tl;dr : Samurai was doing both playstyle in 4.0 and I don't understand why they choose to change that in 5.0. And difficult job shouldn't equal to massive damage. Jobs with the highest damage should have no raid utility, jobs with the lowest damage should have the best raid utility possible, in order to keep every job played in every content available.

[Ksajt]

Well, the saddest thing is that both playstyle were viable in 4.0. You could play totally selfish and still deal a crap ton of damage, and you could also amplify this even more by timing with the raid buff window. The biggest design mistake devs made with 4.0 Samurai was to make Hagakure give 20 kenki instead of 10 or 15 per sen. The way they designed 5.0 Samurai was basically "more Midare", which is the total opposite of 4.0 Samurai, where using Hagakure on 3 sens was worth more in terms of dps than a Midare.

Imo both playstyle and design philosophy are not really different/incompatible... I just regret that they got rid of the old smooth playstyle that also worked with the raid burst window and gave us instead a 60sec rotation (which doesn't even work all that well sadly).

While I do agree that the playstyles and design aren't fundamentally different-- as it was easy enough to manipulate your resources to suit your needs-- we also must consider what will be added further down the line. Samurai's original implementation was variable and flexible, and were I a designer that was looking to balance that, I would find it more intimidating when weighing against not only what is coming to other jobs, but also to any and all new jobs that are introduced. The more focused the goal of balance is, the easier it is to attain, maintain, and evolve, especially as more jobs come into the game in the future, so I could definitely understand why they would choose to narrow down what a job is supposed to do; they have to think further ahead than we as players do, after all.

I believe we can all agree-- at least to some extent-- that they achieved their original mission statement. What I wanted to bring attention to was the fact that the mission statement has changed entirely between 4.0 and 5.0, and unlike with most jobs that have undergone role or playstyle shifts like that, we actually have the (both, in this case) statements to read, and there is a clear separation between the two that we should be addressing. Because if, for instance, we don't like Samurai being designed around the idea of receiving the party's buffs, we should be clear on that feedback to help guide future development.

As for job difficulty equating to damage dealt, I absolutely agree. I do also believe that it was said during a Live Letter or some other interview that they do not balance based off difficulty (if I recall correctly, it was because of the lack of difference between Machinist and Bard's DPS, despite Machinist being more demanding). That statement is... somewhat contradicted by the difference between 4.0 Samurai and Black Mage, though, as I do believe it was also explicitly stated that Black Mage's personal DPS was higher to account for the ease at which its rotation can be interrupted. Hm.

[Acidblood]

While I do agree that the playstyles and design aren't fundamentally different-- as it was easy enough to manipulate your resources to suit your needs-- we also must consider what will be added further down the line. Samurai's original implementation was variable and flexible, and were I a designer that was looking to balance that, I would find it more intimidating when weighing against not only what is coming to other jobs, but also to any and all new jobs that are introduced. The more focused the goal of balance is, the easier it is to attain, maintain, and evolve, especially as more jobs come into the game in the future, so I could definitely understand why they would choose to narrow down what a job is supposed to do; they have to think further ahead than we as players do, after all.

While I understand the sentiment, it's a poor excuse to use 'balance' (or even potential future additions) as a defence for worse design. Balance = numbers, Design = gameplay; if you get the gameplay right adjusting the numbers based on feedback / data over time is relatively easy, adjusting the gameplay though, that not only means more design and development work but also rebalancing everything a 2nd/3rd/4th time... and it's not like the simpler design of jobs in 5.0 has led to better balance at launch :/

As for the question of SAM being equal to BLM; as a BLM main (though not a serious raider) I couldn't care less if SAM does the same DPS as BLM, it's not going to make BLM any less fun to play.

Edit: And to answer the question about SAM specifically, I enjoyed the playstyle it had in 4.X and while I haven't gotten around to trying it in 5.X I will always enjoy flexible classes over those with rigid rotations that can only achieve their potential though the alignment of raid buffs... which is one of reasons I like the current iteration of BLM so much.

[Ryaz]

Samurai from 4.0 were no different from now- they want to line up their rotations to maximize party buffs. Nothing has changed on that front. BLMs also benefit from buff windows, every class does. When Yoshi-P said that BLM don't have raise or party buffs, he meant they don't bring any, not that they don't benefit from them. He believes SAM is similar to BLM in that regard which is why buffs are coming.

The only thing that's has changed with SAM is that we're slightly more bursty than before. If anything, the changes to 5.0, namely the replacing of Hagakure with Ikishoten, has been the real issue. SAM used Hagakure as a way to control their combat flow so they could line up with burst windows much easier and keep rotations smooth. We've always wanted to line ourselves up with others to maximize our DPS, ever since the class was first introduced. Ikishoten and changes to our buffs have unfortunately given us the opposite- a clumsy rotation that's much harder to line up properly.

If Hagakure came back in it's old form, Shoha got changed (which is happening) and if we got a few potency buffs to put us closer to BLM, the job would be perfect, imo.

But the overall battle design of the job has not changed at all.

[CrashofZenki]

I think the MNK and DRG being higher than SAM is how it should be, NIN placed above MNK, along with BLM being a bit lower on the DPS front. And the others raised.
In the perfect setting where EVERYONE is 100th percentile. Personal only DPS classes should be lower than party utility DPS in terms of raid DPS.
Having classes with no raid utility always doing more damage in every level of skill is insane, counter productive, and small minded.
Why would you ever give a spot to a utility DPS if they will never get close to personal DPS kings?

If SAMs get their way of crying through.. and raised to rDPS over everyone and same with BLM, there will NEVER be a spot for utility DPS outside of the parties who wants to use a tissue after watching their own DPS inflated into oblivion.
Progression group PF: NO UTILITY CLASSES! BLM BLM SAM SAM ONLY. NO NOOB
Quick Weekly Kill: BLM BLM BLM BLM
-Page that will not be named- Log runs: SAM NIN DRG DNC (TA every 1min, Dance partner/Dragon eye SAM or KICK)

[Drayos]

I think the MNK and DRG being higher than SAM is how it should be, NIN placed above MNK, along with BLM being a bit lower on the DPS front. And the others raised.
In the perfect setting where EVERYONE is 100th percentile. Personal only DPS classes should be lower than party utility DPS in terms of raid DPS.
Having classes with no raid utility always doing more damage in every level of skill is insane, counter productive, and small minded.
Why would you ever give a spot to a utility DPS if they will never get close to personal DPS kings?

If SAMs get their way of crying through.. and raised to rDPS over everyone and same with BLM, there will NEVER be a spot for utility DPS outside of the parties who wants to use a tissue after watching their own DPS inflated into oblivion.
Progression group PF: NO UTILITY CLASSES! BLM BLM SAM SAM ONLY. NO NOOB
Quick Weekly Kill: BLM BLM BLM BLM
-Page that will not be named- Log runs: SAM NIN DRG DNC (TA every 1min, Dance partner/Dragon eye SAM or KICK)

This makes 0 sense.

Rdps is raid dps + personal dps. Monk currently is over performing because it has too much utility for the dps.

Stormblood has the same thing with BLM and Sam being top contenders for dps and this was not the case.

Because u want to bring the utility to bolster these jobs dps.

Also stacking dps makes lb generation slower so I don’t think that will happen either

[Rivxkobe]

I honestly don't care if they go one way or the other. If SAM is made to get the most damage during party buffs or not. All I care about is SAM doing what it does without utility and not having Melee Jobs with utility stepping on its toes and leaving SAM in their dust.

SAM should do damage, it should do all damage through attacks and not through applying raid buffs, and DPS should reflect this. It shouldn't need to buff another job to get massive gains to its rDPS, it should be the one getting them. MNK and DRG are just better at receiving right now because they also give things to the party and do high personal damage.