Thoughts of Samurai Changes

[Ryaz]

So, I've finally gotten to see some of the changes coming to Samurai and wanted to share my thoughts.

First, the removal of Seigan and Merciful Eyes isn't a huge deal. While it's true that Seigan gave a little bit of a skill gap between people who could use it effectively and who couldn't, it wasn't much of a difference overall. This will be made up for by the fact that Third Eye will be a bigger factor in our rotation due to the Kenki it gives. My only issue is that it will be more or less effective depending on the fight. I'm also sure healers don't want to see us standing in the fire just to get 10 extra kenki.

The moving of Ikishoten to a 120 second cooldown and no Meditation stacks with Tsubame will hurt our oGCD game a bit. You lose one stack of Meditation every minute, which will mean less Shohas over the course of the fight and less Kenki means less Shinten spam, so Third Eye becomes much more important to maintaining dps. Hence my above concern of Sam's purposefully standing in fire to maintain their damage. It does look like Shoha got a damage buff to compensate for using it less.

The change to Meikyo allowing it to apply damage buffs is huge, as are the charges on it and Tsubame. While you'll really only get 2 of them in the very first opener you get, the charges will allow you to adjust for mistakes and have less issues with drift. No more waiting 60 seconds to realign yourself due to messing up or due to a boss transition. Plus, you can get damage buffs back up MUCH faster with Meikyo applying them for you. Overall, Great QoL changes that will give us a bit more flexibility.

The AoE rotation will become slightly more interesting with our AoEs now applying buffs, plus the addition of a third AoE combo. I picture applying damage buffs with our usual combo and then just alternating between the new combo and the other two to maintain buffs while putting out a bit more dps on packs.

Finally the two new attacks that only come every 2 minutes with Ikishoten use... basically a Midare and Tsubame Midare with a mall AoE bit giving us a 2,400 potency combo single target attack every two minutes with a 600 potency AoE. Obviously these numbers are subject to change before release.

Overall, I love the flexibility and streamlining the new Samurai brings. My biggest concerns are people purposely taking attacks for more Kenki and what looks to be a somewhat slower gameplay style due to less Kenki gain overall and less Meditation stacks, leading to less oGCD usage. I just hope it doesn't get too boring in between those two minute burst windows.

Edited because I realized Ogi Nakiri is a weaponskill and is thus affected by Kaiten.

[PangTong]

Overall I think the Samurai changes are positive but there's some immediately obvious issues from the tooltips.

The most obvious of which is just straight up button bloat. Samurai is losing Seigan and Merciful Eyes but gaining three new abilities in their places, Shoha 2, Hyosetsu, and Ogi Namikiri. My Samurai bars are already full to the max so I have no idea how I'm going to fit these skills in a comfortable way. Hyosetsu seems like a completely unnecessary skill since it's only a 10 potency increase, and Shoha 2 is especially bad since it could easily just be a trait upgrade to Shoha to make Shoha hit in AoE with falloff damage. Namikiri could also easily go over the Ikishoten button.

The other main issue would be Meikyo Shisui's new 30 second duration potentially encouraging players to do long prepulls, since using Meikyo very early before the pull will potentially allow you to get an extra use of it over the course of a long fight. The 10 kenki benefit of Third Eye may also see some very optimization-minded Samurais intentionally getting hit by mechanics to increase their DPS.

[ShanaShirayuki]

Overall I think the Samurai changes are positive but there's some immediately obvious issues from the tooltips.

The most obvious of which is just straight up button bloat. Samurai is losing Seigan and Merciful Eyes but gaining three new abilities in their places, Shoha 2, Hyosetsu, and Ogi Namikiri. My Samurai bars are already full to the max so I have no idea how I'm going to fit these skills in a comfortable way. Hyosetsu seems like a completely unnecessary skill since it's only a 10 potency increase, and Shoha 2 is especially bad since it could easily just be a trait upgrade to Shoha to make Shoha hit in AoE with falloff damage. Namikiri could also easily go over the Ikishoten button.

The other main issue would be Meikyo Shisui's new 30 second duration potentially encouraging players to do long prepulls, since using Meikyo very early before the pull will potentially allow you to get an extra use of it over the course of a long fight. The 10 kenki benefit of Third Eye may also see some very optimization-minded Samurais intentionally getting hit by mechanics to increase their DPS.

I agree with Shoha II being traited instead of being an entirely separate ability. It doesn't make sense why the devs would tack on AoE to other abilities like RDM's Verholy and Verflare but not Shoha. In regards to Meikyo Shisui, The Balance is already theorycrafting having a 25s prepull. I wouldn't mind prepulling since I got used to it as a NIN main in Heavensward raids, but I could see some issues in regards to SE trying to make the classes more streamlined for Endwalker.

[Karshan]

Regarding the intentional standing in fire, savage tiers in Eden have brought a very appropriate response to "healers adjust" : damage down stacks and not just a vulna.

Everyone doesn't care about mechanics / vulns, everyone does about their parses (well not everyone, but those trying the stunt you mention, do).

Suddenly you see players dodge, magical !

[Ryaz]

Regarding the intentional standing in fire, savage tiers in Eden have brought a very appropriate response to "healers adjust" : damage down stacks and not just a vulna.

Everyone doesn't care about mechanics / vulns, everyone does about their parses (well not everyone, but those trying the stunt you mention, do).

Suddenly you see players dodge, magical !

Yeah, I was mostly joking about the standing in the fire thing. But I wouldn't put it past some players. Lol.

[Hokies]

Obviously we'll need to see how it plays out, but I have mixed feelings looking at everything on paper. The QOL stuff is very much appreciated and Ogi Namikiri looks cool, but it seems like our steady damage output has taken a hit.

Kenki generation is greatly reduced with Ikishoten on a 120s cooldown. It seems we're trading oGCDs away for Ogi Namikiri which dulls our gameplay between burst windows. I liked weaving Shinten/Kyuten as much as possible.

Removing Meditation stack gain from Tsubame abilities results in less Shohas, further diminishing our oGCD usage. Speaking of Shoha, I’m not sure why Shoha II needed to be another ability. Was it impossible to rework the potency math into a trait for Shoha?

With the way AOE damage propagates and general lag, Third Eye should have its duration increased to at least 5s to allow for more wiggle room. I feel like this is especially important now that it’s a Kenki generator.

Hyosetsu is an incredibly underwhelming ability. I would have preferred having it generate more Kenki (like Yukikaze) to potentially get more uses of Kyuten in AOE situations. I suppose things are subject to change, but as it stands now, a level 86 weapon skill that’s just a 10 potency gain and slightly alters your AOE rotation feels bad man.

Overall, it feels like the flow of the job will be the same with more things being stuffed into burst/buff windows, and less things to do in between. An understandable trade off, but how satisfying it feels to play will be key.

[Arkdra]

Thread so far seems pretty spot on with my takes as well. Doing fewer shintens and shoha's doesn't excite even if the face of the giant damage of namatiri. Hyosetsu and shoha 2 are just flat out unwelcome abilities on my already full hotbars for how boring they are.

Like it's not bad it's just... meh. Namakiri slaps and all of the QOL features are extremely welcome, but I would much rather have traited upgrades ala dragoon than shoha 2 and hyosetsu. ESPECIALLY given that dragoon gets an upgraded chaos thrust and are winning the flower petal battle by a landslide now and it is completely ruining my class fantasy!!!

[Kazimere]

There are some nice QoL changes for sure, but most of the stuff is just fluff/unnecessary, IMO. Admittedly, Samurai is already at a good place, both in damage and flow, so any improvements at this point are going to be somewhat hard to achieve.

1. Tsubame and Meikyo getting two charges is nice for sure, both for burst and CD drift. It pretty much ends there for me though.

2. I'll admit, when I saw the capstone during the trailer, I was like "hell yeah." It was flashy after all, and who doesn't like flash? Not that another hard hitting ability is bad, but it's just a flashy Midare with some cleave thrown in to soup it up. As it stands, I feel like it's going to be more annoying to use than anything, with us having to use yet another Kaiten for the base version. I'd have liked it more if the base and Kaeshi version were just the same potency, or just get one buffed version and call it good.

3. AoE Shoha is predictable and disappointing. Like, why? I don't know what SoE's obsession with doing this stuff is. This button for ST, and this exact same ability, but with a slightly different animation for AoE. I agree with Arkdra, it should have been a trait adding the AoE portion to it.

4. The AoE Yuki makes no sense whatsoever. Mangetsu and Oka adding their respective buffs on hit was more than enough. That was what Samurai's issue was: having to do ST to get buffs up for AoE. If Fuga upgraded to the new AoE Yuki, great. A little more potency and Tenka in two GCDs instead of three, provided they still left the sen generation. As it stands, it's just an added button for the sake of maintaining its current button count.

It's like SoE said to themselves, "well, we took away Seigan and Merciful Eyes, so we need to add exactly two buttons to replace them!" No, no you didn't SoE.

Edit. After thinking about it more, there are some more things I don't like.

1. I liked Ikishoten being on a 60s CD, but Senei/Guren being on a 120. It gave us a reliable source of Kenki throughout an encounter, and it let us have more Shinten/Kyuten when Senei/Guren was on CD. Personally, I'd have taken a 60s Ikishoten over a souped up midare anyday. That's just me though. They could have implemented the capstone a better way than tying it to Ikishoten. Tying it to meditation stacks and Shoha usage would have been ideal.

2. Tsubame being a separate button from Iaijutsu is meh, but whatever. Unless it's a technical issue, as in they can't separate the CD from Tsubame from the constant state of iaijutsu then it really doesn't make sense that they aren't combined. Again, it's just adding a button.

3. The filler GCDs in the rotation are a known annoyance. We don't know if that is going away either. I'm going to be pretty annoyed if I have to use Yaten>Enpi to maintain CD timers (I don't like using movement abilities for filler or a DPS increase at all). I use Yaki filler right now, and it's just meh as well. I really hope that was on their radar and this stuff aims to mitigate that.

Samurai is still going to be solid, and I have no doubt that it's still going to flow well. It's not like it's in the DRK bucket, and I applaud the developers on how well they maintain this job. Most of this stuff is just annoyances, really. It's definitely not going to be broken or unplayable.

[Kaedys]

I liked Ikishoten being on a 60s CD, but Senei/Guren being on a 120. It gave us a reliable source of Kenki throughout an encounter, and it let us have more Shinten/Kyuten when Senei/Guren was on CD. Personally, I'd have taken a 60s Ikishoten over a souped up midare anyday. That's just me though. They could have implemented the capstone a better way than tying it to Ikishoten. Tying it to meditation stacks and Shoha usage would have been ideal.

Definitely agree. There were plenty of ways of handling it that didn't involve doubling Ikishoten's cooldown. They could have tied it to Guren/Senei instead, tbh, and it would have the exact same usage pattern as now, without requiring Ikishoten to be 120s. In fact, I'm a bit astonished they didn't attach it to Guren/Senei, it seems like an obvious target for it.

They could instead make it work like Life of the Dragon, where each usage of Ikishoten or Tsubame granted a stack. Downside is that it wouldn't be available on the pull (and in fact, would desync, because you'd get the 2nd stack at the 60s mark), but they could fix that by having either the first usage in a given combat session grant 2 stacks, or have an ability like Reaper's Soulsow that's only realistically usable outside of combat and grants a stack, so the first usage would bump it to 2 stacks and thus allow usage.

Personally, I'd prefer just tying it to Guren/Senei instead, though.

The filler GCDs in the rotation are a known annoyance. We don't know if that is going away either. I'm going to be pretty annoyed if I have to use Yaten>Enpi to maintain CD timers (I don't like using movement abilities for filler or a DPS increase at all). I use Yaki filler right now, and it's just meh as well. I really hope that was on their radar and this stuff aims to mitigate that.

Personally, I think Samurai could use a charge-based or resource-consuming GCD attack, similar to Sabre Dance for Dancers, which serves a very valuable role for aligning GCDs prior to Flourish. In the case of Samurai, it should probably be designed as something that's essentially a null DPS gain/loss, so it can be used or not used as needed.

If they added a new on GCD melee that did ~500 potency and cost 10 Kenki, it would land at the same potency as Yaten + Enhanced Enpi + Gyoten, and the same cost, without requiring the movement, and fill a similar role, delaying the GCD sequence to align better. Or alternatively, closer to ~370 potency (based on the potencies in the EW tooltips) and not have it cost Kenki. Maybe drop the potency slightly from a "null" potency level, so using it is a small potency loss, made back up by allowing the burst sequence to properly align, to prevent that new ability from simply being spammed (could also give it charges to help prevent that, though with a relatively short CD so it's generally readily available for its intended GCD-alignment purpose).