Thoughts of Samurai Changes

[Kazimere]

Snip

Don't disagree with the QoL from buffs being applied instead of refreshed. I'm for that. AoE Yuki and Shoha are seperate. Maybe I should have stated my concurrence with the QoL change upfront, before taking it down that rabbit hole though. We're just going to have to agree to disagree on the AoE Yuki, as well as AoE Shoha being a completely separate button. I see your perspective, but I just can't get on board with it. If there was an actual purpose behind it that wasn't "we took two away so now we add two" then maybe I wouldn't have such a bad taste in my mouth. There wasn't a rotation gap in Sam's AoE (as someone else stated). The issue was the buffs only refreshing instead of applying, of which they have corrected going into EW.

To piggyback to you post talking about Dragoon. I wouldn't call it anymore engaging than SAM from its basic AoE rotation. It's just a 1,2,3 that is turning into a 1,2,3,1 come EW. Where I do agree with you about it though, is that DRG has a few AoE CDs that get rotated in. Here's the thing though, those get used in ST as well. They didn't give DRG a ST Geirskogul and an AoE version. They have one. Their new capstone is also combined, so it will be used in ST and AoE, and their new AoE GCD actually plays into their capstone, because it gives a scale. Their jumps don't share CDs, so they all get used whether ST or AoE. They have a lot of oGCDs though, as is their design. However, that doesn't mean change that a lot of their abilities are just outright designed better, IMO.

Why are we sitting here with a button added to our AoE that doesn't really serve a purpose except for a little more damage? It doesn't get us to our finisher sooner. It doesn't reduce the CD on Ikishoten for more capstone. It doesn't add AoE higa. It's just...10 potency as of now.

Why are we sitting here with an AoE Shoha when they could have just given it a trait to do AoE?

streamlining real estate is not the same thing as dumbing down gameplay.

[Kazimere]

I just think it's the most interesting 1 gcd filler we have, that's why I like it. There's also the 2/3 gcd build if you dislike enpi that much.

I won't argue that it's more interesting than a Haka/Yuki or another Getsu/Ka iteration. It definitely is. However, I'm opposed to using movement abilities outside of their intended purposes in general. Disengages most of all. If I had my way, no gap closer or disengage would have damage attached to it, and they wouldn't buff any ranged ability.

[Szun]

Im excited to see aoe rotation applying the damage and speed buffs, makes it feel batter to use aoe without having to go through 2 partial single target rotations first to get the buffs up.

[Kaedys]

I won't argue that it's more interesting than a Haka/Yuki or another Getsu/Ka iteration. It definitely is. However, I'm opposed to using movement abilities outside of their intended purposes in general. Disengages most of all. If I had my way, no gap closer or disengage would have damage attached to it, and they wouldn't buff any ranged ability.

I honestly don't mind it buffing Enpi, tbh. I like that mechanism, because it allows you to intelligently use your disengage to mitigate what would otherwise just be dead rotational time from being out of melee range. It rewards you for playing intelligently. What I don't want is for Enpi to have a use case outside of "being in melee is currently bad for my health". Reaper has a similar mechanism with their teleport. Their ranged attack, Harpe, has a 1.3s cast normally, but is made into an instacast when they use their teleport. It still doesn't make it worth using in their normal single-target rotation, but if they need to leave melee range to dodge something, it gives them a sequence somewhat similar to Yaten -> Enpi -> Gyoten, by teleporting out, using Harpe, and then using Regress to port back to their starting point (presumably in melee range). I enjoy this type of setup on melee classes, because it doesn't feel quite as bad as simply slinging your low-damage ranged ability when you're forced out of melee range, and it specifically rewards you for intelligently using your mobility buttons in those situations.

Personally, I'd like it even better if Gyoten had both its damage and Kenki cost removed, and was turned into a charge-metered ability instead (with something like a 20s CD), so the entire sequence of Yaten -> Enpi -> Gyoten was Kenki neutral. Then tune the damage of Enpi so it's a definitive DPS loss during the normal rotation, but is worth using if you'd otherwise waste more than some fraction of a GCD (say a third to half of a GCD). That avoids it becoming rotational, or even really being used just to align GCDs. There should be some other melee GCD ability, unconnected to our combo sequence or Kenki gauge, that's close to but not quite DPS neutral (small potency loss versus the average GCD in the combo sequence, to avoid it being generally used, but so it's not really much of a loss to use it in place of the combo sequence for the purposes of GCD alignment), specifically for that purpose.

[Ryaz]

So, looking at the newest vids about Samurai changes, looks like all our potencies were nerfed HARD. Haven't looked at the other jobs yet, so I'm assuming it's the same for them. It's definitely painful to see, even if it was expected.

Also really not seeing a point to Hyosetsu. An extra button taking up your bar for a whole 10 more AoE potency seems like a had tradeoff

[Beddict]

So, looking at the newest vids about Samurai changes, looks like all our potencies were nerfed HARD. Haven't looked at the other jobs yet, so I'm assuming it's the same for them. It's definitely painful to see, even if it was expected.

They covered physical Potencies in the last Live Letter. To quote from the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXVI Digest (9/30/2021):

Another adjustment has been made not only to tank jobs, but all physical damage jobs in general. Thus far, FFXIV has used separate battle calculation formulas for physical and magical attacks. Between the two, magical attacks were given a higher base value to compensate for more intricate calculations, but these values will be unified in Patch 6.0. Because the base value of physical attacks will be raised to the same value of magical attacks, action potencies will become smaller. Note that this is simply due to raising the base value used in calculations, so the actual power of the actions won’t be any different from before.

[Kazimere]

So, looking at the newest vids about Samurai changes, looks like all our potencies were nerfed HARD. Haven't looked at the other jobs yet, so I'm assuming it's the same for them. It's definitely painful to see, even if it was expected.

Also really not seeing a point to Hyosetsu. An extra button taking up your bar for a whole 10 more AoE potency seems like a had tradeoff

Don't worry about the potency shifts right now. A "nerf" on the tooltips doesn't necessarily mean a nerf in game with everything they were doing behind the scenes.

[Ryaz]

They covered physical Potencies in the last Live Letter. To quote from the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXVI Digest (9/30/2021):

Ah, yes... I remember that now. Thanks for the reminder!

[Taranok]

I like most of the SAM changes, but there's a couple things of note:

1. The devs are continuing their long-standing tradition of bloating ability bars with AoE and single target exclusive versions of low-use skills (Shoha vs Shoha 2). I don't like needless bloat especially when you add single target exclusive things of aoe/ST hybrid abilities and so forth.
2. They're bloating the AoE rotation with another GCD, because they wanted to add a third bar. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for abilities like Shoha vs Shoha 2 and every identical analogue.
3. Tsubame-Gaeshi will still cancel if you accidentally use another GCD, at least the charge system means it won't drift if you mess up. This is also problematic if you need to shoha between a Midare and Tsubame because it tends to clip due to ping and such.
4. The most technical class in the game by raw keyboard button presses and systems to manage just got more technical due to more buttons to press.

That's really it. The class will have about 35 or 36 actual hotbar buttons, a lot of which will be exclusively AoE filler bloat, and the class has long since passed the point of being pretty bloated. I consider most hotbars bloated at about 30, which lines up with complaints about button bloat back in Heavensward. The class didn't need much aside from fixing the bloat and dropping the skill floor on Tsubame-Gaeshi, while it wasn't quite dropped, it was at least made more tolerant to drift, so it's really just a lot of bloat.

[Arkdra]

I like most of the SAM changes, but there's a couple things of note:

1. The devs are continuing their long-standing tradition of bloating ability bars with AoE and single target exclusive versions of low-use skills (Shoha vs Shoha 2). I don't like needless bloat especially when you add single target exclusive things of aoe/ST hybrid abilities and so forth.
2. They're bloating the AoE rotation with another GCD, because they wanted to add a third bar. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for abilities like Shoha vs Shoha 2 and every identical analogue.
3. Tsubame-Gaeshi will still cancel if you accidentally use another GCD, at least the charge system means it won't drift if you mess up. This is also problematic if you need to shoha between a Midare and Tsubame because it tends to clip due to ping and such.
4. The most technical class in the game by raw keyboard button presses and systems to manage just got more technical due to more buttons to press.

That's really it. The class will have about 35 or 36 actual hotbar buttons, a lot of which will be exclusively AoE filler bloat, and the class has long since passed the point of being pretty bloated. I consider most hotbars bloated at about 30, which lines up with complaints about button bloat back in Heavensward. The class didn't need much aside from fixing the bloat and dropping the skill floor on Tsubame-Gaeshi, while it wasn't quite dropped, it was at least made more tolerant to drift, so it's really just a lot of bloat.

I like the bloat personally, but I mainly quoted this to say that Tsubame won't grant meditation stacks anymore so the worry about shoha clipping won't apply.