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.