Like many others here, I created this forum account just to speak my mind on the 6.1 SAM changes. As someone who started raiding with SAM and has continued playing SAM ever since, I have been pretty satisfied with SAM's gameplay in EW as a whole. The 6.1 change however feels like a rug's been pulled out from under my feet. I'm not posting to criticize the devs; I think they've done a wonderful job with this game. Just wanted to put some thoughts out there for discussion and possibly consideration.

I have very little to say about kaiten that has not already been said in this thread. Kaiten feels iconic and to me, is an absolutely essential part of SAM's job identity. If button bloat is the identified problem, then there are many other candidates who are more egregious offenders (ie shoha/shoha 2, ikishoten/namikiri, and I would argue senei and guren could potentially be merged into a single button with high potency on single target and dps falloff on subsequent targets a la double down and shadowbringer).

As for the autocrit changes, I understand where the devs were coming from in trying to reduce the crit variance on SAM's heavier hitting skills. This might be motivated by trying to make SAM's dps more independent from stacking crit % raidbuffs and to increase SAM's overall average DPS output.

After some thinking on what could have been done to better address the dev's overall concerns in making these changes, my proposed solution is as such:
1. Keep kaiten, but change its effect to: increase potency of next iaijutsu by 50% and increasing its base crit % to 40-50% - I'm not too minded about removing the potency buff and moving the potency over to iaijutsu potency, but I think having kaiten give a base crit chance which stacks with crit% raidbuffs is a nice balance which achieves the goals of reducing crit % variance while allowing SAM to remain synergistic with raid buff comps + allowing us to continue enjoying kaiten. I also have considered that in order for shinten to remain relevant over kaiten, this effect should be limited to solely iaijutsu;
2. Ditch shoha, keep shoha 2 but change the effect to higher single target potency with aoe potency falloff;
3. Same as 2 for senei and guren; and
4. Ikishoten into namikiri.

I understand that some of the changes might already be set in stone for the 6.1 patch release, but I sincerely hope that our voices in this thread will be seen and considered for a future 6.1x patch. Am interested in seeing what other players might have to say about my suggestions and I'm hoping this thread can be filled with some constructive feedback for the Dev team to possibly work off.