An Examination of Kaiten and Action Bloat on Samurai

[Xenon_S]

In the liveletter, Kaiten's removal cited it being an being an "Action Bloat" problem.
The JP word used was "操作量", the "quantity of operations", I interpret this as not relating to the number of buttons mapped on the hotbar.

The objective of the post is not to engage in subjective arguments on the aesthetics, depths of use, or thematic importance of the skill. There is a quantifiable metric that can be used to measure the "quantity of operations", that being CPM.

With that in mind, let's examine if Kaiten really is an action bloat problem.


In 4.x, Kaiten was not frequently used due to using Hagakure to convert Sen into more Shinten was the preferred rotation.

In 5.x, Tsubame was introduced and Hagakure was nerfed to give rise to the strict 1 minute rotation, you would do 4 Kaitens per minute in the standard rotation. There were no complaints regarding Kaiten being too busy.

In 6.0, Meikyo received a 2nd charge, and Ogi Namikiri was added. This resulted in 1 extra Midare cast on the opener, and 1 extra Ogi cast every 2 minutes. If we take a look at the logs of the best performing Samurais in the savage encounters, the average cast per min for Kaiten is just shy of 5.


So, 4 Kaitens per minute was not an issue, but once you cross the line at 5, it needs to be removed? This makes no sense.

Further more, the best performing Samurai in P4S P2 casted 33 Kaitens over 6:43, that is 660 Kenki spent, which is equivalent to 26.4 Shinten casts, thats 3.93 CPM.

So, if all else in kenki remains equal (which it might not, which is another can of worms), removing Kaiten would effectively lower Samurai's overall CPM by roughly 1. This solved nothing.

(Funnily enough on a side tangent, the GNB in the same log had even higher CPM than SAM)

Adding to that, the 3 highest performing SAM in Eden's Promise P1 had CPMs of 47.6, 47.8, and 47.1
Whereas in P4S P2 the top 3 SAM had CPMs of 46.1, 45.3, and 46.1

Action Bloat wasn't a problem for SAM in 5.x where the CPM was even higher than now, I don't think one can, in good faith, make the argument that currently SAM has an action bloat problem.


I will give that, sometimes during 2-minute burst windows, I run into the situation where I'm setting up for
Midare -> Kaeshi -> Sen GCD -> Higanbana -> Ogi
Where I already have 1 Meditation stack, meaning between Higanbana and Ogi I need to fit in a Shoha and Kaiten, but I only have 1 oGCD due to Higanbana being a cast. I deal with this simply by adding another GCD between Higanbana and Ogi, or shift the sequence so that Ogi comes earlier.
There are many ways to alleviate this particular scenario that does not invlove removing Kaiten.


All in all, I am strictly examining whether or not Kaiten contributes to action bloat and thus needs to be removed, and my conclusion is that it does not, nor will its removal reasonably alleviate the non-existant notion of action bloat on Samurai.

[Kolsykol]

Out of all buttons that could be considered button bloat on SAM, Kaiten ain't it...
It adds so much to the flow of combat, if they want to do something about this then merge Shoha 1 and 2 or something.

Making it so Kaiten = gurantee crit, that would actually do what they want with consistency AND make it more exciting and unique.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

I will give that, sometimes during 2-minute burst windows, I run into the situation where I'm setting up for
Midare -> Kaeshi -> Sen GCD -> Higanbana -> Ogi
Where I already have 1 Meditation stack, meaning between Higanbana and Ogi I need to fit in a Shoha and Kaiten, but I only have 1 oGCD due to Higanbana being a cast. I deal with this simply by adding another GCD between Higanbana and Ogi, or shift the sequence so that Ogi comes earlier.
There are many ways to alleviate this particular scenario that does not invlove removing Kaiten.

When this comes up I can also just double weave shoha and kaiten. I rarely need to double weave on sam though and if you have bad ping there are plenty of ways to prevent that like you said. If they wanted to target "action bloat" then shoha seems it like it would have been a better target. Not only can it quickly overcap between iajutsu moves, requiring an occasional double weave, it's also less important to the job easily.

I don't see sam having an action bloat problem in the first place. Monk and Ninja are more busy during their burst windows (please don't take this an invitation to "fix that"). You know what jobs feel very busy even compared to sam? A lot of tanks this expac. You probably double weave more playing on tanks like DRK and GNB to account for mitigation or even just the damage rotation than on SAM. And like I said if they wanted to make you double weave less they should target shoha before kaiten. It's a job where the difficulty comes more from planning your rotation out than pure physical execution imo. Also SAM is the selfish melee dps class. BLM is very difficult and it makes sense because it fills that role for magic dps, why should SAM get dumbed down when it's not even the hardest melee to play as it is?

I just hope that they revert this change soon like hagakure. The forums and reddit/twitter are overwhelmingly against it.

[Xenon_S]

When this comes up I can also just double weave shoha and kaiten. I rarely need to double weave on sam though and if you have bad ping there are plenty of ways to prevent that like you said. If they wanted to target "action bloat" then shoha seems it like it would have been a better target. Not only can it quickly overcap between iajutsu moves, requiring an occasional double weave, it's also less important to the job easily.

I don't see sam having an action bloat problem in the first place. Monk and Ninja are more busy during their burst windows (please don't take this an invitation to "fix that"). You know what jobs feel very busy even compared to sam? A lot of tanks this expac. You probably double weave more playing on tanks like DRK and GNB to account for mitigation or even just the damage rotation than on SAM. And like I said if they wanted to make you double weave less they should target shoha before kaiten. It's a job where the difficulty comes more from planning your rotation out than pure physical execution imo. Also SAM is the selfish melee dps class. BLM is very difficult and it makes sense because it fills that role for magic dps, why should SAM get dumbed down when it's not even the hardest melee to play as it is?

I just hope that they revert this change soon like hagakure. The forums and reddit/twitter are overwhelmingly against it.

I usually play at 2.07s GCD, last night I tried 2.14s GCD and never ran into the scenario where I had to double weave shoha + kaiten after Higanbana.
So this is even less of an issue on the standard rotation.

Further more, the fact that kaiten was not removed at 6.0 launch, means that throughout 5.x, there were no feedback saying it is action bloat.
So 4 Kaiten per min is fine, but going slightly beyond that and the skill needs to be deleted outright? That's overkill.
If you have an itch, the doctors are not going to fry all your nerves so that you cannot feel anything anymore, ever.

As for Shoha, my personal idea is that it becomes a GCD skill. It has a nice long animation to start with, and not being tied to a combo means that it can be used as filler in the rotation as opposed to hagakure, plus it can serves as extra wiggle room to delay iai casts during movement heavy phases.

[Quor]

All of this. All of it. Reducing CPM by 1 per minute will in no way make any kind of appreciable difference, and if freeing up hotbar space was the true intent (putting aside the devs own denial of such) then there are so many other options that can be pursued that don't gut the job.

[CelestiCer]

This has been a gem of a finding for me, thank you for this post

[Xenon_S]

This has been a gem of a finding for me, thank you for this post

Thanks for digging this back up, though unfortunately I see it getting buried down again shortly as measured analysis are not great at drawing attention.

And ironically, they didnt just remove kaiten, they made it so that gyoten is now same potency per kenki as shinten and now you will be looking to squeeze out extra gyotens in buffs

So in the end it wasn't even a CPM reduction, which further defeats their originally stated reason of lowering action bloat.

[CelestiCer]

So in the end it wasn't even a CPM reduction, which further defeats their originally stated reason of lowering action bloat.

Yay it's a very good analysis that debunks the argument point of Kaiten removal tackling Action Bloat, which it doesn't cause I don't see an Action Bloat issue it doesn't exist in my mind. In general I question a lot of decision making they are doing with our beloved class...

On my Alt enjoying ARR updates (loving Cape Westwind xD) Fuga, teaches new SAM's Cone into Circle AoE combo, only to need to unlearn it later as Fuga gets turned into a Circle AoE?

Sen Management is made easier QOL that's fine, but Kenki management will not be encouraged with the removal of Kaiten... only " Kitchen Sinking Kenki "

Not to mention the introduction towards Tenka Goken, being a circular cast from the center forces the Samurai to often times be in danger puddles. Dodging it will make the Circle radius we have with Tenka Goken not cover the mobs we want to hit... and I already know an argument would be " well Oka and Mangetsu are Circle AOE's why complain? " and well those AoE skills do not have a cast time requiring me to stand still... it feels unpolished now... and a downgrade...

Gyoten dash yes has become part of my pot opener which is also... I have so many questions towards their decision making... There are so many ways they could have done good changes or not done anything even at all and we would be completely content only to ruin it this badly now and ignore feedback? I am just questioning many things...