After reading the patch notes, I guess I won't play SAM anymore

[Chopstix]

Actually I'm pretty sure it has more to do with it massively sucking when your opener has no crits and your damage nosedive because your biggest hits did half the damage of someone who got lucky.

It is not fun having a DRG and dnc partner, and getting a 0 crit opener.

That is what everyone is dealing with. Even warrior. No matter how many things u make autocrit/DH, there will always be the next highest dmg contributor that does not, which in turn will define ur parse by its proc variance. On a warrior that is ur fell cleaves outside of IR and ur combo finishers and upheaval.

Even though ur sam big hitters auto crit now, there is still going to be that guy who does better than u because most of their combo finishers also crit/DH (the ones that give u the buff).

U want consistency? Remove all possible dmg variance. No more crit stat. No more DH stat. Just job mechanics that set up ur big hitters to hit even bigger. Or u can stop looking at ur parse numbers while doing the fight, focus on ur performance and let fate take care of the rest. Most of ur logs will come out to w/in expected range rates. There will be outliers both on the high end and the low end, it is what it is. Unless u r fishing for number 1 on ff logs, it literally does not matter so long as u feel content with ur performance in terms of GCD rolling and ability usage.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That is what everyone is dealing with. Even warrior. No matter how many things u make autocrit/DH, there will always be the next highest dmg contributor that does not, which in turn will define ur parse by its proc variance. On a warrior that is ur fell cleaves outside of IR and ur combo finishers and upheaval.

Even though ur sam big hitters auto crit now, there is still going to be that guy who does better than u because most of their combo finishers also crit/DH (the ones that give u the buff).

U want consistency? Remove all possible dmg variance. No more crit stat. No more DH stat. Just job mechanics that set up ur big hitters to hit even bigger. Or u can stop looking at ur parse numbers while doing the fight, focus on ur performance and let fate take care of the rest. Most of ur logs will come out to w/in expected range rates. There will be outliers both on the high end and the low end, it is what it is. Unless u r fishing for number 1 on ff logs, it literally does not matter so long as u feel content with ur performance in terms of GCD rolling and ability usage.

The problem is its a HUGE swing for SAM due to the potencies.

[Quor]

The problem is its a HUGE swing for SAM due to the potencies.

Then they can tweak the potencies, or add auto-crit to Kaiten (which won't affect Kaeshi's, meaning group crit buffs still have strong value with SAM's while simultaneously smoothing out damage). They had other options but they chose to gut the job by removing Kaiten and adding unnecessary auto-crit.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Then they can tweak the potencies, or add auto-crit to Kaiten (which won't affect Kaeshi's, meaning group crit buffs still have strong value with SAM's while simultaneously smoothing out damage). They had other options but they chose to gut the job by removing Kaiten and adding unnecessary auto-crit.

I don't find kaiten disappearing "gutting", and Sam was my favorite job in ff before it released in XIV, which I then mained until 6.0. And I wasn't bad at it. I'm no 1%, but I did fairly well in most of the tiers I did.

Different opinions and all that.

[Quor]

I don't find kaiten disappearing "gutting", and Sam was my favorite job in ff before it released in XIV.

Different opinions and all that.

And many people, myself included, don't find the new "Shinten gauge" we're getting to be particularly interesting or engaging. As others have said elsewhere, while Kaiten may have only required one single brain cell to use correctly, that was one more brain cell than spamming even more Shinten. Especially if you keep in mind what SE said about wanting to shift SAM away from Shinten spam at the beginning of ShB. Yet here we are now, back to spamming Shinten more than we have ever since, for less comparative damage to boot.

None of that sounds or feels good to me. So much stripped away in a single patch, how can it be described as anything *but* gutted?