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

[Quyn]

Translations taken from https://discord.gg/ffxiv

[Anemic]

AND yet I'm still trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing for the SAM job.

[SlickPaws]

+1 for dropping SAM in 6.1.
I'm a tank main anyway but having one of the only DPS classes I still enjoy get these sorts of changes is going to have me scurrying back to GNB for the rest of the expansion until they arbitarily come for us too. Frankly they can keep the potency changes and they could make SAM the worst DPS in the game for all I care, but by removing Kaiten they've seriously impacted the feel of the class and that's the dealbreaker for me, but I'm also one of those insane players who actually enjoys managing buffs and resources.

[MiaShino]

To give umm, simple breakdown of what is being stated here.

Kaiten is percent increase spent on high potency ability.

Potency increases apply onto the stack before critical damage is calculated. Soooo class that buffs high base potency skills that are used frequently will suffer more greatly when it fails to crit with frequency. At the least that is what he appears to be suggesting.

I do not believe this because there are plenty of classes with high base potency skills that were not adjusted due to "crit variance balancing". It was originally stated to have been removed to reduce action bloat and crit variance. Then why do we have crit materia and critical on armor at all? What game developer implements percentage based multipliers without understanding how deviation over time or outliers work?

Auto crit not only removes the effectiveness of entire substat, it impacts certain buffs such as Chain Stratagem (lowering rDPS of Scholar if Warrior/Sam/Mech is present). If you are Scholar player who happens to focus on optimization you will probably feel that sting however minute the loss is. Ohhh goodie there is a Samurai in the party.. there goes my chain strat!

Besides if this were truly about critical variance they would have simply made Kaiten cause the next weaponskill used to be critical then left it as Kenki spender. No no it is gone now because good players understood which weapon skills to buff with Kaiten while average players did not, the variance between these two groups was too great (especially if the buffed weaponskill was a critical hit). Much much of the easier to spam Shinten > Shinten > Shinten > Shinten instead. No thinking involved in that!

[Quor]

With all due respect to Yoshi P., I hope he knows that we've been telling him about the parts we don't like ever since he mentioned Kaiten being removed. We don't need to try the patch to tell him that the removal of Kaiten from our kit will suck; we've been able to see that for years now, every time we queue into alliance raid roulette and get CT. It's incredibly boring. Adding Shinten at 52 doesn't make the job interesting, it simply provides a jank justification for the continued existence of Kenki. You could remove the Kenki costs of everything, keep the current cooldowns and shift Shinten/Kyuten over to a four-charge-based 15s CD ability and no one would notice the Kenki gauge being gone.

[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.

[ShanaShirayuki]

I've seen the math based on these changes in the Balance discord's SAM lounge, but a big part of why I enjoyed the class is gone now. It did suck to not get that crit / dh during a Devilment buff, but boy it was extremely enjoyable to see that 100k+ Namikiri when it did.

I could understand them wanting to change crit buffs and variance as a whole, but why only one class and right before an Ultimate drop? Not to mention how arbitrary the changes are, such as how Higanbana got compensated but the other Kaiten'd abilities did not. SAMs essentially have to relearn their class right before Ultimate or pick a different melee. I will say that this is the patch that would've made me unsub permanently, but I have an obligation to my static since I'm locked in as their melee for the aforementioned Ultimate. Hopefully, based on the responses that Yoshi-P made to negative feedback in chat during the live letter reading, I have a feeling this change will be reverted or more buffs will come (but we will see).