Just gave new SAM for a spin and I am not a fan. So I'm going to add to the thread so the devs can get that feedback. I'm already echoing a lot of comments people have made before and there are definitely a lot of reasons, both subjective and objective but in the end, for me playing the class just feels off or wrong now. I will try to comment on each of the changes that are impactful in some way.

1. Kaiten. I understand both sides of removing Kaiten. It's just a button you push before every iai anyways so it is arbitrary. It adds some depth with resource management. It ties 2 of your resources together. The animation is cool and the anticipation feels awesome. For me it boils down to one thing after giving 6.1 SAM an honest try. Regardless of the math, removing it from the rotation was a bigger impact than i thought to the SAM identity, feel, and fantasy. The rotation just feels weird. It's hard to understate how Kaiten really added to the SAM flow. It was like a move that really separated the difference between regular GCDs and your Iais. With the removal of it, the Iais lost a lot of luster and impact. It was like you lost a hype-man before you dropped the mic. Now Iais feel less impactful because of this (and another obvious reason). While it may be an arbitrary button push, it was still a fun button to push. Now SAM Kenki is just using Shinten when you have it and saving it to spam in burst. Which brings me to the second point.

2. What burst? It really hardly feels like a burst anymore. I understand the goal in removing wildly fluctuating DPS due to crits but now the damage is so lackluster even when it does crit because of the potency nerfs. I can understand redistributing damage from the burst to the combo GCDs but the net result is a negative feeling. I hardly notice the combo damage buffs even though i know they are there. But I constantly grimace at how pathetic my big attacks now hit for. It feels really bad seeing a blown up Crit Ogi now do barely any more damage than what a non-crit did before the patch. Even worse that my hype-man Kaiten is gone. Part of the skill ceiling for SAMs was aligning your big attacks properly with burst windows. SAM mains understand that we dont bring utility so we work hard to make sure we are doing the one job we have: Dealing as much damage as we can. While this change lowers the skill floor, it feels like punishment for those that put so much time, energy, and love into playing this class. Put the potency back to Midare and Ogi. Let the dopamine flow again.

3. Third Eye. This is a good change. I didn't understand why Tanks got a 4 second window to time a mitigation properly while SAMs got 3 seconds...with a class that already has some difficulty double weaving depending on SkS. So putting it up to 4 is a good standardization given the sometimes wonky activation windows. And if you're going to remove Kaiten, give third eye it's animation.

Part 1