Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[Shinstrike]

I usually dont post in the official forums. but i wished to add a +1 to the SAM complaints here. SAM does not feel fun anymore SE, and this is the biggest issue i have with the job. i dont get the point in casting for a 25k or so midare setsugekka. i already didnt quite enjoy cast times so much as a melee, but now it feels even more lackluster when the number behind it doesnt match what it should for a cast as a melee. and no im not saying removing all cast times from SAM would fix my issues with the job because it wouldnt, but i will say that the iiteration prior to this update was far more acceptable. it felt aesthestically good and fun to use this job. now it feels like someone sliced open samurai and didnt finish the job, but left it to bleed.

[CelestiCer]

I went back in the forums history, before I joined the Forums. Apparently a ton of " Do not remove Kaiten " posts to be found. And the more thread posts I read, the more angry I got... the amount of players ignored, I can't describe the frustration nor the frustration of all those players ignored. We're going full circle, posting about why Kaiten should not have been removed, a massive mistake by SE to have done this.

[Quor]

I went back in the forums history, before I joined the Forums. Apparently a ton of " Do not remove Kaiten " posts to be found. And the more thread posts I read, the more angry I got... the amount of players ignored, I can't describe the frustration nor the frustration of all those players ignored. We're going full circle, posting about why Kaiten should not have been removed, a massive mistake by SE to have done this.

Yeah, anyone who played SAM seriously understood that removing Kaiten wasn't going to feel good. Plenty of us even went the good faith route and took Kaiten off our bars pre-6.1 to give it a try, and yeah, it was just all Shinten spam. Very one dimensional, very boring, just like we were used to when alliance roulette would give us CT only with an extra button tacked on. And this was before we knew that we'd be getting potency cuts or that Tenka would be changing.

But they still went through with it. For the first time in a long time I have no faith in this dev team as far as job balance goes. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on a lot of stuff, such as tank homogenization ("the complexity would come from the fight!") and healer dps kit minimalization ("they'll introduce more difficult healing challenges once things are balanced!" but now it's clear that the goal isn't fun for the player base, it's apparently to ease the work load for the devs. I don't begrudge them wanting to work smarter instead of harder but what they've done here is just pure laziness, and it's clear that said laziness has been the guiding force behind job balance for quite some time now.

I no longer have that faith in this team, not from a job balancing perspective. 6.1 is, by all accounts, a good patch. The story is great, with lots of fun, interesting beats to it, balanced with a good mix of serious stuff, comedy and some great character background. The new pvp is quite entertaining, the 24-man and 4-man are on-point, hell, even the new Prae and Ultima Weapon fights are fun and engaging in a way that addresses a long-standing criticism about the lack of "intermediate" adventurer training. Even DRK and WHM are doing well for themselves as far as balance goes, with some great (and long-awaited in the case of Blood Weapon and LD) changes.

But then the NIN, MCH and SAM changes (or rather for MCH, the lack of real changes) rear their ugly heads and I just find myself wondering who on earth could have approved these. Was it Yoshi P.? Did he really know what he was giving the OK to? Did he care? Is it just that he's woefully ignorant? Did he trust his subordinates too much and believe that if they put something on his desk then it was good to go? Is he just fucking incompetent when it comes to anything not-BLM? I've never felt the need to ask questions like this before because I always had faith. A hard-earned faith that the dev team won over a long period of time, starting with their rescue of 1.0 and turning it into 2.0. It's a faith that I've built up since I first helped out in the 2.0 alpha, and while they've made mistakes they've generally done right by the players in correcting them.

I hope my faltering faith will be restored. I hope Yoshi P. and his team will see the mistakes that they have made, not just with SAM but with so many other jobs. This drive towards simplification needs to stop. Healers need more engaging DPS kits, tanks need more engaging moment-to-moment gameplay that isn't boss-reliant, various DPS jobs have long-standing issues that need to be addressed and SAM absolutely needs to have 100% of the changes done in 6.1 reverted back to 6.08, if not even further (I would love to see Kenki gain based on correct positional returned to us instead of boosted positional potency like it is now).

[Roxus]

Morning folks. Another day, and still we have received exactly 0 responses from anyone on Square Enix's side. It's par for the course, but disappointing nonetheless.

Don't give up though! There are still people talking about this issue. And that is exactly what we need. A lot of people's hopes are riding on this being addressed in 6.11, in time for Ultimate. Revert the changes to 6.08 for Samurai.

Additional image. Of course, let's not take it too seriously...but like others have said, it does make me wonder.

[Randommob]

What I don't get is why does the new Way of the Samurai II increase base Kasha/Gekko/Yukikaze by 20 potency, but the combo and rear/flank combos by only 10? No one is going to be using the base version without a combo unless they severely screw up.

Those free style sam will hate you for giving this info away my dude

[Randommob]

Strongly disagree with this. Having to constantly re-position was a major headache. Moving to dodge an attack (or just tanking one with Third Eye) won't feel nearly as bad.

Bro, you are melee dps. Moving is what make it fun, dont wanna move , range and caster will welcome you at the open arm. Also, if kaiten is a hurdle, good it should be. That give a job some way to express your skills. If the job has no way to punish you when you play the class wrong, its not fun. Look at NIN, mudras can be messed up, less dmg and give you bunny on hat to shame you. Its fun that way. What are you gonna do about NIN now? Remove mudras since they are hurdle and punishing?

[xAFROx]

While everyone is asking for the changes to be reverted back to 6.08 I'd like to add on to those reversions. We could literally still have everything SAM every had from 4.0 with what we have now. I may not know how numbers in this game work, nor do I pay attention to them outside of the occasional glance at the number that flashes on screen above my target, but like.... with the way jobs have been getting transforming buttons under certain status procs, there's no reason why we can't bring back older skills now.

People have already gone on to show why 'button bloat' isn't an issue, and plenty have gone well into detail about why 'APM action bloat' hasn't been fixed either due to the removal of Kaiten.

So while we're on the train of asking for things back, I want to ask for more:
Third Eye - Open Eyes was a good thing. Open Eyes can change Third Eye to Merciful Eyes (and please, increase the heal of that to at least be similar to Second Wind role action) / Open Eyes can also change Shinten into Seigan with increased potency OR reduced cost (and that is the one I want most alongside Kaiten back)

Ikishoten change into Ogi Namikiri into Kaeshi Namikiri. I am legitimately confused why this wasn't already a thing to begin with. Reading the tooltips (and somehow missing the fact it had no such text of *This action cannot be assigned to a hotbar) I thought that was how it worked and went into 90 content without the ability to use it outside of the actions & traits window. That should be changed.

Senei and Guren... seems to be a 50/50 split on folks who want these to be merged or stay separate. Alternative, make another status proc to change Shinten and Kyuten into Senei and Guren respectively.

Shoha 1 and 2, I will say seems kind of lazy. While logical, the theming on SAM has typically always felt on point. I think Shoha can upgrade to targeted aoe with fallout splash. Or potentially they could make the effect dependent on how many meditation stacks there are. 3 minimum to use. 5 for a medium and 8 for maximum effect.
(The 8 suggested is intentional. With how many jobs have become more referential to characters in FF6, MNK got Blitz from Sabin, MCH got a decent chunk of Edgar's tools, SAM iaijutsu being based off Cyan's sword tech that had to wait for a charge to use)

While this would be a lot of work to include and adjust, I personally believe that a toolset shouldn't be completely changed unless it was already bordering on unplayable.

TL;DR - Don't nerf or take away. Add onto what's there and bring back what was taken away.

[Randommob]

Yeah, but yall didn't really get nerfed but maybe 3% if that. Your rDPS went down, but in that's just from loosing crit synergy, your actual DPS as maybe 5% which honestly isn't that big of deal. You are still the top DPS, just by a smaller margin.

Im sorry but for a selfish dps, to do less dmg is an important thing. Other classes bring something to the table, raid buff, raise, healing buff, etc. For sam, they bring nothing, beside dmg and now doing less dmg than before. Now with auto crit, some raid buff has no meaning which create the problem, why bring sam when they do less dmg, no synergy. If you need a melee with top dps, bring RPR; they even give you the extra 3%dmg up as a gift. My group even ask me if i could change to rpr for now.

[Blackshizer]

Just created an account to support the notion of giving back Kaiten to SAM. To be completely frank I'm not really fond of crit farming so the guaranteed crits don't really bother me that much, but holy hell does it feel god damn soulless to play without Kaiten.

Now we are just a shinten bot.



peak gameplay right there....

[Quor]

Seems my previous post was almost prophetic. First the insane job changes for SAM, now a completely borked housing lottery system. Just what the hell is going on over there?