Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[Akava]

Back with nothing new to add, except to say I still want the changes reverted.

[VincentH]

It's been really hard to get used to the VOID of not having Kaiten before any iajitsu and i still do not understand the reasoning behind it. Now everytime i feel a hole in the rotation i have to fill it with Shinten andit doesn't feel fun. Worst of all is that these changes come 2 weeks before Ultimate and i don't really have the time to gear another job that isn't MNK, let alone how my static feels behind the party composition.

GIVE US KAITEN BACK

[Kyourai]

Its so bad so far, please squareenix give me back my fave class, im so depressed with these changes. the dopamine hits from those 90K back to back namikiris is gone and so is just the overall identity of the job as this powerhouse melee that builds up to these big hitters. It doesn't feel the same.......

[Wyssahtyn]

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?

I feel like Endwalker stands at risk of being another of the devs blunders rather than their supposed magnum opus the longer it goes on. Not even sure Island Sanctuary is even going to be functional on arrival, especially given the near complete silence on it.

[KYuuma]

To the uninitiated, abrupt and dramatic gameplay shift in FFXIV isn't a new problem in 6.1. They've been around for years, Bard got shafted hard in 3.0 and it took them 2 years. 2. Years. To fix their own damn game.

All I'm saying is we're probably looking at similar timeframe if they're this adamant on not reverting back to 6.08. That's a strong enough reason to consider unsubbing in my eyes.

[Roxus]

I'm not going to lie, this was the last straw for me since this is literally the job I waited for, poured thousands and thousands of hours into, and I am heavily considering it. If they are firm this is how they want to go, I'll refuse, even if there is nothing better to replace it. I won't support a company who doesn't care. The game is absolutely amazing in so many ways, but it becomes less and less what players want and more what developers want.

[Theodric_Thorne]

I've tried several DPS jobs and this is the only one I've really clicked with from day one. DRG is close, but I can't really get a good feel for how it plays because the kit feels so incomplete at 56, compared to SAM's out of the box at 50. I don't feel motivated to level DRG to 90 knowing that it will feel awful to play in synced content where SAM would still feel "complete" even if some of the capstone abilities were missing.

If these changes aren't reverted, I dunno how much longer I can stick with the game. Outside of MSQ the only thing I do is chip away at omni-crafting. SAM is the lens through which I experience the majority of the content in this game, but it is no longer fun to play. If button bloat is a problem, why not consolidate some actions in the way that Namikiri already has been? Why do we need two versions of Shoha, or both Guren and Senei? Shoha II could be a trait that adds AoE falloff damage to Shoha. Senei could be a trait that buffs the single-target damage of Guren, with Guren just adjusted however it needs to be in terms of potency to compensate.

I'm also still feeling the sting of the loss of Seigan. Seeing how Chiten works in PvP, maybe we could try replacing Third Eye with a PvE version of it? Blocking attacks with Third Eye almost feels like a waste of time because it's only going to block 10% of a hit that's already going to hurt because we're a fairly squishy class. If we have to lose our "counterattack button" then can we at least have our "parry button" modified with a "counterattack" effect? It doesn't have to work exactly the same as the PvP Chiten, but Chiten has a cooler animation and feels more impactful to use. Third Eye is just kinda...there.

Bottom line, SAM just doesn't feel good to play right now. What drew me to it initially was that it's got the elegant bladework of a Jedi Knight, combined with big finishing moves that dish out huge spikes of damage. Midare Setsugekka blew my mind the first time I used it, because it felt every bit as impactful as its animation looked. The time spent going through the sequence of GCDs that led up to filling my whole Sen gauge felt meaningful. I no longer find myself eagerly looking forward to that magical moment when my cooldowns line up and I know the next enemy is about to be annihilated by two Midares, two Namikiris, and a Senei/Shoha. Sure, they still look cool, but the big spikes of juicy direct crit damage are gone. They feel like WoW spenders now.

[Roxus]

Abbreviated.

Wholeheartedly agree. There are so many suggestions they could have used, you can click a samurai post at random and they will offer a solution. And those solutions aren't even that different from each other in any community. It's almost as if most of us understood the good and bad points of the job we love. There's been a lot of talk in General about the incompetence lately, and I echo their sentiment. The solution at this point is to become so loud they can hear through their hands covering their ears. I hope everyone doesn't give up until we get an actual response on all the current issues this game has.

[elioaiko]

This is an important bit. I think the major root of the SAM "spike" damage problem lies in how we're forced to dump everything into a two minute window instead of having it spaced out more evenly. The lows are much lower if you don't get those juicy direct crits but the high's are much higher if you do, so this creates that damage variance they are so concerned about. The addition of charges on Kaeshi and Meikyo just locked SAM into a 120s rotation instead of it's 60s rotation from ShB, and since every raid buff now falls in that same 120s cycle there is so much more damage to be gained when a SAM pools charges for raid buffs.

This. I just hate that they're being lazy about damage variances and are forcing all jobs to align in a 2 min burst window as if that will solve all their problems. It only makes it harder because now every job is competing for the best 2 min burst. I was drawn to SAM because of the consistent damage throughout (SB) and then it's being similar in ShB but EW has changed SAM into this job that revolves around a 2min and watching your Meikyo CD and making sure that you can get everything into your burst.

Like NIN's trick attack change, it was already aligning in their 2 min because trick is up every min but now they're just forcing it to line up and giving personal damage buffs. They're just taking all of the support dps jobs and making them in a selfish dps buffer hybrid and turning SAM (except BLM) into something that doesn't make sense.

I didn't play SB SAM for the huge boom every min, I played it because it's damage was sustained throughout and rewarding you with the boom when everything else lined up. I was even ok with ShB SAM but what it is now is a busy, messy rotation that isn't satisfying.

[Chimparzan]

just want to add my voice again, hope they revert the changes and at least nice to see all the good input from SAM on here.