Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[Roxus]

So if I'm reading this correctly, a Yuki combo spam with complement Hagakure usage into Shinten spam does nearly as much ppGCD as a standard Midare-focused combo? Missing positionals on Kasha and Gekko a total of four times narrows the gap to within .5 ppGCD? Effectively, SE has then made a Dragon Kick rotation for SAM. Is that correct?

Cause if so then that's fucking sad in a way words struggle to describe.

That's correct. You don't completely ignore the rest of your kit, you just ignore it outside the 2 minutes as much as you can.

[Quor]

That's correct. You don't completely ignore the rest of your kit, you just ignore it outside the 2 minutes as much as you can.

Meaning you do two Midare's, two Kaeshi's and one Ogi+Kaeshi every two minutes, as well as (I assume) one Higanbana every minute, since that's still a clear ppGCD gain. Otherwise you're just mindlessly spamming Yuki, mindlessly eating Sen with Hagakure and then mindlessly spamming Shinten. I cannot fathom the thought process the job balance team went through to think that their decisions regarding SAM were going to amount to anything positive. I'm reminded of that time in SB when NIN's ended up using a GCD combo sequence that resulted in more damage than the devs were expecting because they apparently didn't consider that particular combo sequence in their balancing calculations. And here we are again.

[Ruminous]

It's why the question "do you play your own game?" gets asked. Because as much as people say yes they do, there are certain aspects that people don't touch when they play it. I'm no dev, but I don't play magical ranged much beyond getting it to cap and then forgetting it exists. Has to be the same way for anyone else who doesn't have a lot of free time to learn each and every intricate detail.

Of course, that's why you hire a team of playtesters and get them to play your changes. But why hire those people when you can shove them out the door for your playerbase to beta test for you? Works for Blizzard, and the toxicity you get from the playerbase is peanuts compared to what you save on hiring a dedicated team. At least by how anyone higher up would see it.