Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[Roxus]

Good day all. Topics of interest today are the following: Reaper population and discussion dwindling, Discussions of FF16 and speculation on if it is impacting FF14, realization that we are paying the monthly sub to be testing the changes on the live server, and some random kit reworks people have thought of. There are posters who have posted before expressing their discontent with the changes every day.

[Theodric_Thorne]

Good day all. Topics of interest today are the following: Reaper population and discussion dwindling, Discussions of FF16 and speculation on if it is impacting FF14, realization that we are paying the monthly sub to be testing the changes on the live server, and some random kit reworks people have thought of. There are posters who have posted before expressing their discontent with the changes every day.

Thanks for keeping us posted on the general temperature of the JP forums with regard to this issue, it's encouraging to know they stand with us.

Feels like all we have to do is anxiously await some kind of response and see whether SE walks this back, or doubles down on it.

[Ceridwen]

Hello all.

I'd like to summarize a couple things. Increasing frustration between all communities, concerns that it is getting less and less productive. JP players start to wonder how the situation is in EN more. More feelings on how the job is "boring" or "not fun". More comments on being a "Pure DPS". At this point we're all waiting for an answer.

The frustration of still not being addressed after they completely skipped over Samurai in the patch note reading, and saying they will further elaborate, and have not. This stems from them deciding to ignore the overwhelming feedback before the changes were implemented. Saying "For the future" is not enough. We can't see the future, and we see what is in the present. The community has given a lot of patience over the years regarding job design. I just want everyone to think about this. Money is one thing yes, but time is your most valuable resource. When they ask you to wait repeatedly, at some point you need to tell them to stop. Some people don't have that time, and we don't live forever. Telling people to take a break is just as insulting, they are here to convey their feelings because they trust you and want you to make the game better. They want to have fun with this game. If people did not care, they wouldn't be here complaining. I am not saying that every change for the better has to be instant, but it's been nothing but delays of completely ignoring the playerbase, an utter lack of transparency in this regard. Look what happens to the jobs that have reworks. Look at how barebones tanks and healers are. Our fight encounters don't even have any engagement besides damage now. Our job wasn't even in a bad spot, it's a forced change. For what? Are we really preparing the game to transition into the mobile market? Who knows at this point.

I want them to fix what they broke.

I'm so glad they're feeling the same way! I hope EU players are, too. A united voice would be pleasant &, I hope, more impactful. The Samurai flourish, its character, was tied to that move. It's not a matter of overall dps, or it certainly isn't for me, anyway. My lalafell does all the classes, but some don't fit her, so I make an alt who specializes (and it's easier to gear that way, too - as an aside, also fun to see the story through different/taller eyes.) It's so disheartening and discouraging to have what I consider the signature move just gone and replaced by something flat that could be any 2h warrior in any game.

[FrogBiscuit]

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.

Also speaks entirely to the reason the backlash and outrage is so prominent.

The idea that a class I have played since it has been available, turned into garbage night and day difference, for potentially a couple of expansions before it gets fixed is a terrible feeling.


I don't question SE believing SAM had issues they needed to correct when it came to future balancing/adding to the class. Seems legitimate enough... I found it fun up to 6.1, but I don't know what SE has planned in the future for the class...


What I do question however, is SE absolutely gutting the enjoyment of the class, effectively making it as simple and monotonous as possible, with no indication of a solution, or any other changes... They just absolutely murdered the class without a second look and then just left it to sit like a pile of dog poo on a hot sidewalk....

[cjbeagle]

They just absolutely murdered the class without a second look and then just left it to sit like a pile of dog poo on a hot sidewalk....

So...you don't like playing with hot poo?

That throws a kink in the entire design direction!

[FrogBiscuit]

Ya know this might come of toxic, then again Square and Community help me become that...

When someone gives an opinion of Kaiten and its approval to it's removal... (that rhymed hehe) and sometimes claiming to Main SAM perhaps even for years... does anyone ever go to their " Oaks", to their " Mahogany " if you will to check if they done recent content as SAM at all?

Often times I find out they have not and actualy cleared content with another class. Heck through Lodestone sometimes I see them never having leveled Samurai. Is that just me or am taking this far? am I threading a thin line of something? idk forum rules honestly I even been cursing in some of my posts cause of utter frustrations from SAM changes coupled with my housing lottery being lost to Nr... 0

Might be a little obsessive, but in all honesty I don't really hold it against you. The internet is full of callous, spiteful people and I wouldn't put it past a decent portion of the populace to be so giddy over a class they don't play being gutted of all fun and theme that they would go out of their way to pretend to like a support a negative as nothing more then self pleasing trollish behavior. It happens rabidly in other subjects, its not surprising to see it in gaming.


And I certainly don't blame you for it raising your ire considering the people doing it are doing it entirely for self serving reasons with no connection to the actual topic at hand.

I just hope that any influence those sorts of posts can have is the specific recognition of being nothing more then trolling... Crossing my fingers on that one as most posts supporting the removal of Kaiten reveal the poster to have absolute no idea of what they are talking about in the first place, even without looking up their play history.

[FrogBiscuit]

So...you don't like playing with hot poo?

That throws a kink in the entire design direction!

Hey... Everyone has to grow up at some point...


Not to mention the looks you get from people around the neighborhood.

[SieyaM]

I miss the card identities from old AST. Why they're all just 6 or 3% damage now is beyond me, but I was just starting to level it when that happened and decided 'nah, I want more thinking involved'

The reason for the change in card effects is because certain communities within the game would only play balance, which was a DPS boosting card, and declared all other cards useless. This community was listened to and the card effects have all been turned into the balance.

[xAFROx]

The reason for the change in card effects is because certain communities within the game would only play balance, which was a DPS boosting card, and declared all other cards useless. This community was listened to and the card effects have all been turned into the balance.

And here I thought the only card that wasn't used was uh... which one granted TP? Spire? I thought that was the one no one liked.

But since we're talking about AST, I miss the idea of how flexible it could be with its two modes of diurnal and nocturnal sect. Neutral sect survived but I don't get why they needed to remove half of the jobs kit when it was just tied to a stance you choose before combat.

And on the topic of SAM, I don't log in frequently, but the few times that I do, I typically go dps because I'm too lazy to play tank a lot of the time, but currently my only jobs at 90 are GNB and SAM, and it feels really odd trying to keep track of what I should be doing. I don't know if I should be pooling my kenki for more shinten in spurts or spamming it incessantly at low kenki values, but I'm unironically paying less attention to the fights with a button gone.

I'm having tunnel vision by looking at my bars and resource, using Hagakure more frequently and am only using Midare infrequently. Before I used to build those like no one's business and now it's a 50/50 if I even use it or burn the Sen for kenki.

Am I playing as the devs intended yet? It seems a bit more in line with the change to Tenka Goken that I'm eating unnecessary hits just to make use of as much of my kit as I can remember to.

[Quor]

And here I thought the only card that wasn't used was uh... which one granted TP? Spire? I thought that was the one no one liked.

The issue with AST basically boiled down to how "pre-pull" could last multiple minutes if the AST got "unlucky" and didn't have a spread Balance (which meant one Ewer or Spire to be Royal Road'd and one Balance) ready to go with a Balance in reserve. If you got unlucky then you'd have raid group sitting there for minutes waiting for the AST to get the perfect setup.

The other cards weren't bad per se but they had their own issues. Ewer was nice to have in your back pocket for MP regen but in an ideal situation you didn't need that. Spire was generally not needed outside of Royal Road because most jobs had TP management plus MCH and BRD had a TP regen ability they could use. Arrow was actually pretty baller on BLM but basically useless on anyone else because it fucked up their rotations. Although I did take a personal bit of perverse pleasure in putting an enhanced Arrow on a MNK and watching them bottom out on TP moments later since they would have something like a sub-1.5 GCD.

Spear was also pretty great once it was changed to enhanced crit but when it was a CD reduction thing it was weird to use since it only worked if you use it on someone before they used their CD's. Since CD usage is pretty much pre-planned to line up with buffs using Spear typically was more trouble than it was worth as it would mis-align everything.

Bole was neat in concept but ultimately never panned out. You see it's spiritual successor in WHM's Aquaveil, which functions in basically the same way. But as a card you juse maybe used Bole for the enhancement boost via RR and that was it.

So this left the Balance, which was the straight damage boosting card, and when Spread via RR you were looking at a 15% (or 10 later on, iirc) boost to everyone in the raid, which was absolutely huge from a dps perspective. Ewer and Spire had value for enabling the Spread function from RR while Arrow, Spear and Bole were basically re-drawn or outright discarded unless you could leverage a Bole to boost a Balance and give that to your best dps right before burst phase. Since the ideal combination used by the playerbase was generally Spread Balance, SE just said "ok fine, here" and made Divination with AST while making all the regular cards just various amounts of +dmg%.

On the one hand this kinda sucked because the unique flavor of Arrow and Spear (when it was CD reduction) were pretty neat. But the practical usage they ended up bringing were negligible and hard to manage even when useful due to the RNG nature of the cards. So people leaned into Balance as the only card and Spread as the only RR effect because it was how you got the most consistent bang for your buck. SE made changes that reflected the trends of the community at large, but AST lost a bit of itself in the process.

It's hard as a player because I can see and understand the perspective SE is coming from here, but when you look at the path that led from what AST was to where we are now with SAM and other jobs I just can't support that sort of simplification anymore.