Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[KurenXIV]

Big true here. The removal of Kaiten (and the addition of auto-crits, and the change to Tenka) was bad, BUT! if SE had been transparent about all of this, with showcases of what SAM would become and how the overall feel of the gameplay would be preserved AND it was done in an appropriate manner - i.e. not in the middle of an already-released xpac, but rather in the lead-up to a new xpac

There is literally zero reason to do changes incrementally to lead to a design change for a job. Literally none. They either should have done the full revamp or nothing at all. Having said that I agree with the rest of your post =)

[Naoki34]

They won't give me back my chocolate bar! Give it back to me!

[Roxus]

They won't give me back my chocolate bar! Give it back to me!

Wow look! Another useless post! By none other than the...wait who are you again?

Anyways, some activity picked up since the liveletter announcement. People are once again stating their hopes for the patch. Let's all do the same and look forward to what they have to say.

[Colt47]

Ended up talking with some of my RL friends who played Samurai since Stormblood and the feedback was rather interesting to say the least. They actually all dropped Sam during Shadowbringers because they disliked the direction they went with the job. One of them didn't like Tsubame-Gaeshi since it felt like they were just trying to make some Knock off sword art online combo instead of a legit samurai.

Also they didn't like the idea of Kaiten being removed either and said they'd wished they pruned some other skill that was basically pointless.

I think that it is good that they are attempting to manage rotations and making sure they don't get too complicated for newer players, but I kind of see the point of people who liked Stormblood samurai and now I'm looking at reaper and realizing they are going to make it more complicated next expansion for sure.

[xAFROx]

Ended up talking with some of my RL friends who played Samurai since Stormblood and the feedback was rather interesting to say the least. They actually all dropped Sam during Shadowbringers because they disliked the direction they went with the job. One of them didn't like Tsubame-Gaeshi since it felt like they were just trying to make some Knock off sword art online combo instead of a legit samurai.

Also they didn't like the idea of Kaiten being removed either and said they'd wished they pruned some other skill that was basically pointless.

I think that it is good that they are attempting to manage rotations and making sure they don't get too complicated for newer players, but I kind of see the point of people who liked Stormblood samurai and now I'm looking at reaper and realizing they are going to make it more complicated next expansion for sure.

While I'll agree that Tsubame Gaeshi won't appeal to everyone, I will say that giving it a second charge was most definitely a mistake and they should've just done something more meaningful with Meditation stacks. What would be more meaningful? I'm not sure, but I think if they're really going to go about expanding the SAM kit, that's probably the best place to start since everything else (with Kaiten included) was nearly perfectly designed. Everything had purpose and Meditation was just kind of... there.

I think expanding it in some way would be the best direction they can go. Make it more involved or give it it's own unique evolving button like the iaijutsu does. That would at least remove the issue of having two separate buttons/skills that functionally do the same in st/aoe decisions. If they don't want to combine it into a single skill with falloff, then that's the only way I think helps deal with the complaints against shoha 2 being lazy and the supposed button bloat that some folks have.

[Colt47]

Meditation feels like the prototype to what Reaper has in it's kit. The move is there to be used when the samurai can do literally nothing else but stand looking pretty, so it always feels like a bit of a tacked on skill.

The problem with all the jobs is that they often start out having a good core, and then to make the job feel like it is breaking new limits, they throw on a bunch of extra stuff that does big flashy things, which just amount to some big hit.

Samurai at the core is rotating two buffs, one to increase attack speed and the other to increase damage, while doing combos and either filling up to do a DOT via Higabana or doing a big hit with all three charges. If they just stuck to this game plan and left Kaiten in there the job would have been fine. But then they added in Tsubame-Gaeshi and Shoha on top of balancing Shintens with remembering to always hit Senei.

This has been an eternal problem with their design team. They always add attacks even if the job is doing JUST FINE without them. They want to add them in, because "we got to make this new and fresh" like a pine tree every damn time a new expansion comes out, and then you got the mains either loving it because they only play samurai and basically one other job, and the other people being indifferent or disliking everything.

You'd think removing an ability would net the opposite result, where the mains hate the change and the people who don't main it but play more on and off would think it's great, but it's mostly just silence on one side and the other is grumbling. Again, I'd pin the blame on just over bloating jobs with useless capstone abilities all for the sake of flash and no substance. That's the name of the game of Shadowbringers forward, and I've had my fill of it to be frank.

This isn't to say that they haven't had good things come out of it. Warrior is definitely vastly better than it was in Shadowbringers and Dark Knight is improving as well. But sometimes I just feel like the teams don't really know what is a good game plan or not. If someone came to me and told me to make samurai flashier, would I add a new skill or just upgrade the visuals on the job and boost the potency with a trait? I'd probably have just boosted the potency with a trait and updated the visual effect of some existing capstone.

[xAFROx]

snip

I meant meditation as a whole should be improved and expanded. Not just the channel button we're meant to use in downtime. I mean the entire thing, from the stacks to the shoha and shoha 2, those could be expanded and improved and just overall cleaned up more.

While yes, I can see the idea that more attacks from capstones can become bloat, and they kind of have with it. The main 'bloat' issue is that half the things that have been added on SAM are redundant and meant specifically for situational st or aoe. While not bad in its own right, the fact that they're redundant means that they can be trimmed to still serve the same purpose if they went about the structure a little differently.

You bring up WAR a few times so let's roll with that. Senei and Guren are typically only used right after Ikishoten to keep their cooldowns aligned. They're basically just more powerful nuke versions of your filler kenki spender, so why not do what WAR did with Infuriate changing fell cleave and decimate into Inner Chaos and chaotic cyclone and have Shinten and Kyuten evolve into those While under the effect of Ikishoten? That both cleans up space on the bar and makes for less drift mistakes if they really want to baby proof the game so much.

A similar argument could be made to have Meditation stacks affect our kenki spenders to evolve those as well if not give it its own dedicated button to use. People tell me that Shinten/Kyuten wouldn't translate well into Senei/Guren because guren is a line while kyuten is a circle. Well shoha 2 is a circle, there's an idea right there. Again, cleans up space on the bar and maintains all current actions while reducing drift mistakes.

There's so many ideas they could have gone but seemingly kaiten was the problem? If they really think that then they should look again and really dive into what the job can do.

[CelestiCer]

Meditation feels like the prototype to what Reaper has in it's kit. The move is there to be used when the samurai can do literally nothing else but stand looking pretty, so it always feels like a bit of a tacked on skill.

Meditate has been with us. It's not a perfect skill, but during downtime or transitions it's there to be used that affects what you're going to Kaiten or when exactly you're going to Ikishoten to not overcap or wait well we don't have Kaiten anymore...

I literally use Meditate everytime I server transfer from 1 to the other or when the party queues us in as I fancy teleport in or even before a fight starts as the count down is set to 20 seconds. How useful is all of that? completely useless, I just find it fun.

But if you want an example of Meditate being used " TO GO FURTHER AND BEYOND !!! " <- click this

[Akava]

According to the Balance's Live Letter's translation, they apparently mentioned delaying the AST and DRG changes because are still "wary" from the SAM reactions. So despite their silence, they've clearly heard the feedback. The real question now is are they planning on doing anything about it? My heart still has hope but my mind is telling me no.

Another note, I've been progging DSR on WHM and some of the direct hit crit Miseries I've been getting bring back that SAM feeling they took away.

[KurenXIV]

According to the Balance's Live Letter's translation, they apparently mentioned delaying the AST and DRG changes because are still "wary" from the SAM reactions. So despite their silence, they've clearly heard the feedback. The real question now is are they planning on doing anything about it? My heart still has hope but my mind is telling me no.

Another note, I've been progging DSR on WHM and some of the direct hit crit Miseries I've been getting bring back that SAM feeling they took away.

Yeah . . . I think at best we can expect no further changes for other jobs in the EW time frame (maybe towards the end of the expac) but I don't think they are going to change the SAM changes. If they were they would have mentioned it already. I've made peace with not returning to the game since SE doesn't seem to want to go back to how the job was. What a freakin' shame.