Samurai changes are unacceptable in the current iteration

[SlickPaws]

If they increased them to match the old Kaiten/Kaeshi potencies AND gave them auto-crit our DPS would go through the roof.

Guaranteed crits, not accounting for raid buffs, amount to about 39% extra damage in BiS raid gear with 25% crit and 60% crit magnitude (doing 160% of tooltip damage guaranteed versus doing an average of 115% tooltip damage, 160/115 = 1.3913). If they increased Midare potency to 990 to match Kaeshi, it would be 3168 potency in two hits, compared to what was on average 2277 potency total.

We also don't have to spend kenki on Kaiten anymore to reach that potency, so we have an extra 200 potency worth of kenki to spend on Shinten spam later in the fight.

If they wanted to make Midare hit just as hard on average as in patch 6.0, they should have INCREASED potency to about 710, but this would be a net increase to our DPS because of the extra kenki. If they wanted a Midare+Kaeshi+20 kenki combo to do as much damage as the 6.0 Kaiten+Midare+Kaeshi combo, they should have only reduced potency to 650, or just left it alone. Instead they decided to ALSO nerf the potency of our biggest attacks and redistribute it throughout our combo, reducing our burst damage and synergy with raid buffs even further.

They wanted to address concerns of crit variance, which weren't concerns for anyone not chasing top DPS metrics, and over-corrected so that everyone suffers. And at the same time took away job complexity, identity, and fun.

I wasn't advocating for Midare to go up to 990, I was more thinking of some kind of happy medium that doesn't feel like it's nerfing my biggest attacks. 710 potency seems like it would've been fine to me. I was quite happy with how the class was already, and if they really want to nerf our damage I'd take the hit provided I got to keep Kaiten and some of the complexity. Thanks for the breakdown though. It's kind of what I was trying to say but with way more maths and knowledge to back it up. :P

[huhwat]

+1 To the list of disgruntled Sams

-KamiK

[Chopstix]

Big poopo changes. Actual feedback is going to be hard because i feel like nobody is going to be playing SAM.

SAM is butchered. No kaiten, shinten spam, big moves hitting like a wet noodle (literally less dmg auto crit than ur base hit b4 6.1). Potency got moved out of ur burst windows to ur regular GCDs. rDPS close to same from what im hearing thus far, but ur DPS with buffs is through the rock bottom. Nobody will want a sam in their raid parties because they simply do so much less inside buff windows.

Such a giant waste of meaningless development/balancing time. The only good change for SAM out of the patch is the circle aoes. Thats nice. Everything else needs to be reverted ASAP.

[SlickPaws]

Such a giant waste of meaningless development/balancing time. The only good change for SAM out of the patch is the circle aoes. Thats nice. Everything else needs to be reverted ASAP.

Gonna have to channel my inner WAR here and say that I actually liked the conal.
Which is strange because I hate Overpower. But Tenka Goken's conal was always interesting to me with having to hop in and hop out to position it correctly. The AOE rotation is now basically just going to be standing still in the middle of the pack with no movement at all, outside of dodging the occasional AOE.

[Kazimere]

The salty tears taste so good

[Roxus]

If they wanted to make Midare hit just as hard on average as in patch 6.0, they should have INCREASED potency to about 710, but this would be a net increase to our DPS because of the extra kenki. If they wanted a Midare+Kaeshi+20 kenki combo to do as much damage as the 6.0 Kaiten+Midare+Kaeshi combo, they should have only reduced potency to 650, or just left it alone. Instead they decided to ALSO nerf the potency of our biggest attacks and redistribute it throughout our combo, reducing our burst damage and synergy with raid buffs even further.

They wanted to address concerns of crit variance, which weren't concerns for anyone not chasing top DPS metrics, and over-corrected so that everyone suffers. And at the same time took away job complexity, identity, and fun.

Agree with the math here. I think it's easier if they keep Kaiten as it is (without the crit guarantee on the big skills), nothing was wrong with it in the first place. With these changes we are going back to Stormblood damage numbers (visually). They should honestly have just addressed the crit stat itself and the buffs related.

Gonna have to channel my inner WAR here and say that I actually liked the conal.
Which is strange because I hate Overpower. But Tenka Goken's conal was always interesting to me with having to hop in and hop out to position it correctly. The AOE rotation is now basically just going to be standing still in the middle of the pack with no movement at all, outside of dodging the occasional AOE.

I also liked the conal for positioning and such, but if I had to pick something to dumb down this would have to be my choice.

[Ransu]

The potency nerfs are unacceptable. The whole removing kaiten because of "action bloat" is stupid, but sure whatever I'll get over it. Removing our move that grants a 50% damage buff and then also nerfing the potency on moves that make up the majority of our dps though is absolutely ridiculous. Being auto crits will not make up for the lack of kaiten + a nearly 300 potency drop on kaeshi completely wrecking the burst damage windows and basically removing synergy with raid buffs.

[AutoBunBun]

Made an account just for this, I'm also unhappy with the samurai changes, to me the job just feels that much more boring without kaiten. I really enjoyed the the little wind up animation before any iaijutsu. I really hope they consider reverting the changes.

[Xenon_S]

Adding my piece to the conversaion.

1. As detailed in https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/458421-An-Examination-of-Kaiten-and-Action-Bloat-on-Samurai, simply removing Kaiten does very little to resolve the non-existant "Action Bloat" issue. On top of this, SAM barely have to double weave.
2. Kaiten was not removed in 6.0, this means throughout 5.x neither the playerbase nor the dev team considered it to be action bloat.
3. Kenki Gauge is now effectively meaningless, there is close to zero decision making to be had when using Kenki, even Gyoten/Yaten are the same potency per Kenki as Shinten.
4. The use of Third Eye was further encouraged by extending its duration, thus making it easier to use. This goes against the intention of both lowering action bloat, and reducing skill gap.
5. Crit variance only became a major problem because they chose to turn SAM into a fixed 1min burst job in 5.x with big potencies on select skills. This was not a problem back in 4.x when Hagakure was used to convert Sen into Kenki into Shinten spam for a more smoothed out damage profile.

[Roxus]

Yes, the removal of Kaiten saves us one button press at optimal play. As stated by many others, there are a plethora of actions they could have combined instead. It's a very silly justification and those that say it was an unnecessary button to press before your skills are not looking at it correctly.
Agree with the Kenki gauge. Might as well remove our gauge and give individual cooldowns at this point.
Third eye is another can of worms I have honestly given up on. Seigan and Merciful Eyes were perfectly fine yet removed.
It was stated that they wish to change the Critical system in particular, and burst phases from DPS. Problem is, they decided to push the Samurai changes before everyone else and the substat change, effectively making us a lab rat. There are many discussions about quitting the job or excluding them from parties. I imagine the backlash would not be as hard if the changes were more than just Samurai, but with how it is now, we are effectively worse for no real reason while the other jobs are not also brought to the same level.