Thread: 6.1 Samurai thoughts after getting to try them out in-game (please revert asap)

The pinnacle of iaijutsu and the 'ogi' skill of the samurai feel incredibly bland an unrewarding now. Namikiri felt like a huge deal when I started using it, now it feels like an extra midare that takes up a button space on my bar for 2 minutes between uses.

Beside affecting enjoyment of the job negatively, autocrits hurt synergy with support jobs I feel. I feel bad being in a group with them because their critical chance buffs benefit other melee so much better now. Autocrits just seem like a very poor design decision. A critical hit is a reward for the player, making it granted means it's no longer special.

It seems to me that the specific choices made to address fluctuating damage numbers compiled in someone's spreadsheet are rather harmful towards the player and these adjustments were made more to please the developer side. If overall damage isn't that vastly far away from where we were in the last patch, why upset the players who loved the job?

The button bloat excuse is not true that much is clear. Anyone playing SAM can immediately say and I'll echo the same sentiment: I have a quickbar dedicated for job actions that are either rarely used, share a cooldown or are otherwise mutually exclusive. Kaiten was never one of these, it was the "I'm going to have a lot of fun landing the next hit" button.
Stacking potency boosting and a critical hit feels good as a DPS player. As a tank, I when mitigation, shielding and healing makes me shake off hits like a badass - it's awesome. As a pure dps job I could overlay and stack different increases, procs and support buffs for big damage to feel like awesome.

Personally I'm not happy about the new tenka goken changes either, especially since I loved spinning kaiten before it on dungeon trash, and it felt very satisfying obliterating the mobs before me. Now it feels like most of the attack only hits air.
While they boosted higanbana's dot and put that tragedy of an autocrit on midare, goken didn't get any 'compensation'. The cone already hit everything in a pull it's not like we can hit more targets with it now... in exchange we can't boost it and if I decide to spend kaeshi on it, the second hit is just as bland as the first.

I do miss Kaiten, as I did every time I got old content in the roulette. I just came back to the game, so I don't have top-end SAM raiding experience anymore, but the change feels obvious even to me. It's not just the one button being gone, but the overall feeling of the class is worse for the changes. We don't have the behind-the-scenes information, but it seems like such a half-hearted attempt and a solution looking for a problem.

There have been many smart ideas from the community how the stated reasons could have been addressed better, so I won't try to fumble my way through any of mine, but I'm kind of stuck with SAM unless I want to get another combat class leveled. So I will continue to play with the changes, leaving that space open on my hotbar forever; still pressing it out of habit and remember halcyon days when I do.

Long time player, first time forum poster here! I've been playing FFXIV since Stormblood and have mained Samurai almost exclusively from the moment I hit lv.50.

The removal of Kaiten is absolutely unacceptable. If they wanted to cut back on bloat, there were so many ways they could have done that without cutting Kaiten. They could have made the Ikishoten skill transform to Ogi Namikiri, they could have merged Shoha and Shoha II with some damage drop off for single target. They could have outright removed Hissatsu: Guren as the skill is very situational and seldom used over Hissatsu: Senei.

The class feels so... what's the word...

Boring. They took my favorite class, hands down, and made it a bore. The rotation finishers now hit for only slightly more than the rest of the abilities in the rotation, so the payoff feels so... pathetic.

This change genuinely made me both sad and angry at the same time and, after having 24 hours to sit on it, I'm still feeling a fair bit of both. So much so I broke my silence on the forums to write this.

Please revert this change ASAP, this was an enormous blunder on the Dev side and I pray they actually listen to the massive outcry for this to be reverted as immediately as possible. I don't even wanna play the game again until it's fixed.

If I wanted to play lvl 52 Samurai, I would just go do that instead of dealing with this awful band-aid solution to fix Sam's crit variance. If Yoshi P and the team spent a long time on this like they claimed, then I would be frankly embarrassed to be so out of touch with what a large portion of their players want out of the job.

The changes to SAM have overall been a big failure and I'm pretty unhappy with most everything Square has done in 6.1. The one lone bright spot being Enpi not using Meikyo stacks, keep that and throw the rest out.

I agree, it feels so hollow. There are so many things they could do that achieve the stated purpuse of the changes but the way they chose is the least satisfying, nah it is just not satisfying at all.

The biggest change beside the potency nerfs, kaiten removal, one button smash for gauge etc to me is the aoe ability potential of a samurai in dungeons and during big pulls.

*Tenka goken* to me got hit really hard: *It doesn't auto crit* like midare, (neither higanbana auto crits!).
THESE two at least should have been able to auto crit to balance the kaiten changes.

Why? Well in big pulls you often used kaiten before tenka goken to buff it up. Adding on top: *Kaeshi:Goken potency reduce from 420 to 280!* .
That's same as normal aoe and it's not guaranteed to crit so you pretty much gaining NOTHING with Kaeshi but just copy of the spell!! Kaeshi was supposed to give you a damage boost to make it feel more satisfying!
*At least if the ability auto critted* , after 4-5 ability usages you had a reliable high dmg aoe to look forward. *420 to 380* (so Kaeshi increases by 100) would have been an understandable nerf move. Don't think making the spell "circular" makes it do more dmg, just some minor QOL imo.

In addition *Kaeshi:Namikiri reduced from 1350 to 800*; I'm still scratching my head on that. It's literally same as normal Namikiri which at average ~ high median ceiling dps is a drastic loss of damage.
*1350 to 1050* (so Kaeshi increases by 200) would have been an UNDERSTANDABLE nerf move. Or even lower the CD to 80s to accommodate the change!

TLDR *potency change together with Kaeshi dmg nerf on any ability* (literally now being a button to just copy the last ability with no buffs whatsoever) is what killed it for me.

[re: Tenka Goken]

Originally Posted by FlareDrachyon

Don't think making the spell "circular" makes it do more dmg, just some minor QOL imo.

I actually really dislike that they made it circular - it makes AOE easier, but personally I find it to be less fun since it completely removes the movement incentive from our AOE rotation.

In Shadowbringers our AOE template sequence was: ▲o▲o[Kaiten]▲ - 4 repositions per combo.

At L86+ pre-6.1, Fuga becomes Fuko (circular), so our new rotation was: oooo[Kaiten]▲ - 2 repositions per combo (including the transition from Tenka Goken back to Fuko)

In 6.1 they deleted Kaiten and made Tenka Goken circular: ooooo - 0 repositions.

0 movement required now. The entire reason for melee to have positionals in single target is to incentivize movement even when not dodging enemy abilities - AOE templates can, used to, and should accomplish the same thing in AOE situations imo.

I put Hagakure where Kaiten used to be and then wondered why Iaijutsu would never work lol...
Muscle memory...

That aside yes it feels terrible... It's so boring to play...