Ex-samurai main here, and fwiw, I've entirely stopped playing samurai due to the 6.1 changes.

As you say, they keep tabs on how many people are playing what classes, so if a large percentage of the samurai population puts down their katanas, they will notice.

At least it doesn't feel like a sacrifice to forego the job in the meantime since it's so bad right now that it isn't even tempting to play it.