Thread: Compiled SAM threads against 6.1 changes / Kaiten removal

I had effectively forgotten how much better SAM was before they removed Kaiten and had been having a good-enough time with the sad new version, but then I thoughtlessly played Monk in PVP (who basically has Kaiten) and it rekindled my disappointment. Bump. Bring back Kaiten.

If it's a design obstacle, then reword it as necessary, but having kenki consumption be independent of sen status is mindless, not to mention the flattened damage profile.

As someone who plays SAM casually, I'm of two minds on the change.

On the one hand, playing SAM in synched content felt awful while Kaiten was around, particularly around level 60 -- you had a very strict Kenki economy where a full combo gave you just enough for one Kaiten, so it made it difficult to have enough to Kaiten both your DoT applications and Midare in quick succession, in addition to being able to use your gap-closer, unless you were in a fight that could reliably trigger Third Eye and accommodated sneaking in Enpi and Meditation as net damage bonuses. It would be difficult to resolve this without impacting the Kenki economy at later levels, especially when the job has multiple other spenders.
Logically, I also agree that it creates unnecessary button bloat to have an oGCD that exists only to precede Iaijutsu -- at that point it makes sense to just combine the two into one button, something I myself have suggested many times for other jobs, not just for bloat but also double-weaving windows. The argument that "knowing when to Kaiten was a mark of skill" could also be flipped on its head, that the rotation was designed such that only particular skills would warrant Kaiten, and that the illusion of being able to use it anywhere else made it a trap set for newer players. So long as it competed with filler spenders like Shinten and Kyuten, there was also the threat of fringe rotations cropping up that just dropped other spenders.

Of course, using low-level content as a justification for such a change is a poor excuse given how little content it benefits versus how much current content is also affected by the change (especially now that we can just spend Shinten as we get it when soloing, with the only limiter being pooling for 2-min buff windows), and "think of the new players" arguments are a slippery slope to making a no-skill game.

It seems popular enough of an ability looking at this thread (though I admit I don't know how many players were begging for Kaiten to go before 6.1, inevitably there were at least some), though I can agree with dev concerns about button bloat. Even though there are other buttons that could be combined (like Shinten and Kyuten, or the Shoha skills), the slots they would open would just be filled by other high level skills in 7.0, which just means they're more likely to be on the lookout for further skills to trim rather than to bring back...

Originally Posted by Archwizard

...

Nobody said proper usage of Kaiten was a mark of skill. The loss of Kaiten was an issue because we no longer had something to think about while looping. That something being overspending kenki and being punished for doing so when you don't have enough kenki to kaiten the iaijutsu coming up. Don't get me wrong here, Kenki management was not hard, but it was nice to keep that braincell working even a little bit

Originally Posted by Archwizard

As someone who plays SAM casually, I'm of two minds on the change...

As someone who only plays SAM 24/7 and a lot into Savage, I'm of one mind... Samurai gameplay that was taken from us.

Button Bloat Argument
Debunked countlessly including by yourself. Square's concern was labeled Button Bloat when what they really meant was " Dumbing Samurai down for the Casual player base ".

The following skills could have been activations/fused/merged-buttons etc such as...

• Ikishoten / Ogi Namikiri
• Shoha / Shoha II
• Guren / Senei
• Midare / Tsubame

All the while keeping Kaiten and keeping the gameplay of Samurai exactly the same. Their excuse was just lazy.

More Buttons for the sake of more Buttons is as good as Less buttons for the sake of Less. With no substance/complexity/depth? it becomes hollow. Segway to the overused argument...

A Button you press every-time
In the grand scheme of things, every button is a button you press every time. Kaiten uniquely the last of its kind that embodies the fantasy of charging up to land big hits that Yoshi P himself admitted is the reason SAM is fun. If Kaiten was deemed so meaningless, what is Shinten? put under same scrutiny it falls apart.

Kaiten Skill Expressive?
Factually? Shinten spamming is dumber then Kaiten Execution, which at least required to juggle Kenki management. More thought holding 100 Kenki max for burst phases where as Shinten makes that near thoughtless. The Skill Expression and Satisfaction is not to perform Kaiten right once, its do this right 24/7 over engagements that can last 6/7/8/9/10 minutes. That takes I would say at least an ounce of skill more then Shinten yes.

As for who asked for Kaiten to go?
Literally no one, I even have links in this threads of players warning Square to not do this.

Do we still want Kaiten back?
Plenty do. But will it happen? probably not. The most important thing was that Square, Yoshi and Dev's asked us to give them feedback. We gave it, and the important thing to note was that they ignored us. They just made us top ADPS just to shut our critique up which admittedly it worked. Was it right? I don't think so, cause Yoshi's words were also " DPS is based off of Job Difficulty " and after 6 QOL/Simplifications to Samurai, Kaiten included - their doing the opposite by making our damage performance go up... which many of us weren't giving feedback for.

So? Enjoy what you have. Samurai I still enjoy. But I will never forget that Samurai used to be more complex, a lot more satisfying to play, and a lot more rewarding to achieve high damage with then what it is now in 6.2+

Kaiten was half the job. Now you just have a Shinten gauge. And everyone hates using Shinten. They killed it.

The loss of Kaiten would be better received if Shinten and it's AoE counterpart upgraded into Senei and Guren instead of being 2 minute gated skills.

And they turned Ikishoten into the new Kaiten to activate Namikiri.

And what's worse is they put Kaiten in as a buff in PvP. Circus clowns the lot of them.

Wouldn't it have been so much BETTER if you could Kaiten Midare and then Ikishoten Namikiri? Holy moly.

Kaiten's removal is made worse because Shinten is a weird little poke, and both looks & feels wrong. Kaiten was elegant, methodical - Shinten is a poke. And pokes are annoying.

Beating a dead horse but stop looking at reasons for why Kaiten was ever removed to make life better for the players or improve our experience of the game, only some SE drone seriously think that. It was removed purely because it was a an annoying abbilities for the dev to work around right now with auto crit balance and in the future for new abbilities.

This is why everyones playing sam was baffled to learn it was removed at first and why they couldn't ever come up with a good sounding excuse or argument for the removal and now dodge the subject entirely, they know with time more and more peoples will forget or not even know about it anyway.

Kaiten is not back in 6.25, please bring it back.

Just make it auto crit and add the potency of a shinten to the next iaijutsu + 5 kenki potency, even that would be enough.
Juste make it so Kenki is not as boring as it is !
PLEASE

Originally Posted by Deithwen

Kaiten is not back in 6.25, please bring it back.

Just make it auto crit and add the potency of a shinten to the next iaijutsu + 5 kenki potency, even that would be enough.
Juste make it so Kenki is not as boring as it is !
PLEASE

Its not coming back. We wont see what they have fully planned for SAM until 7.0. Until then my happy ass will enjoy how rewarding BLM is to play.