Personally, I don't like Shinten. I've never liked Shinten.

In Stormblood's "Shinten Meta" where everything was about feeding more Kenki into Shinten, it felt especially gross to me.

I originally imagined that Samurai would be a visually-ascetic, slow, methodical fighter, a class that would line everything up carefully, then unleash a single big attack. Instead, Samurai was constantly jerking out awkward-looking sword stabs between what felt like every other GCD, and its big "damage windows" were about deleting a Midare to spaz out even more sword stabs. Felt really off-putting and weird to me.

Anyway, so I really enjoyed spending Kenki on Kaiten, not because it was difficult or skillful (in my opinion, it pretty much never was), but because it felt smooth, elegant, and satisfying. And it wasn't Shinten. Because I hate Shinten, because it's spazzy and unattractive and annoying.

So for me, it's not that Kaiten itself is some God Action that I feel deeply-enamored with, it's just that being left with only Shinten feels more gross than ever before to me. And in contrast, Kaiten was pleasant and appealing.

I don't really care about pressing the Kaiten button, I just like banking gauge and seeing it deplete and then power up my next action. It's just a satisfying gameplay tic. Also, it's not Shinten.

So, if Iaijutsu just always cost 20 Kenki to activate, or scaled its damage with Kenki spent up to a maximum of 20 or 25, and also did the little twirly animation when consuming Kenki... I'd still be happy with that.

But anyway, what I really want is for Shinten to just jump off the planet, and get replaced by something that feels bigger, heavier, more elegant, and just... better.

Honestly, I'd even be happy with only having Kaiten and Senei as spenders, and just judiciously choosing where to power-up non-Iai in order to avoid overcapping Kenki. "But that's HW Dark Arts!" Well, I liked HW Dark Arts, so I'm completely okay with that.

But alternatively, I don't know, maybe condense the SAM combo into 1-2 and then it branches into either Gekko or Kasha, and use Kenki to apply and maintain Fugetsu and Fuka as OGCDs. At least that would be pretty. And also, not Shinten.

Or take the cooldown off Senei / Guren and crank the cost back up to 50, so SAM spends Kenki slower, on bigger attacks.

I don't know, I don't really have a huge preference about the exact alternative, I just:

a) hate Shinten, and always have, because it's unattractive, awkward-looking, and spammy, and clashes with the entire vibe I was expecting for "Samurai"

b) liked elegant spenders like Kaiten because they felt pretty, smooth, and satisfying

c) like big heavy spenders like Senei and Guren because they feel more like the kind of attacks that I expected from "Samurai"