Why people still seem to be disagreeing about SAM/Kaiten

[Yenrz]

Since the 6.1 SAM change I've hardly touched it, and every once in a while I bring myself to play it in endgame content to try and give it another chance, and unfortunately every time it just feels so monotonous to play now.

In my latest attempt to try and convince myself that I can get over the Kaiten removal, I brought it to Tower at Paradigm's Breach, since I had such good memories of keeping uptime in the final boss fight on SAM with the color rings, knockback mechanics, etc. What I found was that...SHB/Lvl 80 SAM rotation still feels pretty good! Even without Kaiten somehow.

Turns out, having to use Meikyo Shisui immediately before every midare+Tsubame Gaeshi window worked out almost like a proxy/pseudo Kaiten in terms of creating the sense of buildup and release that Kaiten served.

Unfortunately, this principle can't really work with the current endgame/lvl90 rotation as the optimal rotation that we see in the Balance involves using a Meikyo Shisui stack for Higanbana, and using the remaining two stacks with a 2 GCD Yukikaze combo to get the third seal for your Midare. With this, there is no smooth buildup and release from the Meikyo press to Midare, it is interrupted and diminished. Feels like any other skill to press

Funnily enough, this observation could absolutely explain the divide between current dissatisfied SAM mains, and casuals who don't see an issue with Kaiten's removal, as casuals are most likely still using most if not every meikyo shisui stack to build up to Midare exclusively, therefore still preserving the intended job flow of slow buildup and release that Kaiten used to support, and still making each Midare burst feel good to cast.

This disconnect between the playerbases seems to be a result of dev oversight in not having comprehensive knowledge of how the lvl 90 optimal SAM rotation and how it affects job feel, eg. like how they thought adding another charge of Tsubame-gaeshi/Meikyo Shisui would make the rotation more flexible, but ironically for anyone trying to play optimally, it's just as rigid. In this case, perhaps they intended for players to mainly use their Meikyo Shisui stacks on Midares. But in optimal play, this is not the case.

But even then, even with all of the interrupting spells between your Meikyo press and your Midare press, Kaiten was enough to make it still feel good to cast. One could argue that it's our own fault for making the job feel worse by not playing as the devs intended. However, it's the devs' responsibility in the first place to ensure that the job still feels good when played optimally.

Conclusion? Pls just give Kaiten back.

[cjbeagle]

I'm a casual who still used Meikyo to build up for Midare instead of Higanbana and I still think it felt terrible without Kaiten, and that's not even taking into account that you're using Midare way more than Meikyo, so even if it did feel good, it'd only feel good like once a minute - that's...not great.

I miss Kaiten more than anything, but what I'd really like to see is a full reversion back to 6.08. Give back Kaiten, undo the potency redistribution, make Tanka Goken a cone again - undo everything.

[Alex1337]

I’d actually compromise and keep the potency redistributions wherever that lands [kaiten] ogi 1200(?) but revert everything else.

Reason being; had they done guaranteed crits or potency redistribution independently of one another, the wet noodle hits would not half felt so bad, again not sure where that lands ogi and midare, unfortunately they did both at the same time which heavily watered down what I felt was a relatively satisfying aspect of SAM.

Although I still think guaranteed crits aren’t the most imaginative path for an MMO where RNG is a huge part of the game in more ways than just one.

[Ruminous]

Although I still think guaranteed crits aren’t the most imaginative path for an MMO where RNG is a huge part of the game in more ways than just one.

It's to remove damage variance. If you do any log reading, you'll notice that the variance between midare setsugekka now on most is within about 4k damage difference if it's at the same ilvl. The only thing it can do is crit or direct crit, so it keeps the average between multiple samples very close.

That being said, while it's good for balancing, it's less fun for the player. The excitement of building up to a big hit is all gone. Midare setsugekka is just "another skill" that you do. It just saddens me that critical hits are the problem and the system they have for it is flawed. Seeing big numbers, no matter what role you are is definitely fun and exciting. Making it common just rips a lot out of it.

As far samurai, well, they just need to fix what they broke. Kenki management, making shinten less of a thing, making collecting the stickers mean something...Or change the system to add complexity and thought to the role. Because what they have now might be fine number wise, it just feels like a watered down monk with an oGCD to hit every 6 GCDs or so. Making shinten auto cast every 7 seconds would literally change nothing about the class other than the player remembering to hit it that frequently.

[Kabooa]

It's to remove damage variance. If you do any log reading, you'll notice that the variance between midare setsugekka now on most is within about 4k damage difference if it's at the same ilvl. The only thing it can do is crit or direct crit, so it keeps the average between multiple samples very close.

That being said, while it's good for balancing, it's less fun for the player. The excitement of building up to a big hit is all gone. Midare setsugekka is just "another skill" that you do. It just saddens me that critical hits are the problem and the system they have for it is flawed. Seeing big numbers, no matter what role you are is definitely fun and exciting. Making it common just rips a lot out of it.

I'm personally in the camp where "Criticals" should be the result of completing a conditional instead of random or auto applied.

That's a little incompatible with stats as they are currently, but outside some notable RNG situations, that's how PVP works. Every class has a few critical conditions.

Just spitballing, imagine if any Draw Attack gaining its critical bonus was connected to successfully defending with Third Eye*. Now I'm not going to pretend that's a great example, but consider how you might have to bend and change to individual encounters to land as many of those as possible.

[Ruminous]

I'm personally in the camp where "Criticals" should be the result of completing a conditional instead of random or auto applied.

That's a little incompatible with stats as they are currently, but outside some notable RNG situations, that's how PVP works. Every class has a few critical conditions.

Just spitballing, imagine if any Draw Attack gaining its critical bonus was connected to successfully defending with Third Eye*. Now I'm not going to pretend that's a great example, but consider how you might have to bend and change to individual encounters to land as many of those as possible.

We already do this with burst windows though. They just come up every 2 minutes. As someone pointed out in another post, 2m windows makes damage phases fairly strict. Making them more freeform might help, but also dependence on buffs in general. Sam hit high numbers with a lot of assistance, and the changes just keeps their numbers at an average that doesn't rely on as much assistance. Not saying it's right, but that's how it is. A lot of it's just changing how the critical strike stat works because as it works now, it double dips on chance and damage. That alone makes it an insanely good stat.

Here's why I think their excuse in this regard is completely nonsense: they changed NIN to have even higher burst than before (while, again, gutting the core identity of the job), which is perfect for a fight with tons of short burst phases and mechanics-only phases approximately 60s apart like Dragonsong ultimate. And yet they want us to think only samurai has this "issue" with respect to "crit variance", when NIN routinely invalidates these DPS checks they thought were so sacrosanct that they saw fit to effectively remove an entire job from the game and replace it with as much of a nothing as Yoshida's apology posts.

Yeah, I'm aware. They jumped through a lot of excuses when they removed Kaiten. They were never plain with us, they just treated us like an underpaid QA team to test their shitty changes. Probably will continue that trend and just say "Oh these changes are fine, people are still clearing content with them!" While that is a true statement, it's still completely missing the point. The fact that ninja and samurai swapped places in representation shows what people think of the changes, and I'm one of those that swapped too. But hey, my retainer is BIS, so there's that I suppose.

[Alex1337]

It's to remove damage variance. If you do any log reading, you'll notice that the variance between midare setsugekka now on most is within about 4k dps difference if it's at the same ilvl. The only thing it can do is crit or direct crit, so it keeps the average between multiple samples very close.

That being said, while it's good for balancing, it's less fun for the player. The excitement of building up to a big hit is all gone. Midare setsugekka is just "another skill" that you do. It just saddens me that critical hits are the problem and the system they have for it is flawed. Seeing big numbers, no matter what role you are is definitely fun and exciting. Making it common just rips a lot out of it.

As far samurai, well, they just need to fix what they broke. Kenki management, making shinten less of a thing, making collecting the stickers mean something...Or change the system to add complexity and thought to the role. Because what they have now might be fine number wise, it just feels like a watered down monk with an oGCD to hit every 6 GCDs or so. Making shinten auto cast every 7 seconds would literally change nothing about the class other than the player remembering to hit it that frequently.

Thank you I am aware and not questioning how well it works but rather it removes an aspect of mmos entirely RNG.

Why have crit chance if you force a crit?

[Ruminous]

Thank you I am aware and not questioning how well it works but rather it removes an aspect of mmos entirely RNG.

Why have crit chance if you force a crit?

The answer I gave is the one they've stated. Literally, that's it. They don't like the damage variance being what it was, and that's how they chose to deal with it due to their broke-ass crit system currently. It's just putting band-aids on a gushing wound until you can treat it. But we don't know when they'll fix their system, they've never set a timeframe for it.

As for why they have crit at all? Probably because of their system. Shit, your answers to your questions would be as good as mine would be at this point. Maybe it's fun to hit big numbers, but too big a numbers throws off balance...Dunno! Chances are their "fix" later on in the game's life is just to remove variance entirely and just make hits do fixed amount of damage. 'course that'd probably make the game boring to play, but it's how pvp works right now.

[Alex1337]

I just don’t think introducing a constant to eliminate a variable which you introduce into a system yourself in the 1st place is good design, I’m not sure what implying if I did any log reading has anything to do with it, I understand the maths and never questioned it

[cjbeagle]

I think they meant 4k damage (per Midare), not dps. What I'd be interested to know is what the dps difference is between an "unlucky" clear and a "lucky" clear. Over the course of an entire fight I find it hard to believe that crit variance matters that much basically ever.