Kaiten removed? What is going on?

[darkdyllon]

Its roughly 3% from the old potential max. The main difference now is its significantly more consistent which I can't complain about....that said, the dopamine from the build up of kaiten into a big 60k crit is completely gone =/. between that, the awkward flow before iajutus and that fact that kenki may as well not even exist since its just turned into a shinten spam.....Ya sam just isn't enjoyable anymore.

the main issue is that they introduced Kaiten as the main ability for SAMs back in Stormblood, everyone loved how flashy it was and hitting big was amazing.
now the devs (or atleast the job balancer) backed themselves into a corner since somehow they're having difficulities balancing the job around Kaiten. (which is weird concidering that Kaiten was an flat out 50% potency increase, not an number that fluctuates, but i'm not an balancer)
they're also having difficulities with crits in general and want away from it which they're doing slowly but surely, instead of doing this gradually, they should do it as an big expansion thing like belts.
make an PTS available where some set in stone encounters can be played with the new version of the job, let anyone enter that PTS so that the sample size is big enough (anything that happens on that PTS affects the main game)

people would get an taste of what's to come, can give feedback before it gets added and worsen the situation, i get not wanting an PTS for content, but job balancing should be done through PTS.

[LeonKeyh]

the main issue is that they introduced Kaiten as the main ability for SAMs back in Stormblood, everyone loved how flashy it was and hitting big was amazing.
now the devs (or atleast the job balancer) backed themselves into a corner since somehow they're having difficulities balancing the job around Kaiten. (which is weird concidering that Kaiten was an flat out 50% potency increase, not an number that fluctuates, but i'm not an balancer)

The "issue" is the large range of damage; Midare was I think 720 potency? Ignoring Direct Hit you had 4 possibilities with Midare:


No Kaiten, No Crit: 720 Potency
No Kaiten, Crit: ~972 potency
Kaiten, No Crit: 1080 potency
Kaiten, Crit: ~1332 potency

Midare averages at about 15% of the damage that Samurai did (in 6.0), having a range that is from X to almost 2X is a very big range given how important it is to the overall performance of the job. If it were a once every 2 minute ability or something that would either be 1% or 2% of your damage that would be one thing, but the way it was set up, it gave Samurai a wide damage range and they just wanted to pull that in.

[cjbeagle]

The "issue" is the large range of damage; Midare was I think 720 potency? Ignoring Direct Hit you had 4 possibilities with Midare:


No Kaiten, No Crit: 720 Potency
No Kaiten, Crit: ~972 potency
Kaiten, No Crit: 1080 potency
Kaiten, Crit: ~1332 potency

Midare averages at about 15% of the damage that Samurai did (in 6.0), having a range that is from X to almost 2X is a very big range given how important it is to the overall performance of the job. If it were a once every 2 minute ability or something that would either be 1% or 2% of your damage that would be one thing, but the way it was set up, it gave Samurai a wide damage range and they just wanted to pull that in.

It was 660 potency before, not 720, but that's beside the point.

The problem isn't so much with auto-crits as it is the loss of Kaiten's impact on potency.

6.08
Midare: 660 (but you never did this)
Midare + Kaiten: 990
Midare + Kaiten + direct: 1237
Midare + Kaiten + crit: ~1584
Midare + Kaiten + cirt + direct: ~1980

6.1
Midare: 600 (but you can't do this because auto-crit)
Midare + crit: ~960
Midare + crit + direct: ~1200

Our auto-crit now is weaker than our non-crits were with Kaiten. If we still had Kaiten and were auto-critting for ~1440 every time and sometimes hitting direct as well for ~1800, I doubt there'd be an outcry.

Some people would lament the loss of variance, but I suspect that the vast majority of people are lamenting the loss of potency, not the loss of variance.

Of course, for balance, they can't just make 20% of our damage profile auto-crit (including Ogi Namikiri) - but they could have taken some potency away from filler abilities to balance; instead they did the exact opposite - buffed fillers at the cost of potencies that we actually care about.

[RyuuZero]

The "issue" is the large range of damage; Midare was I think 720 potency? Ignoring Direct Hit you had 4 possibilities with Midare:


No Kaiten, No Crit: 720 Potency
No Kaiten, Crit: ~972 potency
Kaiten, No Crit: 1080 potency
Kaiten, Crit: ~1332 potency

Midare averages at about 15% of the damage that Samurai did (in 6.0), having a range that is from X to almost 2X is a very big range given how important it is to the overall performance of the job. If it were a once every 2 minute ability or something that would either be 1% or 2% of your damage that would be one thing, but the way it was set up, it gave Samurai a wide damage range and they just wanted to pull that in.

which is why I had that Idea of "Hey if Midare now guaranteed crit.. just make Kaiten Direct Hit the following attack!", thus Kenki Management would still be rewarded (with Direct Hit) and you Guarantee Direct Crit Midare and Direct Crit Ogi!
though I still would've have to test how Direct Hit Higanbana works on the DoT and Tenka Goken would still be ruined ^^;

[RyuuZero]

Yet.. could it be argued that the Button Bloat Problem is now worse on Samurai?
due to the Monotony of the Shinten Spam?

[Lustre]

Took samurai for the first time into Bozja the other day since 6.1 kaiten removal. I was hitting mobs with midares and it felt.... underwhelming.

I dont know why they didnt just make kaiten a guaranteed crit ability and raise the potency of midare (100p maybe? Idk I'm not a theory crafter). That removes both crit variance and keeps people happy?

[CelestiCer]

There is just literally no logical reason to remove Kaiten the way they did


- Button bloat argument
Flawed. Even if mistranslated on Square's end... there are numerous solutions that serve as better alternatives vs outright removing Kaiten.

- Action bloat argument
Flawed. Even if Square meant Action Bloat, our APM/Skills cast amount did not reduce. At best 2 Less Kaiten casts perhaps, while littering our opener with Gyoten for optimized Kenki spending.

- Meta argument
Flawed. Many of us loved Samurai for it's gameplay, not for it being top-dog damage meta for us to complain. I know right? imagine, playing SAM cause it's fun and complaining about the the changes that impacted our enjoyment. Weird right?

- DPS Variance argument
Flawed, because damage fluctuations did not stop anyone from clearing all content " ever ". Kaiten removal was unnecessary to tackle this issue, keeping players who desire less DPS fluctuations, improving whatever developing issues Square had, and keeping Samurai players who love dishing out big hits happy, while reserving Kaiten.

- Improving Samurai argument
Flawed. A Shinten-Gauge isn't an improvement. Even if changes were meant as a setup for " New " improvements, these " New " improvements or no where to be seen to validate Kaiten removal. Why remove something good, when Square has nothing to show to replace it with?

- Non-Interactive Argument
Flawed. You will have read it before -> " it's a button you press every-time " <- Yes... so is Hakaze and every over job combo/resource spending button. By that logic all buttons that are a nuisance to your parse wittle fingies shoud be removed. Poor argument, unless anyone wants to convince me 6.08 with Kaiten is less interactive then 6.1+ Shinten spam without Kaiten.

[CelestiCer]

I've added your thread to the " Compiled SAM threads against Kaiten removal ".

Next update and yup still no word from Square, absolute radio silence. Somehow it's not surprising.