I didn't think I'd miss Kaiten that much...

[OnyxNanaya]

Apologies if this isn't the right place to speak about this, but I can't take it anymore!

Back when they made the change, even though I was heartbroken at Kaiten's departure, I thought "I'll get used to it after a while I guess?" but that didn't even happen.
Mindlessly pressing Shinten even more doesn't feel good, having that awkward pause just before an Iaijutsu doesn't feel good, and having Midare crits hit less than the old Kaiten buffed Midare without even critting doesn't feel good either!

Keep the circle Tenka if that's really your thing, that's FINE! Hell, make Kaiten enable your iais to crit, I would take that every day over no Kaiten at all. To me, it truly feels like such a waste to throw away this amazing looking animation just for the sake of action bloat when the removal didn't even fix the "issue" in my opinion.

The recent LL didn't even talk about it as far as I'm aware, but I still remain hopeful that someday, maybe in the next expansion, we'll get back what was ours!

[Deo14]

Inb4 people who weren't there around 6.1 will say "it's just an ability" without knowing that 22 other skills were adjusted in 6.1 for SAM. Moving potency of big hits, aka what SAM used to be known for, into regular GCDs. Making skills guaranteed crits before the guaranteed crit bandaid was even implemented. Making Midare, arguably the most symbolic skill across all jobs in the game, deal about 2.5x more damage than regular GCD. Simply killing whole class fantasy overnight. Not giving us replacement ability or altering Kenki generation, so now we just spam Shinten all day. And most importantly, asking us to provide feedback, but when we did, they ignored us and still do today.

People who weren't here do not understand any of this, so they keep parroting SE's excuse that it was because of button/APM bloat, even though this was debunked million times, while simultaneously they think that it was just Kaiten, even though 2/3 of SAM's kit was changed and gutted.

What I've found interesting is the fact that discussions about this halted not necessarily because of time, but because discussions ended up being very one sided, since community overwhelmingly agreed that 6.1 changes were terrible.

The only good thing is that I started liking (after a long time) circle Tenka, but that's mainly because targeting mobs in pack sucks.

[AsiTsurugi]

... SE's excuse that it was because of button/APM bloat, even though this was debunked million times, while simultaneously they think that it was just Kaiten, even though 2/3 of SAM's kit was changed and gutted.
...

Even the most amended excuse of "weave bloat" is utter nonsense, because learning when to weave certain skills because you have a mandatory weave in the form of Kaiten before a cast was part of SAM's learning curve. The biggest offender to that was Third Eye, where the duration change alleviates its difficulty to a large extent, but we still don't have Kaiten returned. But that's okay, everyone needs to "support" everything this dev team does, and pretend like we owe them an infinite time and amount of patience when they cannot be bothered to even say "Yes, we see your feedback and are discussing how best to move forward with it" - which is an empty PR response, but one that is still significantly more than all the nothing we have gotten so far.

[Ransu]

SAM as a whole doesn't feel good to play anymore. Removing kaiten and adding boring auto crit skills ruined the entire job for me.

[Teteiyusu]

I feel this as well. I agree I miss Kaiten.
The circle Tenka is fine IMO. It just needs an animation change from how it is now to look more like Kyuten animation with a new attack effect to represent the spinning slash motion.
Maybe one day we will get our Wish and have our blessed Kaiten return. But doubtful. =(

[OnyxNanaya]

SAM as a whole doesn't feel good to play anymore. Removing kaiten and adding boring auto crit skills ruined the entire job for me.

Yeah, the fantastic flow of the game just isn't as present anymore and it's really depressing...
Seeing auto crit Midares hit for barely as much as old non crit ones completely goes against Samurai's whole fantasy of building towards huge and satisfying hits.

[OnyxNanaya]

Inb4 people who weren't there around 6.1 will say "it's just an ability" without knowing that 22 other skills were adjusted in 6.1 for SAM. Moving potency of big hits, aka what SAM used to be known for, into regular GCDs. Making skills guaranteed crits before the guaranteed crit bandaid was even implemented. Making Midare, arguably the most symbolic skill across all jobs in the game, deal about 2.5x more damage than regular GCD. Simply killing whole class fantasy overnight. Not giving us replacement ability or altering Kenki generation, so now we just spam Shinten all day. And most importantly, asking us to provide feedback, but when we did, they ignored us and still do today.

People who weren't here do not understand any of this, so they keep parroting SE's excuse that it was because of button/APM bloat, even though this was debunked million times, while simultaneously they think that it was just Kaiten, even though 2/3 of SAM's kit was changed and gutted.

What I've found interesting is the fact that discussions about this halted not necessarily because of time, but because discussions ended up being very one sided, since community overwhelmingly agreed that 6.1 changes were terrible.

The only good thing is that I started liking (after a long time) circle Tenka, but that's mainly because targeting mobs in pack sucks.

Honestly I'm on the fence concerning circle Tenka, I liked the cone and the freedom it gave you, but circle feels fine-ish to me. It does kinda sucks not having to weave in and out of packs, and instead just standing still, but I don't mind this change nearly as much as Kaiten's removal for sure

[Wyssahtyn]

kaiten removal is trash, circle tenka is trash, seigan removal was, in hindsight, trash. auto crits render watching numbers meaningless. game's job and encounter design have been nosediving into the trash this whole expac. at least shb plateaued in relative tolerability.

also lol, discussion dropped off after 6.2 came out because the corpo dogs developing this game went mask off and really showed that they give zero shits about any sort of feedback. like damn, people like to fight over semantics over whether the devs listen or not, but just remember this whole shitstorm the next time the director asks for feedback on anything. they don't actually care, they just want you to go scream into the void and eventually give up when it becomes obvious they aren't going to listen.

only reason i went back to sam post 6.2 after burning myself out on nin instead of just generally quitting this crap game more than i already have is because of vergil tbh.

[AsiTsurugi]

Yeah, the fantastic flow of the game just isn't as present anymore and it's really depressing...
Seeing auto crit Midares hit for barely as much as old non crit ones completely goes against Samurai's whole fantasy of building towards huge and satisfying hits.

The auto crit Midares also hit for almost the same values as a CDH combo'd Gekko and Kasha right now, which is even more depressing.

[Ransu]

kaiten removal is trash, circle tenka is trash, seigan removal was, in hindsight, trash. auto crits render watching numbers meaningless. game's job and encounter design have been nosediving into the trash this whole expac. at least shb plateaued in relative tolerability.

also lol, discussion dropped off after 6.2 came out because the corpo dogs developing this game went mask off and really showed that they give zero shits about any sort of feedback. like damn, people like to fight over semantics over whether the devs listen or not, but just remember this whole shitstorm the next time the director asks for feedback on anything. they don't actually care, they just want you to go scream into the void and eventually give up when it becomes obvious they aren't going to listen.

only reason i went back to sam post 6.2 after burning myself out on nin instead of just generally quitting this crap game more than i already have is because of vergil tbh.

The wildest part is that people say they only listen to the JP players, but even the JP players were pissed off about the change which definitely speaks volumes about their care for specific feedback. I understand the forums can be terrible and trollish 90% of the time, but when a change is universally hated in every region and they completely ignore it...There's absolutely a problem and its something that pushed a lot of people away from WoW for awhile. The game overall will continue to be fine and I don't see them running into the WoW situation, but man sometimes it sucks to be a raider and know they care little about class design feel in end game and focus so heavily on how the classes/jobs feel to the casuals since most people never really go beyond normal content.