Comprehensive Guide to the Kaiten and 6.1 SAM rework

[Deo14]

This is quite an essay, which I started back in early 6.3 and was slowly adding more stuff every now and then. Because I was writing this occasionally, bit by bit, I don't guarantee that everything is coherent. I thought I would not even post this, but after Kaiten sparked yet another discussions recently, and after overhearing stuff like button bloat for 1000th time, this time in NN(yes, I'm in NN, I like play MMORPGs with some background noise), even though whole button bloat has been disproven before 6.1 even went live, and after finding out that people don't even know what Kaiten did (some claimed it made Midare CDH), I eventually decided to post this.

If you're already familiar with the situation, you won't learn much from chapters 2 to 8 and frankly, it's way too detailed. In those chapters, I basically talk about why typical excuses for Kaiten removal make no sense, some crit variance rant, my propositions and so on, nothing that haven't been said here million times already. If you just need refresher about whole 6.1 SAM situation, just skim through introduction and go straight to the conclusion.

1 - Introduction to the issue

It's been nearly 1.5 year since patch 6.1, which introduced the infamous SAM rework. However, a long time has passed, and I've noticed an increasing number of people misunderstanding the entire issue, or worse, parroting excuses that were debunked a long time ago. That's why I wanted to provide a comprehensive explanation of the entire Kaiten situation.

Firstly, there is a misconception that it's only about Kaiten. It's not. The 6.1 rework included several changes, such as:

• Removal of Kaiten, an oGCD ability that did cost 20 Kenki and increased the next Iaijutsu's potency by 50% (technically all weaponskills, but it was dps loss on anything that isn't Iaijutsu or Ogi).
• Implementation of guaranteed hits for 4 skills. That was one patch before compensation for lost crit was even implemented.
• Increase in potency of all basic GCDs.
• Decrease in potency of all big hits (such as Iaijutsus and Ogi) that SAM was known for.
• Transformation of Tenka from a cone shape to a circular area effect.

Here's link to 6.1 patch notes.

However, it's mainly the removal of Kaiten that really hurts. The reason is that removing Kaiten also removed Kenki management. You used to need to save 20 Kenki, otherwise, you'd deal significantly less damage if you used Iaijutsus without it. But they removed Kaiten and we were given no replacement for it, so now we just spam Shinten all day. 20-23% of all SAM's actions are Shinten. This means on average, you do shinten every 5th action. It's most frequently used ability, even more frequent than Hakaze.

Kaiten was also simply satisfying to press. It was this calm before the storm, just a cool twirling animation before your Midares that amplified the whole effect.

Here's one of Misshapen's chair video about Kaiten that he released before he lost his mind from the lack of Kaiten.

Here's some quote from another one of his videos when talking about devs simplifying jobs further and further.

Who are these changes indented for? Super casuals who don't want to play the game correctly anyways? It can't be, because they're going to mash whatever button their little heart desires. Is it for hardcore players who are going to maximize their job no matter how stupid it is? That doesn't seem right either because usually those are the players that are most in the love with the small amounts of complexity the game offers them.

Introduction is over, so let's have a look at some classic excuses that people parrot.

2 - Button bloat

It was removed because of button bloat

One of the most prominent thing players talk about. Funnily enough, I could not even find devs saying something about this fictional "button bloat" issue.

First off, think about what is a button bloat. Is it when you have too many buttons? If so, how many? Is 25-30 buttons, half of which are situational or infrequent, too much for you? If your answer is yes and you don't have physical handicap, then check your keybinds, they're garbage.

So what is button bloat really? It's when certain button/skill is not required. When something becomes so situational, it's not worth keeping it on good keybind or when it makes sense for skill to be consolidated with other skill, but it isn't, like Ikishoten not turning into Ogi Namikiri, even though you cannot ever use Ogi Namikiri without using Ikishoten first.
Few examples:

• SMN's Physick - you should never use it, period.
• BLM's Scathe - Only good if you need to keep moving for most of GCD's duration AND you ran out of all the instacasts.
• PLD's Shield Bash - GCD stun is very situational, every bash is damage loss. Can be great in some old ARR dungeons and DDs, but you nearly never use it anywhere else.
• Afformentioned Ikishoten and Ogi Namikiri

There is also gray area of button bloat, which are skills that could be technically merged together. Some make sense, some not so much. Things like putting NIN's Huraijin effect as an uncomboed Armor Crush - it technically makes sense, sure, but then again, you're benefiting from using uncomboed action, which I personally think isn't good way to go. Consolidating some skills is good, but it's definitely not good for every situation.

So do you think Kaiten is bloat because you use it before every Iaijutsu? If yes, then why do we need to press Iki before Ogi? Why do we need to press Ogi before Kaeshi? Why do you always activate FoF and Requiescat together? Hell, why do we do rotations, they are all rigid anyways with barely any flexibility. You always do FoF->Req->Goring Blade->Scorn->Gap Closer->Expiacion->Gap Closer->Faith Combo and so on. This mentality is slippery slope which devolves into auto combo and eventually into removing everything except auto attack.

If we really wanted some button removal/consolidation for SAM, then we have:

• Kyuten, which is AoE version of Shinten
• Guren, which is AoE vesion of Senei
• Shoha 2, which is AoE version of Shoha 1

These 3 pairs of the same skills are completely identical except that they are ST/AoE versions. They have same Kenki/Meditation cost and even share cooldowns. So why do they use 6 buttons? Why not just merge them into 3 buttons, which would be functionally identical? Plenty of skills already use the "Deals X to the target and Y to nearby enemies". In fact, Guren does exactly that already, so why don't we just put Senei's single target potency into Guren?

These simple changes would be fully beneficial to SAM. It's purely QoL and unlike Kaiten removal, it won't affect gameplay, it will simply remove 4 unnecessary buttons.

Also keep in mind that (if my math is correct, all buttons, pot and LB included):

• 6.08 - SAM had 35 skills, while PLD had 36.
• 6.3+ - SAM has 34 skills, while PLD has 37. Kaiten removed, Bulwark added.

If 35 buttons was too much for SAM, why is PLD with 37 fine? It's not like PLD doesn't have button bloat. I'm not saying that PLD didn't need Bulwark, it was long overdue, but SE clearly doesn't care about button bloat enough to help PLD and merge Sheltron with Intervention, FoF with Requiescat or anything similar.

Conclusion: Kaiten was really low on priority list when it comes to button bloat, and there is no mention of "button bloat" from devs I could find in a first place.

3 - Action bloat

It was removed for action bloat

This is official reasoning for Kaiten removal, as written in Live Letter 70:

But does it really fix action bloat, if there is any action bloat to begin with?

Kenki generation did not change. Shinten is and was 25 Kenki, Kaiten was 20. Meaning that for every 5 Kaitens, you do 4 Shintens instead. But when? Image below is a comparison between 6.1+ and 6.0 opener.



As you can see, in both openers, APM is identical, removal of Kaiten didn't even change opener/burst (assuming my 6.08 opener is correct, let me know if it isn't). You also need to use same amount of buttons for it, since in 6.1+, you'd leave burst with 10 Kenki left, so you need to use Gyuten to spend that last Kenki. Further in your rotation, you will generate 5 less Kenki for every Iaijutsu compared to 6.0, this will reduce apm a little further, I don't know when or where, I'm too lazy to simulate whole timeline, but I sure don't care about doing few extra Shintens per fight. Much better than doing nothing but Shintens. At the same time, you can only get 2 extra Shintens into 2 min burst by pooling Kenki because of Ikishoten. Conclusion? [B]Burst barely changed, it removed Kenki management and didn't affect APM in burst (assuming my 6.08 opener is correct). It did bad job solving action bloat, if there really was such a thing in a first place.

What would really be a good solution for action bloat, if there was any? Nerfing Kenki generation and increasing Shinten's cost. If Shinten went from 25->35 for example, you would pool less Shintens into burst while lowering APM.

4 - "Kaiten is badly designed"

This is (probably) 3rd most popular excuse.

Doing X before every Y is bad design

Welcome to FFXIV! Here's WHM rotation:
Glare-Dia-Glare-Glare-PoM-Glare-Assize-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare...

How about SGE rotation, aka the DPS healer?
Dosis-DoT-Dosis-Dosis-Phlegma-Phlegma-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis...

You get my point.

Yes, it might not be the most sophisticated design in videogame history, but it still gives the job more depth. Without Kaiten, you only use Kenki for Shinten. Kaiten requires you to keep watch on your Kenki, if you don't, it's significant damage loss. Is it hard to make sure you have those 20 Kenki saved? No, but it still adds a depth. Being able to keep track of Kenki is the difference between bad player and average player (even though one might argue that those are the same players). These small nuances are what creates healthy, gradual skill curve. You should never define skill curve by anything too significant. Imagine old positional which broke combo. If someone struggled with positionals, they might as well quit playing melee. Player would be walled from playing whole role just because of this.

5 - Crit variance

This part is less about Kaiten itself and more about nerfs to big hits, guaranteed hits and SAM's fantasy of low damage while building up resources, and high burst while spending them.

It's because of crit variance!

This is not a SAM problem, this is game's problem. Endwalker has made very questionable change of putting every big skill and raidbuff on 2 minute cooldown. This amplified problem of the crit variance. Right now we have critical hit, direct hit, critical direct hit and 95%-105% variance. Stacking multiple buffs on top of that creates very RNG dependent damage, while we also do big damage skills less often, since plenty of skills went from 60/75/80/90s and similar to static 120s. Lower frequency means lower chance at averaging out all the RNG. Most non-ultimates fights take 6-10 minutes, meaning you have only 3-5 chances to get some crits with your big damage button like Double Down. You don't need to do math to realize that odds of either not criting even once or all the time are too big. This can be variance of 1000s of potency throughout the fight. So once again, this is problem with the game, not a SAM.

SE's solution? Instead of fixing the actual problem, they make jobs oblige this meta. This was what SAM's rework was mostly about, and PLD's rework too. Yes, Kaiten is most talked about, but 6.1 changed whole damage spread of SAM. Instead of having low damage, building resources and then unleashing massive burst, aka the class fantasy of Samurai, we now have very bland damage output throughout the fight. 6.1 amplified potency of all regular GCDs, while it lowered potency of all the big hits SAM was used to be known for. Midare went from 660 + 50% from Kaiten, to 600 + guaranteed critical hit and no Kaiten. Ogi + Kaeshi went from 900 + 1350 to 800 + 800 with guaranteed crit. Crit compensation was implemented in 6.2, whole patch after SAM rework. Midare now deals similar or even lower damage than some tanks skills, which is just embarassing, since Midare is SAM's identity.

6 - Kaiten vs Crit variance

But back to Kaiten. What was the point of the removal? If Midare was nerfed even further and Kaiten added 50% + guaranteed hit, it would be identical to current Midare. As for Ogi, it would be fine with guaranteed hit and lowered potency until 7.0, or simply just removing whole skill. It's just cheap high damage button on way too long cooldown anyways. Seriously, how did balance team even allow to release EW with skill that originally used to be 900 + 1350 potency in 2 GCDs, without guaranteed crit and on 2 minutes cooldown? No wonder there was crit variance. Anyways, if we did these things, SAM would still follow the garbage 2 minute meta, but at least we would have Kaiten and Kenki management.

Another point is circle Tenka. You used to do 1-2, 1-3, reposition, Kaiten and then Tenka. Now you just stand in middle of trash pack and spam 1-2, 1-3, Tenka, all while standing still in the middle of the pack, now with ridiculous 8 yalms range. That's just lame, bring back cone Tenka. At one time I though that I started to tolerate circle Tenka, but then I started playing RPR and holy, it makes such a difference having to actually move around and correctly position yourself.

7 - My proposition

My solution to all of this? Just give us Kaiten back, slap a guaranteed crit on it and recalculate potencies. Lame solution, but will do until 7.0. But it's too late for all of that, unless they throw a bone out of pity on us in 6.5. For 7.0 onwards, all SE needs to do is to get rid of the garbage 2 minute meta, return to old varied ShB cooldowns, finally remove direct hit, maybe even 95%-105% variance and remove all the guaranteed crits. Maybe merge ST and AoE variants of Shinten, Senei and Shoha. After that, even old Kaiten with old potencies won't be such a problem.

8 - SE's response and my analysis

Before final summary, I would like to address some of the dev responses/Yoshi P's comments that I found:

Here is me trying to analyse SE's (mainly Yoshi-P's responses) from Live Letter 70 and 6.1 patch reading stream. I do not speak Japanese. I blindly rely on unofficial translations from Discord, since that's all I can do. I do not like this over-analyzation of someone's words, which are even translated on top of it all, if I was Yoshi-P, I would hate that someone analyzes my every word, but this is only response I could find. So take this part with a grain of salt.

Anyways, some comments from LL 70:
Straight up nothing of consistence here. Just a slide with afformentioned "action bloat" excuse.

But there was one heartwarming thing Yoshi said which was unrelated to Kaiten.

I think that's good, we're all creating this game together in a way after all.

That's all from LL 70 as far as Kaiten goes.

Then there is next stream, the 6.1 patch notes reading, which has even smaller translation coverage. But as you will see, it actually contains much more relevant info, unlike LL. I had no clue about this, I just thought that patch notes reading streams aren't something relevant and I didn't bother with them since it's all in Japanese, but as it turns out, it seems that Yoshi talks a lot about actual problems here, shame I needed to dig very deep into Kaiten issues to find that out. Official english coverage, or at least official subtitles 1-2 days after streams would be great. Anyways here we go:

Translator's notes:

• Do note that he will keep reviewing the Official Forums and he welcome your feedback and voice on the matter. Once again, I'll say this, Do it politely and do NOT bitch, whine, gaslight or guilt trip. Just state out your disappointment and your reason politely. Push for a change and they'll look into it.
  
• YoshiP will not read everything for job changes, but he does state that the most focus they poured onto was NIN and SAM.
  
• Some comments wanted the person who worked on NIN to address their rationale, YoshiP replied that it doesn't matter if they did or not because the changes are done based on the discussion between YoshiP AND the one who worked on job balances, and they discussed it before taking the risk to apply the changes.
  
• The same applies on SAM as well. Since this is dragging out really long. A separate post will be made later here.
  
• YoshiP is also aware of the result of changing skill to deal guaranteed Crit and its effect on synergy, the specification is something YoshiP is always worried about whenever adjustments are applied. But for now he wants the players to test it out first and then post feedback on Offical Forums for them to gauge on.
  
• [B]YoshiP for now wants players to play the changes to the job first and then post their feedback in OF so that YoshiP can review on them and made changes (or revert them, depending on the response). Do note that your comment matters, because what you post WILL influence how the job direction will do in the future.[B]
  
• They put new traits for NIN and SAM so that the level 90 combo potency don't look too weak while at the same time not making it too strong before reaching level 90.

Here's the "test it out first and then post feedback on Official Forums". There was even phrase "revert them" when talking about the changes. Then there was this:

Do note that your comment matters, because what you post WILL influence how the job direction will do in the future.

I'm sorry but it doesn't feel like our comments and feedback matter at all, just check Celesti Cer's post with all the compiled SAM feedback which did absolutely nothing. It's not like there were people praising these changes either, here on EN OF, I would say there was like 10:1 ratio of people who hated changes vs who liked them or was neutral. If you don't count trolls, it would be even less.

On NIN though, the biggest will be...Trick Attack. We made it....conforming to 120 second cycle. Just...we split it and put it on Mug...well we did indeed have a huge discussion on that, and....for what we could we changed the position....and due to that we extend the effect timing so when it comes to PTDPS the effect duration lasts far longer than before.

Well what next would be Doton during the opener, we thought that it's more trouble than its worth so we adjusted to eliminate the trouble so we thought this is wha...well, you could say Mug is also a part of defense＊...

(The following would be YoshiP looking at stream chat that got flared up voicing their dissatisfaction on NIN changes and YoshiP eyed it very hard throughout replying to them)

Hmmm....this really troubles me every time...to do it, or to just leave it like that....

Well, if we put it this way, Samurai too...ummmmmmmmm...yeah, people who say that it wasn't a trouble at all must be really used to the job by now, I think...oh dear, this is really troubling...hmm...I do think it's easier to not change it at all...now what do I...oh well this is troubling...I know I won't get away by avoiding this so I do look at various comments here and, hmmmmm....whether it's okay to change...well to the person who like that kind of troublesome at hand is easy to read I suppose. I mean, they've been really fond of the job for quite a while now...

Obviously Kaiten is not problem for people who are used to it and can play the job properly. There is this thing called skill curve. If you had problems with using Kaiten, you were worse than those who didn't. What's wrong with that? Should good players deal same damage as bad players?

But if we continue this then we won't be able to change anything and if we pick up and rebuild again it'll cause more complicated experience than it's worth...

I saw comments asking for the person responsible to come out and explain themselves, but even if they come out I doubt that they will say anything different than what I did. By the way, the adjustments you see here are the result of me debating with the person who worked on it, along with discussing the risks it come with, and in the end, decided and then signed on it after knowing and acknowledging that performing such changes are for the sake of the playerbase. So this is definitely my responsibility...so probably no matter how much I say here it will just be some speech where people either be convinced or not so...

Of course there are times where I thought of just flip the table and not change anything...but still...yeah on SAM's guaranteed critical, having that will make SAM's performance jump really high but there are also parts where SAM doesn't see drastic jump as they should...and on Kaiten getting removed we did that because we want to do away having to be restricted by that move, and as for its sub stats, the influence of those stats as the patch moves on will become bigger and bigger and it'll jump the job's performance really high, more so than expected and in reverse the numbers on lesser patch will see the job not jumping as high as the job should....hmmmm...Indeed, it is true that the job's strength and weakness will depend on whether the job's amount of critical dealt and I agree the job relied on that aspect too much, and as for the strength and weakness...yeah that's what it is. I of course do understand that this is part of the fun for the job....and, as for this time, we saw specific actions determined the the composition of DPS and perhaps it leaned way too much so we let some of the weapon skill value loose and we know that if we just increase the potency of weapon skill it'll result in those skills at lower level being too strong, so we adjusted on those values as well by... please refer to the new traits added to SAM located below. So...yeah, this is the adjustments for the job we made for this patch.

Typical crit variance talk. Instead of solving crit variance in the whole game by removing direct hit and bringing back ShB cooldowns, they decided to just gut SAM. He touched upon the Kaiten being removed because they felt restricted... Restricted to what? Fun gameplay? Jobs with some depth? Players are now restricted to spam Shiten every 3th/4th weave window. It's really hard to tell what Yoshi meant by that. Since Midare and Ogi got guaranteed crit anyways, then Kaiten wouldn't really affect anything when it comes to crit variance, since it's all completely static and predictable damage. There would be no extra variance caused by Kaiten, maybe by Hingabana and Tenka, but non-Dot hit of Hingabana is just 300 potency, and Tenka is AoE, which is close to irrelevant for balancing matters and has higher chance to balance itself out since it's AoE.

And then, I am also well aware of how the critical synergy works well with jobs...and I'm definitely aware, but this is also the overall problem of FFXIV itself, and there are discussions where we should have change that itself to begin with. But we can't be doing everything simultaneously at once so please understand that we want to tackle on that gradually. We do experience cases where it's hard to adjust when a skill with and without critical can cause such a huge disparity...and so we performed this adjustment precisely we care about that so I apologize but I'd like you to please give it a try first.

Yes, 2 min meta is terrible for the game. But 3 patches later, and there were no gradual changes, situation is still problematic. They haven't "tackled that gradually", they merely put more and more skills on guaranteed crits and even reworked PLD just to oblige the meta. They made compensation for guaranteed hits in 6.2, but that is not fix, but merely a band aid. Just like PLD and SAM reworks. Please, start providing actual solutions.

(long pause)

But still...on adjustment in the future............ it's really hard to decide what should and shouldn't change....

(long pause)

It's obviously not an easy thing to make these decisions. But when it comes to Kaiten, community clearly agreed that it should be brought back just a few weeks after 6.1 went live. I don't think this specific issue is hard to solve when people are vehemently against the change and balance wouldn't be such a problem since everything relevant is on guaranteed crit anyways.

I do receive comments saying "Well you don't have to go your way to get troubled with this issue, since this is just a Patch Notes Reading stream", and...yeah it's there but I do have to explain on the adjustments we made halfway and we touched upon making sure the definite number is adjusted to what we wanted, I mean if we didn't we definitely can't release them, since there's also part where we have to touch upon everything to make sure....but still this time it's just...hmmmmm...well, just give it a try and if there are large voices saying not to change this or that part to that extent then that's the direction we're taking for future adjustments so is it fine for you to submit your feedback to us? ....I'm sorry.

I appreciate that there are at least some comments regarding the issues (even though it's only in JP). And again, asking for feedback. Which is still ignored 'til this day.

Closing Note That Touched Upon Job Balance

I am sure that there are people who think I shouldn't be touching on job balances anymore but I would like to apologize because I do hesitate a lot halfway during that segment, and the lack of proper adjustments were...well, there are many cases where it's due to my hesitation in judgement...but basically while there might be people who this isn't the case, I would like all players to know that we perform adjustments and improvements with the premise that every player can enjoy them not only on the short term but also on the long term.

Sounds like Yoshi wants to say that they wanted to make SAM more accessible. But why though? It was one of the most popular jobs, it didn't need more. It's not hard job either. Also, please, for the love of Hydaelyn, stop listening to the players who don't even main the job. I mainly play SAM, my opinion on let's say BLM should weight a fraction of opinion of someone who does main BLM and vice versa. Stop listening to players who don't even play that job. That's how homogenization and dumbing down starts.

However, as for opinions, Of course we do and indeed read those properly, including those that think it's not right to over standardise jobs or comments like "you overdid yourself when it comes to our only trait or the optimization elements we have". We do indeed want to push it for as much as we could, and we are very well aware of people who understand this, as well as people who are already used to what they have now and people who told us not to do anything unnecessary. We really get that but in order for the expansion to continue and for each jobs to continue getting new actions, and whenever we think of trying to maintain the individual characteristics of each job, we found out that this "optimization" is quite tied and connected to the irregular element that was created in the past, and if we don't work to address this we can no longer build upon the existing elements and improve things further, and it'll land us in a situation where we can no longer steer ourselves forward.

Can we get some acknowledgment that you do? All the feedback seems to fall on deaf ear. Even to get to this response in english, I had to go find it in some random DC channel.

Then there is this infamous "future proofing". Kaiten was removed but you did not add anything back. There was no compensation. There is no need to make space for new skills if you don't add any. If you really needed more space, you should remove something when you actually have something else as a replacement. Why was Kaiten removed in 6.1, we've been playing as hollow shell for over a year now, and it's still more than a year for next expansion where we might get something that could take Kaiten's place.

Still, I of course do acknowledge that there are parts where people did not ask for, like Ninja or Samurai..and regarding Samurai's guaranteed Critical, we indeed struggled a lot on the balance adjustments due to the strong ratio fluctuation here, and we really attempted to close the variance gap for as much as we could, and we know this is done for the sake of job balance so I really appreciate if you can understand what we're trying to achieve here. You can send us feedback from there and if the voices of how a job's identity has been taken away too much then these comments will act as a reference to the direction of job balance and improvements we'll be performing in the future. So please, if you do think it matters to you, do send us a feedback regarding the matter.

Again, asking for feedback. Yes SAM's identity suffered, Midare now deals lower damage than even some tank skills. We spam Shinten all day now. Why Shinten though? Isn't stabbing last thing you would want to do with katana? It's primarily cutting weapon and while stabbing is possible, it should not be used too much, if we want to go into "lore" details. Can we, at the very least, get some better, more fitting animation for it?

Well, of course I am very well aware and understand that players will feel lonely and their displeasure will get really big when certain elements of the job they played and got used to for quite a long while now gets changed or removed, so it's not like we're purposely looking away these comments with disapproval or something, but it'll definitely be much appreciated if you can tell us which part you want us to retain or tell us more on which aspects are more favorable to you after touching on the adjustments so that we can take your comment as reference, and from there we'll know where to draw the line. I'll repeat myself that we really did all these adjustments for the sake of player's enjoyment here so I'll be thankful if you all can understand this. (The rest omitted)

Then give us some response. Simple "we're working on it" goes a long way. Granted, you really need to actually work on it (as in it's gonna be finished in 6.X, not in the next expansion).

As for what I would personally go for - Using Iki changes into Ogi, add guaranteed crit effect to Kaiten and compensate potencies for it. When 7.0 comes out, remove that and finally remove direct hit too, fix 2 min meta and bring back old Kaiten with potencies similar to 6.08. Midare should be one of the most potent ability across all jobs, not a laughing stock.

These changes were talked about since 6.1 released, yet it's 6.4 already and we still get nothing.

As for things that shouldn't ever change - don't ever implement any insta casts. Iaijutsu should always be hard casted. Do not put any "QoL" skill that will instacast next Iaijutsu. Don't "upgrade" Meikyo by giving it one stack of instacast buff. Don't bring back Kaiten just to make it have instacast. No "1 charge of instacast every minute". None of that.

As for drawing the line - I think they learned where we draw the line now, which is at removing skills for "future proofing" while that future is 2 years away. Which is presumably why they post-poned AST and DRG changes. Surely it was because there was a lot of stuff to do, and not because they wanted to wait for players to cool down after the SAM/NIN backlash, right?

9 - Conclusion

Here comes the part that doesn't affect only SAMs, but everyone.

They asked us for feedback. They told us to try it out and we did. This is the feedback just here on EN forums (keep in mind that it wasn't updated for some time):
Compiled SAM threads against 6.1 changes / Kaiten removal

Back in july 2022 (6 months after rework) I counted pages on JP's SAM megathread (they use chaotic megathreads for some reason). At the time, thread had 325 pages worth of discussion. Meanwhile, from SAM's release in SB (June 2017) to 6.1, there was just 170 pages. That means 170 pages in 4.5 years vs 155 pages in just half a year after 6.1 release. I think it's safe to say that even JP community wasn't excited about rework.

So what was SE's response to all of this? Radio silence. After nearly 1.5 years, they still didn't respond to anything. There wasn't even "we're working on it", "we hear you", "we will fix it in 7.0", nothing. I don't care if they're right now working on Final Fantasy XVII: The Kaiten Reborn, if they don't tell us what's going on, it's just worthless and frustrating. Community wants to at least hear SE address the issue, yet we don't even get that.

Going radio silent and waiting until the community calms down and gives up is a bad outlook for developers. Not only because they claim they listen to the community, but especially since they specifically asked for feedback for this specific change. Sad thing is that this seems to be their go-to tactic, just look how they ignore all the healer issues.

You might say that SAM is just single issue that they choose to ignore, but fact is that community's backlash was massive and most importantly, very one sided. Ignoring one big issue is just as bad as ignoring plenty of smaller ones. If all of this feedback did nothing (except of making them scared of making original 6.3 reworks for AST and DRG), then how is any other feedback relevant? If they didn't listen to this magnitude of community uproar, how can we expect them to listen to anything else? They only listen to feedback they want to hear or isn't too inconvenient for them. Only proven way for them to listen is to make drama out of it. There were barely any QoL things before all the plugin drama, now we get some good QoL every patch. So what should we learn from that? Do we need to fabricate drama for them to finally acknowledge problems or what?

TL;DR: 2 minute meta bad, reworking jobs just to follow meta bad, kaiten good, shinten bad, ignoring feedback bad, endwalker mid.

[AsiTsurugi]

Good post, and I agree with all the points made. One small (pedantic) correction though. In point 6, you said Ogi wasn't affected by Kaiten, when Kaiten did in fact buff Ogi (not Kaeshi Namikiri, like the regular Tsubame-gaeshi skills), for the short period both skills coexisted in the game. Other than that, I think it is a great post, and might be helpful to cross-post or link this post in the JP megathread about SAM to possibly get more eyeballs on it.

[Eorzean_username]

4 - "Kaiten is badly designed"

Welcome to FFXIV! Here's WHM rotation:
Glare-Dia-Glare-Glare-PoM-Glare-Assize-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare-Glare...

How about SGE rotation, aka the DPS healer?
Dosis-DoT-Dosis-Dosis-Phlegma-Phlegma-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis-Dosis...

You get my point.

This seems to be commonly brought up in response to this, but I think it misunderstands the reasoning behind it.

Kaiten's design essentially split 1 action across 2 buttons, since separating them was ~100% useless in all possible cases. So Iaijutsu was basically a 2-key combo... except it had no tangible effect, other than invisibly increasing your action to the correct Potency.

If you look at other similar "2-key combos", there's some kind of tangible change to the functionality of the affected action.

• Eukrasia + Dosis → becomes entirely different action

• Reassemble + Drill → becomes automatic CDH

• Disembowel + Chaotic Spring → DOT applied, unlocks Wheeling Thrust action

...etc.

Because it was basically impossible to ever not be able to Kaiten (assuming reasonably-correct play), Kaiten was basically just a formality that un-nerfed your artificially-lowered Iaijutsu Potencies, at the cost of an extra keypress and keybind.

This probably made it seem very tempting as something "superfluous" that could be eliminated without much consequence, when a designer zoomed-out and viewed things from a detached, clinically-organised, meta-level perspective.

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Now, you may be wondering things like, "But what about the cascading effect on Kenki usage, diverting even more casts into the already-overused Shinten?"

Or, "Why not first make an effort to differentiate Kaiten more, so that the keypress feels more mechanically-meaningful, such as causing it to also grant extra effects to Iaijutsu?"

Or, "Why not make Kaiten more of a decision and less of a formality, by turning it into something like a Reassemble clone, with a hard cooldown and 2 charges?"

Or, "Why not start out by trying literally anything other than obliterating the action with an orbital Lalafellin space laser?"

These are good questions, but they are beyond the ken of mere mortals to answer.

————————————————————

My best guess, though, is that overworked, understaffed, overwhelmed designers — who are receiving dubious feedback at best from the community teams and/or a poorly-designed, corporatised feedback-gathering system — are inclined to just rip things out and change them in sweeping, massive bursts that target the "expected ultimate endpoint", rather than bleed time and energy into trying to manage and keep track of more gradual, incremental, fine-tuned changes.

You see similar philosophies throughout FFXIV's current design — Dungeons become completely-standardised "2 pulls → Boss" hallways because "Oh, that's what everyone will eventually just do anyway once they learn the ideal route"... etc.

Maybe part of an internal philosophy like, "Jumping straight to the bone-marrow of a design in one pass is cheaper than iterating successively to get there slowly".

[Deo14]

Good post, and I agree with all the points made. One small (pedantic) correction though. In point 6, you said Ogi wasn't affected by Kaiten, when Kaiten did in fact buff Ogi (not Kaeshi Namikiri, like the regular Tsubame-gaeshi skills), for the short period both skills coexisted in the game. Other than that, I think it is a great post, and might be helpful to cross-post or link this post in the JP megathread about SAM to possibly get more eyeballs on it.

I'll fix that. I wasn't sure if I was remembering it correctly, so I just assumed that you wouldn't get another 50% to 1300 - but yeah, that was just a brainfart, it makes so much sense that you would get 900+50% with Ogi, and non-buffed 1300 with Kaeshi. This also means that my assumed 6.0 opener is incorrect. I'll remove my image and put in 6.1+ opener from balance and some 6.0 opener that I managed to find.

[vetch]

Kaiten's design essentially split 1 action across 2 buttons, since separating them was ~100% useless in all possible cases. So Iaijutsu was basically a 2-key combo... except it had no tangible effect, other than invisibly increasing your action to the correct Potency.

The tangible effect was to increase gauge management complexity and also to give you a hit of 'job fantasy' via an animation when you used it. Not every job element has to be an 'adds function'. Some of them can be a 'don't screw this up or it's suboptimal'.

C.f. the dungeon changes, where something was very tangibly lost when the design shifted from 'use your judgement to anticipate how much you can safely pull' to 'everyone lick the wall'.

[Shurrikhan]

This seems to be commonly brought up in response to this, but I think it misunderstands the reasoning behind it.

Kaiten's design essentially split 1 action across 2 buttons, since separating them was ~100% useless in all possible cases. So Iaijutsu was basically a 2-key combo... except it had no tangible effect, other than invisibly increasing your action to the correct Potency.

While true, I don't think it ever pretended otherwise. Moreover, this analysis leaves out the thing Kaiten was clearly intended to do: to force gauge margining.

We can call that a minor mechanic (I'd argue that Senei/Guren costing 50 and Ikishoten being on a 1min CD back in ShB had a slightly larger effect, even), sure, but it was nonetheless a mechanic that was lost with Kaiten's removal.

Remember, we started originally with spenders at 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 Kenki.

Now? 10 (situational) and 25 only...

[Aravell]

If all of this feedback did nothing (except of making them scared of making original 6.3 reworks for AST and DRG), then how is any other feedback relevant?

I highly doubt that they were scared off by the negative backlash from the Kaiten removal. They're definitely going full speed ahead with whatever they intended to change, they're just waiting until everyone calms down and eventually forgets about the Kaiten upset. Waiting until the next expansion is quite a long wait, a lot of time for a lot of people to lose interest in the whole situation and allow them to push out the reworks with lesser negative backlash.

[Eorzean_username]

The tangible effect was to increase gauge management complexity

That's not what I mean by "tangible effect", since it's entirely an abstract HUD / number management which is transparent outside of parsing, or squinting at either gauges or flytext — and even then, since you'd never want to actually not Kaiten, even the potential flytext comparison stopped being relevant over time.

That Kaiten had an effect seems inarguable to me — since yes, you needed to maintain the extremely-mild tension of pretending that the floor of your Gauge was 20 instead of 0 — but that effect was detached from the action execution or consequences themselves, making it decidedly abstract in function.

———————————————

and also to give you a hit of 'job fantasy' via an animation when you used it. Not every job element has to be an 'adds function'. Some of them can be a 'don't screw this up or it's suboptimal'.

Taken out-of-context, this could just as easily be describing Summoner Primals and Gem Charges — a hit of "job fantasy" via an animation, which doesn't add much function, but "feels good", and is suboptimal if you somehow manage to "screw it up".

But anyway, while that's fine, it's also something that designers are naturally going to target when they're dealing with constraints such as an upper ceiling on how many Actions and Keybinds a given design is allowed to have, or attempting to cut down on clutter that the (mythical) "most players" don't seem to engage with much — What you're basically saying is, "This key exists because I like pressing it and it looks cool".

Which is also fine — above all, gaming is a subjective entertainment experience, and an art, not a science. If the playerbase just likes something a lot, and claim that "something" increased their entertainment value, then it doesn't have to make objective, clinical "design sense", and those players aren't wrong for wanting it back.

I just also think that there's been excessive attempts to "lawyer" the developers into returning Kaiten based on over-exaggerating its prior, actual mechanical value, rather than just more honestly stating "We liked it because we liked it, and we want it back because we liked it".

Because I maintain that the Shinten issue was long-standing, has always "needed"(?) to be addressed, and was merely magnified by Kaiten's removal, not directly caused by it (and is not even addressing the seemingly-perplexing change to Senei/Guren costs).

[Eorzean_username]

Moreover, this analysis leaves out the thing Kaiten was clearly intended to do: to force gauge margining. [...] it was nonetheless a mechanic that was lost with Kaiten's removal [...] Remember, we started originally with spenders at 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 Kenki.

This is all true, I just think its overall effect and value is — again — being overexaggerated in hindsight.

And also, that the drop of Senei/Guren to 25 was actually the stranger and more influential change, with regard to the management of Ikishoten and Kenki during burst, and was something that was far more likely to be "reckless" about and "mess up", due to the much tighter "margin" on 50 vs 20 — though this was perhaps more relevant when Ikishoten was still 60s CD.

As for the 15, that applied only to Seigan, and — to be blunt — that was an at-best-trivial component of even the "glory days" of the Samurai rotation, which I think was a good example of "additional complexity without (much) reward". I'm not surprised it got KO'd, though I would have much preferred simply rejuvenating it into something more relevant (just like Kaiten).

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When you really look at Kenki historically, the spread was really:

• 10 — Gap-closers which were previously self-flagellating to use, and avoided as much as feasible. The Celestial Revolution of Kenki spends.

• 15 — Essentially a gimmick.

• 20 — The actual floor of your gauge, essentially always-available, and relatively-easy to recover from mild misplays due to its low cost, unless you really, truly botched something.

• 25 — The vast majority of your Kenki spends, since the Job's inception.

• 50 — Your big hefty burst, which previously made sense to justify banking and building to this extra cost.

—————————————————

Another thing to consider is that the original "gauge-focused" design and components were released in Stormblood, when Yoshida went "gauge-crazy", and both SAM and RDM were obviously designed around the new Gauge system at their core, and to showcase it heavily.

At that time, SAM had very little else going on — it was basically "Black Mage with a Sword", in the sense of having nearly no real burst window, and most of its damage coming from just pumping out GCDs consistently and steadily.

Kenki thus was central to what system SAM did have, right down to its primary rotation focusing on sacrificing as many Midares as possible into Kenki via Hagakure on-cooldown (and then dumping that gain into — Guess which action).

As Samurai has evolved over time to have a true "rotation", a very definite "burst window", and a more robust and matured system overall, it may well be that the designers feel that the Job no longer needs so much detail involved in, nor devoted to, its Gauge management in-specific — ie, bringing SAM's Gauge more in-line with most other Jobs.

From that perspective, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Shinten eventually ends up becoming a 50 Kenki action.

[vetch]

From that perspective, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Shinten eventually ends up becoming a 50 Kenki action.

That'll be great, then samurai and warrior can both suffer for the lack of a useful way to prevent overcapping before burst. Why have gauge management? Just make everything clunky as shit and make up for it with raw potency.