Quote Originally Posted by AnotherPerson View Post
The whole reason why [Kaiten] got removed is because crit variance was too big on Samurai, even though they don't say it is (hence the huge rebalance on DPS towards all of Samurai's skills).
Removing Kaiten, in itself, had absolutely no effect on crit variance.

If I have a skill that increases another skill's damage by 50% (Kaiten), it is no more subject to crit variance than if that original skill just dealt 50% more damage in itself (no Kaiten) and the of the kit is tuned around the reduced opportunity cost in Kenki.

Moreover, Kaiten itself could have just instead guaranteed the critical hit, for --shocked Pikachu face-- roughly the same damage bonus.

If crit variance were the reason for the change, we would have simply swapped "Increases damage dealt by next weaponskill by 50%" for "Guarantees a critical hit on your next weaponskill. Its damage increases with your critical hit chance" and been done, with at most a bit of Namikiri potency shaved off in favor of Shoha in order to balance out the impact that'd have on SkS's relative value.