Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Not a defense of removing Kaiten, but...

"Action Bloat" is generally not "too high an APM". It's when a button is pressed "just to be pressed", rather than its changing what ought be done before or after, and/or is necessarily constrained to a particular bundle that would, again, otherwise function identically even without it.

Which, Kaiten was... in itself. Its only claim to anything than bloat more was due to its gauge cost.

That, however, is not to say that bloat is never appreciable. People are free to like their woosh-woosh-wish animation even if it saw zero use outside of Iaijutsu and changed absolutely nothing about when and how Iaijutsu should be used.

Action bloat wasn't a sufficient reason to remove it, imo, but their reasoning does actually hold water. Remember, DRG's old Power Surge (90s CD meant to be used with Jump) was removed under the same rationale. Look at it from that angle, and it makes a lot more sense.

The problem is the narrowness of their view, as --again-- there was also the matter of how its costs interacted with other costs, and none of that impact was replaced nor reinvigorated in Kaiten's absence.
What I've said before is, if Kaiten is so problematic that it needed to be removed, why do that barely into the expansion and not wait till the next expansion to make more drastic changes? They did this with Monk during Shadowbringers as well, erased Greased Lightning as a buff in I believe 5.4 in preparation for the 6.0 rework, but what point was there to neutering Monk prematurely rather than just wait until you can do the full rework? Why mug a job's gameplay and leave it naked in the alleyway instead of wait till you have the replacement outfit ready and working? It makes no sense to me. Kaiten, Shadowbringers Monk, Endwalker Paladin... why are these such major emergencies that we need to blindside the job mid expansion when Sage's Toxikon had to stay a piece of hot garbage all throughout Endwalker? Make it make sense.