SAM gaeshi change severely cripples rotational flexibility and ruins the job for me

[Dysvalence]

Endgame raiding is heavily based around tightly aligning team cooldowns in large burst phases every 2 minutes. SAM's natural rotation doesn't align cleanly with this, and there are two ways to deal with it- using hagakure to throw away part of your rotation so everything fits, or slightly changing your rotation every time, not only for more damage, but also more flexibility with mistakes or downtime where you can't hit the boss.

A key part of that is using meikyou shisui to accelerate parts of your rotation, and entering burst with full sen/stickers but with a partially finished combo, and using that after midare+gaeshi to get a sticker for higanbana instead of using meikyou. Essentially, it lets you easily move your rotation up to 6 GCDs ahead or 2 GCDs back, and you can do so closer to burst. Since you need gaeshi to be the 2nd GCD in your burst, the change complicates the timing for accelerating things, and makes the latter impossible as meikyou overwrites your combo. You have to fall back on using "standard" hagakure looping, and that requires planning 8-10 GCDs ahead and makes it harder to adjust midare timing to take advantage of how it has double the range of regular attacks.

Without this flexibility, there's a very clear prescribed rotation and you just have to not screw up. IMO that's horrendously boring and more often than not just feels bad. At the risk of being melodramatic, imagine playing pvp where there's no value in pressing the advantage, and no back and forth where losing the opening engagement means that you can at best squeeze out a draw unless the other team throws the game. It's just a lot less fun.

To make things worse, the only other job that has this level of depth and freedom is BLM, and it looks like they're also getting their flexibility taken away. For a lot of people nonstandard BLM was the pinnacle of EW job design so these changes feel incredibly tone deaf given that they contradict the dev's stated goals of listening to the playerbase and addressing pain points.

Ngl, none of this is particularly surprising given what happened to kaiten, but if annotated powerpoints saved character creation then I might as well format this feedback seriously.

[RyuuZero]

do it like me with Dragoon in 6.1: keep Mirage Dive, I mean Tsubame on your HUB bar and play 7.0 unchanged

as far as I assume that should do the trick. I still was able to use Mirage Dive on it's own in 6.1 because I haven't updated my settings^^

[Arkdra]

do it like me with Dragoon in 6.1: keep Mirage Dive, I mean Tsubame on your HUB bar and play 7.0 unchanged

as far as I assume that should do the trick. I still was able to use Mirage Dive on it's own in 6.1 because I haven't updated my settings^^

Tsubame is almost assuredly only available after meikyo and will no longer have it's own cooldown or be usable after iaijutsus executed without meikyo.

[Mikey_R]

For changes like this, they are giving you the option to use it or not. If you feel it gets in the way, then don't use it.

[RyuuZero]

Tsubame is almost assuredly only available after meikyo and will no longer have it's own cooldown or be usable after iaijutsus executed without meikyo.

but flow-wise that doesn't make anysense at all^^;
here's a Macro that makes more sense:

/macroicon Iaijutsu
/ac Iaijutsu
/ac Tsubamegaeshi

[Mogred]

Endgame raiding is heavily based around tightly aligning team cooldowns in large burst phases every 2 minutes. SAM's natural rotation doesn't align cleanly with this, and there are two ways to deal with it- using hagakure to throw away part of your rotation so everything fits, or slightly changing your rotation every time, not only for more damage, but also more flexibility with mistakes or downtime where you can't hit the boss.

A key part of that is using meikyou shisui to accelerate parts of your rotation, and entering burst with full sen/stickers but with a partially finished combo, and using that after midare+gaeshi to get a sticker for higanbana instead of using meikyou. Essentially, it lets you easily move your rotation up to 6 GCDs ahead or 2 GCDs back, and you can do so closer to burst. Since you need gaeshi to be the 2nd GCD in your burst, the change complicates the timing for accelerating things, and makes the latter impossible as meikyou overwrites your combo. You have to fall back on using "standard" hagakure looping, and that requires planning 8-10 GCDs ahead and makes it harder to adjust midare timing to take advantage of how it has double the range of regular attacks.

This 100%.

I'll offer a personal example: My group in TOP did not struggle in the 1st phases damage check but we did struggle sometimes in phase 2 during prog. To help with this I started saving 1 charge of Tsubame in phase 1 so that I would have 2 charges at the start of phase 2 that I could use during buffs which helped my group with the phase 2 DPS check. I did not hold Meikyo in phase 1 I needed it to setup my opener for phase 2 and there is not enough time to properly use 2 Meikyo shisui in the opener of phase 2 before the boss jumps away.

If you tie Tsubame-gaeshi to Meikyou Shisui you will kill Samurais flexibility and skill expression

Please square do not tie Tsubame Gaeshi to Meikyo Shisui

[Arkdra]

but flow-wise that doesn't make anysense at all^^;
here's a Macro that makes more sense:

/macroicon Iaijutsu
/ac Iaijutsu
/ac Tsubamegaeshi

That probably isn't going to work. Did you watch the LL? The slide reads, "To simplify recast management, tsubame-gaeshi will be changed to be executable after Meikyo Shisui." There is no plausible way to interpret this as anything other than tsubame only being usable post Meikyo, almost assuredly through some buff named tsubame ready. The only reason I keep hedging is just in case this is a funky translation.

[RyuuZero]

That probably isn't going to work. Did you watch the LL? The slide reads, "To simplify recast management, tsubame-gaeshi will be changed to be executable after Meikyo Shisui." There is no plausible way to interpret this as anything other than tsubame only being usable post Meikyo, almost assuredly through some buff named tsubame ready. The only reason I keep hedging is just in case this is a funky translation.

I wrote this macro for funsies, but you should keep the Tsubamegaeshi Skill on your HUB bar^^ though you also can try my macro while it's possible^^ just double tab it after the Iaijutsu gone through^^

If you tie Tsubame-gaeshi to Meikyou Shisui you will kill Samurais flexibility and skill expression

Please square do not tie Tsubame Gaeshi to Meikyo Shisui

I slowly wonder if there is somebody on the Combat Design Team, who hates Samurai.. first the Kaiten Removal and now the Tsubamegaeshi Ruination?

[HikariKurosawa]

Standardization of job skill expression is a win. Look at from software games, because that's exactly how all games work. You have input difficulty, and you have encounter difficulty. The two are constantly balanced in consideration of the level of challenge the devs feel is right. From software games essentially have three buttons, and two when you're actually good at the game. You use dodge, heal, and R1. You can use more buttons, but that's all that is needed and what the game is balanced around in the most difficult moments.

The encounter difficulty of from software games is way higher and more dynamic than games like ffxiv as a result because the inputs are so simplified. This is the most extreme example of difficulty contrast between inputs and encounters, and it's not how I want ffxiv to go, but the way ffxiv is currently is too much complexity in the input department and too little difficulty in the encounter department.

The other problematic part about all the difficulty being in the input half of the design is that, it eventually becomes total muscle memory even with all the nuanced tricks you guys are using to optimize your rotations. When that happens, all you experience is easy encounters which also go more or less into muscle memory over time. Once you know the mechs of a fight, it just happens naturally. What you are claiming you want is a mindless experience with trivialized difficulty in the content. What standardized rotations lead to is more complex encounter design that actually ends up feeling dynamic and constantly engaging. You can't have it both ways, and it is better for the difficulty to come from the encounter more than the inputs. It leads to more engagement from newer players on top of more enjoyment from veterans who have already mastered their rotations.

You think you know what you want, but you do not. But also, maybe a lot of you really do just want to mindlessly execute your complex rotations you made total muscle memory on training dummy bosses. This way you get to parse high and feel chill instead of actually engaging with difficult bosses. There are all types out there. I think the best type of player is one who wants standardized rotations and difficult engaging encounters though.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

You think you know what you want, but you do not.

The last time I heard or read this line was some Blizzard dev saying it about players wanting WoW classic. It bit him completely in the ass because players in fact have shown how much they wanted it.

I do not think Standardization of job skill expression is a good thing if the way it is achieved is by reducing flexibility and neutering non-intuitive designs. All it does is narrow the already small performance gap between high-end and average players, which the average player didn't care either way for and only really comes as detriment to those who wish to strive for greater excellence.