Final Fantasy Hacktics

By creator intent, I'm assuming you mean what the developers of FFT envisioned? If so, we've already thrown that out. Look at what has happened to Ninja, for example.

I've noticed. And yet, people are very resistant to my suggestion of removing Masamune. Well, the first people to respond to me weren't too defensive. It was only after I posted my "I'm going to drop this now and leave you with these thoughts to think about later on" post that Raven got on and I felt the need to clarify that my suggestion to abandon haste and regen wasn't rooted in concern for flavor or adherence to creator intent.

As for mechanical coherence, I honestly don't understand what you mean at all. If you are talking about how most samurai abilities are AoE, then why not also complain about Kiku, which has the same targeting system as Masamune, except that Masamune hits self and is 1 range. If you are talking about about how most Draw Outs deal damage to the enemy, then Murasame gets attacked as well.

Most Samurai abilities inflict damage. One of them has a different targeting system, one of them inflicts harmful status effects instead of direct damage, and one of them is reversed to provide support rather than offense. Then there's one ability that has a different targeting system, adds status effects instead of affecting HP, and focuses on supporting the party instead of harming the enemy. Sorry for trying to use odd terminology to save myself the trouble of explaining this, but you can't tell me that Masamune doesn't deviate a lot further from the standard than the other abilities in the move set.

And finally, the reason I don't want a mass death attack...

I only suggested the AoE death because CT5Holy said he would prefer to change Masamune rather than scrap it, which was my original suggestion. I really don't care about Zanmato.

If you read the goals of this patch, it lists balance as the primary goal, bar nothing. Cool abilities are cool, sure, but I'm not going to make an overpowered/underpowered ability for flavour/mechanical coherence/whatever you want to call it.

I wasn't suggesting cool abilities for the sake of cool abilities. I was trying to come up with an alternative for people who didn't like my original plan of scrapping the ability (like CT5Holy.) Honestly, if the Samurai didn't already have haste+regen, wouldn't anybody who suggested adding that ability be treated to the exact same attitude you're treating me with? But I'm getting really frustrated here because I'm getting really tired of being treated like some scrub who's all about "flavor" or "cool abilities" or "creator intent" when I'm the one who suggested moving away from creator intent to scrap a cool ability rather than contorting it for the sake of... what exactly?

TL;DR version: Masamune is currently broken, and getting nerfed. If the nerfed version is still broken, we can change it or whatever then.

So... you referenced the Zanmato idea from my "I'm just going to leave these thoughts here so you can consider them later if your current idea doesn't work out" post, and yet you're still regurgitating back at me exactly what I already said about waiting for you to test Masamune? You are seriously getting on my nerves, but I'm going to try to calm myself because this is the internet, and text is easy to misinterpret. You probably saw me defending my position to Raven as me actually trying to convince you to change your plan (the square peg/round hole analogy probably sounded too much like an attempt at persuasion.) Also, you probably weren't paying attention to who was saying what when the topic came up on IRC (I wasn't the one suggesting veil or instant death, I just suggested the First Aid ability for the Squire when the subject of making regen useful came up.)

I probably sound just as much like a jerk to you as you do to me, so let's just end this conversation that should already be over anyway.