Don't most characters depend on items? Otherwise the balance of this game would be changed to be more like N-A's style.

Yukigaaru without Tanto or Kunai makes Yuki a somewhat Up char.
Amaya without Pipe of Intel or Book of Mentality makes her costly.
Jomon without Pipe of Strength/Energy makes him an energy eating, no momentum player.

See, items make characters more usable because it takeaway some of the drawbacks and/or costs of skills and just boost the overall effectiveness of that character and WoN's balance is based off that mostly.

Did I just click the quote button instead of edit? Crap.

Don't most characters depend on items? Otherwise the balance of this game would be changed to be more like N-A's style.

Yukigaaru without Tanto or Kunai makes Yuki a somewhat Up char.
Amaya without Pipe of Intel or Book of Mentality makes her costly.
Jomon without Pipe of Strength/Energy makes him an energy eating, no momentum player.

See, items make characters more usable because it takeaway some of the drawbacks and WoN's balance is based off that mostly.

Again though, I'm not saying Items are meaningless. As it's not.
It's the argument of Items are the most based thing to a character which isn't the case.

I do understand you're point of view, which is explained much better.
However Sainan's removing One Item is not a major breaking thing.
If it was removing a skill(Character Skill) that's a different story cause it can render a character useless, While items on the other-hand can be a one propose thing. Use- Done.

There's plenty of items at are just that. a One use thing.
Only balance patch I would prefer for Sainan is dropping the CD and making it a one time deal, that's all. She's a balanced character IMO

This is Itachi btw, just on a alt.
Trialing a clan member

Only thing I didn't like is how little this balance affected Caltrops and Eien.

That's not true, caltrops being zero cost is major stuff cause you can set it on first turn without damaging your base strat and Eien having FoG instant might make people target him less right away.