The problem with gap closer potency - TLDR PLEASE REMOVE POTENCY FROM GAP CLOSERS

Summary:
Gap closer (GC) potency combined with gap closers being oGCD reduces their utility as a movement tool to just-another-dps-button. This leads to unnecessary oGCD bloat and an extremely dissatisfying experience when missed GC opportunities happen in context. Feeling punished for holding GCs to use as movement utility should not happen.

Pros to removing gap closer potency:
Opportunity to use the ability as intended
Reduced oGCD bloat

Cons to removing gap closer potency:
Reduced overall damage
The "CRUNCH" feeling when you HIT with a gap closer

The removed 150 potency can be moved to other abilities, of course.

It would also be nice in gap closers did something that wasn't potency, ie. PLD charges to the target and absorbs the next auto-attack rather than the target of target.

This is specifically why they have multiple charges. You are only losing DPS if you are sitting on a fully charged skill, so long as that cooldown is ticking, then your banked charge is free to use for movement. If they took away the additional damage andit was used purely for movement, then they'd likely remove the charges too and just give it a cooldown based around common raid mechanics.

As a GNB, I love my Rough Divide, as it takes the place of Continuation as an oGCD to weave when Continuation isn't available, it maintains that momentum because sitting there for an entire GCD doing nothing just feels bad. PLUS it's a gap closer. Its actually reducing button bloat.

But in the name of greater differentiation between tank skills, to prevent further homogenisation, I'd be all for giving PLD a completely different effect as you suggest, by tying mitigation to the gap closer instead. Low level, maintenance mitigation of course, like a 20% increase to your block rate or something and move the damage to something else like increasing Circle of Scorn's potency by 15.

WAR could instead have "Increases the potency of your next weaponskill by 20%" or something. (would be a 130 potency buff to an Inner Chaos)

And DRK could have a small HP and MP regen tied to Plunge, and offset the lost damage by reducing the cooldown on AD/CnS to 30s. (both of which would also give DRK slightly better self sustain in pulls which is needed right now)

The issue with gap closers needing to have potency is a perfect example of current Warrior. Just think if Warrior lost its potency on onslaught. The job would kinda lose alot of it's enjoyment as you just 1, 2, 3 even than you do now and only have one single OGCD attack for your rotation. It would hurt the enjoyment of the job. Now I do agree with DRK needing their gap closer damage moved because they have enough OGCDs to begin with. It's honestly just a situation where you have to individually look at the tanks and see which ones have a good amount of OGCDs vs those with almost none.

I remember watching the Heavensward Job Actions reveal something like six years ago, and seeing DRK flip into battle with Plunge was the coolest thing ever. And now? I would trade it for Ingress/Egress in a heartbeat. One of the highlights of tanking is supposedly positioning and movement, and yet melee dps are consistently way ahead in this area.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

This is specifically why they have multiple charges. You are only losing DPS if you are sitting on a fully charged skill, so long as that cooldown is ticking, then your banked charge is free to use for movement.

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You are still losing damage every time you don't use the charges inside of the raid buffs (and in case of PLD/GNB personal buffs too so it's even worse). Additionally, what the charges on any skill do, is that as long as it's possible to bank all of them for buffs, it will be optimal to do so, therefore adding more ogcd bloat to burst windows and making the downtime between those even more boring.

Unless a specific fight calls for it. You are using both charges in the raid buff window. I hope they remove the potency and add the potency to other skills to make up for it.

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WAR could instead have "Increases the potency of your next weaponskill by 20%" or something. (would be a 130 potency buff to an Inner Chaos

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This would force it back into the DPS rotation. I would recommend something like this: "Charge into battle xyz. Your next weaponskill hits all targets in a cone based on the distance travelled to the target." For DRK, "Plunge into your target and refresh the timer of TBN". Any except single target dps increased.

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Originally Posted by BarretOblivion

The issue with gap closers needing to have potency is a perfect example of current Warrior. Just think if Warrior lost its potency on onslaught. The job would kinda lose alot of it's enjoyment as you just 1, 2, 3 even than you do now and only have one single OGCD attack for your rotation. It would hurt the enjoyment of the job. Now I do agree with DRK needing their gap closer damage moved because they have enough OGCDs to begin with. It's honestly just a situation where you have to individually look at the tanks and see which ones have a good amount of OGCDs vs those with almost none.

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If a gap closer is a difference between a job being fun or not, there are much bigger problems with the job.

WAR and PLD would need something to replace them since they are already pretty low on oGCDs. But for GNB and DRK it would be a blessing, specially for high ping users.

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Originally Posted by BarretOblivion

The issue with gap closers needing to have potency is a perfect example of current Warrior. Just think if Warrior lost its potency on onslaught. The job would kinda lose alot of it's enjoyment as you just 1, 2, 3 even than you do now and only have one single OGCD attack for your rotation. It would hurt the enjoyment of the job.

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You enjoy spamming Onslaught?

WAR didn't spam Onslaught before and it was just fine. That is, I doubt anyone sincerely enjoys WAR now over Shadowbringers just because they get to spam Onslaught some more.

Give WAR a second real oGCD if it's so important.

I guess I don't raid enough to be bothered by this. I'd rather not have these skills be useless gimmicks in the other 90% of the game, but that's just me.

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Originally Posted by Drakkaelus

I guess I don't raid enough to be bothered by this. I'd rather not have these skills be useless gimmicks in the other 90% of the game, but that's just me.

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I mean, I'm sure there are some legit arguments against it, but mobility being "useless gimmicks" in 90% of the game is a silly take. It's literally useful even on something like dungeon pulling (Hell's Ingress feels really fantastic on pulls btw) and just about every casual content boss that moves/teleports, requires you to disengage for AoE/other mechanics or spawns adds, which you can find in dungeons, normal modes, ally raids and deep dungeons. I am honestly hard pressed to think of battle content in this game where you wouldn't use mobility if available, because even killing open world mobs for a quest is faster when you can jump from one kill to another - not to mention it's just fun.

Sure, having damage on mobility doesn't affect you unless you're optimizing, but it's not like removing it would make these skills any less useful for movement in non-optimized content.

Honestly they could remove the damage, I don't care about the animation.
Ranged and tank clearly use their weapons to silence but deal no damage, it doesn't bother anyone.
At best, they could add a line "Damage aren't impacted by any buffs.", you would still use a charge to let the cooldown roll, but at least not burn both of them during party buffs.

At top, tanks could get some utility for using their dash.
PLD could get a shield on self or targeted ally.

Yeah I'd prefer the gap closer to be tools instead of being part of DPS rotation. For WAR add that property to Orogenesis so they don't lose APM and bored with the downtimes. As for DRKs I think the job has a good array of ogcds to be entertained with so potency could be spread along the existing cds.

I think MNK got it right by having thunder clap be pure utility. A bit cumbersome to use on controller, especially when you want to select another player, but regardless I like what they did with that gap closer. I agree the gap closer are just another dps button to press now. When onslaught cost gauge it was utility. I would prefer if the tanks had a variation of MNK's or RPR's gap closer where its no damage but allows you to disengage and gap close at the same time. Some examples of actions tank could have (none of these do dmg) and only have defensive or utility.

PLD (aka MNK Thunderclap):
Cover II - Rush to a target, 20 yalms (enemy), or reduce magical damage target receives by x amount (player).

WAR (aka RPR Ingress/Egress):
Onslaught - Rush to target 20 yalms. Action changes to Back Step.
Back Step - Move backwards x yalms. Action changes to Onslaught

DRK (aka NIN Shukuchi):
Voidsent - Place a void hole, 20 yalm range. Action changes to Teleport.
Teleport - Move to location of Voidsent.

GNB (aka MNK Thunderclap):
Flash Step - Rush to a target, 20 yalm (enemy), and reduce physical damage target receives by x amount (player).

On second thought, let tanks stick with what they have. I had forgotten how PLD and WAR players always demand the best stuff for themselves until the dev team caves. We can do without teleporting WARs.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

On second thought, let tanks stick with what they have. I had forgotten how PLD and WAR players always demand the best stuff for themselves until the dev team caves. We can do without teleporting WARs.

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Weird comment. This is intended to apply to all gap closers. I posted in tank role because that's my primary role. MNK and RPR, which do not have potency on their gap closers, feel extremely satisfying to play.

Do you have a specific example of why gap closers should remain as-is that I missed?

I'm in a weird place with this. I feel there are intangible factors at play. You would think that the improvement to a job like MNK by changing shoulder tackle to Thunderclap would apply to all jobs, but it doesn't. If jobs like WAR or SAM underwent the same change it would not be a welcome change. At least not for me. The thing about this statement is I can't really tell you why this is. The closest I can come to is that MNK having thunderclap just 'makes sense', and the same can be said about a skill like Onslaught and the damage it causes.

That basically keeps things stagnant, and I am ok with that. I would rather not make Thunderclap universal across jobs with gap closers.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

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The issue I see with these is that the PLD and GNB gap closers provide an actual benefit, such as using Flash Step on the MT before a Tankbuster, while WAR and DRK are just pure utility. Because of that I would go with:

• PLD - Cover II - Rush to target ally/enemy, 20y
• WAR - Bull's Charge - Charge forward, 10y
• DRK - Shadow Walk - Dash forward 15y, leaving Esteem at your starting location. Action changes to Shadow Retreat.
  Shadow Retreat- Dash backward 15y, leaving Esteem at your starting location. Action changes to Shadow Step.
• GNB - Flash Step - Move to specified location, 20y.

Basically, MNK gap closer for PLD, DNC gap closer for WAR, RPR gap closer for DRK, NIN gap closer for GNB. I think it'd be more fitting, with WAR charging forward like a bull and DRK pulling off some swap shenanigans with Esteem. As for GNB, I dunno, they fire off an aether cartridge to mark a location to teleport to, whatever works. Anyways, each Tank has a different type of gap closer, none of them provide an actual benefit like reducing damage and creating an mitigation disparity.

I wouldn't mind removing the damage from gap closers, because using up all charges for a slight dps increase feels kinda wrong to me, and then when i actually need a gap closer i dont have any left.

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Originally Posted by JRessell

Do you have a specific example of why gap closers should remain as-is that I missed?

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Yeah, the post above mine which immediately started allocating out the existing melee dps gap closers to the tanks, reserving the most versatile one for WAR. Then watch it immediately get reverted a half patch later because of player complaints that it's too hard to use, why can't we be like PLD. Back to three stacks, no cost, gap close to target we go.

I mean, there are are plenty of new and unique ways that you can make movement abilities that haven't really been explored. What about a forward jump with a speed boost, like Lost Impetus? What about a simple big speed boost? A stackable set of short distance dashes or rolls? Could you grapple hook a mob to you or vice versa? Can you charge into a mob/teammates and push them into a desired position? Can you levitate and cast spells while moving? Even in a MOBA game where characters may have relatively few abilities, it's not uncommon for at least one of those to be movement related and end up being a defining feature. It's surprising that they're just exploring this now, when there are endless possibilities. Granted, I will say that the standard gap closer to target is hands down far the lowest skillcap way of doing this, which is probably why it predominates. Can you imagine if most of them were actually required skillshots, like Shukuchi? The playerbase would have a conniption.

Either way, I would hate to see the amount of infighting that ensues from each tank job trying to obtain a better movement set than everyone else.

They should just give tanks back flips akin to Elusive Jump. Excuse them as tool to pick up mobs from people lagging behind.

PLD's - No One Left Behind - Slam their shield into a generated holy projection and skate backwards 15y
WAR's - You're Mine! - Slam their axe into the ground to propel themselves 15y back
GNB's - Method of Madness - Detonate a special cartridge and blow self backwards 15y
DRK's - Back in Black - Shoot darkness energy forward to jet backwards 15y

Put'em all on a 30 sec cooldown, and then BAM! Every tank has an equal, flavored gap closer that requires a modicum of attention to use, and is specifically for utility.

I'm actually really into the idea of tanks having their own version of dps gap closers. Especially Beddict's idea of DRK using Esteem as an anchor for ingress/egress kind of movement. I'll join in with my ideas:

PLD
Recourse - Rush to a targeted enemy's or party member's location. Creates a barrier around target that absorbs damage equivalent to a heal of 200 potency, or around self if enemy is targeted. 20y range. Maximum Charges: 2

WAR
Onslaught - Rushes target and delivers an attack with a potency of XX. 20y range. Beast Gauge Cost: XX.
Give Ground - Delivers an attack with a potency of XX. Additional Effect: 10-yalm Backstep. Beast Gauge Cost: XX.

DRK
Dark Advance - Quickly dash 15 yalms forward. Additional Effect: Leaves behind a simulacrum at point of origin, and grants Dark Dance to self. Duration: 10s.
Dark Retreat - Quickly dash 15 yalms backwards. Additional Effect: Leaves behind a simulacrum at point of origin, and grants Dark Dance to self. Duration: 10s.
Dark Return - Move instantly to the simulacrum left behind by you. Can only be executed while under the effect of Dark Dance. 30y range.

GNB
Blast Charge - Quickly dash 10 yalms forward. Maximum Charges: 3

This gives PLD a Thunderclap that leans into the support/shield tank fantasy of the job with a cover/intervene mashup. WAR with a SAM-style backstep and gapcloser, deals damage but due to gauge cost is only used for movement. DRK is Beddict's Esteem shadow port idea that reimagines our old Dark Dance. And GNB is DNC's En Avant, using a blast from the gunblade to propel forward.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

I mean, I'm sure there are some legit arguments against it, but mobility being "useless gimmicks" in 90% of the game is a silly take. It's literally useful even on something like dungeon pulling (Hell's Ingress feels really fantastic on pulls btw) and just about every casual content boss that moves/teleports, requires you to disengage for AoE/other mechanics or spawns adds, which you can find in dungeons, normal modes, ally raids and deep dungeons. I am honestly hard pressed to think of battle content in this game where you wouldn't use mobility if available, because even killing open world mobs for a quest is faster when you can jump from one kill to another - not to mention it's just fun.

Sure, having damage on mobility doesn't affect you unless you're optimizing, but it's not like removing it would make these skills any less useful for movement in non-optimized content.

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I could just...walk out of the way...like I've been doing.

It's not the serious in normal/open world content. I'd rather have the damage.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

On second thought, let tanks stick with what they have. I had forgotten how PLD and WAR players always demand the best stuff for themselves until the dev team caves. We can do without teleporting WARs.

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True, but I'll personally never ask for anything again after Primal Rend and Bloodwhetting.

Ngl, I always thought Beast Gauge Onslaught WAS the solution and was arguably a lot better than the pathetic 3 charges we have - now instead of using when it is actually useful we cringe at the idea to use it outside of damage buffs.

Yet an insane amount of people wanted Onslaught off the gauge - this is the result. We had a damaging Onslaught that also did some nice free damage under Inner Release, which we could use at our own leisure and we traded it for a copy of what the other tanks had, and now we complain about how bad it is.

The other tank's shouldve had their equivalent of Onslaught, not the other way around. The "how" should always boil down to generally making as damage neutral as possible without the increase of uptime, which the two-charge system fails.

People complaining about WAR having certain differences to other tanks worries me - if Overpower loses their cone AOE on Overpower, it will make me seriously sad as I think cone AOEs feel a lot better to use than circles.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Yet an insane amount of people wanted Onslaught off the gauge - this is the result.

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Look two posts above yours and you can easily see why that was.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

On second thought, let tanks stick with what they have. I had forgotten how PLD and WAR players always demand the best stuff for themselves until the dev team caves. We can do without teleporting WARs.

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Yep...remember, PLDs demanding ridiculous things led to DRK losing Reprisal, Low Blow, and Dark Dance (turned into Anticipation) going into Stormblood. I still won't forgive them gutting DRK over that, or the PLDs who made it happen. And before anybody wants to get on my case about that...every tank and melee DPS had a stun prior to Stormblood, with only PLD not having an oGCD stun. There was no reason to take Low Blow and make it universal outside of appeasing PLD players.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Yep...remember, PLDs demanding ridiculous things led to DRK losing Reprisal, Low Blow, and Dark Dance (turned into Anticipation) going into Stormblood. I still won't forgive them gutting DRK over that, or the PLDs who made it happen.

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To be fair, it had it coming...

Reprisal was an insanely overpowered ability, and Low Blow Spamming + Dark Dance was dumb, really dumb.

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Originally Posted by Undeadfire

To be fair, it had it coming...

Reprisal was an insanely overpowered ability, and Low Blow Spamming + Dark Dance was dumb, really dumb.

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Reprisal I knew we had coming, but to destroy our Low Blow and Dark Dance...I still cry internally about that. The change of Dark Dance to Anticipation was really questionable since WAR had Raw Intuition giving a 100% parry rate at that time, so they didn't really need it, and PLD had the blocks so they didn't need it. Low Blow could have just lost its connection to crits and it would have been fine without making it to where we had to waste a role skill slot on DRK just to have it. Overall, a lot of the gutting of DRK kit to SB was really questionable.

Tbh if reprisal had a higher cooldown to reel it in, would have been neat.

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Originally Posted by JRessell

If a gap closer is a difference between a job being fun or not, there are much bigger problems with the job.

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I agree, also the idea of putting specific cds on the gap closers helps bring more identities to the jobs, as the exemple of paladin being able to intercept an auto attack or give some grade of quick defesive to the one he's chargin too DRK could get something related to sustain or something, might be hard to implement due to the process of concepting the abilites and programming each one but the fact that gap closers are a source of damage is really annoying, look at GNB and DRK, the bloat of OGCDs is really bad, the amount of tanks on savage that asks for the OT position cuz they cant manage to position the boss while double weaving their optimal openning is way to much.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Ngl, I always thought Beast Gauge Onslaught WAS the solution and was arguably a lot better than the pathetic 3 charges we have - now instead of using when it is actually useful we cringe at the idea to use it outside of damage buffs.

Yet an insane amount of people wanted Onslaught off the gauge - this is the result. We had a damaging Onslaught that also did some nice free damage under Inner Release


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This, ppl wanted it out of the gauge exactly because it was a potential damage gain and it felt super bad to use, now it is a nice dps gain but these were two different problems.

Now that we can rejoice with the new free damage OGCD most of tanks came to realize that having to hold on to it until the party buffs came in to squese that DPS is a struggle, and we all know how much difference 50 or 100 dps can make on a Savage or Ultimate encounter.

Of course not every ability must have the traits to please the raiders playerbase but also, this is a topic that the playerbase of the tank role brings up from time to time. So i think it should be at least considered by the devs

Yeah, instead of having the tank lose the potency on their gap closer, I'd much rather see each of them gain a small, individual quirk that makes them all unique. WAR already has a third charge, so that covers them. Just for fun, some off the top ideas for the others could be -

PLD - Intervene gains the additional effect of "Upon execution, create a barrier around self that absorbs damage equivalent to a heal of 100 potency".

DRK - Plunge gains the additional effect of "Upon execution, grants a single charge of Dark Passenger".
Dark Passenger Effect: Increases the potency of Unmend by 50.
Duration: 60s
Maximum Charges: 2

GNB - Rough Divide gains the additional effect of "Upon execution, guarantees that your next auto-attack is a critical direct hit".

I'd like to see this but with the addition of the tanks getting new OGCD's to fill the gap
Warrior and paladin especially would feel much more empty without them i feel, but making them not do damage and instead just be for mobility would feel much better

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

I'd like to see this but with the addition of the tanks getting new OGCD's to fill the gap
Warrior and paladin especially would feel much more empty without them i feel, but making them not do damage and instead just be for mobility would feel much better

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Maybe, my perspective right now is that, while in OT position everything works fine, even the dumb spam of gap closers, the problem comes with MTing the boss, if u have to prepos the boss rightaway after the pull like u should in P3S or move while in a Burst Window like in P4S
the extra OGCDs sucks to use.

maybe if we get something ranged to be used, something that procs and gives you a stack and you hold on to it and use it whenever you want so you can use it as a filler while moving the bosses would be nice. They tried to fix this problem making so Shield lob/toma/etc... dont break combos anymore, but it still delays the gcd and can drag your rotation.
Alternatively these abilities could have its GCD times reduced so using them woudnt affect the rotation timeline that much.

Just throwing ideas of course i dont even know if these could work

Monks gap closer has no damage potency btw.