Double Down costing 1 Cartridge instead of 2 hurts the skill thematically

I understand why the change was made, but having the skill called "Double Down" cost a single cartridge makes it feel less unique and interesting.

That's all. Job identity and skills being thematically unique and interesting makes the game more fun, and I'd hope we'd be moving in the direction of more unique resource-costs and skill differences, not less.

I also don't think the general goal of reducing punishment for not generating enough cartridges for burst is really that important. It's okay to punish players for playing poorly, especially given that this "punishment" wouldn't be relevant in the vast majority of content. It only mattered in Ultimate content or when taking on Savage content soon after a new tier has dropped. All content besides Ultimates gets easier and easier as time goes on and gear improves, and eventually have the Echo added to them to allow less-skilled players to clear the content even if they aren't as good at their job, provided they can complete the mechanical checks.

Single cartridge Double Down has been throwing off my muscle memory a lot since I've been getting back into playing GNB. While I think it's fine to make GNB a little less strict when it comes to cartridges, I'm not sure if reducing the cartridge cost of Double Down was the best solution. I would prefer if the cost went back up to 2 cartridges, and GNB get a new skill that allowed them to generate cartridges during down time. Like a 'Reload' GCD that has like a 3 second recast time, and does 0 damage, but grants 1 cartridge.

They should simply make it a dynamic weaponskill that consumes 1 or 2 cartridges and deal potency accordingly.
Doing Burst Strike -> No Mercy -> Hypervelocity feels weird and just more rigid oGCDs.

Or give more cartridges slots to allow us to build more cartridge for cases where we might lack one essential cartridge.

Should just rename it to "Single Down"?

But yeah it's annoying how FFXIV devs seem to be inherently against any friction in a job's loadout. You can't ever have conflicting uses for resources, conflicting CDs for time, anything really. This was interesting. There was some skill expression in using GNB cartridges correctly. Now it's gone.

I didn't find anything difficult about the previous design but I like the cart change. It lets me do Hypervelocity more and that ability is awesome. Perhaps they could rename Double Down to Bloodfest since that's the name of Seifer's limit break the visual is based on, then they could rename the current Bloodfest to Draw or Draw and Junction or something since it's clearly based on the Draw action from FFVIII.

In my opinion the least fun part of GNB currently is the Lionheart combo since it's just hammering one button. I wish they would make it replace the base combo buttons or just remove it honestly.

I cant believe dawntrail made double down into down

It's named after the KFC sandwich.

Ah yeah you're right, it should just be called "Down" now. :')

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I cant believe dawntrail made double down into down

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It's Downtrail after all

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Originally Posted by mallleable

Like a 'Reload' GCD that has like a 3 second recast time, and does 0 damage, but grants 1 cartridge.

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Based, I like it. While not quite the same, reminds me of the old MCH ammo system, thematically, and really would fit.

The FF8 skill that Double Down got its animation from was called Bloodfest in FF8 amd Bloodfest was already called Draw & Junction in PVP before they removed it

Just rename Double Down to Bloodfest and Bloodfest to Draw & Junction, problem solved (and it's more accurate to the source material too)

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Should just rename it to "Single Down"?

But yeah it's annoying how FFXIV devs seem to be inherently against any friction in a job's loadout. You can't ever have conflicting uses for resources, conflicting CDs for time, anything really. This was interesting. There was some skill expression in using GNB cartridges correctly. Now it's gone.

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GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

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Originally Posted by andromeda_kha

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

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Yeah although I will say I'd prefer it if it required 1 cartridge but could use a second one for a guaranteed crit + crit-scaling or something like tha,t if available. Prevents drift but promoted tight rotation + autocrits always feel great to use.

It's fine at it is. Tweaking it to give it a buff if more than one cartridge is used only means that's the default play, defeating the point of it being available for one cartridge.

This would be the perfect solution. The only remaining issue would be if you died immediately before burst and didn't have time to generate the cartridges for it, but they could also just make it so that you don't lose cartridges on death, which isn't unheard for other classes either. That way Double Down keeps its theme, and you're still encouraged to manage your cartridges better if you don't generate enough, but you have a recovery method if you do make a mistake, at the cost of a little damage.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

It's fine at it is. Tweaking it to give it a buff if more than one cartridge is used only means that's the default play, defeating the point of it being available for one cartridge.

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WDYM? It was already optimal at two cartridges, the change was to alleviate some drift in the rotation from misaligning generation depending on how the fight evolved (and somehow the static 2m-window being sacred and not being moved, because screw intelligent job or fight design like in other games, we're japanese devs we don't care whether this is a solved issue everywhere else and we'd just have to copy&paste the solution). Meaning that it ought to not be necessary to fire it without having the second cartridge available. So long as the damage of the other cart is folded into the 2-cart use, that's all a wash and it retains it's "feeling" without being unusable if you drifted the rotation and got only 1 cart?

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Originally Posted by andromeda_kha

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

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That was one of the few remaining punishment in GNB rotation.
We had many ways to secure 2 cartridges, especially in 7.0.

But instead of making players "think" they decided to remove another difficulty.
That's why I proposed a more dynamic potency based on your current cartridges available, it's a compromise between keeping rewards for players who manage to secure the cartridges without punishing those who can't with a drift.

It seems like the devs don’t like the idea of there being conditions attached to cooldowns. It’s now easier to avoid the situation where you can’t (or don’t want to) press a cooldown that helps your damage. If all you need is two carts then it’s harder to end up in a situation where you can’t press both GF and DD every minute. A comparable thing happened with DRK, who no longer needs to spend anything to use Living Shadow. In Dawntrail also have less reason to think twice about when you press Barrel Stabilizer, Manafication, and Geirskogul now.

I don’t like when this type of change is made. If there’s less things in a rotation that need to be done right then it’s going to feel less rewarding when I make it work.

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Originally Posted by andromeda_kha

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

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Making the rotation work and figuring out how to keep everything in buff windows despite having downtime or making mistakes in your filler rotation is an opportunity for skill expression.

I mean even then, I prefer the opposite route: Remove the CD rather than the cost. We can already only produce cartridges at a certain speed, so things could as well have been reworked to remove the time-based restriction instead of the cart-based one. Bonus points if the skill automatically gains potency over time, but otherwise has no CD, meaning we could press it ~whenever, but the potency/cart only maxes out 120s after last use.