Alright hear me out DRK

Suggestion: Make Plunge a Delirium proc. When you activate delirium, shadowstride temporarily morphs into Plunge (same hotbar slot). Using plunge doesn’t consume shadowstride—after the plunge use (or when delirium ends), the button reverts and you still have shadowstride available normally. Keeps the kit clean and makes delirium feel more burst-y without adding buttons. Plunge also give you a small heal. And you can unlock it at lvl 70

Why bother with anything so convoluted?

As long as Shadowstride/Plunge retains a second charge, there's no risk from its being used for damage since the max potency benefit for using it under raid buffs is under 40 potency (outpaced by even a 9th of a GCD extra uptime saved from actually using it for a gap-closer).

It's literally just a question of apm and button density. Do you want the button to be wasted whenever there's no gap to close, or not? Do you want it always to offer 2 extra apm, or only when there are at least two gaps to close per minute? That's it.

Better idea, just delete carve and make abyssal drain usable on single target and use the extra slot for plunge

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Better idea, just delete carve and make abyssal drain usable on single target and use the extra slot for plunge

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Good idea, but even better:

* Do what you say.
* But just replace Shadowstride with Plunge.

-> One hotbar slot freed up, ~10 more to go until all unnecessary stuff is removed and the good functionality has been consolidated into 10-15 buttons that actually do meaningful things. :D

I mean I like that we have dashes we don't have to spend for damage but I think most of the tanks except paladin have enough room for both. There are lots of skills that are just aoe versions of a different offensive or defensive cd. for example why aren't sheltron x intervene and bloodwhetting x nascent flash one button? gun breaker and dark knight don't have this problem since hoc and tbn are used on themselves or a friend.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

I mean I like that we have dashes we don't have to spend for damage but I think most of the tanks except paladin have enough room for both. There are lots of skills that are just aoe versions of a different offensive or defensive cd. for example why aren't sheltron x intervene and bloodwhetting x nascent flash one button? gun breaker and dark knight don't have this problem since hoc and tbn are used on themselves or a friend.

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Yeah but I'd be fine with a 0 damage plunge. I just want the awesome animation back tbh, compared to the silly 80s neon-retro slidestep.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

I mean I like that we have dashes we don't have to spend for damage

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Gap-closing IS damage. Far, far more so than fitting it into raid buffs (generally less than 40 potency, outweighed by even 0.3 seconds of uptime saved). And with two charges, you could keep the CD rolling without losing the ability to gap-close within the next 30s, leaving it rare for you to have to think more than some 15s ahead for an upcoming double-gap.

The only tanks with any constraint issues on that mobility (limited to spending both charges within a 15s window for optimal damage or 20s for near-optimal damage) are/were Paladin and Gunbreaker due to Fight or Flight and No Mercy, respectively. And both can/could have been fixed by just having Intervene and Rough Divide always count as if under FoF and NM, respectively (or by having no damaging gap-closer of them scale with damage bonuses altogether).

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah but I'd be fine with a 0 damage plunge. I just want the awesome animation back tbh, compared to the silly 80s neon-retro slidestep.

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I'd prefer an attack animation to deal damage.

If you don't want it to deal damage so that you don't have to include it inside an already debloated rotation (already lost Abyssal Drain and Blood Weapon each as separate CDs)... there's a Purpsurf for that.

I would rather gain a move rather than lose one. Theoretically I would like DRK to have a second combo which could be Plunge->Scourage->power slash. Where they could bring those moves back and improve the animations.

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Originally Posted by Derio

I would rather gain a move rather than lose one. Theoretically I would like DRK to have a second combo which could be Plunge->Scourage->power slash. Where they could bring those moves back and improve the animations.

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By that logic, by 10.0 you're sitting on 41 abilities. Good luck. PS6 players will be using two controllers, one with their feet, on top of voice input through Alexa. PC users will get the game as a bundle only, including an MMO mouse and a full-size keyboard incase they only got a 60% one or so.

And mind you with those 41 abilities, all FFXIV would still achieve is a 100% static rotation you just read from The Balance and then practice on a dummy to keep up, 0 actual gameplay still.

> 41 abilities
> Controller players needing two controllers

Controller players with W-Crosshotbar can hold up to 48 keys without having to swap between hotbars using double-taps and left-right / right-left taps of the hotbar keys, so that's a wild claim Carighan. Sure, it wouldn't be as comfortable as having less keys to press, but Controller players really are not lacking hotbar real estate.

That aside, even then you could likely slash three hotkeys with an option to merge combos. [Hard Slash] -> [Syphon Strike] -> [Souleater] = [Souleater Combo], as well as [Unleash] -> [Stalwart Soul] = [Stalwart Soul Combo], similar to PvP. Still requires the same amount of button presses to execute the combo, but its on the same hotkey similar to how Torcleaver combo, cartridge combo, Atonement combo etc. works.

I like the suggestion but the reason but same time conflicted with it. Reason why plunge got yeeted from drk.

1. dmg a gap closer is dumb. Which the suggestion will fix being a only burst thing but open the door of getting jebaited for dmg (oh baby damages downs) and getting animation lock by gap closer.

2. Next, drk and gbn have too much ogcd button press back on endwalker. They remove gap closer dmg which open the door for a utility and I will die on this hill it was a welcoming change.

For players who miss this,they never play high end game raid, trust me you will not miss plunge. I'm happy to say no thanks plunge stay in shadow realm. As a drk main.

Yeah I agree Zarkovitch, the underlying idea that we no longer have to save up and then burst with gapclosers (removing their use as actual gapclosers anyways) is kinda silly.

Although I guess I'd prefer to fix that at a very basic level (FFXIV's use of GCD vs oGCD "weaving"), but that'd be a massive rework so I can see why just making the gapcloser damageless works fine.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

For players who miss this,they never play high end game raid, trust me you will not miss plunge. I'm happy to say no thanks plunge stay in shadow realm. As a drk main.

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That's not 100% true. I've done high end content and I want plunge back. I've actually put time into the class to learn how to play it. While I can see why people don't want plunge back, something needs to be done about the 1-2-3 spam.
They got to give us something back. So personally for me, it's a gameplay feel issue. On the balance side the class works. However, anyone can change numbers around make the classes work and still make it feel like crap to play.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

For players who miss this,they never play high end game raid, trust me you will not miss plunge. I'm happy to say no thanks plunge stay in shadow realm. As a drk main.

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...speak for yourself, not others. Savage Raiding since 4.05 Stormblood, four out of six ultimates down with multiple kills, been maining the job since 4.3. And I want Plunge back.

We can always discuss the painpoints of wanting to stack multiple Plunges into burst windows vs having to allocate one based on fight knowledge for movement/knockback cancellation (which is where having Shadowstride AND Plunge would be the simple solution), but do not be so arrogant to speak for other high-end DRK raiders like we are all the same.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

I like the suggestion but the reason but same time conflicted with it. Reason why plunge got yeeted from drk.

1. dmg a gap closer is dumb. Which the suggestion will fix being a only burst thing but open the door of getting jebaited for dmg (oh baby damages downs) and getting animation lock by gap closer.

2. Next, drk and gbn have too much ogcd button press back on endwalker. They remove gap closer dmg which open the door for a utility and I will die on this hill it was a welcoming change.

1.
For players who miss this,they never play high end game raid, trust me you will not miss plunge. I'm happy to say no thanks plunge stay in shadow realm. As a drk main.

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This is like saying that damage on something with a heal (Carve and Spit, Soul eater, Abyssal Drain) or %DR with flat sustain (Shadowed Vigil, etc.) is inherently dumb -- except worse, in that the heal would get at least some use on a tank while a pure gap-closer being worth its button depends on, obviously, having gaps to close.

Just as a 400p heal on a %40 DR wouldn't force you to use it without incoming damage (wasting the far larger component of sustain), the 40p of extra damage from using a gap closer under raid buffs does not force you to waste the ~400p of total potency saved from even a single a GCD of extra uptime.

Fcs. Why do people insist that something utterly no optimal (outright bad play) must be the inevitable end brought by optimization?

Generally, the only "high end players" who would want to never have to think about how many gaps are coming up in the next 30s are those who largely prefer striking dummy rotation over actual content. Don't pretend that this dumbing down was by their insistence.

And if you got "jebaited", then maybe play with some foresight or learn your actual balance points on the relative value of your skills, just as one would for mixed defensive.

2.
The oGCDs were already compressed, and if it were such an issue, there was a far more obvious solution: giving our CD attacks (or at least Shadowbringers) the Six-Sided Star treatment, causing it to spend 3k MP whenever one had 6k+ in order to deal an extra Edge's worth of of damage to one's primary target and an extra Flood's worth to all others caught in the blast. Voila; 3 fewer oGCDs per 2-minute burst with no loss of control. More than enough to retain an extra skill in the mix regardless of the number of gaps to close in the fight and add a modicum of reward for forethought/fight knowledge.

Even in the case of "feeling forced to press a button because it does damage"... Samurai's [Hissatsu: Gyoten] is a dash with a damage component, but it costs gauge and has a potency-per-gauge value identical to your main spender [Hissatsu: Shinten]. Costs less than Shinten, so you can bank your gauge without issues and still have a damaging dash before or after your burst.

Warrior's [Onslaught] operated similarly in 5.X series. Despite the insistance that "Fell Cleave does more damage", Onslaught actually was as damage neutral as it could get and more or less just boiled down to what GCD you ended the fight on. You also could use it to do gauge manipulation.

https://i.ibb.co/PzJFyF00/image.png

We had a tank dash that was not a "must press on cooldown", did damage and had only 10s recast, so you could use it relatively often if you really needed to. It got replaced with a charge system because WAR wanna-bes would rather pull with a dash (which is far from ideal anyhow) and make the whole thing worse down the line. (it also made Bloodrage in Bozja significantly less interesting since you only get two charges there and have to be very strict with the dash timing).

And now we are asking for damage to be removed from dashes altogether. I'm tired boss.