Why wasn't Heavy Thrust merged into Impulse Drive?

[LineageRazor]

The whole point of Heavy Thrust is to give you something necessary to do that's outside of your normal combos. If the damage boost effect was moved into Impulse Drive, you wouldn't even need to pay attention to the buff - it'd just always be up, simply by doing what you'd normally be doing anyway. Heavy Thrust is separate from your DPS combo specifically so that you have to pay attention to your buff, and work a Heavy Thrust into your rotation when that buff starts to run low.

It's a way to add complexity to the job. A cheap way to add complexity, possibly, but complexity was its intention. It's another way to differentiate the good DRGs (who keep their dots and buffs up full time) from the mediocre ones (who let the buffs slip from time to time).

The same used to be true of Hot Shot, before it got it's 4.0 makeover.

[Khel]

The whole point of Heavy Thrust is to give you something necessary to do that's outside of your normal combos. If the damage boost effect was moved into Impulse Drive, you wouldn't even need to pay attention to the buff - it'd just always be up, simply by doing what you'd normally be doing anyway. Heavy Thrust is separate from your DPS combo specifically so that you have to pay attention to your buff, and work a Heavy Thrust into your rotation when that buff starts to run low.

Everyone uses it as part of the combo, you don't monitor the buff You use it prior to impulse drive when you are running your two combos and it is always up. Really does not add nothing but an extra button to the DRG "utility" combo.

Does not bother me, but I can see why they kept it. I don't think other melees have a buff or debuff on their first combo skill (I could be wrong). That leaves out Impulse Drive and of course Disembowel and Chaos already have their effects. Pushing it to the DPS combo, to like Vorpal would be bad for the class.

[kattzkitti]

It's a way to add complexity to the job.

Complexity for the sake of complexity is never a good thing. Game design 101.

[Berethos]

I wonder how many players could actually discern the difference between complexity for its own sake and complexity for the sake of depth (complexity for the sake of complexity gets thrown around an awful lot).

That being said, I do think Heavy Thrust needed combining with something else, but not because it's an element of complexity for complexity's sake (I don't think it is in the first place) but because it's purpose in the Dragoon rotation has been supplanted...really since HW launched.

Originally it was meant as the "thing you needed to keep going" as part of performing well as a Lancer/Dragoon. This function within the rotation exists with the Blood of the Dragon and the Dragon Eyes mechanic now. As a separate skill with a buff to keep running, it's obsolete, particularly compared to the overall more involved mechanics of BotD.

It also never served the kind of purpose/place in the rotation that Straight Shot for Bards does - it does provide the increased buff, but it also provides a proc-based function (the guaranteed crit) that would impact the Bard rotation, namely in that you suddenly had an "important ability" and had to figure out quickly if using it immediately was the best option or if there were more pressing concerns/things that had to be dealt with first. Essentially it already served the kind of dual purpose that makes it more than just a buff maintenance ability you press once every 15/30 seconds (which continues with SB's iteration and Refulgent Arrow sharing the proc, there's now an additional layer of consideration to be applied, so its even more entrenched in its dual purpose).

So either Heavy Thrust really should do something additional that adds an element of moment to moment consideration, or be baked into another existing ability...and given everything Dragoon already tracks, I'd say baking it in would serve the job better.

[FaileExperiment]

The whole point of Heavy Thrust is to give you something necessary to do that's outside of your normal combos. If the damage boost effect was moved into Impulse Drive, you wouldn't even need to pay attention to the buff - it'd just always be up, simply by doing what you'd normally be doing anyway. Heavy Thrust is separate from your DPS combo specifically so that you have to pay attention to your buff, and work a Heavy Thrust into your rotation when that buff starts to run low.

It's a way to add complexity to the job. A cheap way to add complexity, possibly, but complexity was its intention. It's another way to differentiate the good DRGs (who keep their dots and buffs up full time) from the mediocre ones (who let the buffs slip from time to time).

The same used to be true of Hot Shot, before it got it's 4.0 makeover.

Everything you say here is really good case for it simply being axed, or rolled into another skill like Shadow Fang/Dancing Edge.

[Andevom]

It's a way to add complexity to the job. A cheap way to add complexity, possibly, but complexity was its intention. It's another way to differentiate the good DRGs (who keep their dots and buffs up full time) from the mediocre ones (who let the buffs slip from time to time).

DRG has enough to focus on, and as the job currently stands, HT is a necessary evil we'd rather have condensed. SE seems to think that upping the duration a few seconds each major overhaul is addressing the problem. But now with Dragon Sight, charging LotD, and longer combo chains, it sullies things when we have to further interrupt our flow to get that HT buff in before we can pick up where we left off.