Quote Originally Posted by Midareyukki View Post
And, again, had they played any iteration of DRK, they'd know that Abyssal Drain was something you'd do fairly often in AoE pulls. Carve and Spit was something you pressed on cooldown. Not the same thing by a long shot.
True, but what else was something "you'd do fairly often in AoE pulls" (and would have no redeeming quality opposite Abyssal Drain after the removal of enmity-high skills)? Unleash. That, not C&S, was the primary reason for it shifting gears.

Similarly, they intended to make a matched VFX AoE mirror to their new DA-direct attack (Edge of Darkness/Shadow) against which a no-CD oGCD Abyssal Drain would be redundant (and leave no real redeeming feature for Flood).

Retaining its pre-squish potency (i.e., buffing it slightly) and making the self-heal automatic and free (instead of at MP cost), then, seems pretty logical.

That move wasn't a matter of forgetting what Abyssal Drain was previously supposed to do. It was simply that they prioritized their new way of packaging Dark Arts over it and thus pushed it towards a more powerful CD position instead. AD, a GCD AoE with optional MP spending for self-healing was no longer possible to differentiate from Unleash, a GCD AoE with enmity mods (no longer a thing), nor was there room for AD as a weaker no-CD MP spender, since that'd be redundant with Flood.

Thereafter, they listened to the earlier complaints of a 150-potency attack not feeling like it was worth its weave-space in the opener and put it on a shared CD with CnS as an attempt at QoL.

No one was "believing that [StB or HW] C&S and AD are the same skill." But, due to additions elsewhere and the change t oDA, they were since both made into simply AoE and ST variants on "damage+" {MP or HP} skills on CDs.

If that healing weren't best rotated in early in an AoE pull (i.e., where it'd have been used for damage anyways) and DRK had additional use for MP outside of the phases you'd want to dump MP in anyways, then they would have been significantly distinct. But that's not the case.

(Even then, however, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be placed on a shared cooldown; sharing that recast time allows each of the two to be individually stronger (and therefore the DRK to have a higher ceiling each on AoE and ST, using the appropriate option instead of having to muddle in hybrid purposes). CD-sharing isn't inherently bad, especially given that DRK has more than enough means to regain the missing 1 APM however they'd wish if that were an apparent issue.)
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I don't really get this argument though. By the same logic, so too is Xenoglossy useless on single target past Foul. There simply are skills meant to be used in AoE than they are in single target. That was never a problem.
That one just comes down to subjective preference. Those who are fine with spending buttons just on checking whether the enemy/enemies is/are singular or plural and hitting the correct A|B option accordingly will like those purely ST|AoE action pairs. Those who don't, won't.

Most BLMs I've spoken to were not fans of Xenoglossy once Foul likewise became instant cast, since it relegated Xeno to solely a mechanic of "Is the enemy count greater than 1?" See also the many SAM threads on why Senei as a separate action was bloat and Guren should have just retained its former damage and fall-off (current Senei damage on first target, current Guren damage on all thereafter).

Prior to its giving MP, (ShB / CD-based) Abyssal Drain at least had more distinction from CnS than did those actions above. But, I could also understand if some wouldn't mind seeing either CnS or AD consolidated into the other with falloff, or to axe either among Drain or Flood entirely to consolidate those two's features -- in rejection of either old iconic VFX (AD) or the devs' preferred VFX pair (Edge+Flood).

You'd never use Fuga in single target, would you? Yet it's there.
But there's also a difference between having one ST|AoE mirror, especially where there are at least some distinct advantages to the latter (see Sonic Thrust for uptime on Neo Exdeath, Fuga-Oka/Mangetsu on adds that'd die from DoTs anyways while running back to the boss's reentry position for the higher rate of Sen and Kenki generation -- or, to push Sen sync ahead by 1 GCD -- etc.) and applying it to nearly every offensive action. Take Shadowbringer Bard, for instance. Did we really need an AoE and ST variant each of our GCD spam, or DoT capitalizing attack, our River of Blood charges, etc.?