Robbing gap closers of damage makes the game even less fun.

[Metricasc]

DRG's Spineshatter dive, PLD's Intervene etc are announced for having their damage taken off, leaving them as just a gap closer.

Just. Leave. Things. Alone.

Controller players especially are able to enjoy using the 2 Spineshatters and Dragonfire Dive to chain bounce 3 enemies (switching targets between each action), more fun after 180+ Elusive jumping towards them beforehand. Why remove fun? There is no valid reason to remove the damage the gap closers do. This so game is going to drop off so hard if this Nintendo Mentality continues to be applied to the game. Far more often than not, the fun you have in any game is the fun you make for yourself, not the fun that's been 'planned' for you. Even in it's current state, I cannot recommend this game to anyone and will probably start actively warning people away from this dying game. There is a certain worrying symbolism in targetting this random aspect of the game and taking it away, as any other random fun thing could get deleted from the game if they notice it. The future of this game is sadly just more and more restrictions and gameplay funnelling.

depends on how you see the things, the main problem with a lot of the current gap closers is that they are often really only used in your burst windows since for a lot of them, they are a source of OGCD damage, and often the 2 charges will be up for a 1 min burst (tanks) or a 2 min burst (WAR being the only exception though its just 1 in 1 min, all 3 in 2 mins). the classes that don't really have that issue overall are classes that are already light on OGCD weaves (WAR and PLD), classes that don't have damage associated to them already (MNK, NIN) the fact a class with them is a caster generally (RDM) or the class has a resource cost on them and is often used to fill a loop at a specific GCD (SAM).

I'm a fan of the damage being removed from them overall as it allows them to be used more efficiently in scenarios where as a melee, you need to take downtime to resolve a mechanic or avoid an AoE. then you have a charge to quickly dash back on hand to then get back into melee range. and the case for DRG, is that this also makes it equal if not a better option than ingress/egress for RPR. and the case for DRG, GNB, DRK, and now VPR. is that it also frees up 2 OGCD weaves in the burst windows.