Damage gap closer should vanish

[Valence]

Why forced? This is supposedly an opportunity vs cost design, where you have to decide whether you want to use those abilities for best damage, or for mobility, which is also something one can find in various other jobs, notably casters with some mobility tools. I am not surprised though that this keeps cropping up again and again because players are seemingly allergic to tactical decisions and probably a little to parse brain rotten to accept this concept.

I am far from saying that I do like this specific mechanic though, I don't really have a horse in this race, but the reasoning really resonates badly with me and this is exactly after those kinds of demands that SE brings out the sandpaper to accommodate them.

[Arohk]

Why forced?

for the same reason you use any other damage ability in combat.
It does damage, so it is required to kill the boss.

If you don't use it you lose damage, if you have a 10 Minute fight, that's 20 Gap Closers you are not utilizing, which is a Loss of 3.000 potency in damage.

If you don't understand that, you don't understand the game.


Mobility skills should never do damage, that is a core design flaw, you can debate if there is a secondary effect like a stun or snare to them, but not Damage.

[Valence]

for the same reason you use any other damage ability in combat.
It does damage, so it is required to kill the boss.

If you don't use it you lose damage, if you have a 10 Minute fight, that's 20 Gap Closers you are not utilizing, which is a Loss of 3.000 potency in damage.

If you don't understand that, you don't understand the game.


Mobility skills should never do damage, that is a core design flaw, you can debate if there is a secondary effect like a stun or snare to them, but not Damage.

And let me guess, not using them within raid buffs is going to make you miss an enrage?

And why would you not use those 20 gap closers, either for mobility or damage when warranted?

[Arohk]

And let me guess, not using them within raid buffs is going to make you miss an enrage?

I have wiped to 0.1% a few times, so it is certainly a factor

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I have wiped to 0.1% a few times, so it is certainly a factor

...0.1% enrages are not because you allocated dashes away from raidbuff/selfbuff windows and actually used a charge to dash back to a boss for uptime rather than walking.

The whole point of allocating your dashes for this is to increase your GCD uptime, which is a DPS increase and keeps your GCD cycle from drifting. You can more likely blame unlucky crit rates or one of your four DPS players making rotational mistakes before moving a dash worth 150 potency out of thousands more per buff cycle out of said cycle.

If this was ARR damage numbers, sure we can talk about it, but in Ultimates + Dawntrail, surely not.

[Arohk]

...0.1% enrages are not because you allocated dashes away from raidbuff/selfbuff windows and actually used a charge to dash back to a boss for uptime rather than walking.

My Point was that every little bit of damage counts, so not using your dashes for damage can make a difference.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

My Point was that every little bit of damage counts, so not using your dashes for damage can make a difference.

Of course - nobody is asking you to sit on two charges of your dash and not use it and let the cooldown just drift. You have charges for this reason - use some for damage, hold one or two (WAR) where needed when it would cost you more damage from drifting GCD/using Tomahawk than you'd gain bonus potency from a raid buff window.

[Shurrikhan]

Late/necro, but... jesus...

My Point was that every little bit of damage counts, so not using your dashes for damage can make a difference.

Using your dashes for the actual dashing nets you around 300+ potency in conserved uptime each, while spending it in raid buffs vs. outside of raidbuffs would have net you under 50 potency per 2 minutes each.

You have two charges.

The mobility IS the largest advantage whenever there is a need for it. The damage is a fall-back that provides some portion of the potency over a given fight that the gap-closer would have by actually gap-closing, allowing you more similar apm and flair from those skills regardless of how much or little mobility is actually needed, and tightening balancing across jobs (since the value of those skills would otherwise be wholly situational).

Yes, removing damage from gap-closers means you turn them into, in effect, an easier version of a 30s CD Arm's Length/Surecast, simply removing a KB mechanic for free, etc., but not ever job needs to have the specific advantage of being able to have 4 gap-closers available across every 2 minutes with complete freedom. There are other commensurate advantages available, and removing the reward for fight knowledge (or, without it, for wise gambles) from every job just makes the game that much more homogenous and, worse, that much less engaging.

These were sensibly replaced with non-damaging abilities because it's ridiculous to combine utility with damage.

This is like saying it's ridiculous to combine a buff with a damaging ability.

So long as a fight is ended through damage dealt, there is no utility that does not indirectly increase damage done within X time.

Gap-closing does exactly that.

[ExiaKuromonji]

Why forced? This is supposedly an opportunity vs cost design, where you have to decide whether you want to use those abilities for best damage, or for mobility

This isn't really an issue when the boss hitboxes are large enough where you basically never have to leave melee range. It's not as bad in DT but the design hasn't really changed much from EW. You're rarely put out of range of the boss.

I can't speak for WAR. But if this is supposed to be some sort of skill expression they really made a weird decision leaving the damage on PLD. There's only 1 time I can think in all of DT where I use this for mobility instead of just spamming it off CD and that's during the 3rd beat of Honey B. Literally everything else except maybe Brute Bomber I was able to just save Holy Spirit at those moments and not lose uptime.

These gap closers haven't really mattered much at all in EW or DT. They'd be way more useful in older content which is ironic since PLD and WAR don't get these till Stormblood levels.

[Carighan]

This isn't really an issue when the boss hitboxes are large enough where you basically never have to leave melee range.

Sure, but let's not pretend encounter- and class-design should needlessly mix its flaws.

The issue of rarely needing movement tools is on encounter design. Fully. It's not a tank specific issue either, plenty melee and some other jobs have movement tools, and yet they rarely use them for anything but damage because well, you rarely need them if ever. They feel superb when used for movement and you feel really clever, but that just goes to show how underutilized they are. A similar problem exists in how despite having 25-30 abilities, Healers use only 2 spells in their kit constantly because few bosses deal meaningful damage to the group, it's always minor attacks the tank nearly heals on their own + the odd raidwide every 20-60 seconds. Compare other games where the vast majority of spellcasting is spent on GCD heals due to the constant barrage of damage onto the raid both on single random and also area targets. Or compare the lack of meaningful distinction between casters, ranged and melees due to the lack of need for movement+range.

This needs to be fixed encounter-design-side. All of these.