Damage gap closer should vanish

[Oizen]

Is there any real reason we couldn't have both Plunge and Shadow stride as two separate buttons?

[Carighan]

Is there any real reason we couldn't have both Plunge and Shadow stride as two separate buttons?

Other than most jobs including DRK already having too many instead of too few buttons, no. Like, if you made them intelligently swap out (say Plunge out of combat, Shadow Strike once in combat), sure!

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Other than most jobs including DRK already having too many instead of too few buttons, no. Like, if you made them intelligently swap out (say Plunge out of combat, Shadow Strike once in combat), sure!

They could actually do something fancy with that snorefest of a LV84 Unmend trait and do the following rather than the CD reduction on Shadowstride...

Enhanced Unmend (Lv.84 Trait)
Upon execution of Unmend, you gain the effect of "Plunge ready", changing the action Shadowstride to Plunge.
Effect Duration: 30 seconds

Plunge (Lv.84 Ability)
Recast: 1 second
Potency: 200
Additional effect: Enhanced Enmity
Can only be executed while under the effect of "Plunge ready".

Would make using Unmend less painful without it being a gain, keeps your Shadowstride dashes as is, retains Plunge as an action. The only thing I'd possibly consider is moving this interaction to lower than Lv84, at least in the 61-70 bracket if not straight up being baseline obtained at Lv54 with Shadowstride. Or we could stop pretending that "button bloat" and "busy rotation" is this much of a problem and just give us back Plunge along with our new dash as a usable action with like an additional effect - like Sole Survivor, similar to PvP. WAR also gets to have two dashes (yes I count Primal Rend), so what gives?

[Oizen]

Other than most jobs including DRK already having too many instead of too few buttons, no. Like, if you made them intelligently swap out (say Plunge out of combat, Shadow Strike once in combat), sure!

DRK doesnt have too many buttons.
I don't even think you'd need a swap out. Just two seperate buttons. 4 gap closers.

WAR has 4 gap closers and the server is still running.

[Carighan]

DRK doesnt have too many buttons.

#respectfullydisagree

I should add that I think all jobs have too many buttons for how insanely shallow their gameplay loop is. GW2 achieves far more interesting core gameplay with just 12-15 buttons. Hell I'd go as far as saying that most MOBAs achieve deeper gameplay with four buttons.

I could understand 20-25 buttons for jobs if that were actually relevant, but it's really not. Just on Dark Knight, consider that all the following abilities could be removed cleanly if the skills did full damage to the main target then reduced damage to extra ones:

* Unleash
* Stalwart Soul
* Quietus
* Flood of Darkness
* Abyssal Drain

That's 5 hotbar buttons freed up at not a single spit of depth lost. And in turn shows how absolutely irrelevant the existence of these skills even is, beyond some funky visuals (which I very much enjoy, don't get me wrong!).

[Arohk]

I could understand 20-25 buttons for jobs if that were actually relevant, but it's really not. Just on Dark Knight, consider that all the following abilities could be removed cleanly if the skills did full damage to the main target then reduced damage to extra ones:

20 is the sweet spot for buttons, FFXIV is very very bloated on hotkeys.

[Oizen]

#respectfullydisagree

I should add that I think all jobs have too many buttons for how insanely shallow their gameplay loop is. GW2 achieves far more interesting core gameplay with just 12-15 buttons. Hell I'd go as far as saying that most MOBAs achieve deeper gameplay with four buttons.

I could understand 20-25 buttons for jobs if that were actually relevant, but it's really not. Just on Dark Knight, consider that all the following abilities could be removed cleanly if the skills did full damage to the main target then reduced damage to extra ones:

* Unleash
* Stalwart Soul
* Quietus
* Flood of Darkness
* Abyssal Drain

That's 5 hotbar buttons freed up at not a single spit of depth lost. And in turn shows how absolutely irrelevant the existence of these skills even is, beyond some funky visuals (which I very much enjoy, don't get me wrong!).

You just listed aoes. Then every job has too many buttons? And its not even true

Unleash/Stalwart have a unique niche of gaining 600 MP and 20 Blood in two GCDs instead of 3, making it optimal to switch to this on any boss that is at .01% HP but doesn't die due to game mechanics to build gauge faster for next phases.
Likewise, Abyssal Drain has a niche of being a Ranged AOE pull on DRK. Its not available enough to ever justify this but it is a thing it uniquely does over Carve and Spit.

[Shurrikhan]

Likewise, Abyssal Drain has a niche of being a Ranged AOE pull on DRK. It's not available enough to ever justify this but it is a thing it uniquely does over Carve and Spit.

An "advantage" whose use is never justified is... not particularly worth mentioning. And in the spitball you quoted, one could as easily remove CnS instead of AD, Edge instead of Flood, etc., providing double damage to the main target instead of 50% AoE damage to everything else a la original Guren; the point was the button count, after all.

Unleash/Stalwart have a unique niche of gaining 600 MP and 20 Blood in two GCDs instead of 3, making it optimal to switch to this on any boss that is at .01% HP but doesn't die due to game mechanics to build gauge faster for next phases.

And in how many fights across the game is that? Are we getting at least a moment each in a fight each across the game per button? Two fights each?

Now, I'll agree with you both that we don't need to remove those keys and that it's definitely better to have that visual variety than not but... that's objectively weak use/nuance-density for our buttons.

[Carighan]

You just listed aoes. Then every job has too many buttons?

Yes. I did not think this would need mentioning, but yes. FFXIV is uniquely bloaty even comparing other MMOs, because of the amount of hotbar buttons for how little gameplay comes from them.

And its not even true

Unleash/Stalwart have a unique niche of gaining 600 MP and 20 Blood in two GCDs instead of 3, making it optimal to switch to this on any boss that is at .01% HP but doesn't die due to game mechanics to build gauge faster for next phases.
Likewise, Abyssal Drain has a niche of being a Ranged AOE pull on DRK. Its not available enough to ever justify this but it is a thing it uniquely does over Carve and Spit.

Great, it's thinking like this that keeps boatloads of rubbish hotbar bloat around because people desperately try to find an excuse for the simplicity and flatness of the underlying combat system in these "niche skills" and their "usage".

1. Remove all the bloat.
2. Rethink what the jobs are supposed to be.
3. Retool the entire combat system, it's bananas that we have 2644 jobs and they all use "static rotation" as their design paradigm.