On this day a year ago, Plunge was taken from us (and other Job Identity)

[BigCheez]

Having to save your movement utility to deal damage during your burst window was just awful design. While the new animations might not look as cool, removing the potency allows your movement utility to just be movement utility which is a huge W. They should do the same for PLD and WAR.

[Daralii]

Having to save your movement utility to deal damage during your burst window was just awful design. While the new animations might not look as cool, removing the potency allows your movement utility to just be movement utility which is a huge W. They should do the same for PLD and WAR.

I dimly remember them saying that they were going to replace Intervene and Onslaught too, just that DRK and GNB were first in line because they had the busiest full burst windows. That being said, consolidating Blood Weapon and Delirium at the same time they removed Plunge left DRK with large timeframes between Delirium windows where it's almost nothing but 1-2-3-1-2-3 and whatever mitigation is needed.

[Absurdity]

I dimly remember them saying that they were going to replace Intervene and Onslaught too, just that DRK and GNB were first in line because they had the busiest full burst windows. That being said, consolidating Blood Weapon and Delirium at the same time they removed Plunge left DRK with large timeframes between Delirium windows where it's almost nothing but 1-2-3-1-2-3 and whatever mitigation is needed.

That was already the case before.
Delirium and Blood Weapon were already both on a 60s cooldown before the consolidation and while Plunge had two charges on 30s you wanted both of them in the 2-minute window anyway.

So Dark Knight in 6.X was suffering from way too crowded burst and nothing but 1-2-3 filler spam outside of it.

The two lost charges of Blood Weapon were the bigger issue with the consolidation, but that has mostly affected Dark Knight's TBN usage.

[YovelaLindswood]

I dimly remember them saying that they were going to replace Intervene and Onslaught too, just that DRK and GNB were first in line because they had the busiest full burst windows. That being said, consolidating Blood Weapon and Delirium at the same time they removed Plunge left DRK with large timeframes between Delirium windows where it's almost nothing but 1-2-3-1-2-3 and whatever mitigation is needed.

Honestly they need to remove the damage from all the gap closers and could probably get away with adding something else to them to make it a use case. Like another minor short duration barrier/mit or a utility like an interrupt or stun so they still have some thinking in their use.

[Absurdity]

I dimly remember them saying that they were going to replace Intervene and Onslaught too, just that DRK and GNB were first in line because they had the busiest full burst windows.

Been a while but I needed to pick this back up again.
Because if that's the case they better replace those with new oGCDs on top of whatever movement tools they plan for the two jobs.

You may not agree with it but you can at least understand the reasoning behind moving the gap closers out of the burst windows of GnB and DrK, two jobs who already had stuffed burst.
But removing them from Warrior and Paladin, who already feel like barren GCD spam even during their burst, would be completely awful.
Granted Dark Knight also suffers from this issue outside of burst windows but the entire rework was a disaster in hindsight, it's mindless 1-2-3 filler spam for a majority of your gameplay.

So they're probably going to do it and replace them with nothing.

[Shurrikhan]

You may not agree with it but you can at least understand the reasoning behind moving the gap closers out of the burst windows of GnB and DrK, two jobs who already had stuffed burst.

I mean, the first is a reason to increase the potency of Shadowbringers by an Edge (on primary target) and Flood (on all other enemies) but give it a 3000-MP cost and massively increase Syphon Strike MP regen in compensation, shifting that 2 actions per 2 minute out of window while also replacing the 3 APM lost to the removal of Plunge and Blood Weapon outside of the burst window with additional Edge casts. Instead, rather than moving the APM, it simply deleted it.

Meanwhile, high burst APM is essentially the identity of Gunbreaker, and most "mobility issue" that could be "caused" by having damage attached to its gap-closer could be solved by having Rough Divide always act as if affected by No Mercy or by having No Mercy affect only weaponskills, with due potency adjustments in either case, reducing its banking incentive to just that of raid buffs (very small) rather than its far larger self-buff. (The same could be said perhaps for Intervene on PLD.)

[Shurrikhan]

Having to save your movement utility to deal damage during your burst window was just awful design. While the new animations might not look as cool, removing the potency allows your movement utility to just be movement utility which is a huge W. They should do the same for PLD and WAR.

You didn't have to, though. If you could legitimately use it as a mobility tool, it was a damage LOSS to waste that opportunity by saving it for raidbuffs and instead walking back.

On a 200p skill, using your gap-closer under raidbuffs could net you an extra 25 potency, tops. Each GCD for which you were forced to use a ranged filler instead of continuing your optimal damage would cost most tanks over 300 effective-potency.

Removing the potency only simply offers, in effect, one extra charge of mobility (since you would otherwise face damage loss from overcapping it), negligible when already at 2 charges. The primary changes were to APM and cognitive load (no longer being rewarded for knowing whether there was a gap to close within your skill's recast time).

Phew, thank god I had you two to explain that to me and not the years of competitive LP! It still can be designed better. EW PLD dash was better. Separating stun into shield bash was better. GNB dashes are better, full stop.

Guess we'd better separate that self-heal/barrier from Brutal Shell, the 4s miti layer and excog each out of Heart of Corundum, the parry chance from the base mitigation of Camouflage, etc.

If we keep having any two effects not perfectly alike (not necessarily sharing exactly the same optimal timings even if separated) together under a single skill to make gameplay more than "monkey see gap, monkey close gap", we'd certainly cause ourselves cognitive fatigue before we can hit our daily PvP fix.

Thinking that could possibly weigh multiple factors together -- what an abomination! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

/s to be clear.

I don't mind having discrete gap-closers, but they're no more needed than for a %DR and barrier to be separate, or damage and healing, etc.. There's extra control in having those as separate tools, certainly, but having the most streamlined, straight-foward path to every capacity (as to reduce any value for/in componential strategy, etc.) isn't always for the best. And as PvP aims to be button-efficient, it makes all the more sense that flavor sometimes bundles in some extra cognitive load rather than all that is not discrete and plain being pruned.

[BigCheez]

You didn't have to, though. If you could legitimately use it as a mobility tool, it was a damage LOSS to waste that opportunity by saving it for raidbuffs and instead walking back.

On a 200p skill, using your gap-closer under raidbuffs could net you an extra 25 potency, tops. Each GCD for which you were forced to use a ranged filler instead of continuing your optimal damage would cost most tanks over 300 effective-potency.

Removing the potency only simply offers, in effect, one extra charge of mobility (since you would otherwise face damage loss from overcapping it), negligible when already at 2 charges. The primary changes were to APM and cognitive load (no longer being rewarded for knowing whether there was a gap to close within your skill's recast time).

Plunge was 150 potency iirc. You were missing a lot more than 25 potency by using it outside of personal, raid buff and potentially pot windows. Overcapping also only applies to WAR and DRK. Due to having 1 minute personal buffs, PLD and GNB would never overcap if spending all of their charges in personal buff windows and could never use their gap closer freely without incurring a damage loss.

Thanks to not having a personal DPS buff, WAR at least gets 1 free charge to use wherever it wants per 2 minutes. PLD does not, though.

Regardless of how big or small the loss is, it's still stupid to give players movement utility and punish them for using it. Let the gap closer be a gap closer.

[Shurrikhan]

Again, that makes no more sense than "let the barrier be a barrier, separate from any heal", "let the damage be just damage, separate from any buff generation", etc.

By the time we worry so much about the 0.4% overall damage, well beneath Crit/Dhit variance in otherwise identical runs, as to demand that every mobility tool be identically single-function... what job flavor or variance are we even permitted?