So when can we get Plunge and Rough Divide animation back?

[Ruvycontria]

I thought I'd get used to the new gap closers after a while. But I still dislike them.
Will they bring the older animation back on 7.1?

[drgnmstr44]

finally getting around to leveling GNB and holy hell, the trajectory animation completely sucks. now instead of feeling like I'm hitting the mob, it feels like I'm trying to slide into the DMs to say Hi. I get wanting to remove the potency from the ability originally but they should have just removed the potency and left the animation I think. this just feels all sorts of wrong and I doubt we will ever get it back in the PvE side of things. it looks dumb, doesn't make me feel like I'm playing the tank, has no weight behind, doesn't feel meaty to me. I really don't think they should have removed the potency in the first place since they didn't do that with all tanks on launch. Just feels like throwing things at the wall to see what works. Shouldn't have to run mods to get that animation back either.

[Mesarthim]

I'm curious as to why Living Shadow had to also lose plunge. Didn't someone make a post at some point about LS not working as intended if it had to shadowstride and thus lose damage or something? Unless they fixed that problem. I'm not exactly paying attention or playing enough to math it.

[Oizen]

I'm curious as to why Living Shadow had to also lose plunge. Didn't someone make a post at some point about LS not working as intended if it had to shadowstride and thus lose damage or something? Unless they fixed that problem. I'm not exactly paying attention or playing enough to math it.

I believe what you're refering to is the fact that Living Shadow is significantly more punishing than it used to be on bosses that move around and reset its AI.

Endwalker Living Shadow cast attacks all at the same potency except Shadowbringer which is stronger, so it really wasn't a damage loss if its AI reset its rotation, as long as shadowbringer got used, which is pretty early in its rotation so whatever. (you could actually get a very slight dps gain by reseting after shadowbringer actually, but I've only ever seen this happen in one fight)

Dawntrail living shadow, thats a different story. Sure they adjusted the potency of everything else for the loss of plunge, but any time the Living shadow AI resets, you flat out just lose 420 attack potency because it had to waste time on Shadowstride again, and you also lose another 200 damage potency because it will no longer reach Disesteem, which the last move it casts so it must go through everything in its 14 second window to get out Disesteem.

Luckily, So far the only fight where this has been relevant is M3N so it hasn't mattered that much yet.

[Carighan]

I mean, that's cool though. If that were a more universal concept (punishing per-fight per-ability timing usage if you just press stuff on CD) and not just punishing one job, I'd love that.

It's like losing pet classes just because controlling pets is haaaard, sure every MMO does it, but it so ruins such a unique gameplay style, and having to actually sit on your ability and not use it would be amazing in theory. Know the perfect timings for things, like an AST using Horoscope or Macrocosmos just on the spot so they never have to actively close it, it fires on its own just after damage is applied.

Sadly, current FFXIV fight (and job) design paradigms are sadly incompatible with non-fire-everything combat plans.