Damage gap closer should vanish

[mallleable]

I like dash attacks, and want them to explore the possibilities of more dash attacks.

Couldn't it also just work if using Unmend/Lightning Shot/Piercing Talon just applies a buff that turns Shadowstride/Trajectory/Winged Glide into Plunge/Rough Divide/Spineshatter Dive to make up for some of the damage lost from using those?

I think this would be an excellent compromise.

[Valence]

Eeh, it's on both. SE listens to parse brains, then it's just a circlejerk in the end.

[Praesul]

The damage and crit variance from pull to pull probably has a larger impact on damage than "losing out" on the gapcloser damage in raid buffs.

Not everything should be standardized across all tanks, having variety even if it's small is good flavor, and it's pretty clear the devs intentionally let PLD/WAR keep their damaging gapclosers because they're lower APM than GNB/DRK so they needed filler buttons just to feel good to play, and I agree. Imo they're satisfying buttons to hit just from a game feel perspective not only because the keep the 2 slower jobs a bit more active but the animations are satisfying, especially Onslaught though I may be biased.

I always thought the complaints about the GNB/DRK gapclosers not making sense when used from melee range (so not actually closing any sort of gap) were were dumb because even if your character's hitbox isn't actually moving forward you're still frontflipping in the air and slamming town with a big two handed weapon to do damage in the case of DRK, or doing a fancy manuever in GNB's case that it still makes total sense in a fantasy game.

GNB/DRK needed some oGCD pruning, and while you may agree or disagree on whether the gapclosers should have been where the pruning happened at least there's logic to it, and that logic does not apply to PLD/WAR. On top of that having to figure out at which points you need to save gapclosers charges is an extra bit of mastery that the jobs have even if in the grand scheme of things it likely doesn't make a massive difference.

[Collin_Sky]

Friendly reminder that abilities like Spirits Within used to have a silence attached to it, as did BRD also have a silence ability. Many other jobs had stuns with damage attached as well.
These were sensibly replaced with non-damaging abilities because it's ridiculous to combine utility with damage. Most jobs now have gap closers as non-damaging abilities, literally every job except WAR, PLD and SAM at this point. There's no reason these 3 jobs should have to deal with this when every other job in the game can have their utility be available whenever it's needed.
There is no "tactical decision-making" involved at high level, it is a binary "will I need to use this for it's intended utility? no? spam that shit in the burst window".
Just remove the potency from the final 3 gap closers and give us something else to weave/manage instead.

[Carighan]

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

Not at all, other MMOs are just smart enough to not make ~everything an oGCD instant you can press between other abilities, so they never have this problem in the first place.

Now of course, this is probably not something FFXIV can viably change, even if we can easily assert that when we compare other games, its current design is a hindrance to smart class design because it shoves everything into this "static rotation with tons of woven extra skills"-pseudo-design, which also in turn establishes the inane button bloat we see on ~all classes.

But FFXIV is centered around a very slow GCD timer (comparing other modern games) to work around the terminally bad netcode it inherited from 1.0. And this slow timer probably can't be changed in a usable manner as it'd essentially require ripping the entire combat system including all skills out and re-implementing it. And without that, a reduction in oGCD weaving would make things... boring.

But there's a reason I had my little list before were one job had no gapcloser, two had a rotational one, and one was too slow to be woven: Removing the damage is not the only way of fixing this "gapcloser gets woven"-issue, and it's also an incredibly boring one that needlessly increases class homogenization. Which can sometimes be useful, but the tanks are mostly carbon-copies of each other already, there's little need to further up it, no?

[Zarkovitch]

Friendly reminder that abilities like Spirits Within used to have a silence attached to it, as did BRD also have a silence ability. Many other jobs had stuns with damage attached as well.
These were sensibly replaced with non-damaging abilities because it's ridiculous to combine utility with damage. Most jobs now have gap closers as non-damaging abilities, literally every job except WAR, PLD and SAM at this point. There's no reason these 3 jobs should have to deal with this when every other job in the game can have their utility be available whenever it's needed.
There is no "tactical decision-making" involved at high level, it is a binary "will I need to use this for it's intended utility? no? spam that shit in the burst window".
Just remove the potency from the final 3 gap closers and give us something else to weave/manage instead.

Preach Warrior of Light Preach.

[Azurarok]

SAM's Gyoten is a gauge spender that's usually used in tandem with Yaten for disengagement scenarios. You use Shinten, Sanei, and Zanshin instead in the 2min burst. Ikishouten gives you 50 gauge, the cost of Gyoten/Yaten are minimal, and you gain gauge quickly enough that it's just not a problem there.

It's not so much the gap closer that's the problem and more the fact that charge actions don't mesh well at all with the 2 minute meta.

EDIT: What I'm trying to say, is that both SAM and ShB WAR's gap closers work while still having damage because they're not used for the burst, and they do it by being gauge spenders that shares the resource with a burst tool.

[RyuuZero]

SAM's Gyoten is a gauge spender that's usually used in tandem with Yaten for disengagement scenarios. You use Shinten, Sanei, and Zanshin instead in the 2min burst. Ikishouten gives you 50 gauge, the cost of Gyoten/Yaten are minimal, and you gain gauge quickly enough that it's just not a problem there.

It's not so much the gap closer that's the problem and more the fact that charge actions don't mesh well at all with the 2 minute meta.

EDIT: What I'm trying to say, is that both SAM and ShB WAR's gap closers work while still having damage because they're not used for the burst, and they do it by being gauge spenders that shares the resource with a burst tool.

tiny correction.. you can't use Zanshin outside of Ikishoten, so Zanshin is just a Kenki Sponge that soaks up Ikishoten's Kenki and Senei is just a bigger Shinten.. so the Gyoten/Yaten Kenki Cost is kinda unnoticable

[AvoSturmfaust]

SAM's Gyoten is a gauge spender that's usually used in tandem with Yaten for disengagement scenarios. You use Shinten, Sanei, and Zanshin instead in the 2min burst. Ikishouten gives you 50 gauge, the cost of Gyoten/Yaten are minimal, and you gain gauge quickly enough that it's just not a problem there.

It's not so much the gap closer that's the problem and more the fact that charge actions don't mesh well at all with the 2 minute meta.

EDIT: What I'm trying to say, is that both SAM and ShB WAR's gap closers work while still having damage because they're not used for the burst, and they do it by being gauge spenders that shares the resource with a burst tool.

thats not fully true, you actually use your gap close in your burst as samurai, because it has the same potency per kenki value then shinten has, so if you have spare 10 kenki and buffs are still up you will use the gap closer for dmg or if you wanna manipulate your kenki for your burst, there are many examples to use it as dmg tool and in your burst

[Oizen]

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