Double Down costing 1 Cartridge instead of 2 hurts the skill thematically

[GainsGoblin]

The FF8 skill that Double Down got its animation from was called Bloodfest in FF8 amd Bloodfest was already called Draw & Junction in PVP before they removed it

Just rename Double Down to Bloodfest and Bloodfest to Draw & Junction, problem solved (and it's more accurate to the source material too)

[andromeda_kha]

Should just rename it to "Single Down"?

But yeah it's annoying how FFXIV devs seem to be inherently against any friction in a job's loadout. You can't ever have conflicting uses for resources, conflicting CDs for time, anything really. This was interesting. There was some skill expression in using GNB cartridges correctly. Now it's gone.

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

[Carighan]

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

Yeah although I will say I'd prefer it if it required 1 cartridge but could use a second one for a guaranteed crit + crit-scaling or something like tha,t if available. Prevents drift but promoted tight rotation + autocrits always feel great to use.

[Exmo]

It's fine at it is. Tweaking it to give it a buff if more than one cartridge is used only means that's the default play, defeating the point of it being available for one cartridge.

[velswen]

This would be the perfect solution. The only remaining issue would be if you died immediately before burst and didn't have time to generate the cartridges for it, but they could also just make it so that you don't lose cartridges on death, which isn't unheard for other classes either. That way Double Down keeps its theme, and you're still encouraged to manage your cartridges better if you don't generate enough, but you have a recovery method if you do make a mistake, at the cost of a little damage.

[Carighan]

It's fine at it is. Tweaking it to give it a buff if more than one cartridge is used only means that's the default play, defeating the point of it being available for one cartridge.

WDYM? It was already optimal at two cartridges, the change was to alleviate some drift in the rotation from misaligning generation depending on how the fight evolved (and somehow the static 2m-window being sacred and not being moved, because screw intelligent job or fight design like in other games, we're japanese devs we don't care whether this is a solved issue everywhere else and we'd just have to copy&paste the solution). Meaning that it ought to not be necessary to fire it without having the second cartridge available. So long as the damage of the other cart is folded into the 2-cart use, that's all a wash and it retains it's "feeling" without being unusable if you drifted the rotation and got only 1 cart?

[CKNovel]

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

That was one of the few remaining punishment in GNB rotation.
We had many ways to secure 2 cartridges, especially in 7.0.

But instead of making players "think" they decided to remove another difficulty.
That's why I proposed a more dynamic potency based on your current cartridges available, it's a compromise between keeping rewards for players who manage to secure the cartridges without punishing those who can't with a drift.

[Voryn]

It seems like the devs don’t like the idea of there being conditions attached to cooldowns. It’s now easier to avoid the situation where you can’t (or don’t want to) press a cooldown that helps your damage. If all you need is two carts then it’s harder to end up in a situation where you can’t press both GF and DD every minute. A comparable thing happened with DRK, who no longer needs to spend anything to use Living Shadow. In Dawntrail also have less reason to think twice about when you press Barrel Stabilizer, Manafication, and Geirskogul now.

I don’t like when this type of change is made. If there’s less things in a rotation that need to be done right then it’s going to feel less rewarding when I make it work.

GNB carts didn't really have skill expression, you either did it right or you didn't, and drifted Double Down into eternity, an incredibly tough punishment for something that could happen from losing only a few GCDs. Having 1 extra cart now allows the job more flexibility. I will say the thematic loss is sad but I'm not thinking of thematics when my CD is drifting because the boss disappeared or I had to disconnect for a mechanic.

Making the rotation work and figuring out how to keep everything in buff windows despite having downtime or making mistakes in your filler rotation is an opportunity for skill expression.

[Carighan]

I mean even then, I prefer the opposite route: Remove the CD rather than the cost. We can already only produce cartridges at a certain speed, so things could as well have been reworked to remove the time-based restriction instead of the cart-based one. Bonus points if the skill automatically gains potency over time, but otherwise has no CD, meaning we could press it ~whenever, but the potency/cart only maxes out 120s after last use.