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

[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?