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

[Reimmi]

No thanks, remove damage from all charge attacks
Add other abilities instead to make jobs more interesting. Mobility should never have to be sacrificed for damage imo
in drk's case i'd rather we see dark arts returned as its unique identity

[Rizlee]

i was heavily complaining when they changed plunge to shadowstride, atleast keep the plunge animation but no, they literally removed it except for pvp

the devs hate drk what can u do, just accept defeat and move on i m already planning to unsub after a certain incident happened in the new field operation content (was already mad how they implemented it) and i cant bother playing this game anymore since i mostly play drk, and visually drk looks hot garbage, heck rpr looks way flashier with those slash vfx and plays better thematically why bother playing drk anymore

[Altina_Orion]

Gap closers should have never been used to deal damage. Should we all have gap closers as tanks? Idfk honestly. But using them during burst to do more damage ruined the point of them being gap closers. I do think we should have more interesting class design, but this is the wrong hill to die on.

Also, i find it strange how everyone misses "plunge" but i dont see anyone talking about rough divide. Literally the same ability, but it gets no attention.

[Birdbrain]

The suggested reasons for removing GNB/DRK jump were always incredibly weak. If they wanted to remove it from the basic rotation, just make it do no damage. Jumping on your target and doing 0 damage doesn't seem any weirder than Reprisal's 0 damage "stab your target and rip it out" debuff animation.

However, if damage was still super important to keep for these skills in particular, the alternative solution: keep GNB/DRK's jump with the potency, and simply make it unusable if you are too close to your target. It can function as an intended gap-closer, but running away from the boss to get the distance to use it again should be a DPS loss, and therefore not viable for rotations anymore.

I am sure the devs could have considered this solution. That they went ahead anyway and put resources to making inferior looking/sounding abilities, with worse animations, and less appropriate class theming, has me wondering if it wasn't a dev's personal pet project or something.

[Atreus]

I don't think plunge was particularly unique, and I rather think all gap closers should be movement-only. I do miss dark side being a stance and requiring management though. That was absolutely a cool job identity.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

If I had to pick between old Plunge or new Shadowstride, I'd go for the former. Wanna use it for dps? Go ahead. Wanna keep it for gapclosing? Do it. The options are there.

I very much dislike SE's tendencies to be a control freak on that front & resort in minimizing options... for what, exactly?

[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.

[Valence]

No thanks, remove damage from all charge attacks
Add other abilities instead to make jobs more interesting. Mobility should never have to be sacrificed for damage imo
in drk's case i'd rather we see dark arts returned as its unique identity

It's the damage that has to be sacrified for mobility, and not mobility that you sacrifice for damage. If you're doing the latter you're playing the job wrong.
It's exactly like a BLM telling you they're going to keep their mobility tools for burst when they actually need them outside to move... Oh wait, they made triplecast being a damage gain irrelevant last patch. Well I guess there is other examples like Energy Drain...
Opportunity cost design and all that. Has pros and cons for sure, when fights turn into big memorization spreadsheets.

[Raikai]

3. I suppose a third reason from their perspective is if it's not doing damage, it doesn't make sense to look like you're plunging your sword into the enemy. I think they should stop caring about this.

Well, I guess they completely forgot about BRD's Repelling shot still named like a damaging action while just a leap.

[TKMXIV]

I was going to comment my own take, but it kind of became a mini rant of job design in general. So here is just my view on plunge nothing else.

Plunge wasn't a dash for me. It was an attack button that was fun. I liked mixing in plunge because it was fun. Plunge is fun while Shadowstride isn't.
To be honest if they really want to give every job a dash than make a universal dash skill in the Role Actions that just moves you forward.
I just miss doing a helm splitter with a giant sword instead of just sliding along the floor.