[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] MNK

[Motenten]

Add Regen, Stoneskin, or some other type of support-related effect to Chakra.

We are thinking about adding something along the lines of increasing the effect of Chakra through Boost. It might be good if we added a Regen effect when using Boost in conjunction with Chakra which would get more powerful the more times you Boost.

That's called "Invigorate". Tier 2 merit.

Stoneskin might be nice, but (agreeing with Francisco) I'd prefer being able to remove additional status effects (certainly slow, maybe plague (since we can already cure disease), possibly bio).

If you want to add Boost as a prereq for removing additional status, well.. guess it's not too bad. But "more boosts = more healing" just seems silly. Chakra is a JA, for instant use in battle, primarily; picturing trying to sit around for 3 minutes Boosting to get its full effect just seems ludicrous.

We are currently looking into an effect that will reduce an enemy’s TP as an adjustment to Chi Blast.

That's called "Penance". Tier 2 merit.

Make it so magic casting cannot be interrupted when you guard.

Since monk has no native magic skill, a different type of effect such as a reduction in enemy’s generated TP would fit better than simply magic interruption.

I'm actually not sure if Subtle Blow affects the TP gained by mobs hitting players, though I would assume it does since Store TP affects the amount of TP the player gets. If so, then the amount of TP the mob gets from hitting you is already fairly low, and further reducing it would be a fairly minor effect. Just add it in as part of the Tactical Guard trait (say, -3 TP to the mob to correspond with the +3 TP for the player) and call it a day.

We’ll keep it in consideration as a part of the Footwork adjustments.

Actually, this is probably the info that I'd be most interested in hearing. Footwork is fairly unique as a combat style within the game, but mechanically just can't keep up with standard H2H under pretty much any circumstances or intended usages.

Its greatest advantage, reduced TP given to the mob, is overshadowed by taking twice as long to kill the mob while giving half as much TP per unit time (so in the end you gain nothing but wasted time). The other problem is that it's only remotely useful with the OA2-3/4 weapons to boost the double-kick proc rate, and can't take advantage of other specific weapon traits/stats (eg: Empyreans or Relics, obviously, but also other weapons that seem like they were more intended for Footwork use).

Damage wise, because of how its damage scales, even if you got it perfectly balanced compared to standard H2H at level 90 (for example), it will inevitably fall behind as soon as the level cap goes up. So whatever gain it gets, it has to scale well with level.

Sam has Hasso and Seigan for offensive and defensive stances, and likewise nin has Innin and Yonin. Each serves a useful purpose for a specific task. Mnk's secondary stance is Footwork, but it seems the developers had only the vaguest of ideas in mind when creating it. Mnks can kick, right? Let's let them kick a whole bunch... It has no real raison d'etre, a purpose for existing.

Serious thought needs to be given to that before some half-assed revamp is done.

How much TP does a mob gain from being countered? Perhaps we can lower the number? I think it is much easier to justify this than having us gain TP from counters.

When you counter a mob, the mob gets as much TP as if you'd hit it normally.



Overall summary for mnk needs: Fix guard proc rate. Fix Footwork in general. Maybe add bonuses to Chakra for a Christmas present. Anything else is just busywork that, honestly, could be better used on any number of other jobs.

[Zhronne]

First of all thanks Camate for the info on the upcoming adjustments.
My two cents now:

Chakra
The idea of having Chakra powered up by Boost is nice, but it might not work out quite well and could be a bit frustrating, especially when you talk about the effect scaling up with the amount of times you use Boost.
Boost wears off with the next attack you perform, and has a 15 seconds delay between each use. Which means to power up Chakra you'd have to disengage or turn around and use boost a few times before using Chakra. But that's a bit unpractical to use, because Chakra is normally used in situations of danger, when you want a fast recover of your HP to avoid a possible death. There are many uses I guess, but this probably is the most used/effective.
So, from this perspective, the stacking boost thing doesn't seem very efficient.
Could make Boost receive a small bonus according to your Max HP, currently it scales exclusively with your VIT. HP recovered with Chakra is VITx2, Temple's Cyclas add a 1 to the multiplier, Melee Gloves add a 0.66. Maybe creating a new item for a slot that isn't hands or body and that adds a 0.44 multiplier (for a total of VITx4) might be an interesting choice?
Also, there's a small problem with Invigorate, the group#2 Merit that adds Regen to Chakra. This effect at the moment doesn't stack with the spell "regen" and that's not the only problem, it *overwrites* other regen spell effects, even if they are more powerful. That's really a shame if you ask me. It should either be allowed to stack with the spell, or avoid to overwrite the stronger effects.


Boost
I don't completely understand the request to make boost "stronger". I mean, if we're talking about the added Attack bonus, it's not a fixed one, it's a % so it scales with your basic attack, which means the higher your basic attack the higher bonus you receive from Boost.
While more/better gear to enhance this bonus could be interesting (currently we only have Temple Gloves) I don't think it's really necessary to increase the bonus given, it already scales up.
The idea of adding an accuracy bonus is very nice, but probably would be a bit too much etc.
I have to say I REALLY like the idea of boost wearing off only with WS, Chi Blast or Chakra. This way Boost wouldn't wear off with normal attacks (not even accidentally, happened a few times to me) and it would be much easier to make use of it during fights.
Really, I'd love such a change


Footwork
In my opinion, the developers need to better understand what is the goal, the meaning, the role of such a stance.
At the moment it's just a way to gimp your damage while changing the aestetical way you attack your foes. Even supposing developers manage to "power it up" and make it on par, damage wise, with the normal "fists" setup, it would still be a pretty useless ability, because all it would grant is a difference in animations, right?
So instead of "boosting" footwork, they should go back to square one and think what they want footwork to be.
To me Footwork should be a situational stance to use in certain circumstances that grants some advantages at the cost of something else.
For example the original idea of having Monk swap from a normal stance (with a lots of quick punches and some occasional kicks on each attack round) to a foowtork stance where you deal only ONE kick per attack round, making so this kick is very powerful, very slow, and gets you a lot of TP.
That was the core idea of Footwork, but it slowly transformed into a series of very fast kicks on each round (thanks to the "occasionally attacks X times" weapons).
A simple change that could balance things up is changing the role of "Kick Attacks + X" bonuses on legs equipment.
Currently this bonus, in a normal stance, increase the possibility of a Kick Attack to happen at the end of the round.
During footwork it works in a similar way to "double attack", adding a second kick.
This is pretty useless. Make it so that the "Kick Attack + X" bonus has a different effect wether footwork is active or not.
If it's turned off it works the same way it does now, if Footwork is up, it just adds + X base damage to the kick, similarly to what Feet equipment do, like Dune Boots or Tantra Gaiters.

[Zhronne]

Whoa! Sad I didn't read the allmighty Motenten's post before, said more or less the same things but in a much better way.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who got the impression that Footwork currently has no purpose, that's a very important point imho.
Even if they manage to make it perfectly on par with Hand to Hand damage (which I find unlikely, but let's suppose they succeed) it still would have no purpose. Why would you swap to Footwork then? Just to see different animations? Sounds a bit silly, a waste of a JA.
They should find a "purpose" for Footwork.
Having very slow, very powerful, high return TP kicks sounds like a more interesting and situational JA that we could use at times, and closer to the original idea of Footwork.
Damage-wise it wouldn't be as good as H2H, but it would be close, and u'd generate much less TP on the mob.
Not particularly original maybe, but good enough for me.
To achieve this they would need to reduce the number of kick attacks per round (making so OAx weapons don't work, and so +kick attacks merits/gear give +damage instead of +% rate of activation) and make so the JA itself scales with level. At the moment it gives a fixed +damage bonus, make so that amount is not fixed but it scales with level. Say... +20 at level 65 when you get the JA, and +50 at level 99? (+5 damage every 5 levels, approx)
They could do the same with the attack bonus I guess, and they should also increase the base tp return, from the current 13 value to something else slightly higher.


As for your group# 2 merits comments. I get the pretty clear impression, from past Developers' comments and from recent comments on other jobs, that they are up for a big revamp on group 2 merits.
I think a lot of those will become "normal abilities/job traits" for the majority of jobs, and they'll put something else in there.
That might just be the case with Penance and Invigorate.

[Reznov831]

We are currently looking into methods of utilizing the sub slot for hand-to-hand. We’ll take into consideration the balance of other weapons and will look to implement it at the right time.[/QUOTE]

Why not just let Mnks have variety like Nin and its ability to choose 2 different katanas? I think it'd be awesome if Mnk could use 2 different h2h weapons. I doubt I'm the first to think of this, but just thought I'd put it out there since I've never seen anyone else say anything about it, though I haven't really looked either XD.

[Lushipur]

dunno if already said, but i doubt.

please if you introduce grips for h2h, remember that pup use h2h too.

[Ladycandygem]

One option for Footwork would be for it to give you an increased rate of kick attacks (average of 1.5 per attack round?), but also let you use Hand-to-Hand attacks as usual. Obviously this would be a big boost to Monk, so the trade off would be that you couldn't use Counterstance at the same time.

So it becomes like Samurai and Ninja stances, you have to choose which is most beneficial to the situation.

As the extra kick attacks would give TP, that gives it an advantage over counters, so in situations where taking damage isn't an issue, or for some reason the monk doesn't have hate, people would likely use Footwork. But when taking damage is an issue Counterstance would be preferred.

If necessary you could add the defense down of counterstance to footwork to stop it being too overpowered.

[Lynchilles]

Originally Posted by Camate
We are currently looking into an effect that will reduce an enemy’s TP as an adjustment to Chi Blast.

That's called "Penance". Tier 2 merit.

Penance decreases the amount of TP that a mob gets as a result of hitting or being hit by 25%. It simply inhibits the mobs TP gain. It does not actually decrease the amount of TP a mob has however. I think Camate is talking about an ability that actively decreases a mob's TP.

[Zhronne]

One option for Footwork would be for it to give you an increased rate of kick attacks (average of 1.5 per attack round?), but also let you use Hand-to-Hand attacks as usual. Obviously this would be a big boost to Monk, so the trade off would be that you couldn't use Counterstance at the same time.

This would make Footwork from a "situational stance" to something you want to keep up most of the times.
I mean, I love MNK and everything (it's my main after all), but asking for additional boosts seems a bit unrealistical, and honestly unnecessary.
You can't ask for a job to get something new without at least trying to keep an overall view on the rest of the jobs, can you?
What we should ask is maybe for new tools, new situational stuff etc, not just raw power.

I mean, what you asked is not very far from asking stuff like "Hey SE make so Boost gives me +90% Weapon Skill Damage!" or "Hey SE make so Counterstance activation rate goes up to 100% and you also get a +50 accuracy bonus while it's active!" lol

[Ladycandygem]

This would make Footwork from a "situational stance" to something you want to keep up most of the times.

For Samurai, Hasso is something they want to keep up all the time, but sometimes they have to use Seigan instead. It would be the same for Monk, having to choose between a more offensive or defensive stance.

I mean, what you asked is not very far from asking stuff like "Hey SE make so Boost gives me +90% Weapon Skill Damage!" or "Hey SE make so Counterstance activation rate goes up to 100% and you also get a +50 accuracy bonus while it's active!" lol

I'm sure SE could find a way to keep it balanced, maybe with an attack penalty, or lower kick activation rate or something. But it's not like those clearly overpowered suggestions. The extra kicks would be a similar number to the attacks you lose from reduced counter rate, so effectively you are gaining extra TP at the cost of taking more damage. It's almost like going from Counterstance to Retaliation.

What we should ask is maybe for new tools, new situational stuff etc, not just raw power.

And yes, it would be nice to have some utility abilities, but I was looking at a way to make Footwork useful, since at the moment it has almost no use at all.

[Motenten]

Penance decreases the amount of TP that a mob gets as a result of hitting or being hit by 25%. It simply inhibits the mobs TP gain. It does not actually decrease the amount of TP a mob has however. I think Camate is talking about an ability that actively decreases a mob's TP.

Ah, good point. I didn't consider that. I suppose that could be useful, a sort of Absorb-TP without the absorb half. Would expect it to be more powerful than Absorb-TP then (which only absorbs about half the mob's TP) given recast limitations and no absorb benefit.