Monk Ideas

[Enaula]

Yeah need a "guard" ja, but i don't want a ja for defense boost. I play mnk since i started game in 2005 and it was for DD not for tanking. Atm i don't like game because i need to tank in abyssea, i hope @ 99, pld and nin ll be tank at 100%

[AyinDygra]

I've had more time to consider the ideas I presented in the original post, so here are a few revisions.

My initial thought on Guard Stance is that I don't like tanking on monk, but there are those who do. While I personally wouldn't get much use out of it in groups, when I play solo, like in Campaign, or other general activities, I'd get great use out of this. So, adding this is a win/win for Monks. It's not enough to force us into a tanking role outside of Abyssea, but it's still nice to have when we are the focus of attacks.

Job Ability: Iron Shirt (Guard Stance)
(Possibly better as an addition to "Footwork", rather than a new stance)
Level 50
Duration: 5min
Recast: 1min
This is a stance that switches Monk's focus from attacks to defense. While it may reduce a Monk's damage capabilities somewhat, it may make up for it with several additional effects including reduced enmity loss and higher enmity gains, so it does not have to rely on damage to keep the enemy's attention.

Brainstorming Potential pros and cons (any/all/mix)
* Unable to cast spells at all. (may be unnecessary; depends on how many additional bonuses are added)
* Reduce attack speed. (not necessary if this is part of Footwork)
* Reduce evasion. (allows for more counterattacks, so both a pro and con)
* Reduce enmity loss from taking damage. (Pro for tanks, Con for DD)
* Increase enmity gain (especially from "boost") (Pro for tanks, Con for DD)

* Guard rate increased. (a maximum guard rate of 5% is far too low)
* Reduce Damage Taken (by 20%? ... more? less?)
* Chance to stun enemy when their attack is guarded. (very important addition, in my opinion)
* Chance to counterattack enemy when their attack is guarded. (perhaps added as an "augment: trait" on Monk gear)
* During Iron Shirt, the "Boost" ability changes effect to "Raise Defense" until the Monk takes unguarded damage.
When Iron Shirt is activated or wears off, Boost's effect wears off.
* Reduce Chakra's recast when used during Iron Shirt.

Reasoning: A Guard Stance is something the monk job could make good use of. The exact implementation of it is a matter of sorting through a great variety in options. As I noted above, this could simply be a feature added in to Footwork, since the stance of a kicker is generally protective of the upper body. This would make Footwork quite useful, even if its damage falls behind normal fist combat (which is almost certain to happen, even with our Tantra +2 set bonus)

The other main thought behind a Guard Stance is to make it easier to activate guard to actually gain skill in guard to make it useful. As stated earlier, guard activates so infrequently, even at max skill, that it seems useless to even try. The point I added to try to make Guard more useful in this stance was the potential to stun the enemy after you guard their hit. In addition to that, a chance to counterattack a guarded hit plays to our current gear options to increase counterattack damage, without increasing our damage mitigation by raising our "counterattack" rate that negates damage (we'd still have to take the guarded hit to activate this additional counterattack.)

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Job Ability: Viper Stance
Level 60
Duration: 5min
Recast: 1min
This is an attack stance focused on using pressure points to cripple the enemy.
* Recast penalty on all spells.
* Decrease Evasion
* Greatly Decrease Damage of normal hits.
* Increase Attack Speed
* Critical Hit Damage increases. (to normal hit damage)
* Critical Hit Chance increases.
* Critical Hits inflict TP damage and have a chance to inflict one crippling status ailment on the target from this list: choke, paralysis, blind, silence, attack down, defense down, slow.
* Kick Attacks are disabled for the duration.
* Cannot use "Footwork"
* Increase the rate of "additional effects" triggering on armor and weapons.
(Perhaps Kick Attack rate could be used for the additional effect activation rate)
* When enemies counter/block/parry the Monk's attacks, have a chance of inflicting the random bad statuses on them anyway.

Reasoning: The Viper Stance can be a potent tool for crippling an enemy that is normally very powerful. I see the main uses against Monk enemies, like Gnoles and Orcs in Campaign, and any Monk enemies in Dynamis when they use Hundredfists. If they're paralyzed, blinded, attack down'd, etc, they'll be easier to handle. Monks using Viper Stance could inflict many status effects quickly, depending on how high their critical hit rate gets, and at the same time, reduce the ability of enemies to unleash their TP moves by directly inflicting TP damage with Crit Hits. This is a natural progression of Monks reducing how much TP they feed to enemies with their attacks. The TP damage may be the most important feature of this stance, since it allows Monks to directly melee HNMs that they'd normally be forced to stay away from to stop feeding TP.

This stance also sacrifices our melee damage for speed and effects. The Critical Hit Rate increase will, at best, only bring damage up to what our current attacks already hit for, damage-wise (It is NOT a request for "Razed Ruins" outside of Abyssea). The point of it is to use the Critical Hit Rate as the factor that determines whether or not the crippling effects are inflicted. This all balances out, since we're attacking so much faster. (Balancing will be important here. Once the test server opens, I'd like to see this tested there.) (also, the Metasoma Katars are a very limited toy and do not fulfill this JA's main purposes - TP damage being a huge feature)

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Footwork adjustments
* Increase damage against enemies with high defense. (no effect on low defense enemies)
* Allow more than 2 kicks per round.
* Allow Counter-kicks based on kick attack rate, Double/Triple attack rates, and multi-hit weapon properties. (for example: take it into consideration when activating an extra counter-kick when a counterattack lands. This becomes a "double attack" for Counterattack, only with a kick)
(see above thoughts about "Iron Shirt" being a feature of Footwork)

[Leonlionheart]

I'd say everything in this thread is extremely over powered.

That's not to say that you shouldn't try, but think more about balance.

The only way any of this could possibly be implemented is if every other job got equal or better (PLD comes to mind) boosts to their roles, since MNK is already an offensive and defensive powerhouse.

[Trigger]

your ideas are great but maybe only in a futur,in couples months when we gonna reach lev 99 or over lev99 in nexts years O_O who knows..
For the moment i tihnk monk is already enough powerful.