Two Months In: Will You Reconsider GL IV?

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Originally Posted by Xeinon

I just feel like a lot of players and especially SE are way too hung up on numbers. People like OP are suggesting these changes not because we want our job to be stronger and have higher DPS, we actually want the gameplay and HOW we achieve those numbers to improve, because at the end of the day thats what actually matters. The numbers will be balanced eventually but the gameplay stays the same.

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Believe it or not. Having the core gameplay of the class stay the same is a good thing.

See Summoner salt threads for details. Greased Lightning 4 would require a tremendous amount of nerfs to Monk However. Monks would likely lose a lot of potency, and the timing of Monk would probably be butchered. Grease lightning 4 would have 3 effects. #1 Monks would be far more punishing. If you lose greased lightning 4 or die you have to spend all that time getting it back. 12 gcd's till you get back to full damage. #2 This applies to the opener and pushes Monk's damaging skills backwards. It would take 4 snap punches to reach max damage, meaning if perfect balance is on cooldown, you are out of luck. #3 Skills like tornado kick would be devastating to Monk's dps. Tornado kick would eat all your stacks for 300 potency, and would take what, 30 seconds to get back to greased lightning 4 without perfect balance?

The only way greased lighting would work, was if it was a side effect of fists of wind and was a temporary buff only.

There's no need to even give another Greased Lightning stack. You can just nerf Riddle of Fire's damage boost and then get rid of the speed penalty. Even that would be enough. As long as Monks are not forced to sacrifice speed for that damage, it would be a massive improvement to the class. Greased Lightning 4 is meant to be a temporary buff like Riddle of Fire, not a permanent buff, so it would not really be an issue. The only problem would be that you need 3 stacks of Greased Lightning to activate it.

Tornado Kick is not an issue since its already a skill that's not even used. It's even more situational than Riddle of Earth and sucks because of it. If it only had a cooldown and no Greased Lightning requirement, it might actually be useful. But, there's no situation in which you want to give up those stacks unless you've been counting a boss rotation.

Another solution is simply to extend Greased Lightning's duration like they did with a lot of other classes and their skills. Simply boost it from the 15 or so seconds to 20 and it would already be an improvement. Have Riddle of Earth reset your Greased Lightning timer immediately upon use rather than needing to take a hit (again it would be far easier to just increase Greased Lightning duration overall).

The problem with Monk is that it has not really gotten a lot of useful skills since ARR. Many other classes received powerful buffs in Stormblood that extended their original skills. The only useful skill Monk has gotten for their rotation across both expansions is Elixir Field. One skill in two expansions. Why do I say Elixir Field is the only useful skill? Form Shift is great for starting a fight, but that's it. However, Perfect Balance is even better. Purification was always inferior to Invigorate. Tornado Kick is impractical because it erases your Greased Lightning stacks. Riddle of Fire requires you to be at Greased Lightning 3 to offset the speed penalty and still feels terrible to use. Forbidden Chakra is too luck dependent, even with the level 62 passive to use. Brotherhood usually gives you enough for a Forbidden Chakra, but it is still unpredictable.

I see this on OF a lot but it doesn't make much sense. First of all, most bosses are anti-monk in design. Example: with good timing and proper use of RoE you can maintain GL3 in o4s first phase during decisive battle - if Exdeath casts Bliz or Fire at the end. If he casts Thun and spawns not on top of you, you can't. now imagine you would loose 30% damage (or more, depends on GL4 buff) and it would take min. 10 GCDs to get it back. No, thank you. GL4 would actually not speed you up but forced you to +/- 25 seconds of superslow in many cases.

Another think is the constant complains about RoF slowing you down. If you time RoF with Brotherhood, which you should, you will get extra TFCs you have to weave in between GCDs. But you also have oGCDs you need to use. Meaning you need recast that allows 2 CD uses or else you would have to push back either CDs or TFC, resulting in dmg loss in the long run, since you are in RoF 2/9 of the encounter. What would be actually better is another oGCD to use or changes to chakra charging.

Removing slowdown from RoF would mean either potency nerfs to basic attacks or dmg up reduction from RoF. I don't see it as a way to go either. What makes our sweet sweet numbers right now is exactly the 30% dmg up. Just look at random logs - RoF with other players' buffs almost doubles our damage. And what would happen with TFC? Right now it's a brute in RoF and a meh otherwise. Without changing potency it would be always meh.

After changing RoF what would be left? A job, that's: 1) punished by 30% for dropping GL which sometimes happens no matter what, 2) punished by 30% for missing positionals which sometimes happens no matter what, 3) without burst phase to catch up if 1 and/or 2 happens. 4) the only one with mantra that's useless once everyone gathers a few ilvls on gear. Why would ANYONE take MNK instead of SAM then?

I've been playing monk for 3+ years now, raiding as monk since second coil. I did what Yoshi said (try it in savage and see) and it works good. There are ofc problems with the class but RoF nor GL4 ain't one. That we are dependant on RNG*RNG + party comp + party RNG: now that's something that doesn't make sense!!!

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Originally Posted by Yneko

I see this on OF a lot but it doesn't make much sense. First of all, most bosses are anti-monk in design. Example: with good timing and proper use of RoE you can maintain GL3 in o4s first phase during decisive battle - if Exdeath casts Bliz or Fire at the end. If he casts Thun and spawns not on top of you, you can't. now imagine you would loose 30% damage (or more, depends on GL4 buff) and it would take min. 10 GCDs to get it back. No, thank you. GL4 would actually not speed you up but forced you to +/- 25 seconds of superslow in many cases.

I've been playing monk for 3+ years now, raiding as monk since second coil. I did what Yoshi said (try it in savage and see) and it works good. There are ofc problems with the class but RoF nor GL4 ain't one. That we are dependant on RNG*RNG + party comp + party RNG: now that's something that doesn't make sense!!!

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Again, if GL4 is turned into a buff, then it would not be an issue. It would essentially turn Riddle of Fire into a skill that temporarily boosts damage and skill speed. It would literally be a skill that now reads, "Increases damage dealt by 10% and reduces weapon cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay by 5% for x seconds." In other words, just activating the skill would give you Greased Lightning 4. You wouldn't even need to use your rotations to build up to it. Just activate the skill and its there.

Removing slowdown from Riddle of Fire does not mean you need a potency nerf to basic attacks. The idea is that by lowering damage from Riddle of Fire and increasing the skill speed back to normal levels, the damage remains the same. There is a net loss of 0 in this case assuming it is balanced properly. You could also undo the nerf on The Forbidden Chakra to balance it out. Remember when it was about 30% stronger in Heavensward?

The problem I have is that Riddle of Fire feels more like a tank skill rather than a Monk skill. Lore wise, Riddle of Fire goes completely against the basic concept of a Monk, which is to go fast and hard. Riddle of Fire completely sacrifices the speed aspect of the character and just doesn't fit the class as a whole. To me, Riddle of Fire is more like a Warrior skill, specifically one that will temporarily allow them to do normal damage while in a tank stance. The skill itself doesn't feel like a Monk skill at all and that is the biggest problem with Riddle of Fire.

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

The idea is that by lowering damage from Riddle of Fire and increasing the skill speed back to normal levels, the damage remains the same.

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That's hard to tell for sure. Keep in mind that RoF synergizes well with brotherhood, especially in the opener when you can get 3-4 forbidden chakras with a favourable party composition. The increased weaponskill recast time is there mainly because of brotherhood and the high number of oGCD abilities you have to use every other RoF+Brotherhood window. This is very obvious in a fully physical party composition.

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Originally Posted by Ariomi

Believe it or not. Having the core gameplay of the class stay the same is a good thing..

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You see thats my exact problem, the core identity and gameplay HAS been changed. I'm not so much concerned that the class didn't get faster, I wasn't hoping for anything beyond a temporary GL4 anyway, what I am complaining about is making the job slower; thats 2 completely different things.

And for me that is what Monk, at its core, is and should be; hit fast but for lower numbers and rely heavily on positionals. Sure RoF is not the end of the world but it goes completely against what the job is at its core.

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Originally Posted by Yneko

I see this on OF a lot but it doesn't make much sense. First of all, most bosses are anti-monk in design. Example: with good timing and proper use of RoE you can maintain GL3 in o4s first phase during decisive battle - if Exdeath casts Bliz or Fire at the end. If he casts Thun and spawns not on top of you, you can't.

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Yes, you can. You use ROE on the stack damage, not the knockback (saves a few seconds of GL time). You pop sprint so you have time to get to the boss if he doesn't spawn near you, can hit it once and still move out before thunder goes off. Or wait for thunder, run in and hit it and keep GL3 since you used ROE on the stack damage and not the knockback. Also, ROE is not needed to maintain GL3 in O1S-O3S or on Neo (can just TK before GCO, PB is up). Its another "usually useless" skill they threw on MNK and forgot about.

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Originally Posted by Xeinon

You see thats my exact problem, the core identity and gameplay HAS been changed.

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Not really. For the core identity to have changed, the class would have to be much more different. For example, Summoner spends very little time applying dots now. They got rid of Bio 1 and Shadowflare is an Ogcd, Dot's take a maximum of 2.5 seconds to apply, and Tri Disaster applies them anyway.

The core gameplay of Monk, has not changed. You still bootshine, twin snakes, snap punch. The only thing that "Changed" is you got a buff that was stylized in a way you don't like. The class is more or less completely the same if you choose not to use riddle of fire.

I've posted before about Monk improvements (in playability/fun, not DPS numbers), so I won't mention that again. Today I'll say SE was way off the mark on Monk this expansion if the idea was to decrease the output skill gap between players. With Monk Riddle of Fire + potency nerfs to skills in the rotation the complete opposite is true. I've been playing Monk since HW and when I screw up a bit my rotation suffered far less back then than it does now and here's why:

1) The basic opener is harder to execute. With RoF's slowdown and massive buff increase (more than B4B), the penalty when messing up an optimal opener is heavy. The slowdown (at current normal looking skill speed) causes a very close call on the first GL3 refresh after Perfect Balance wears off. If that refresh is missed (one of your GCD's didn't go off right letting you progress to the next stance, you are very likely to miss it, dropping GL3 right in your burst opener with more than 10 seconds left on Riddle of Fire (and you're currently being slowed down by it so you won't get to GL3 soon).

2) Sustained DPS come from the windows of RoF instead of your basic rotation. Before you could B4B and IR sub-optimally before and not wreck your DPS as hard as it hits you now. Not Riddle of Fire - you better get good mileage under it or you'll be losing out.

The only thing theoretically easier about SB Monk is the complete lack of needing to worry about TP outside of sustained AoE scenarios.

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Originally Posted by Ariomi

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it had changed, on arr and hw monk had 2 dots, 3 if we count fracture, now we have one, what this means? we do not have to watch the debuffs since is all muscle memory, and by doing so, our rotation becomes 100% static, you know when your buffs and debuffs falls down, and when you need to renew them again whit no need of watch the timers, and positionals? same, muscle memory, after a while you know where you need to hit each skill, so the only enjoable thing we have now is... speed? nope, again, it is robbed to us thanks to riddle of fire, basically monk it is boring because we got robbed of stuff what made the job interesting, and sb skills do not help whit that

and let's not exclude the fact what the dev team said about removing useless skills, yet monk got almost nothing of that, we still keep the useless skills meanwhile they removed the ones what made the job more interesting and fun