Monk rework thoughts

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Does anyone else find it odd that the community can come up with such in depth analysis of the job, with insightful reworks (usually just as one person), but an entire companies worth of employees cant seem to even do anything meaningful with the jobs abilities or additions?

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When thinking about MNK, this is something that eventually comes across my mind. And I think I can only describe how SE treats it as two things:
1. They're too married to how monk is now and are too stubborn to change it.
2. They genuinely don't know what to do with the job for whatever reason, despite having years of feedback to work off of and quite literally endless amounts of inspiration to design a fist fighting job, especially from their own games.

I lied, there's a third reason being that they don't care. But I really don't want to believe that.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

When thinking about MNK, this is something that eventually comes across my mind. And I think I can only describe how SE treats it as two things:
1. They're too married to how monk is now and are too stubborn to change it.
2. They genuinely don't know what to do with the job for whatever reason, despite having years of feedback to work off of and quite literally endless amounts of inspiration to design a fist fighting job, especially from their own games.

I lied, there's a third reason being that they don't care. But I really don't want to believe that.

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4. What one person or one small group of people like, doesn't mean everyone at large will like.
5. Text design doesn't often translate to game-feel.
6. It's very bad precedent to source your changes from specific users.

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Originally Posted by hballamco

Hey Shurrikhan, that's true, I don't think someone would trade FoW current bonus for SkS interruption. So, I'm thinking of adding 5% crit. hit bonus to FoW instead of haste. What do you think? As for Blaze and Tornado kicks, my concept is to give a player the feel of challenge that might affect his/her sub-stats build instead of pure potency ability although I do think there is something better to do with them. I think Fissure Kick would be extremely powerful if you think about raid-wide AoEs (E5s > Judgment Volts, E6s > Infernal Howl, E7s > Empty Wave, etc.). Thus, a player would technically plan to switch to FoE just before an AoE and cast Fissure Kick then switch back to whatever he likes or maybe stay. For SSS, my brain was squeezed too much to come up with this result XD any suggestions?

Thanks a lot.

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Using Crit is far worse than Haste, for two reasons:

1. It only adds 40-60% bonus damage relative to the percent revealed, as compared to ~84-93%.
2. Its value varies with crit chance buffs present.

Even if you had balanced it, though, it'd be worthless: you'd merely be applying Damage in Fire or Effectively Just Damage in Wind.

The whole point of stances is generally capacity variance that permit gameplay changes. Haste provides that through alternative rotations and Chakra banking. Earth can provide that by increasing how late and/or minimally one can move out of proximity-based AoEs. Fire, depending on tuning, would be the main stay from which you generally swap to Wind for about 40% of the time one Demolish string, and 60% the next string except where abilities are ready to be spent within the stances' shared cooldown. That's not to say that each of those capacities, and therefore opportunities, haven't been continually lackluster thus far, but there is at least an obvious concept to them that can be expanded upon. But if they're not going to amount to either gameplay or newfound unique capacities there's no point in designing a stance system at all.

My issue with your Tornado and Blaze kicks, besides their being identical and thus Tornado Kick is relative garbage for lack of a damage modifier, is that they again force Monk towards Crit. Wasn't the whole point of the Chakra change to eliminate that?

I'd offer some suggestions, but for now there's too little here to get a clear picture of the design direction you specifically want to go for, leaving any potential suggestions... haphazard/arbitrary.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Does anyone else find it odd that the community can come up with such in depth analysis of the job, with insightful reworks (usually just as one person), but an entire companies worth of employees cant seem to even do anything meaningful with the jobs abilities or additions?

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To be fair, as soon as we get a truly in depth analysis or suggestion list, it's avoided like plague-gerbils.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd offer some suggestions, but for now there's too little here to get a clear picture of the design direction you specifically want to go for, leaving any potential suggestions... haphazard/arbitrary.

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Now I see your point. Based on your feedback, it would be logical to give FoF the priority over the other two while letting the secondary Fists shine at certain circumstances. FoE in my opinion, is good so far. FoW on the other hand, need to be valuable at some point which I'm not sure how to achieve that.

However, there is an idea which I'm fond of that came across my mind when thinking of a bonus to the FoW instead of the current haste or critical hit bonuses that could attract the player to activate it:

-This bonus requires a trait. I will call it "Like the Wind." Like the Wind: while moving, build stacks up to 100 (2 stacks per 1y).
It activates during combat regardless of the current Fists. While FoW is active, spend 10 stacks of "Like the Wind" to increase next GCD potency by 20 (meaning that 10 GCDs will get the bonus if stacks are at 100). That is in addition to the increase of the movement speed ofc. Hence, the player may stay in FoF while "Like the Wind" is building. Once stacks reaches 100, the player can change for the extra damage and then back to FoF.

As for the design, that is indeed a good question. I will state my logic as follows:

1-Fists, currently, has lost identity in my opinion (I have not used FoE since I learned FoF, and that is a total waste). I believe they are the core of the MNK's job and what shapes it. So far, FoF is the primary choice which is great yet I would like to see the other two stand as well and give some valuable gifts during different encounters.

2-In addition to let the Fists stand, giving each of them a unique Kick ability would make different aspects of the job blend nicely. (current Tornado Kick is a sub ability for sure which is not supposed to be as a level 60 ability) However and as you know, I'm still thinking of refining the Kicks potency bonuses.

3-Forms are also another signature of the MNK, yet one of them is nothing but a name. (hello raptor) So I decided to implement the chakra opening once a GCD with raptor form gets executed.

4-Chakras generation are currently chaotic. I do sometime use Boot Shine while The Forbidden Chakra is available which popped up just at the moment I pressed Boot Shine thus wasting a chance of opening a chakra. For that, I decided to remove the RNGs and added the chakra opening to the raptor GCDs.

5-Mantra, in my opinion, is less flashy or I should say simple. So I added some spices based on the activated Fists (another blending stuff) while decreasing the healing percentage.

6-GL stacks are now much obvious to control, whether to build or maintain them.

Thanks for your reply. (btw, the quote is short because of character limitation)

I feel like FoF, FoW and FoE should become temporary buffs that interact with MP like they used to in 1.2. I don't like how melee have a resource that isn't interacted with it at all, especially when lore-wise we are using our aether in some fashion on every job.

• FoF could increase DPS by a % while draining 50% of your MP.
• FoE could ignore positionals and increase chakra gain rate while draining 50% of your MP.
• FoW could refresh Greased Lightning with the 4th stack, increase movement speed, and recover MP (either 100% over the duration, or 50% and separately allow MP to recover by 10% every time a chakra is opened).

Give each of them an equal duration and 3x recast so you have one up at all times. This could give MNK the feeling of fast mode and strong mode by losing that 4th stack of GL for a period of time. I liked the concept of that in SB but negating GL completely just felt slow and bad, gaining and losing 1 stack feels like a good compromise.

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Originally Posted by hballamco

However, there is an idea which I'm fond of that came across my mind when thinking of a bonus to the FoW instead of the current haste or critical hit bonuses that could attract the player to activate it:

-This bonus requires a trait. I will call it "Like the Wind." Like the Wind: while moving, build stacks up to 100 (2 stacks per 1y).
It activates during combat regardless of the current Fists. While FoW is active, spend 10 stacks of "Like the Wind" to increase next GCD potency by 20 (meaning that 10 GCDs will get the bonus if stacks are at 100). That is in addition to the increase of the movement speed ofc. Hence, the player may stay in FoF while "Like the Wind" is building. Once stacks reaches 100, the player can change for the extra damage and then back to FoF.

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Sorry, I won't be able to respond to everything right now; I may do more on edit later.

One could argue that in such a case there is little point in having an FoF, and that we should instead instead add a compromise component to FoW/FoE or have them consume gauge while FoF be just... no stance at all. Of course, we could say the same for the present situation. Nonetheless, I'm glad you're considering them in new ways.

You can kind of consider what you're moving towards as what's called "back-loaded" or "back-end(ed)" effect, whereas immediate Damage and Mitigation bonuses would be called "fully dynamic", and Haste "to-GCD dynamic". (For comparison, the current FoW, in the form of GL4, is a "to-GCD dynamic" effect with "windowed/limited access" since one can only enter it on a Coeurl skill.)

You could, for instance, go entirely back-ended, generating something over time, from attacks dealt, potency dealt, relative potency dealt, or any combination thereof, such as by having Fire generate Attack Power (affects all sources of potency, including even Second Wind), Wind generate Skill Speed (AAs, GCDs, and DoTs a bit further), and Earth generate (Magic) Defense, each of which fades over time. The problem is two-fold: (1) an back-ended Defense buff is going to feel useless or entrapping until one has a fight fully memorized AND somehow needs the added mitigation AND can get more out of sacrificing damage during the time prior to proximity AoE than by moving that little bit further away (unless of course there's a damage component to FoE as well), and (2) it's just far less intuitive and harder to track.

A logical alternative, then, would be to build something generalistic, and then have them spend from that same resource pool for their (additional) effects. In that way there's no sense of entrapment. Swapping to FoE before a big hit will consume just enough resource to keep you alive -- no more, no less -- while FoF may consume resource based on potency dealt (its damage bonus refunding an increasing part of that resource cost as not to make its value even across all GCDs), FoW per strike, etc.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

I feel like FoF, FoW and FoE should become temporary buffs that interact with MP like they used to in 1.2. I don't like how melee have a resource that isn't interacted with it at all, especially when lore-wise we are using our aether in some fashion on every job.

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This is another way to go, and my personal preference if ever we returned all jobs to using MP in some way. I despise wasted UI components, so I'd like to see that shift regardless.

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

Does anyone else find it odd that the community can come up with such in depth analysis of the job, with insightful reworks (usually just as one person), but an entire companies worth of employees cant seem to even do anything meaningful with the jobs abilities or additions?

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That is probably because the vision of classes between the players and the dev's do not often match up. Due to that difference what we the players find interesting, viable, fun, and engaging differ greatly it makes class balance a pain.

I have made a change to the chakra system. When a player gets all chakra stacks, increase critical hit and direct hit rates by 5% (might be better to make it 10% but I'll see what you guys think). Now, you won't have to worry about exceeding chakra stacks as keeping them would give you the mentioned reward.

But now you just weigh the damage. Would a 5% increase to crit and direct hit give more damage on average than using a Forbidden Chakra. My head says yes (without doing calccs) which would mean Forbidden Chakra is completely useless to use and is a damage loss, just like current Tornado Kick.

That change also does not address the issue of overcapping on Chakra. So to put it bluntly, it's a change that has had no thought put into it.

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Originally Posted by hballamco

I have made a change to the chakra system. When a player gets all chakra stacks, increase critical hit and direct hit rates by 5% (might be better to make it 10% but I'll see what you guys think). Now, you won't have to worry about exceeding chakra stacks as keeping them would give you the mentioned reward.

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This is unnecessary. As long as you generally can't randomly proc another Chakra within the same or immediately following GCD, there's no need for an 'at cap' buff. Moreover, while I tend to like resource priorities, any that potentially reduce APM without being attached to a far broader, cohesive mechanic are far less desirable.