MNK Feedback (long)

Some spitball ideas for RoE, RoF, and a new RoW that I feel would better fit the Monk aesthetic and offer deeper gameplay:

Background Changes:

• The level 66 trait, Tackle Mastery, has been replaced with a new ability, Riddle of Wind.
• Riddle of Wind, Fire, and Earth now share a slot, seen in the Actions & Trait menu as Riddle of the Elements, by default, adapting to your current Fists.
• Riddle of Wind, Riddle of Fire, and Riddle of Earth may still be assigned separately in order to force their change in stance.
• Riddle of Wind, Riddle of Fire, and Riddle of Earth now persist for 3 seconds after leaving their related stance.
• The animation durations for Fists of Wind, Fists of Earth, and Fists of Fire have been greatly reduced.
• The recast times for Fists of Wind, Fists of Earth, and Fists of Fire have been reduced to 1.5 seconds.
• The recast time of Meditation now scales with Attack Speed.
• The recast time of Tornado Kick now scales with Attack Speed.
• The recast time of Purification has been reduced to 30 seconds.
• The recast time of Perfect Balance has been reduced to 120 seconds.

Fist of Wind, Earth, and Fire have been revised substantially.

• Fists of Wind now increases movement speed by 15%, attack speed by 5%, and reduces recast times of damaging abilities by 10%.
• Fists of Fire now increases damage by 5%, critical strike chance by 5%, and critical strike bonus by 5%.
• Fists of Earth now decreases damage taken by 10%, reduces the rate at which positive status effects fade by 33%, and increases the rate at which negative status effects fade by 33%. (These effects do not snapshot.)

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Riddle of Earth: Duration - 20 seconds. Activates Fists of Earth. Refreshes Greased Lightning. Causes your damage-increasing effects to enhance the effectiveness of Fists of Earth. (In other words, with Twin Snakes and Greased Lightning III active you gain 50% mitigation and your refreshed Greased Lightning may last up to 27.7 seconds, Twin Snakes, Dragon Kick, and Internal Release may last up to 26 seconds, and status effects against you to fade 73.3% faster. This effect does not snapshot.)

The Breaker's Resolve: Instant. 5 yalm range. Returns the damage absorbed by Fists of Earth over the course of Riddle of Earth upon your target. Damage to be dealt will not exceed half of your maximum HP. Consumes Riddle of Earth.

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The idea here is simple. You get a better Fists of Earth (see above), which itself has synergy with other aspects of gameplay. And then you get to punch people with it.

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Riddle of Fire: Duration - 20 seconds. Activates Fists of Fire. Refreshes Greased Lightning. Causes all attacks to deal an additional 15% of their damage as a periodic effect, Fury of Fire, over 6 seconds. All attacks against an affected target consume the entirety of this periodic effect for bonus damage, with which to create further periodic damage. Auto-attacks and other sources of periodic damage augment Fury of Fire by 15% of their damage without consuming the effect.
Additional Effect: Changes to Crimson Lotus upon activation.

Crimson Lotus: Instant. 2-GCD recast time. 5 yalm range. Detonates any Fury of Fire effect on the target for 115% of its damage to the target and all enemies within 5 yalms thereof. Does not generate Fury of Fire.

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The idea behind this is ramping and gambling. The more high-damage hits you can chain together, the more that 15% damage bonus ramps up. You'd generally want to go ahead and blow it, though, via Crimson Lotus before a rotationally low-damage hit (e.g. Demolish).

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Riddle of Wind: Duration - 20 seconds. Activates Fists of Wind. Refreshes Greased Lightning. For every 5 relative potency of damage dealt, you generate a count of Windform. Windform: Your next ability of potency equal to or less than your Windform will be ready to recast 50% more quickly and will consume no resources. Potencies higher than Windform will have a chance to generate this effect proportionate to the difference. Abilities with potencies lower than your Windform will be ready to recast proportionately sooner. Each ability consumes Windform equal to half its potency.

Double of Wind: Instant. 2-GCD recast. 5 yalm range. Duplicates your last weaponskill dealt as an ability for half its potency.

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This is the trickiest of the three, probably involving the most risk, and quite likely the most reward. At best, (at 330 Windform generated) it can even guarantee that Tornado Kick may be used without consuming GL3. The trick here is that attacks which consume Windform still contribute to Windform, and there's a good 50+% difference between relative potency and base potency. For instance, let's say you take advantage of the 3 seconds of lingering time on Riddle of Fire after changing to Fists of Wind (so, both Riddles up simultaneously) to Tornado Kick into a Snap Punch into Perfect Balance to recover that GL3. That's 594 relative potency already, multiplied if Critical, giving ~120 Windform, meaning that you can already blow a Shoulder Tackle for a 36% recast time (.5 * (100/120)*.9 from Fists of Wind) which itself can generate 30 more Windform at the cost of 50, made nearly free by any given weaponskill. As you become more able to afford higher potency oGCDs, you can start throwing in stronger and stronger abilities for free, or save up for a free Tornado Kick, etc. *Yeah... still working on this one.

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Originally Posted by Xau

personally i wish what they make elixir field use chakra stacks...

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I agree that having an AoE ability that spends chakra would be nice, it feels like something MNK is lacking. However I don't know if changing Elixir Field would be the way to do this. Firstly because it would subtract an ability from MNK's already simplistic single-target rotation. And secondly I think people would react badly to the change, if Elixir Field suddenly had a cost when it used to be free. So ideally an AoE chakra-spender would be a new action. Tornado Kick could potentially fill this role since it's largely unused at the moment, most people would welcome a change which makes it more usable.

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Originally Posted by Gravton

I've said it before but they need to switch monk damage to piercing. Slashing debuff helps 5 jobs, Piercing helps 4 (rdm I guess), blunt helps mnk and mele casters I guess. At least if mnk had piercing they would be part of the conversation. "Do we run nin/sam or drg/mnk?" Mnk should be the Sam of piercing comps. At the very least, do something to boost caster comps.

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You know those debuffs don't stack, right? The only jobs the slashing debuff really helps are PLD and DRK, since all other slashing jobs have the debuff as part of their rotation. Adding the piercing debuff to MNK wouldn't really help anything. The only change is that groups could choose between taking either a MNK or a DRG to boost a BRD/MCH. This is admittedly an advantageous trait, but it's not really what I'm talking about. Again, I'm not particularly concerned with MNK's power, or its utility, or its position in groups, or how useful the raiding community thinks it is. Balance is ephemeral. I just want the job to be more fun to play.

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Originally Posted by Zohnax

MNK's core design probably hasn't been touched since ARR launch because it is so solid and doesn't need adjustments. etc

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I have a hard time believing the Tornado Kick is worth using rotationally due to Riddle of Fire. Examining the play of top level monks, none of them use it in this way and continue to use it the way it has always been used, to dump stacks before a phase transition or right at the end of a fight. Were this true however, I still feel as though it wouldn't improve MNK gameplay much since you'd then be stuck building back up to GL3. That's kind of the reason they nerfed Tornado Kick before Heavensward released, it was a DPS gain to use it rotationally when they didn't want it to be.

As for Riddle of Fire, the fact that I occasionally miss an ability is not the reason why I don't like it, merely something annoying that occurs as a result of using it. Most of the time I never miss skills. The reason I don't like it is because it feels bad, and it goes against what I think the MNK job is (or should be) about: Fast, flowing combos.

For 68 levels, the feeling and importance of Greased Lightning is drilled into you, and then suddenly you are given an ability which effectively takes that away, but you still have to use it because it's a damage boost. It's like if you gave NIN a stance which greatly boosted their damage but prevented them from using Ninjutsus. It makes you more powerful, but goes against the "unique experience" of the job, something the devs seem to be interested in preserving. I suspect that Riddle of Fire was implemented the way it was not because of any careful consideration of MNKs rotation or their ability to weave oGCDs (which they could already do), but because they needed a damage buff to replace Blood for Blood and wanted to give it some kind of "extra" effect so it's not boring as hell like say, Raging Strikes. Well, they at least succeeded at that much. Riddle of Fire isn't boring, but only in the same way that stubbing your toe isn't boring.

And as for MNK's oGCDs, more buttons does not equate to better design. Having a bunch of oGCD attacks that you mash as soon as they become available might make the job "active", but it doesn't make it interesting or fun. In fact most jobs got changes which reflect this idea, downplaying the importance of simple oGCD attacks in favour of more abilities which interact with the job's core rotation and resources. I don't feel that MNK is going too slow, although it can feel a bit slow during RoF sometimes, but rather it's the disruption to the job's combo rhythm that is annoying.

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Originally Posted by HoLoFoNo

Well here's the issue: MNK is performing very well and play style is objective. I like current MNK. I agree they have some issues with useless abilities but other than that the core mechanic (to do damage) is good with MNK. So regardless of what you say I don't see them changing it much for now.

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Sadly I think you're right. While MNK definitely has room for improvements, it is unlikely they will happen during the middle of an expansion's patch cycle. As long as the job is "balanced", there is little incentive for the dev team to try and improve on its gameplay when there are so many other things they could be addressing. Unfortunately, I do not expect to see any real changes until 5.0, however long that is away. But I can at least make my thoughts known and potentially influence those future changes. Nothing can change if nothing is said.

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Originally Posted by HoLoFoNo

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I mean i triiiied not to bring up LoTD but your points are valid. Drg gets royally screwed and i dont think anyone debates that. As soon as the devs get their head out the clouds though regarding losing botd = losing eyes and change it. I am certain they will... i hope. Then monk will be back to being the most screwed dps. Because buffs are multiplicative a monk getting messed up in susano gaol (for example) is not just the loss on potency of positionals it is also the straight up loss from GL3 which is the real killer. Gl3, DK, TwS and FoF equal around x1.6 iirc.

Either way im sorta going off topic and comparing mnk to drg when my real post was to compare to similar dps but the harsh realities revolving around it\\'s strict timers whereas sam and nin in particular have very long timers and do not suffer. Drg is worse off than mnk for now i wont dispute that. Imo Sam is like rdm. Easy to do what it does and isnt punished for bad gameplay as much as other jobs. And i think that\\'s where a lot of this balance is scewed a lot.

On a dummy and dummy like fights monk is completely fine in terms of dps. But it doesnt mean it\\'s design isnt flawed. It has a lot of issues that make it less rewarding because of rng. Gimmicky job actions and traits that want you to use different fists but ultimately they are lackluster.

RoE is okay at best right now it has uses but it feels weird to use for 2s only to go back into fire right after. Why does it even need a second affect. RoE can sometimes not even proc on a crit adlo and it is painful that the one thing it was meant to do just didnt work.

I could honestly go on but the OP has summed it all up nicely monk has issues and most of it comes down to useless buttons or conflicting job actions and aesthetics. The fact that GL4 was an idea and they turned it down to have RoF is really painful to think about

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Originally Posted by PangTong

I agree that having an AoE ability that spends chakra would be nice, it feels like something MNK is lacking. However I don't know if changing Elixir Field would be the way to do this. Firstly because it would subtract an ability from MNK's already simplistic single-target rotation. And secondly I think people would react badly to the change, if Elixir Field suddenly had a cost when it used to be free. So ideally an AoE chakra-spender would be a new action. Tornado Kick could potentially fill this role since it's largely unused at the moment, most people would welcome a change which makes it more usable.

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said elixir field because people obtains it after meditation, and if they change either the percentage of chakra generation trough crits, change the way chakra generates from deep meditation trait(to make it less unpredictable and rng dependant), or change the way we get chakra stacks from brotherhood(like make spells give chakra stacks too) could make this a better idea as well(the idea of make elixir field use chakra stacks), and at this point, i don't tink SE could try to make a new animation for a new aoe for monk, instead they could just change it to cost chakra and change some potencies here and there to balance the lack of a ogcd aoe, also, maibe could be a bit unpopular, and regardless we do not have that many ogcd anyway to make a big complaint, because at the very least monks could have something to do on mass pulls(since every tank/healer i meet on df loves them) rather than the tipical run out of tp because arm of the destroyer/do single targets until you can use rockbreaker


and as you can guess, what makes me suggest this is what tanks/healers loves mass pulls to death(i hate them as monk for obvious reasons), in that situations i am rather useless because either more sooner than later i run out of tp because of arm of the destroyer while doing a crappy aoe dmg(especially if the other dps don't do aoes), or i hardly affect the total aoe dmg because i am using 2 single target attacks to do after a aoe, and there is the problem what rockbreaker is a cone aoe, if the pull is to massive(like after the first boss of ala mhigo, pull all the dogs and what is after), i can't hit all the targets, a dps what can't aoe properly is a dead weight to clear something fast, yes, the dev team could just buff aotd, but i prefer they use chakra for this since it gives more depth to chakra usage, rather than the now chakra is always used on tfc whit the odd time where you need to use purification for tp on heavy aoe situations

the only other way what i can tink to make monk feels less uselsss on aoe situations is what the dev team makes a punishment for mass pulling(like if you pull 3 packs of enemies the party gets a rather strong def down debuff), and i believe this could be far more unpopular

You use Arm of the Destroyer??? Did it get a potency bump?

Arm of the Destroyer is ok to use if there are 5+ enemies.