MNK - question about bonuses.

Hello,
I started to play as a MNK recently and i have a lot of issues with getting the bonuses from attacking the enemy either from the flank or the rear.
As far as it's pretty easy when the tank is holding something in certain direction, how am i supposed to get those bonuses when i play solo, doing quests and such, if the mob is always facing towards me?

Basically you can't. MNK is pretty crippled solo compared to how strong it is with a tank. It's not really a problem or anything, just means that soloing with MNK is slower than other DPS jobs. It's most annoying with beast tribe quests, but again, not actually problematic. You can stun and get a shot or two from the appropriate direction from time to time as well as when mobs ready a telegraphed attack, otherwise you just do lower than normal damage. Just don't try running around to get the direction bonuses. It won't work and will make you skip auto attacks (further lowering your damage output).

Uh, that is so bad to hear... Before i started to play this class, i thought that mechanic like this might be problematic, there are bosses, things where you cannot attack from certain sides, like how do you get Kraken's rear?
On top of that your DPS suffers a lot when you do things solo. I didn't play this class long enough, but it seems like huge DPS loss.
Btw, i found out now, that they did change the Dragon, who had similar mechanic. Well, if they changed it for Dragon, why is it left on the MNK?

The bosses like Levi and Kraken which you cannot reach the rear, have a 'special' target circle. What looks like you attacking from the front is actually their rear, so just attack from the front and it'll count as the rear.

MNK dps from the front can be pretty pitiful compared to others dps, but it should still be enough to down any solo mob without problems. But even if we have decent survivability we're not meant to be the ones having aggro.

I don't think I'm mistaking by saying that nowadays MNK is the only Job that purely rely on positioning, and despite the inconvenient I personally wouldn't want it any other way. It can difficult when starting up but muscle memory play a huge part in being a MNK and can easily become an automatism depending how much you play it.

To try to answer your last question, DRG positioning wasn't exactly like MNK. While MNK only gets a lower dps we still get our de/buff even in the wrong position, while DRG HAD to be in the correct side for it's de/buff to apply, which apparently was difficult to do for a lot of players. Now DRG only has 2 or 3 abilities where position gives a dps buff like MNK.

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Originally Posted by Ymal

The bosses like Levi and Kraken which you cannot reach the rear, have a 'special' target circle. What looks like you attacking from the front is actually their rear, so just attack from the front and it'll count as the rear.

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While your response is fine, and I have no real issues with you what you've said I must point out that the only time Leviathan cannot be attacked from the rear is during the first 20 seconds or so before he dives down the first time. Other than that you can most certainly attack from any position. Head having front/flank and the tail having flank/rear. The only two bosses currently in the game where you can't get all your positionals are Demon Wall and the Kraken in Sastasha HM.

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Originally Posted by Resine

Btw, i found out now, that they did change the Dragon, who had similar mechanic. Well, if they changed it for Dragon, why is it left on the MNK?

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Anyway in response to the initial question/concern. Solo content as monk isn't all that friendly, but it's not too terrible since it's so easy in the first place. In regard to the dragoon change, that change was to make their positionals work like monk positionals. Before the change if they used one of their positional abilities from the wrong position they could not continue continue to next move in one of their combos and did not get an extremely important buff from another move. Please be aware that other than Demon Wall and Kraken getting your postionals in party/raid content isn't so bad, and is normally not an issue.

Suckie when the tank keeps turning the boss all about too :p

Though, I always felt trying to go back and forth between rear and flank felt like a DPS loss too.

The positional requirements were the reason I chose for monk to not be my first class to 50. I started with pug and swapped to another class around lvl 25 because I did not like the thought having to quest with a monk all the way to 50.

Final verdict, it really is not a big problem, it just makes it annoying to level monk to 50 as your first max level class. i would recommend picking another one to quest with and then levelling up your monk afterwards with the 50% exp bonus

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

i would recommend picking another one to quest with and then levelling up your monk afterwards with the 50% exp bonus

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Coming from someone who did level Monk as their first level 50 class and has played other classes on other characters, it's not that big of a deal to where you would avoid monk until you leveled something else up to 50. As others have said, you're pretty unlikely to get your bonuses when solo unless you get a stun in or they charge up an aoe. Despite that, you do plenty enough damage to kill mobs on your own. It's made easier if your chocobo is healing you too, so you can keep up gl3 and take out mobs to mitigate the lost dps. You get a rhythm of sorts after awhile.

It is a little annoying that you can't get the best out of your skills until you have a tank, but again, I'd not go so far as saying it spoils solo content.

You can get the flank bonuses if you attempt to go for the rear. (It's how DRGs got Heavy Thrust on monsters while soloing, before the buffs)
AFAIK there's no way to hit the rear of a monster solo without stunning them though.

All the solo content dies super fast regardless.