There are flaws in Monk's TK design

I personally see room for improvement for the level 60 monk skill, Tornado kick. I understand the philosophy behind it's design where the design time wanted us to utilize our GL3 stacks to deliver a all-out attack between boss phases such as using TK during Ravana's liberation right before it disappears, etc. And to be honest I have absolutely no issues with that.

But as it stands right now it doesn't have a steady niche as a level 60 skill. As much as it sounds good on paper, there are issues with it. Mainly because of the difficulty in maximizing it's usage in certain boss fights. More noticeably in the new raids, namely on Faust from Alexander Savage and pretty much every floor of Alexander normal because of their "unpredictable" phase switching and the "survival-mode" mechanics introduced into the new raids.

Alexander floor 1
Glaring issue during the boss phases when the 2 oppressors jump into the air to do their area-wide attack. Unlike bosses like Ravana where they show a cast-bar right before it does it's attacks so you know when it's going to phase-change, the oppressors just jump. Without extensive research and note-jotting it's difficult to time a perfect Tornado kick before it jumps to properly utilize TK.

Alexander floor 2
Issue is in the fact that it's pretty much a "survival-mode"-like stage where you just have to do DPS hard and attack the right targets. Which makes TK completely useless here as you are constantly trying to keep up GL3 and it makes no sense to want to drop your GL3 for any reason at all.

Alexander floor 3
Similar to A1 except that the issue is much more obvious here. Mainly during it's several phase changes which is near impossible to time properly. At times it phase changes to the hand at about 85% HP, at times it's 81% HP. The same can be said for the the hand>Tornado hand phase where the change can range for a wide variety of HP % numbers.

Alexander floor 4
Noticeably during the first leg phase and the annoying "disappearance act" mechanics. There are several openings during phases that can allow TK to further increase DPS such as the part where the Manipulator becomes available to be attacked for a short while before it does it's aoe attack when you destroy the first leg. Similar to the previous floors, the boss doesn't display a cast-bar before it does it's attack which makes it untargetable. So you have to roughly gauge the timing to use TK which can range from 85%-80% HP which is a pretty wide range. If you were to execute it at 85% HP, you will do much lower DPS for the remaining 5% or less on the Manipulator as you will have lost all your GL3 stacks overall affecting your DPS. The mechanic where the Manipulator throws you and a tank into another room with an add can affect your overall DPS as well since it causes your to pretty much lose all your GL3 stacks most of the time. It wouldn't be that bad if you know that you are going to be thrown into the room as you can TK the boss right before it throws you but sadly it doesn't.

Faust from Alexander Savage
Pretty much no usage from 100% HP until 1% HP. It also has a pretty long animation time before the damage number applies. In a clutch fight like Faust, the animation delay can either seal the deal or break it. Many times we got Faust to 1% HP where something like a lucky crit from TK might have allowed us to pass through but the animation delay and the fact that it is only effective when the boss is at about 1% HP is making the skill a pain to use.

Alot of the issues go against the design philosophy that the Yoshida mentioned. Yes, the design would have sounded good on paper, especially in boss fights like Ravana EX where you can time TK perfectly and utilize it to it's fullest. I guess another way to look at it is to blame the design team for not adding cast-bars to the boss skills. A good example of bosses where you can properly utilize TK are basically all the primals available. Titan, Irfit, Garuda, Ravana, Bismarck, etc. All of them have some sort of cast-bar for their phase-changing attacks which is what monks need to properly utilize TK at the right timing!

And also I do not think that the 5 examples mentioned above are the only ones, I believe there are more of them as well.

i mean if your tornado kick critting is the "make or break" on faust you have other problems

also, using it when a phase change is coming is fine, even if you can't predict when.. like you said, 85% or 81% - if the boss is castinf, wait till thay finishes. you also could just pop it at 85% and hope he phases.

in alex 4 its 15 seconds. not hard to time at all >.>

A1 normal timing is fine but savage is a pain in the ass, you either have to pay attention to the cleaves on the tank or count GCDs after the last laser. At least the boss doesn't go immune... even if there's no number visible it does hit.


But yeah Tornado kick is not a good skill. Potency is not impressive, the amount of memorizing/timing required makes it too much of a hassle (I personally don't find the fact that you're counting even remotely enjoyable), the cost of using it inefficiently is extremely high and they even decided to give it a f'ing cooldown.


Even if you use it perfectly in A1 savage it's still less than 1k potency over the 8 minute fight. If you go through the effort of using it perfectly (if you can finish a GCD afterwards you failed) you get maybe 7-8k damage. When your total damage is what, 450k?


Note that the A1S dps check isn't even that high and it's completely useless in A2S. It's barely worth figuring out how to use it while DPS checks are tight. As soon as we get geared up 3-4 weeks in it'll be a waste of time.


I pretend Elixer Field is our 60 skill. TK is pretty much trash compared to NIN/DRG 60 and will only be "useful" in gimmicky non-relevant fights like Ravana.

I do agree that the potency of the skills is low considering that it requires good timing to use it, too early and you will be doing a few GCD without GL3, too late and TK execute as the boss goes invulnerable.
All Alexander boss does not have cast time for their jump/change/invulnerable phase, we have to rely on timing it ourself either by seeing what animation it does, the amount of GCD we can use, sound affect before the jump, etc, this is easy to do in normal, but in savage things gets more hectic so it's really not easy to time.

Well if they going to have us lose all of GL3 stacks for TK, why not buff it with higher potency considering we can probably count with 1 hand how many times we can actually use TK in a fight.

in savage A1, you have room for approx 1 GCD after the tank cleave that follows the missiles hitting the ground, easy timing.

as for the normal modes your complaining about
A1: the boss will jump approx 1 GCD after the missiles hit the ground
A2: dont expect to use it in A2 since, well the skill isnt designed that way, we can keep GL3 100% of the time here.
A3: when in the hand phase the boss will disappear almost immediately after the tanks get 7 stacks of the blunt debuff
A4: the boss begins to shake when its about to become untarget-able.

boss HP isnt everything, there are many other telltale signs to look for

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Originally Posted by Zamii

A4: the boss begins to shake when its about to become untarget-able.

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In A4 it's still not worth using depending on where you are in your rotation because you can keep stacks. Whether you can keep stacks? Enjoy counting some more.



For that matter, imagine if we removed the GL3 cost. We would then have a 60s cooldown skill that could only be used under GL3 that does 330 potency. Would that even count as overpowered? At least we would use it.

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Originally Posted by Humorless

In A4 it's still not worth using depending on where you are in your rotation because you can keep stacks. Whether you can keep stacks? Enjoy counting some more.

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Yeah, if your last hit on the boss is a GL refresh then you have plenty of time if you form shift on the downtime. Even if your last move is an Opo move, if you shift to Coeurl and hit the next leg ASAP you can just about maintain it. If your last hit is Raptor though you're screwed. You'll be in Coeurl form already and have the least amount of time to refresh GL.

Generally I don't mind the skill, but in cases where you know there's a transition coming but have no reliable indication except maybe an estimate of how many GCDs you can fit in a certain window it's notoriously difficult to master.

I do agree with the OP that TK needs some love, but I have found 1 other use for it. I find that i can sometimes use it properly when I derp hard. For instance in A2 you should be able to keep it up full time, however it you are running to a mob and it get pulled away and you can't seem to hit it. If you notice the you GL timer is at like 1-3 seconds depending on what form you are in you can hit TK to help mitigate the loss.

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Originally Posted by Humorless

In A4 it's still not worth using depending on where you are in your rotation because you can keep stacks. Whether you can keep stacks? Enjoy counting some more.



For that matter, imagine if we removed the GL3 cost. We would then have a 60s cooldown skill that could only be used under GL3 that does 330 potency. Would that even count as overpowered? At least we would use it.

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i'll let you in on a little known fact, its a dps gain to use tornado kick and gather 5 stacks of chakra, than it is to maintain GL3 via form shift

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Originally Posted by Zamii

i'll let you in on a little known fact, its a dps gain to use tornado kick and gather 5 stacks of chakra, than it is to maintain GL3 via form shift

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Except sometimes Coeurl form drops off as well before invulnerability ends meaning you have to shift anyway.

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Originally Posted by Humorless

Except sometimes Coeurl form drops off as well before invulnerability ends meaning you have to shift anyway.

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you could be in opo-opo, it doesnt matter about your form

Potency-wise I definitely have no complaints. And TK is definitely not a "Make-it or Break-it" skill. The potency just isn't high enough to deserve such a role. WAR's Fell cleaves or BLM's Fire 4 are more deserving of such a title. Even with a good crit it does about 4k damage which isn't close to what a 7k Fell cleave or Fire 4 could do. So I do not expect to increase our DPS by 100 or something. I'm more concerned on it's usage and it's transition into rotations where timing is a big deal. Sure the potency isn't high but if you miss enough TK chances it will be a noticeable DPS loss.

I'm just saying that TK could see definitely see some improvements so that it is more fluid and fit into combos more naturally while the "timing" expect is still kept. I understand that guessing the right moment definitely involves some skill but I also believe that choosing the right timing to use TK should be less of a guessing game but more of a timing issue. For example imagine if bosses do not have projected aoe circles on the ground but instead just have small telltale signs before it attacks and you are supposed to guess where the aoe circles are.

TK is such a waste of a new skill at the moment, IMO...

Like you mentioned, it can be a pain to time it, and you don't use it very often, but it still does pretty tiny amount of damage actually... I guess they didn't want it to be a potency gain by using TK in the middle of your rotation, so they reduced the potency from 500 all the way down to 330...

It's pretty pathetic really. I haven't really done any testing, but even if you miss your timing on it, and don't get it off, in a longer fight, I doubt it makes a huge difference on your DPS. In A1 maybe, but the rest is just really bad for TK.

A1, good. Only floor where there is clear usage of it.
A2, useless.
A3, hard to use, and limited usage since you want to keep GL
A4, useless. You don't wanna use it ever(except right before killing him ofc), because it's much better to keep GL through that. That can be a real pain, and I keep being a millisecond too slow on Snap/Demo to keep it up, but for optimal DPS, you want to time it right.

This is all for Alex normal though, but it still shows some problems with the skill.

It's not the biggest problem with MNK though at the moment, the biggest problem is them making a skill like Meditation which is meant to be used on every downtime, but then have Form Shift too, which is more important, and in many cases overwrites the usage of Meditation. In fact, Meditation also have limited usage in Alex Normal, and not the highest potency either....

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Originally Posted by Craiger

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Definitely. It just feels like a waste of a skill due to it's really limited usage compared to some of the newer skills that the other jobs got which contributed a lot as a niche to their jobs such. It just feels like SE is purposely gimping monks and because of our DPS capabilities and just dumping us skills just for the sake of giving us skills rather than giving us a skill that synergize well with our rotations. Feels really lazy, it's like they are too lazy to tweak the job and balance it so they decide to just throw in skills that have very low usage and of small significance to DPS gain so that they can avoid any "Monk OP" complaints in future

Mnk has had no tweek since 2.1 besides the addition of the new skills. TK needs to be either crit from the rear or 500 pot. Med and form change are fine tbh.

We already have useless skills we never use such as Haymaker, One Ilm punch, Arm of the destroyer, Fist of wind, Featherfoot. We really don't need more skills that are rarely use. Apart from the basic rotation skills from ARR except for form shift and PB, we don't really see any changes to our rotation at all. Compared to the other jobs it's just 2 skills that we use in our rotation or more specifically in our openers.

I honestly appreciate the approach where rather than change the rotation of monks, SE decided to add more "behind the scenes" skills where you do preparation whenever the boss goes MIA for a phase change or when it returns from dive bombs, etc, etc. If you do not charge your Chakra during the boss down-time. Shame on you. But TK on the otherhand is used before the boss downtime and in that sense It makes the skill extremely difficult to use optimally for a skill with an arguable payoff with just 330 potency at the risk of ruining your DPS for another 5-10 seconds depending on how bad your timing was as you will be doing your rotations for the remaining of the time with just GL1 or GL2. Not to mention a 330 potency loss if you miss the timing.

I just hope to see TK have much more usage and be less punishing.