Suggested Monk Changes

As a longstanding Monk player, I'd like to offer what I believe needs to be changed with the Job, and I welcome any constructive feedback or opinions.

Change #1: Fist of Fire
Monk stances have always had an imbalance problem, where Fist of Fire would be used most if not all of the time for the damage increase. Fist of Earth has seen incredibly niche use, almost exclusively during progression raiding (and levelling prior to receiving Fist of Fire), and Fist of Wind is absent from most players' hotbars. I propose that Fist of Fire be changed from a damage increase stance to something purely utility-oriented, but that may facilitate damage nonetheless. I am open to alternative suggestions, but for now: I suggest an increase to the monks' melee range, allowing them to attack from further away while Fist of Fire is active. This would allow monks to more easily attack a target whose hitbox is partially blocked off by a ground aoe of some description. I think every melee player can understand the struggle I'm referring to.

Change #2: Tackle Mastery
This is widely considered by the community to be a useless addition to the game, due in part to Fist of Fire currently being a damage increase and Fire Tackle having a potency boost. Along with the Fist of Fire change noted above, I offer the suggestion that Fire Tackle be changed in kind: instead of an increased potency, give it a different additional effect. Increased tackle range or dealing conal AOE damage on impact would be solid options. Again, open to suggestions from others.

Change #3: Riddles of Earth and Fire
I beat this horse to death in another thread so I'll keep this to the point:

-Riddle of Earth: change the additional effect of "extending greased lightning to max duration" to "grants a stack of Earth's Favour", this stack would allow the use of a single Tornado Kick without losing Greased Lightning. it still requires Earth's Reply to trigger, so it works best as a response to raid-wide damage or when a Monk must solo an add (think A7S and A12S) (flavour-wise the idea is that you remain grounded to the earth, so that the wild tornado kick doesn't cause you to lose your footing, and thus lose greased lightning)

-Riddle of Fire: remove attack speed penalty and lower damage increase to 20%. Lower duration to 15 seconds (to line up with Brotherhood). Lowers Forbidden Chakra recast to 1 second and causes all weaponskills during Riddle of Fire to grant Meditation stacks.

Change #4: Restore Monk Weaponskill Potencies to 3.X Values
The other 3 changes thus offered would undoubtedly result in relatively lower DPS for monks, so to offset this, I believe all Monk weaponskill potencies should be restored to their previous values.

Fist of Fire would still be the only one used, as it would provide more uptime than the other two.
Improving potencies back to 3.0 just basically puts Fist of Fire on everything.
Riddle of Fire's change is a net gain, fairly large, especially with pre-4.0 Forbidden Chakra
Riddle of Earth interacting with Tornado Kick instead of Riddle of Wind is a bit confusing.

My MNK is only at 65 but a friend and I were talking about the Fist abilities and what-if they changed them like BRD's songs, where they completely changed their effects to all be useful most of the time and you had to rotate through them. They could also condense Riddle of Earth and Fire together, with effects that reflect their Fists.

For example: Fist of Fire could stay at a 5% increase to Damage done but it would only last for 30 seconds and when you use the Riddle ability, Riddle of Fire will grand you +10% more Damage to it (15% total).
Fist of Earth could lengthen your Greased-Lightning's effect time by like x% for 30 seconds and Riddle of Earth could just extend the time to max+x%.
Maybe Fist of Wind could deal with skill speed, attack speed, or oGCD time or something?
Then they could keep the Riddle ability at 90 seconds and make people have to decide when a good time to use it is, like if you're in a boss battle and the boss is about to become untouchable, you could pop Fist of Earth and Riddle to save your Greased-Lightning OR you could just use Tornado Kick and save Riddle for when you can damage the boss again you can pop Fist of Fire.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

My MNK is only at 65 but a friend and I were talking about the Fist abilities and what-if they changed them like BRD's songs, where they completely changed their effects to all be useful most of the time and you had to rotate through them. They could also condense Riddle of Earth and Fire together, with effects that reflect their Fists.

For example: Fist of Fire could stay at a 5% increase to Damage done but it would only last for 30 seconds and when you use the Riddle ability, Riddle of Fire will grand you +10% more Damage to it (15% total).
Fist of Earth could lengthen your Greased-Lightning's effect time by like x% for 30 seconds and Riddle of Earth could just extend the time to max+x%.
Maybe Fist of Wind could deal with skill speed, attack speed, or oGCD time or something?
Then they could keep the Riddle ability at 90 seconds and make people have to decide when a good time to use it is, like if you're in a boss battle and the boss is about to become untouchable, you could pop Fist of Earth and Riddle to save your Greased-Lightning OR you could just use Tornado Kick and save Riddle for when you can damage the boss again you can pop Fist of Fire.

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Maybe the fists were more interesting during 1.0, as I heard, they were temporary buffs draining MP for specific effects.

I think one fist assuming the soloing/bulky purpose, tied to a riddle for enhanced effects, is a good tradeoff.

The fact beeing, if one fist is tied to damages, with a riddle improving it. what could be the purpose of the third one ? We've all seen that movement is a poor choice as the actuel fist of wind is unused outside of capitals.

Making it the burst damage fist, would frail the other damaging fist or put them in competition

Making it a survival one, will compete with the earth one.

The range is a good idea, but as seen if it's a trade instead of damages, none will ever put it on.

What can the wind inspire, that would be more than situationally usefull, but not a "must never drop" buff ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MauvaisOeil

Maybe the fists were more interesting during 1.0, as I heard, they were temporary buffs draining MP for specific effects.

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They worked out to more overall variety in 1.x because Fists of Wind had rotational benefits (it reduced the recast times of damaging abilities used under its effect), and the elemental wheel was still used, meaning that just by switching to Earth on an Earth-weak mob you could be doing up to triple damage. Until Yoshida took over, the incapacitation/break-off system was also still used, which required x strikes and potentially y effects active to, say, knock a skeleton's head off or a buffalo's horn off, sabotaging it and/or offering unique loot. Iirc, Fists of Earth was required for at least one of these.

I feel like if you want to make the Gale/Lotus/Adamantite (Wind/Fire/Earth) stances work in current XIV, you would need to make each rotationally useful and more impactful within the Greased Lightning mechanic. You could also vary Howling Fist and Steel Peak in the same way that Shoulder Tackle was via Tackle Mastery, but unless the effects are more diverse than its were, I doubt that would feel satisfying.

Assuming necessary changes to base potencies, let's say that:
- FIRE increases Damage by 5%, Critical Strike Chance by 10%, Critical Strike Bonus by 15%.
- WIND increases Attack Speed by 5%, Movement Speed by 15%, and Haste by 20% [Reduces recast times of damaging abilities].
- Earth increases Attack Power by 5%, reduces damage taken by 10%, increases the speed at which negative effects fade by 33% and reduces the rate at which positive effects fade by 33% (continuous additional drain / reduction of drain over duration).

This means that Wind offers nearly the same damage increase as Fire, while Earth comes in at a close third that doubles up by improving, indirectly, Second Wind.

Now, let's take Greased Lightning. Imagine the UI ring of 5 Chakra, but this time including Greased Lightning as a trio between the 5. Each orb of Chakra takes on a different color and internal sign, for Wind, Earth, or Fire.
The base benefits of Greased Lightning are roughly halved. Each increases all stat modifiers (Attack Power, Defense, Magic Defense, Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Bonus, Attack Speed, Movement Speed, and Haste [which reduces the recast time of abilities]) by 3% each. But they also each carry half the benefits of the stance used when the Greased Lightning was generated, and [tentative idea] a consumable Essence (of Wind/Fire/Air), consumable by certain abilities.

[Tentative] The point of these Essence is to provide bankable resources for tactical adjustment to play. An Essence of Wind, for example, allows you to ignore up to a certain amount of a given remaining damaging ability's cooldown (percentile reduction per Essence based on total cooldown*potency), accelerating it, making it useful for doubling up on Shoulder Tackle or chaining stuns. Preparing enough Wind Essence to ready oneself for an incoming event where fitting an additional damaging CD (say, Elixir Field) into a window would outweigh the general modifier given by Fire Essence or for needed movement or utility, for example, could make the difference between a decent Monk and a very good one.

I'd like to see Tornado Kick give Enlightenment. Make the Monk flash gold like Wilargelt and get enhanced crit rate and maybe perfect balance.

I would like to see MNK's weapon changed from Blunt to Slashing type damage, or change Dragon Kick to add a increased damage taken debuff on target instead of -10% blunt resistance that doesn't benefit the party.

But yes, I do agree that we need to see changes to the difference Fist Stance. Swapping between 3 Fist Stance would be so much more fun than staying in just Fire. We no longer suffer from TP drain, so there must be something more we can have/do to get back that need to manage TP. Maybe Fist of Fire could drain TP per hit for increased dmg, while Fist of Wind could convert MP to TP per hit.

Even if you buff the other stances, there will always be 1 best stance to use, even if its 5% better, people will use the best stance. Buffing them merely gives you the illusion of choice.

Also not all skills need to be viable. Every class has at least 1 skill that hardly sees any use. Paladin the best tank or whatever? Tempered Will is hardly ever used in 95% of the content, 5% being o4s. Shield Bash?? Most of these skills are there just to give some sort of flavour to the class. If the skill has its niche use, then its already pretty good for a filler skill. People are just bitching cause it happens to be in your 60-70 rather than being a niche skill in 1-50..

If any changes are to be made, then the stances should directly be in the rotation, isn't of having a "best" stance, like start if wind makes your buffs/debuffs longer, so you always go to wind in opener, and switch to fire later on, then back to wind to refresh debuffs/buffs. Earth is fine as some sort of migation with its niche use.

Honestly, the only way Fist stances will ever see any real use is if they're reworked to function similarly to BRD songs, which I don't see happening this expansion sadly. Barring that, having Fist Stances alter MNK oGCD abilities, such as Tackle Mastery tried to do (and failed miserably), or even adding some secondary effect to stances that made them more desirable to use in general would both make stances mildly more useful as well.

I did have some idea for the former suggestion.

Fist of Earth
Shoulder Tackle - Conal AoE on impact.
Steel Peak - Stun.
Elixir Field - On top of the initial damage, purify the ground, granting allies a small resistance buff that stand inside the purified ground
Tornado Kick - Vulnerability Debuff

Fist of Wind
Shoulder Tackle - Granted a small haste buff for the MNK but loses the stun
Steel Peak - Silence
Elixir Field - Similar to FoE but removes a negative effect from players close by instead of resistance buff
Tornado Kick - Nullify Directional Requirements

Fist of Fire
Shoulder Tackle - Increased Potency
Steel Peak - DoT
Elixir Field - Ground becomes a smoldering waste that deals DoT damage and slows enemies.
Tornado Kick - Increased Potency.

As for the Riddles

Riddle of Earth - Grants damage resistance buff on activation, Grants Perfect balance when effect ends
Riddle of Wind - Grants Sks/SpS buff to allies and MNK, Refreshes GL.
Riddle of Fire - Grants Temporary GL4.