Spitballing Ideas for MNK

I'm terrible at intros so I'm just going to get straight to the point; SE screwed MNK in SB. From a DPS standpoint, we're fine but the abilities we gained coupled with the virtually non existent removal of button bloat for MNK and just the feel of MNK in general was not exactly well conceived IMO and I don't believe I'm the only 1 that feels that way. So, I just wanted to post some of my own ideas on how to improve MNK, by getting rid of button bloat to an extent and just making some skills/traits better in general.

I know a lot of people want Fist Stances to be turned into passives, similar to NIN's poisons, and I support that as well but if SE is determined to keep them as active abilities then something needs to be altered to make them actually useful enough to warrant being skills. As such, I've been thinking about having your stance change Bootshine, True Strike and Snap Punch and how our oGCDs function, thus allowing Stances to work in certain situations better than others.

1) Fist of Earth would now lower the TP cost of abilities.

• Bootshine becomes Arm of the Destroyer (Removed silence for higher potency)
• True Strike becomes One Ilm Punch (Changed into a Line AoE like Howling Fist)
• Snap Punch becomes Rockbreaker
• 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.
• Howling Fist - Apply heavy to targets
• Tornado Kick - AoE damage attack at a slightly reduced potency
• Riddle of Earth - Reduce damage of nearby allies by 10% (20% on MNK) for 30 seconds. Grants Enhanced Tornado Kick, allowing for Tornado Kick to be used without consuming GL. Effect ends upon use.

Fist of Earth is now our AoE Stance

2) Fist of Wind extends the effects of Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes and Demolish to 20 seconds

• Bootshine becomes Dragon Kick
• True Strikes becomes Twin Snakes
• Snap Punch becomes Demolish
• Shoulder Tackle - Increased Range
• Steel Peak - Silence
• Elixir Field - Remove Negative effects from nearby Allies
• Howling Fist - Reduce CD
• Tornado Kick - Damage Down Debuff on enemy for 10 seconds
• Riddle of Wind - Increase Movement Speed of self and allies by 5% for 20 seconds. GL Refresh on activation.

Fist of Wind is now more of a Utility stance that we'll need to go into once every 20 seconds or so, with the odd change for any utility we might need.

3) Fist of Fire is unchanged and thus does not alter Bootshine, True Strike or Snap Punch

• Shoulder Tackle - Increased Potency
• Steel Peak - Remove 1 Buff from target
• Elixir Field - Leaves ground a smoldering waste and deals DoT damage (Upfront potency reduced to make up for the DoT)
• Howling Fist - Increased Potency
• Tornado Kick - Increased Potency
• Riddle of Fire - Temporary GL4

Still just a flat out damage stance

These suggestions condense a lot of button bloat by reducing the total number of skills we have to literally just 3 skills per stance instead of 9 skills bloating up the Hotbar. Of course, the level of which we acquire these skills would need to be altered so that the whole leveling experience isn't entirely devoid of any skills at all (like level 40-50 MCH currently is) but that really shouldn't be too difficult to sort out.

Tackle Mastery needs to die since Stances would already do what it failed to do. As such, I suggest it to be replaced with Deeper Meditation that allows a Chakra be granted on every GL refresh.

Edits:
Removed SkS/SpS buffs from Riddle of Wind
Replaced Vulnerability Debuff from FoW Tornado Kick with a Damage Down Debuff
Howling Fist effects changed for FoE and FoW. FoE now applies heavy instead of reduces CD and FoW now reduces CD instead of a Damage Down Debuff
FoF Steel Peak now removes 1 buff from enemy target.

Ok...some of those changes are out right broken, just the RoW one, will make nin borderline useless, damage debuff, vul debuff plus SKs /SPs buff? Broken AF
Not only that but lets take the fire EF. How do you think that wil work out on fights like O3s? the boss jumping around, will make that lingering AOE an outright dps loss. How about o2s?
Stance dancing doesnt work, let alone how you are proposing it. Not only that but it will make the class have a lot less "flow", prone to mistakes, and extremely situational.
It will be an outright DPS loss in every aspect, and i do believe that these "changes" are absurd, mostly, some of them actually are pretty interesting.
This will make mnk a support-ish dps and personally i would hate to see that, it would go against what the class has been and is. Also its basically an overhaul, that is a bad thing.

Overall, they are not great sugestions, well most of them are not.

I don't think this will work mainly because the stances will still favor Fists of Fire for the damage buff. It's just an unwinnable situation as long as Fist of Fire provides a damage buff and the others do not. There's literally no situation in which you would prefer one of the other stances over Fists of Fire.

The concepts are interesting, but you have to remember that Monk seems to specialize in damage against a single target as well. An area based stance just seems contradictory to the class.

The idea of one stance being dedicated for AOE is good, but there is too much interactions not to make them either broken, or mandatory.

I think the change to snap and bootshine are good, and maybe to tackle, but nothing more.

Make earth stance beeing a solo stance with additional reduction : No more positionnal but reduced potency, tackle for control, damage taken reduced and RoE for increased survavibility.

Wind stance being either focused on AOE or being the single target one

Fire stance for what remains, ST or AOE.

That would be cool, less flexible at some point but interesting overall.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by reyre

Ok...some of those changes are out right broken, just the RoW one, will make nin borderline useless, damage debuff, vul debuff plus SKs /SPs buff? Broken AF
Not only that but lets take the fire EF. How do you think that wil work out on fights like O3s? the boss jumping around, will make that lingering AOE an outright dps loss. How about o2s?
Stance dancing doesnt work, let alone how you are proposing it. Not only that but it will make the class have a lot less "flow", prone to mistakes, and extremely situational.
It will be an outright DPS loss in every aspect, and i do believe that these "changes" are absurd, mostly, some of them actually are pretty interesting.
This will make mnk a support-ish dps and personally i would hate to see that, it would go against what the class has been and is. Also its basically an overhaul, that is a bad thing.

Overall, they are not great sugestions, well most of them are not.

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The changes really wouldn't need to be the extreme that you're making it out to be. The damage debuff of Howling fist wouldn't really be any different to how virus/feint or Dismantle currently work and none of them are OP at all, especially if the debuff only lasted something like 3 seconds. I will admit that removing the Sks/SpS buff from Riddle of Wind might be alright, all things considered. Tornado kick still would remove the MNK's GL so it's not exactly like it would replace NIN in any way, especially since NIN still has the slash debuff as well. It's trading MNK's damage for a utility so I see it as a balanced trade off. As for Fire EF, there is more than just Raids to consider and when you consider that any ground based abilities suffer the same issue, I'm not seeing a problem with that at all .The Earth and Wind EFs would be as effective as the standard version available currently so there is still the option to use them as well. If Stances were changed to work as oGCD abilities, it would actually make the flow of the class much easier as now you just finish a combo, stance change and continue as though it was standard practice to do so.

Considering that SB was suppose to be an overhaul to classes, I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with suggesting MNK get the overhaul it clearly missed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blanchimont

I don't think this will work mainly because the stances will still favor Fists of Fire for the damage buff. It's just an unwinnable situation as long as Fist of Fire provides a damage buff and the others do not. There's literally no situation in which you would prefer one of the other stances over Fists of Fire.

The concepts are interesting, but you have to remember that Monk seems to specialize in damage against a single target as well. An area based stance just seems contradictory to the class.

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It's more so that Stances would lock you out of abilities than anything else. Fire only gives you access to Bootshine, True Strikes and Snap Punch so in AoE situations, it would be useless and so on. MNK's main concern is Single Target but that shouldn't mean that the class should be barred from using AoE moves entirely either. Also, we have to consider that Fire is just pure damage, made entirely for single target fights, which is fine but you would still need to go into Wind every 20 seconds to refresh your own buffs/Debuffs from Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes and Demolish to maintain you high damage. Stance Dancing becomes part of MNK's identity to maintain good damage, which doesn't conflict with the job at all (At least not as much as Riddle of Fire currently does)

Made some slight edits.

I applaud the effort that goes into these posts whenever someone tries to "fix" the Fist Stances and balance them around the riddles. A lot of time clearly went into this. The result, however, is always the same. Massively overpowered or overly convoluted.

The simplest answers are often the best, and I favor a simple answer. The Fists Stances need to go - or they should simply have been replaced by the Riddles as the Riddles are an inspired (but weak) concept and could have acted as the natural progression of the fists stances. The problem SE had was wanting to keep all three fist stances and then trying to base the identity of the Riddles/Tackle Mastery around them. What resulted was a great (albeit counter-intuitive) DPS gain in Riddle of Fire and a simple 30 potency buff on Fire Tackle; a half-baked and frustratingly misguided Riddle of Earth that works maybe 60-70% of the time coupled with the train wreck that is Earth Tackle; and finally the complete joke that is Riddle of Wind - which is such a last minute tack-on by SE that they didn't even bother to give it its own button.

Since our DPS is fine any suggestion that increases the DPS of too many of our abilities will make us overpowered. Monk needed mostly QoL in 4.0, an expansion of the GL and Chakra system and at least 1 new attack ability. What I would have preferred to see...

Brotherhood
Removed. Effects baked into Riddle of Fire since the two have the same recast and are almost always used together anyway. Effectively saves a button click.

-Fists of Fire becomes a trait when we get Riddle of Fire.
Effects of Brotherhood baked into Riddle of Fire.

-Fists of Earth upgrades into Riddle of Earth. Riddle of Earth is tweaked to the following:
Duration 30 seconds
Pauses the GL timer on use. Resets GL timer when hit.
10% damage reduction. No longer reduces damage taken by an additional 10% after damage is suffered.

-Fists of Wind upgrades into Riddle of Wind.
Duration 30 seconds. Recast 90 seconds.
Increases movement speed by 10%
Riddle of Wind instantly resets the cooldown of Shoulder Tackle and grants an additional charge.

Form Shift.
The form granted by Form Shift does not incur a timer.
QoL to address the fact we often are stuck cycling through forms pre-pull / during a boss jump. Less button mashing = QoL.

One Ilm Punch.
Removed. Or better yet - replaces Steel Peak and Steel Peak is removed (let's face it, One Ilm Punch has the better name / animation.

Arm of the Destroyer.
Removed.

Tackle Mastery.
Removed. Thanked for its time. Given decent severance. Shipped to Madagascar to live a live of plenty among the lemurs.

Deep Meditation.
Unchanged. It's a PITA but interesting concept.

Dragon Punch.
New level 70 ability. Replaces Brotherhood.
60 second Recast
GCD ability of high potency.
Costs two (2) Chakra
Reduces target's blunt resistance by 30% for 3 seconds. Overwrites Dragon Kick debuff.
Basically the idea of this move is to open a very small window for us to deliver some oomph. Think Dragon Punch then Tornado Kick at the end of Riddle of Fire. The 60 second cooldown makes it not line up with every Riddle of Fire intentionally. Has to be planned for accordingly because you would run the risk of not having any blunt resistance down on the target if used incorrectly.

I just realized it's 2am and I need to go to bed.

TBC

My main problem with QoL changes is that they wouldn't really address why MNK just feels wrong right now. None of the abilities we got were remotely interesting and poorly implemented because they contradict prior experience.

Riddle of Earth and Tornado Kick are fighting for the same niche purpose.
Riddle of Fire goes against GL as a concept entirely.
Tackle Mastery is a DPS loss with no real benefit.
One Ilm Punch and Arm of the Destroyer are incredibly underwhelming and need adjustments to them to make them worthwhile to use.
Purification being somewhat useless now that MNK is TP positive in all but extreme AoE situations.

Brotherhood and Deep Meditation are really the only 2 things added in SB with any real value but SE really dropped the ball with the rest of our toolkit that nothing short of altering some of these skills would really work, which is why I made this topic in the 1st place. Even if I went to the extreme with my suggestions, I do feel as though as least some of these would be alright since we really lost out in SB. As I stated, I would be completely fine with Fist Stances going the way of NIN's poisons and becoming passives, or even the suggestion of Stances upgrading into Riddles and gaining additional effects for a short duration would work for me but that still doesn't address the issues with OIP and AotD, the fact that Purification doesn't do much anymore and that Tackle Mastery is a complete joke.

I'm full of silly ideas:
Fist stances are now all passives which adds bonuses for the 3 forms:
Fists of earth: each hit with correct positional in opo opo form adds a earth chakra stack. 5 enable you to us forbidden chakra (rename it)
Fists of wind: each hit with correct positional in raptor form adds a wind chakra stack. 10 enable the use of Tornado Kick, no longer consumes GL
Fists of Fire: each hit with correct positional in courl form adds a fire stack. enough of it enables riddle of fire. It is now a burning version of touch of death. Maybe it can decrease magic res a little so mnk will always have a place in mage comps.

Here's my idea.

Change Deep Meditation so that the odds of opening a Chakra when landing a crit is increased to 100% while under the effect of Internal Release.

Riddle of Fire
Increases damage by 10% for 20 seconds
No skill speed reduction
Allows use of Forbidden Chakra and Tornado Kick without consuming Chakra or Greased Lightning
Forbidden Chakra and Tornado kick changed to 10 and 20 second cooldown respectively. You're able to fit in 2 FCs and 1 TK in this window. This removes one layer of RNG from the job, as well as making the Monk less dependent on party composition. Also solves the problem of not being able to use Tornado Kick very often.

Tackle Mastery changed to Steel Peak Mastery
Maybe it's guaranteed to give you 1 Chakra or something. Anything to make Steel Peak more interesting. Right now it's just a bump-on-a-log 40 second OGCD

Brotherhood becomes a Determination or Haste version of Battle Litany/Battle Voice or something. I don't have a lot of ideas for this one. I just know that 5% physical damage up isn't a very enticing raid buff compared to Litany or Trick Attack, which buff everyone.

Frankly, I don't think any change to Monk that doesn't turn the Fist Stances into traits a la Ninja poisons or outright remove them while folding the 5% Damage buff from Fists of Fire into something else isn't worth considering.

In general though, a few of the changes I would suggest would be:

1. Convert the Fist Stances into traits. There is no reason to ever leave Fists of Fire with the changes to Weakness and Brink of Death, all it does is create the illusion of choice. Remove them and give Monk some kind of ranged action at low levels or an execute skill to replace them(Suplex!), potentially with an effect that maxes out our chakra gauge if its the killing blow.
2. Steel Peak: This skill is just a tumor in our kit that exists for minor bonus damage, and unlike Jumps on Dragoon it doesn't interact with anything and isn't a core part of the Job's identity. Some have suggested having it grant a Chakra upon execution, which is fine. I honestly can't think of anything better to do with it other than that beyond just axing it.
3. One Iilm Punch. It was the single most useless skill in the game in ARR and Heavensward and it still is. If they want Monk to have an on command stun, then remove it from the Stance system. That's the only way it will be functional.
4. Arm of the Destroyer. Costs way too much TP for how much damage it does, even with all of Monk's stacking buffs it still only deals about 75 potency which makes it far and away the weakest actual AOE in the game (unless you count Flash). Either drastically reduce the TP cost or Boost the damage up to about 75 potency so it's worth using.
5. Purification: Even more useless now that Monk's TP issues are gone. There's no reason for this to be in Monk's kit anymore. Change it into an AOE chakra spender with 100-150 potency.
6. Tornado Kick: Honestly not that bad on it's own, but it's so highly situational that it doesn't see use in most fights. A trait or some other effect that would actually give us the opportunity to use this would be nice.
7. Tackle Mastery. Frankly, this trait is so poorly thought out that it's outright insulting that the devs would think we'd want it. Remove it, even replacing it with something like "Form Mastery" that gives Opo Opo, Raptor, and Coeurl form infinite duration so we don't have to spend all of our time pre fight mashing form shift would be a welcome change. At least with that we'd have a tangible quality of life improvement as opposed to bupkis.
8. Riddle of Earth. It's aggravating that this skill exists. Dragoon's and Black Mages don't have to jump through the hoop of getting hit to extend Blood of the Dragon and Enochian, Dragoon can just extend it by 20 seconds by hitting a button and Black Mage can just Transpose. Why Monk has to have another action to do something that should have been built into its pre existing kit (AND WAS IN THE CASE OF OTHER CLASSES WITH BUFFS THAT FUNCTION IDENTICALLY) infuriates me to no end. Remove it, let monk refresh it's stacks during downtime by Form Shifting through Coeurl form or reduce the cooldown on Perfect Balance. Monk having to jump through all these hoops is ridiculous. Replace it with a new GCD while they're at it so Monk isn't stuck doing a less enjoyable version of the same rotation we did in Heavensward and ARR.
9. Riddle of Fire. Remove the slow. Remove the slow. Remove the slow. Remove the slow. Monk is the job that's been characterized by its haste since ARR. Dragoon Jumps, Ninja has ninjutsu, Monk is a racecar. Let the racecar go fast, don't make it slam on the brakes every 70 seconds.

TLDR: Trim the nonfunctional, redundant and useless skills from Monks kit please Devs, you said that was the goal in Stormblood with the action rework, how about you actually follow through on it.

Change Tackle Mastery to Riddle of Wind to complete the trifecta of Riddles being useful:

Riddle of Wind: dash to target enemy, range 30y (larger than Shoulder Tackle), no damage, 60-90s cd. No damage means you shouldn't have to worry about it rotationally, but it will give you even more mobility and potential uptime if used well. Dash to an add, RoW back to the boss or something. Or consider the longer range if the need to return is more urgent for stacks but you're too far.

Riddle of Fire: Honestly I don't mind this skill as much as others seem to, but if need be: lower damage buff at the expense of not reducing weaponskill recast time and shorter duration, increase potency of TFC further while under its effect.

That's all, none of these insane complete kit reworks :P
Though I approve of a lot of SpeckledBurd's useless skill rethinks above.