Monk Positionals

When did they become so pathetic? Granted, I started playing this game about 1.3 years ago, but I seem to recall the positional potency being more substantial. For me, the fun of the Monk comes from having to dance around your opponent to maximize DPS. A few minutes ago I noticed the positionals now only increase potency by 20 points, with the exception of Bootshine. As soon as I saw that, all enthusiasm for this class drained from me.

I understand S.E probably wants to make the class or accessible, but is this really the best way of going about that? What's the point in even trying to land positionals anymore if the DPS gained is barely noticeable? Perhaps I'm just a filthy casual. Anyone disagree with my perspective, and if you do, why?

There are lots of situations where positionals aren't practical, or beyond your control. Solo gameplay where the enemy is constantly turning to face you, dungeons with tanks that won't hold the enemy still or move it out of dangerous ground...

You're still maximising your DPS by doing it right; you're just not that heavily penalised for doing it wrong.

I almost exclusively play ranged jobs in anything remotely serious though, so take this with a grain of salt.

Do people actually like positionals? also with true north and earth's reply (?) you don't even really have positionals anyways. Positionals being an additional "only 20pts" is still a considerable amount of dps as well given greased lightning speeding you up. I personally don't really see positionals as a good thing, increasing damage? neat. Being required for a combo/skill to work (like old trick attack)? Awful. I feel like reliance on positionals takes away whatever control you have when you have to do mechanics, have a bad tank in dungeons, etc.

hopefully some of that made sense since i just browsing right before bed

I suppose you guys make fair points. I guess I'll just have to get use to the changes, or I can just play another class.

Back when positionals meant something we also had flex skills without positionals that we could weave in. Touch of Death, Fracture, and, in a pinch, Haymaker or Impulse Drive, all required no positionals.

I am finally leveling up melees, and the Dragoon positional requirements didn't seem to matter much until 76. That's when you get the move (spoiler: Raiden Thrust) that requires you execute the last two positional moves correct. It's neat, sure, but an entire move that changes your main attack once from 290, to 330 because you did your positional correct is a little lackluster. 400 would probably get you to try as hard as possible, or at the very least care about "True North" more often than not.

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Originally Posted by daespinoza

I am finally leveling up melees, and the Dragoon positional requirements didn't seem to matter much until 76. That's when you get the move (spoiler: Raiden Thrust) that requires you execute the last two positional moves correct. It's neat, sure, but an entire move that changes your main attack once from 290, to 330 because you did your positional correct is a little lackluster. 400 would probably get you to try as hard as possible, or at the very least care about "True North" more often than not.

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Unless they have changed it since the last time I played DRG you only need to land the final positional to get Raiden Thrust to proc.

I personally hate positionals and don't feel they add anything to the game other than punishing you for the way fights are designed. True North and Earth's Reply are just band-aids to an archaic system I'd like to see gone in 6.0.

I don't want positionals to go away, because I don't want every fight to be Eden Leviathan. I don't want to find a place next to the mob and just sit still while mash button efficiently, ESPECIALLY with how SE can't seem to figure out what it is they even want the job's kit to be. The last thing Monk needs is to be made even more boring while still wrestling with mechanical issues that stem all the way back to 2.0.

The devs continued insistence on stripping away OGCD buttons because of "button bloat" despite keeping garbage like Tornado Kick as is, or giving us more garbage like Anatman and Six Sided Star, and their overreactions to people not playing the job "as intended" while working within the systems they have provided us, suggests to me that removing positionals from the job would not actually fix anything.

I would rather they remove True North entirely. Positionals are not that difficult even for someone of middling ability to accomplish if they actually put some effort into playing well. I understand that some encounters can make them considerably harder than others, but I don't believe for one second that the solution is to completely scrap positionals for that alone. Some jobs have it easier than others on certain encounters, and that is okay.

The job is already underplayed as is despite the considerable effort SE has expended into making it easier for players to accomplish the very minimum the job is capable of. Making it even easier will not actually address core problems with the job's kit as is. Unfortunately, because the devs have shown zero willingness to listen to the people who have been playing the job for some time, they are more likely to aim for people who have shown no interest in playing the job to begin with in the next round of "fixes."

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Unless they have changed it since the last time I played DRG you only need to land the final positional to get Raiden Thrust to proc.

I personally hate positionals and don't feel they add anything to the game other than punishing you for the way fights are designed. True North and Earth's Reply are just band-aids to an archaic system I'd like to see gone in 6.0.

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Positionals add an element of adaptation to the fight, where you need to adjust yourself based off which direction a boss is facing. It's the melee version of a Black Mage knowing when they can greed an extra cast out. And frankly, melee are pretty damn boring without the positional bonuses. The extra movement needed and knowing when and how to squeeze out another help make melee, especially monk, much faster to play.

Sadly, I do think they're going to go the way of the dodo next expansion. The problem is that I don't see anything to replace the positional system because, especially in the case of Monk, we have never received anything new to replace removed systems and abilities.

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

I would rather they remove True North entirely. Positionals are not that difficult even for someone of middling ability to accomplish if they actually put some effort into playing well. I understand that some encounters can make them considerably harder than others, but I don't believe for one second that the solution is to completely scrap positionals for that alone. Some jobs have it easier than others on certain encounters, and that is okay.

The job is already underplayed as is despite the considerable effort SE has expended into making it easier for players to accomplish the very minimum the job is capable of. Making it even easier will not actually address core problems with the job's kit as is. Unfortunately, because the devs have shown zero willingness to listen to the people who have been playing the job for some time, they are more likely to aim for people who have shown no interest in playing the job to begin with in the next round of "fixes."

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To compound on that, I think one of the reasons Monk is one of the lesser-played jobs despite being very strong is simply that it's just not fun. Monk is not more complex than the other melee. Making it simpler and more accessible won't get more people to play it, it'll drive people who do like playing it to go do something else.

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

I don't want positionals to go away, because I don't want every fight to be Eden Leviathan. I don't want to find a place next to the mob and just sit still while mash button efficiently, ESPECIALLY with how SE can't seem to figure out what it is they even want the job's kit to be. The last thing Monk needs is to be made even more boring while still wrestling with mechanical issues that stem all the way back to 2.0.

The devs continued insistence on stripping away OGCD buttons because of "button bloat" despite keeping garbage like Tornado Kick as is, or giving us more garbage like Anatman and Six Sided Star, and their overreactions to people not playing the job "as intended" while working within the systems they have provided us, suggests to me that removing positionals from the job would not actually fix anything.

I would rather they remove True North entirely. Positionals are not that difficult even for someone of middling ability to accomplish if they actually put some effort into playing well. I understand that some encounters can make them considerably harder than others, but I don't believe for one second that the solution is to completely scrap positionals for that alone. Some jobs have it easier than others on certain encounters, and that is okay.

The job is already underplayed as is despite the considerable effort SE has expended into making it easier for players to accomplish the very minimum the job is capable of. Making it even easier will not actually address core problems with the job's kit as is. Unfortunately, because the devs have shown zero willingness to listen to the people who have been playing the job for some time, they are more likely to aim for people who have shown no interest in playing the job to begin with in the next round of "fixes."

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The reason they reduced the damaage loss on a positional initially was because they perceived them to be overly hampering Monk in Alphascape where 2 charges of True North really didn't cut it for the number of times your movement could get locked down. But that's somewhat muddled because they also tried to buff Monk and Machinist that patch in a desperate attempt to get player numbers up for them. The thing was though, that really didn't change it.

At this point I also don't think Monk being the least played job is even strictly a matter of positionals, it's more of a death by a thousand cuts thing. Until now playing Monk has been a pain in the rear compared to everything else. Why deal with the headache of Monk and Greased Lightning only being upkeepable with a dozen niche skills when anything else with a more or less identical buff can keep it up by hitting literally one button and also gets rewarded by incredibly satisfying nuke skills like Foul, Xenoglossy or Stardiver. New players see that and don't bother, or they're intimidated by the positionals, the Form Based combos or the memes that have built up around Greased Lightning over the years so people don't jump onto it often. At this point Monk also pretty much has the reputation as being the the job the devs neglect which might have an impact as well. Why play a job the devs have eternally ignored and which people haven't been satisfied with for for nearly two and a half expansions now. If people do give it a try it's leveling curve has been trimmed out so it feels very bare bones and there's been very little in the way of skills and traits that you get and actually use so it doesn't retain people to 80. Then the people who ride it out to 80 don't stick with it because there's just nothing satisfying about playing it compared to any other job which are consistently getting at least 1-2 new exciting skills an expansion, while Monk is the only DPS job with less rotational skills than any iteration previously.

The job is just a continued disaster and they don't seem to listen to any of the feedback regarding it in the way they listen to the feedback that other jobs get (Shoha got reworked in a patch, people have wanted reworks for Monk skills for literal expansions and we still haven't gotten them).

Positionals are probably the only thing that keeps the job feeling engaging to me. Without them it would be exceptionally boring. Like the other guy said, it would just be Leviathan all the time. On that note, I would actually rather the positionals go back to being higher damage to reward better play, but then you run into people that don't know how to position enemies correctly in the first place, or people that like to dance around while tanking to make things even more difficult, and then it just turns into the monks bashing their faces against their desks because of it.

They just need to do something about the niche skills that are too niche or otherwise useless. At this point, a machinist like rework is probably the only thing that will help.

Whatever they do, I also hope they don't take away the positionals. Personally, I don't think the class appealing to a niche part of the player base is a bad thing. In every MMO there is also going to be one class that barely anyone, save a few, play, and there's nothing wrong with that. I say try to tailor the class more to the crowd that loves it rather than stretching it out to fit a large part of the community. Stretching the class out will inevitably thin it to the point it tears.

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Originally Posted by Burningskull

Unless they have changed it since the last time I played DRG you only need to land the final positional to get Raiden Thrust to proc.

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Thanks! I haven't put much time into it, but would probably explain how I "accidentally did it correct" at times where I know I should have failed.

As an ex career monk:

I wish they'd just delete this job so I can stop being so disappointed.