What is the purpose of Anatman?

As always in this game, i'm sure someone will tell me I'm missing the 'Big Brained' picture on this one, but what is the point of Anatman?
Monks have form shift, so i can just wait in a transition phase and press form shift before charging over to boss. Even better I can get laeden fist up, then get my twin snakes buff then follow up with my sure to be expired by then DoT.

Sooooooo, what is Anatman for?

At this point it's a skill that's stuck in an awkward spot that will hopefully be pruned or massively reworked in EW. but it's supposed to be for keeping you from having to let your mechanics drop whenever you're unable to hit a boss.

You use it to keep the twin snakes buff up.

Yes, you can formshift when you have to disengage, but also if you have to disengage and stack or something like that, you might as well use it. It's the difference of hitting a move to gain the damage up buff while it's not in effect, and hitting the skill with the damage up already in effect. It's minor, but it is still more damage.

I use it, as an example, in Matoya's Relict in the second boss fight while the party is on the cloud after killing the adds and waiting for the attack to go off (after doing all my meditates)

It was originally a poorly conceived skill that was designed to upkeep and build Greased Lightning. Its requirements to actually work were so narrow that it was useless for its intended purpose and it in conjunction with the other questionable Monk changes basically broke the flow of the job for most of the expansion.

After they killed Greased Lightning it became the weird vestigial skill it is now, which is to save Twin Snakes but only after you've Formshifted for Formless Fist and capped Chakra with Meditation. It doesn't justify having a slot on your bar.

It's pretty questionable if there's anything they could do to salvage it in the future either since the typical point of a channeled skill like that is to build Gauge which Monk already has in Meditation. Hopefully it just gets deleted and turned into an Emote.

In its first iteration, it was ogcd used to build and maintain your greased lightning. SE didn’t like how the players were using it and changed it to be on the gcd. Following the changes to monk and removal of the greased lightning duration anatman only maintains your twin snakes buff. So no you’re not missing anything with anatman it’s just pretty useless as it is.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

After they killed Greased Lightning it became the weird vestigial skill it is now, which is to save Twin Snakes but only after you've Formshifted for Formless Fist and capped Chakra with Meditation. It doesn't justify having a slot on your bar.

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Mild disagree here. Only in that in my experience if you have to disengage and have enough time to meditate and anatman, you can typically form shift on your way back to the boss rather than before popping anatman, which does give it a little more use. Though beyond that, yes. It was a niche skill to start with and it still is.

So basically it serves absolutely no purpose apart making me feel like i am doing extra dps when in fact it's so negligeable it borders on dps loss. Gotcha, ignore the ability as form shift exists.

Or am i still being small brained?

It's always been pretty much useless and now it is even more useless, you can ignore it.

All of the answers to your question are correct.

Also FYI.

The threads from all the monk mains have an insane amount of knowledge that should be acknowledged. I’m by no means an expert. But I have mained monk since ARR, and have seen it’s decent into what it ultimately became in shadowbringers. I will never forget the gigantic let down of each skill given to me through leveling. And the utter disappointment of my favorite class destroyed to a party trick.

When others that don’t know how far monk has come and the 40 miles of bad road we have dealt with. I for one am still hopeful no matter what the outcome is, because I know it HAS to be better then what we were getting for 6+ years.

Do yourself a favor and look up “monk rework” in the thread search. Months of reading material and you’ll understand why so many people are defensive of the job going in the wrong direction.

Looks neat when you hit the skill and let it go though.

https://i.imgur.com/n1i8pe6.gif

Other then that it really is useless.

What is it good for?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

WAH, HOO, YA

What iiiiis it good for?

There are countless bosses that have invulnerable transitions or phases, and so, you can keep all your shifts and buffs as they were using Anat. Plenty of moments where this happens, so I move to a comfortable position, put my palms together, and once the fight actually resumes, I'm exactly where it all left off. Is that a super-awesome button? God no -- but I actually press it more than other buttons on some other classes, for whatever that's worth.

I don't care if this would be either broken or unused but I kind of want it to maintain literally every buff you current have, both self and party.

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Originally Posted by Navnav

So basically it serves absolutely no purpose apart making me feel like i am doing extra dps when in fact it's so negligeable it borders on dps loss. Gotcha, ignore the ability as form shift exists.

Or am i still being small brained?

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It's a minor DPS gain, not just a feel like you're doing more damage.

Twin Snakes gives you a damage increase on all your GCD moves and auto attacks of 10% so letting that fall off means you're doing 10% less damage until you can reapply it. If you let it drop off and use formshift you will still do less damage on the move that reapplies it (and if you decide to start in Opo Opo form to get a leaden fist or critical bootshine, then you're doing less damage on two GCDs. It's actual uses are few and far between, but it does help you maintain damage when you do use it.

Hate this skill, it’s generally pointless unless it’s big transitions. For anatman to be more useful it needs to add bootshine to the upkeep, assign Twin and Formless automatically instead of halt it, and maybe generate meditate per tick, but even than it’s still niche

Currently, the use of Anatman is to halt Twin Snakes from Expiring during transition phases since the MNK skill adjustment. It works as a DPS gain, albeit you need a decent level of optimization for it since you're competing with a bunch of other skills to use during disengages and transitions.

It's more widely used, however, as a skill to 'look cool' for most players however.

Would be nice if Anatman became our Power Up form though.

Anatman is essentially the Ki Charge from Dragon Ball except it doesn't actually charge anything.

The fact that it even has a cooldown is truly baffling to me, what is even the point?
Maybe it'd feel more impactful if it didn't have a cooldown because you could use it more actively, but just stopping twin snakes from dropping once every 60 sec is underwhelming as hell.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

The fact that it even has a cooldown is truly baffling to me, what is even the point?
Maybe it'd feel more impactful if it didn't have a cooldown because you could use it more actively, but just stopping twin snakes from dropping once every 60 sec is underwhelming as hell.

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Which is the exact argument of it needing to exist at all. Form Shift is far superior just by it only have a 1.5 sec cooldown and I can move while using. If twin snakes drops I literally sacrifice 1 GCD, which is twin snakes being used following a form shift.

I have asked anatman be able to be used on a instant cast vs. channel. The channel is useless anyway with meditation being soooo much faster, and I can move.

I still believe that when they got rid of GL that Twin snakes just took it's place.

Anatman should just become a 45sec buff, and pause twin snakes completely. As long as you complete Corel Form ---> Opo opo form it refreshes the anatman buff from falling off. Giving the effect of a pseudo GL, but with MUCH less punishment of losing your GL stacks.

This may appease those that still miss GL to some extent with out punishing those that DON'T miss GL.

Or Anatman just get's yeeted into the bin in 6.0....time will tell.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

Which is the exact argument of it needing to exist at all. Form Shift is far superior just by it only have a 1.5 sec cooldown and I can move while using. If twin snakes drops I literally sacrifice 1 GCD, which is twin snakes being used following a form shift.

I have asked anatman be able to be used on a instant cast vs. channel. The channel is useless anyway with meditation being soooo much faster, and I can move.

I still believe that when they got rid of GL that Twin snakes just took it's place.

Anatman should just become a 45sec buff, and pause twin snakes completely. As long as you complete Corel Form ---> Opo opo form it refreshes the anatman buff from falling off. Giving the effect of a pseudo GL, but with MUCH less punishment of losing your GL stacks.

This may appease those that still miss GL to some extent with out punishing those that DON'T miss GL.

Or Anatman just get's yeeted into the bin in 6.0....time will tell.

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It's gonna get Yeetus'd Vanitas'd