Proposed changes to Monk's "Fist" passives

[Mcshiggs]

If you played the class, you would know that the only reason to ever use anything but Fists of Fire is in towns while you can't be mounted.

If you knew about the class/job you say you play, you would know that fists of fire is the only monk ability, the other two are pugilist. The damage boost from fists of fire is one of the benefits of going monk and not pugilist, to not use it in combat would be like a paladin tanking in sword oath. They are adding in more jobs to existing classes in the future, and maybe wind and earth will get used more, but we don't know all of that yet, so to say something needs changed because you use a job skill over a class skill just shows all of the "I want it now" attitude that is so common in MMO's these days.

[Garlyle]

If you knew about the class/job you say you play, you would know that fists of fire is the only monk ability, the other two are pugilist. The damage boost from fists of fire is one of the benefits of going monk and not pugilist, to not use it in combat would be like a paladin tanking in sword oath. They are adding in more jobs to existing classes in the future, and maybe wind and earth will get used more, but we don't know all of that yet, so to say something needs changed because you use a job skill over a class skill just shows all of the "I want it now" attitude that is so common in MMO's these days.

That's not only splitting hairs it's kind of a silly argument in the first place.

One of the big advantages to XIV's class design and skill progression is that, generally speaking, skills do not obsolete each other. In FF history, even in XI, Fire II would basically obsolete Fire I; Fire III obsoletes both. In XIV, that's not the case - they're three different spells with three very different functions.

In the example you give, yes, it'd be silly to use Sword Oath when tanking. But in 8/24-man content or playing solo, you're not always going to be Main Tank. You do, actually, have significant reasons to use it because it offers tangible, significant advantages over Shield Oath in certain situations.

Fists of Earth and Wind, in comparison, are extremely hard to make the argument for.

Fists of Earth does sort of have a use - moments like when a Primal's overdrive goes off and, no matter what you're doing, you're tanking a huge amount of damage. But you could get the same effect from having an actual cooldown ability in that slot. It'd be far more useful, too. Unless Pugilist gets a Tank alternative in the future - but that's not now, and the fact is, that skill exists in the Here And Now.

Wind is the real offender though. "I can have a 10% movement speed boost running around town". Okay, sure that sounds nice - but as a job ability, actively taking up a spot that could be filled by another far more interesting skill? Heck no. You don't really use it in battle because, well, Fists of Fire. You're supposed to swap into it to move in/out of AoEs faster, but not only does a 10% movement speed boost feel basically irrelevant you rarely actually need the movement difference, especially in order to maintain Greased Lightning - either you can maintain it, or it's going to reset, and Wind doesn't matter there. Fire existing just completely obsoletes it. The number of times that you might ever activate Fists of Wind can be counted on about one finger, because only the final part of Stone Vigil comes to mind (a dodging sequence where you can't damage anyway).

For a DPS job, sacrificing DPS needs very significant benefits. Bard songs drop their damage while being performed, yes - but their party gets significant benefits (The party replenishing TP/MP can more than make up for the damage loss in an extended fight, because running out of damage/healing is far more impactful than one person's brief DPS reduction). The alternative fists for Monk just don't posess that.

[Mcshiggs]

Unless Pugilist gets a Tank alternative in the future - but that's not now, and the fact is, that skill exists in the Here And Now.

They have to design classes and jobs now with the future in mind, otherwise they would have to totally revamp every class and job whenever new ones come out. As for Fists of Earth and Wind, again these are pugilist abilities, if you didn't have fists of fire would you just not turn one of these on, no you would still have one up. I've seen plenty of monks just learning Titan go in Fists of wind to make dodging a bit easier, or Earth full time so they take less damage when they don't dodge, but it still remains that fire is your main one, because monks are dps, they need to keep as much up time on their dps stance as possible, and again, it is one of the benefits of monk over pugilist, pugilists don't have access to it. Just because you don't use every ability all the time, doesn't make it useless and need to be replaced. Another thing they have to consider is balance with other classes/jobs and utility, monk already has very high dps, they get an off GCD stun, a ranged stun, aoe silence, they can remove enemy buffs, they can cross class invigorate for TP, giving them TP regen on fists of wind would mean they could basically do anything without ever having to worry about TP, and right now if you use invigorate before your TP hits 0, to start the cooldown rolling, you can go single target for a very long time, aoe however is different, you burn TP, but that is how it is on all classes, you have to learn to manage your resources to maximize your dps with aoe vs. single target, otherwise everyone would just run through aoeing everything without a second thought and we would have early WoW frost mages all over again.

[Garlyle]

As for Fists of Earth and Wind, again these are pugilist abilities, if you didn't have fists of fire would you just not turn one of these on, no you would still have one up.

What you are saying there straight up is "Once you get Fists of Fire, you stop using them". This means the ability is obsoleted to them in practice, which means it is a poor ability. There is a difference between Situational - such as One-Ilm Punch, Feint, Sword Oath, etc. - and "In practice you'll never use this because it actively prevents something you actually will use" like Fists of Fire.

As for the part where you argue "but only Monks get Fire", nobody sticks around in just Pugilist for very long after hitting level 30. There is no alternate class out yet - and won't be until at least 3.0, which is an incredibly long length of time to leave borderline-useless skills on a kit. At that time, could Fists of Earth become fine? Yes, maybe it could. That doesn't account for Wind though.

I'm not even aruging whether or not the changes posed by the OP are actually good or not. I just disagree heavily with the sentiment "yeah fire fists outclasses the others but that's okay". Because that shouldn't happen. There's very, very few skills which are just straight up obsoleted by others learned later in XIV.

[Totalxtc]

I get what's being said regarding the PUG/MNK differences. This is the reason I suggested traits. This isn't me trying to tell anybody what to do with the game. It is simply an idea I would like to see in one way or another. My thought process behind this was if BLM can put out such high dps with little to no resource depletion, why shouldn't Monk; arguably the hardest dps role in the game, get the same sort of freedom? A TP regeneration skill would give MNK the opportunity to focus on putting out an immense amount of damage without fear of slowing everything while TP regenerates at a very slow rate, while focusing properly on dodging and staying alive. If any of these skill traits were ever to be put into use, some other abilities would have to take a hit. That much is certain. BUT, this would give utility to skill speed builds, rendering it finally useful.