Monk 's Riddle of Fire feels awful to use

[knotwrite]

I can't be the only one that thinks the complaints about RoF are hilarious, right?

Like, it's 20 seconds of slightly lower skill speed. Twenty. Seconds. That's it. You spend 20 seconds out of every 90 attacking as slowly as a DRG and your entire universe comes crumbling down around you.

[Svabodnik]

I can't be the only one that thinks the complaints about RoF are hilarious, right?

Like, it's 20 seconds of slightly lower skill speed. Twenty. Seconds. That's it. You spend 20 seconds out of every 90 attacking as slowly as a DRG and your entire universe comes crumbling down around you.

I know, it's rather bizarre - how is it that introducing an ability that slows down the pace of a rotation, for about a fifth of a fight's overall duration, to a class that has had consistently paced rotation for years, and a sizable portion of longstanding players find it annoying? Boggles the mind. Really makes my noggin think.

[FoodAspectedPrimal]

20 seconds is roughly 9 global cooldowns at the slower speed (ie 3 standard combos) which is, as was already pointed out, a little over 20% uptime. That's not a small amount at all.

So yes, you're the only one. Congratulations.

[Tigerlilley]

I've mained monk since T4 was a thing.

The burst / dps wise? Fantastic. No one is going to complain about that.

It feels like utter crap. Punching under water. It's infuriating and I hate it also. However, seeing the SB changes and consequent "fixes" for Summoner and Machinist, I'm hesitant to kick up a fuss about Riddle. There was literally nothing wrong with Summoner 3.0 rotation, it was neat, it flowed, cooldowns lined up, it was perfect. Look what happened.

Yeah, SE has ignored Monk every expansion but better the devil you know at this point. ^

RIP Smns.

[Blanchimont]

Riddle of Fire is a great skill, but it's also a feels like shit skill. There's a difference. Just because the numbers are good doesn't mean it's a good skill because it turns the Monk class into mindless button mashing for thirty seconds.

[Pyitoechito]

mindless button mashing

I thought this was the case for all melee DPS 24/7? (please don't hit me)

More on the point, would RoF be less frustrating if there were more oGCD to weave (and double-weave) over the duration? For example: Reduce the damage boost of RoF, but make Tornado Kick "free" for the duration. With TC's 10s cooldown, that's two more off-global skills within RoF's duration.

[FoodAspectedPrimal]

I thought this was the case for all melee DPS 24/7? (please don't hit me)

More on the point, would RoF be less frustrating if there were more oGCD to weave (and double-weave) over the duration? For example: Reduce the damage boost of RoF, but make Tornado Kick "free" for the duration. With TC's 10s cooldown, that's two more off-global skills within RoF's duration.

I've actually discussed this at length with an FC mate regarding Riddle of Earth. Right now it's additional effect of extending Greased Lightning only triggers with Earth's Reply, meaning it's only useful during transition phases, which eliminates Tornado Kick's whole purpose: used before transitions since you'd lose stacks anyway. Essentially Tornado Kick and Riddle of Earth are competing for the same spot on your hotbar (because let's face it, all that stuff about Damage Reduction is reallyjust flavour text).

[FoodAspectedPrimal]

The idea we came up with was, instead of extending greased lightning, Earth's Reply would grant a stack of something akin to Polyglot on Black Mage which allowed the use of a single Tornado Kick without removing your Greased Lightning. This was mostly inspired by the benchmark trailer where the Warrior of Light is seen using Riddle of Earth and immediately casting Tornado Kick. It was what we actually thought it would do, originally.

[FoodAspectedPrimal]

In reference to your point about more OGCDs, I don't think that solves the overarching problem. Even if you had more OGCDs, optimization would still need to take animation lock into account (referring to animations preventing the trigger of the next skill or ability in the queue), meaning the optimal way to take full advantage of this would vary from person to person, depending on their latency. In most cases, the best option would be to make Skill Speed a dump stat, which just further exacerbates the problem of RoF feeling like mud. Seasoned Monks know the global rotation like an extension of themselves, and no amount of OGCD weaving is going to distract them from the massive drop in flow RoF hits you with at lower Skill Speeds.

[mosaicex]

..., meaning it's only useful during transition phases, which eliminates Tornado Kick's whole purpose....

It seems to be useful in 4s during Decisive Battle (at least that's what I see some monk in my 4s runs did), in fact I'm almost sure they created this skill for this sole purpose, prolonged Simon says phase where you can attack stuff but also not quiet a big phase transition (Perfect Balance not up yet).

Of course this doesn't mean it's a good skill.