Monk suggestions

[SpeckledBurd]

Sure it doesn't prevent you losing your stacks in every situation, but it's not *supposed* to. It allows for there to be some skill in finding/optimising where it can be used in contrast with Tornado Kick, and encourages knowledge of a fight and player skill.

If Monk isn't "supposed" to keep it's stacks at all points, why is Monk the only job that runs into situations where keeping GL3 is flat out impossible through a transition when BLM, DRG, and NIN have no such problems with their respective buffs? It's gotten to the point where Monk has more skills to manage to maintain our job buff than other similar jobs that rely on keeping a buff up but we're still the worst at maintaining it by a long shot. Monk basically just gets arbitrarily screwed by fight design, just cause.

Dragoon literally just has to use Blood of the Dragon, Black Mage has Enochian and Transpose, and Ninja has armor crush. Monk has Form Shift, Tornado Kick, Riddle of Earth and Perfect Balance. It's absurd and way against the notion of Stormblood being about reducinng button bloat.

[Mahrze]

...I'd much rather see Fists of Wind, Earth, and Fire, for instance, be made more fluid, integral, and distinctly significant rather than outright pruned, but that would likely require turning them into something else entirely.

And that is what they require precisely: Turning into something else entirely that potentiates interability play. I would even argue, on top of the effects they would bring, to have their effects linger for x amount of time as you keep shifting them...

"Bard"-ifying the stances would actually be pretty nice. Cycle through the stances to access different effects/combos. While we can argue that 10% reduction is overkill, as it stands with earth riddle MNK has a potential ~20% reduction for 30s every min. And MNK in most FF games have high HP & STR so the "sturdiness" can be justified in canon, specially since we're 90% of the time hugging the boss and playing chicken with AoEs.

Then we get to GL vs the rest. Every other job has a convenient way to keep their job buff up with minimal effort. And monk by design has do do a dog and pony show to get to the top and another one to keep the buff. Not to mention Tornado Kick and Riddle of Earth are a "pick your poison" contrast.

When you think about it, MNK is a micro management nightmare in design, 3 stance forms , 3 fist forms (which would technically be the same) 3 riddles (secrets in jp iirc). 5 chakra points, 3 levels of Greased Lightning which are in an all or nothing setup and if we add positional requirements in the mix for our damage output and the nigh-useless blunt damage de-buff and we can start seeing the migraines.

• But Forms can easily get axed by using fists to change the combos akin to how WAR has a duality with their beast skills. making the combos change based on the Fist in use.
• Each Fist can change the combos to match the fist element. While the Fist stance will have a timer and a gauge/point system to execute fist related abilities
• With Riddles can easily be the finishers of each fist stance. These finishers can have utility linked to them. Earth: Increased DH/CH / Wind: Regen/Refresh / Fire: Strong DoT
• The Chakras should be raised to 7 points and have both offensive and defensive capabilities. that are not all or nothing skills. The chakra points themselves should have a higher rate of acquisition.
• And Greased Lightning becomes our passive buff with the addition of Movement from Fist of Wind and the Defense of Fist of Earth (GL1: 10/5/2/2; GL2:20/10/5/5; GL3 30/15/10/10). With PB being our burst "GL4" status for damage output and rather than a Skill Speed penalty, we get an increased TP cost as penalty.

[MauvaisOeil]

Armor crush can only be put on the same step as coeurl form attacks.

It requires a target and a 3rd step weaponskill, just as gl or botd (which is 4th and 5th combo steps).

There is no way to refresh huton outside of battle except wasting a ninjutsu or the 3rd step of ten chi jin.

Just correcting, the remaining is true and accurate.

[SpeckledBurd]

Armor crush can only be put on the same step as coeurl form attacks.

It requires a target and a 3rd step weaponskill, just as gl or botd (which is 4th and 5th combo steps).

There is no way to refresh huton outside of battle except wasting a ninjutsu or the 3rd step of ten chi jin.

Just correcting, the remaining is true and accurate.

Yes but it also refreshes for 30 seconds and Huton has a maximum duration of 70. It's so powerful that you literally don't need anything else.

[MauvaisOeil]

That doesn't make it a managing skill like clicking botd / enochian / transpose.

The mnk also automatically refresh his buff in his cycle while nin AC is a decision to take or to delay.

While mnk GL are too long to get and too easy to loose, and RoE a very bad designed ability for very niche encounter design, the comparaison doesn't really stand.

However, in 20s+ boss jump, nins can manually refresh huton with a ninjutsu and that is something worth comparing to the poorness of RoE and GL maintain.

[Deceptus]

My humble opinions

1) Dragon's Kick debuff needs to not require opo opo stance.

2) The blunt debuff needs to last 30 seconds. Same with the Twin Snakes Buff. No other self buff is so short.

3) Perfect Balance CD needs to be shorter. 2 min is good, one minute would be dreaming.

4) Monks need a middle button for their AOE combo. Tornado kick thematically seems logical. Remove the GL3 removal on it.

5) Arm of the Destroyer needs to be buffed to 80-100 potency. Currently it's too weak.

6) The stun needs to go away from Tackle. Bosses are immune to it anyway, and the 2s Stun wrecks any stun planning for dungeons due to diminishing returns.

7) Deep meditation needs to be affected by Direct Hits as well. 50% on DH, 100% on crit.

8) One ilm punch is currently useless. It needed to go away with the ability pruning. See the Tackle Stun issue above.

9) Fist of Wind is pointless now with the sprint change. Should be a trait.

10) Tornado Kick needs to apply sooner. It's one of those long animation, damage at the end of it abilities that no one likes.

[Mahrze]

That doesn't make it a managing skill like clicking botd / enochian / transpose.

The mnk also automatically refresh his buff in his cycle while nin AC is a decision to take or to delay.

While mnk GL are too long to get and too easy to loose, and RoE a very bad designed ability for very niche encounter design, the comparaison doesn't really stand.

However, in 20s+ boss jump, nins can manually refresh huton with a ninjutsu and that is something worth comparing to the poorness of RoE and GL maintain.

I think the comparison is that MNK has a make or break decision on their self buff where as the other three examples are much more forgiving.


NIN doesn't need to use armor crush 3 times to get the full Huton benefit.
BLM doesn't need to press Enochian every 3 spells to get its full benefit (without going into the icing in the cake that is Foul).


DRG is a different issue but DRGs BotD is much more forgiving in contrast to GL.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

That doesn't make it a managing skill like clicking botd / enochian / transpose.

The mnk also automatically refresh his buff in his cycle while nin AC is a decision to take or to delay.

While mnk GL are too long to get and too easy to loose, and RoE a very bad designed ability for very niche encounter design, the comparaison doesn't really stand.

However, in 20s+ boss jump, nins can manually refresh huton with a ninjutsu and that is something worth comparing to the poorness of RoE and GL maintain.

I think speckledburd is mainly focusing on the amount of time a nin has on huton. 70s compared to GL3s 16s, Losing huton is losing 15% haste and a ninjutsu. Losing GL3 is losing 15% haste and 30% attack power. GL is certainly more punishing. A monk only needs 16s of downtime to lose GL3, RoE grants us a total of 32s AT BEST. there's a 1/3 chance to go into a phase transition with GL3 having just refreshed. But the refresh requirement sucks. Also if you take no damage due to a scholar's crit adlo, you no longer get the proc to trigger the refresh. If a monk is already losing GL3 at 16s tho due to no attacks happening, then a nin in a similar situation is only 4seconds away from casting huton anyway. Which is much easier to establish. And Armor Crush while yes, being tied to the GCD can increase your huton timer by such a substantial amount and the max huton time is so huge, literally 1 minute and 10seconds means that a skilled ninja will never lose huton. Whereas a skilled Monk will always be forced to lose it. It's that comparison of buff maintenance which is completely unfair. A monk NEEDS to have PB back. I don't really like using trials for examples because i prefer balancing around endgame raiding. But Shinryu for example is abysmal for GL upkeep because there's so many long breaks in the fight that means a ninja can breeze through it. And DRG doesn't lose much either due to both jumps being back to regain the eyes you lost during phase transitions. GCO in V4S is another example of a Monk not being able to keep up GL3, while DRG and Nin can go into it and come out with both resources still in tact. Monk's have to wait 5 minutes into the fight before they can use PB again. If they use it for min maxing when it comes off CD then it becomes a DPS loss later. It is unfair and overly punishing

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, I was initially in the "Riddle of Earth Sucks!" camp, but having used it for a few months, I think it's the best designed and most satisfying feature SE added to Monk this expansion. Sure it doesn't prevent you losing your stacks in every situation, but it's not *supposed* to. It allows for there to be some skill in finding/optimising where it can be used in contrast with Tornado Kick, and encourages knowledge of a fight and player skill. Like, using it between the pushback of Decicive Battle in v4s, and the Holy hit so you can get a few extra seconds of GL to refresh it with a Coeurl move when he comes back (really satisfying to execute). Or after the last boss of Rabanastre jumps when he does the pulsating AoE. The skill has uses and it's fun to find them. When you can't use it to keep your stacks? Use Tornado Kick. That's why that skill was put into the game to begin with, and that's why we still have it.

You cannot lose that much, divorced from any possibility driven by player control, and say that GL3 needs not be maintained 100% of the time, by RoE or otherwise. Monk simply does not have that kind of lead, nor should it: it should not be dependent on fights not having extended jump phases in order to be viable. That would be asinine. Or rather, it would then be left to remain asinine.

Now, by all means argue that RoE shouldn't be sole solution. Sure. Why should anything be? But consider:

For something to be a class mechanic, it must be able to be influenced by the player itself, at all times. This was true when we could precisely time our Coeurls to the final GCD of a Jump (especially for those with parsers and damn good eyeballing). It has not been true since. RoE merely circumvents the mechanic in certain circumstances, while providing nothing in the remainder. TK attempts to give it alternate reward, and therefore works in a broader range of situations, but as it so clearly inferior to GL maintenance, this merely becomes a type check, rather than a real decision: if GL3 cannot be maintained, free damage via TK. If it can, do not gimp damage via TK. At present, the team as a whole can push a jump such that it goes off directly Coeurl or directly before Coeurl, a range even now of 2 GCDs to how much downtime a Monk can handle, and certain jumps just become irrelevant because you have RoE. But there is nothing, lest you call that simple application of a very long Earth's Reply buff before the damage arrives sizeable player skillgap, the Monk itself can do about it.

Moreover, for a mechanic to ever feel like a reward to maximize, rather than a punishment to lose, it needs to have something like exponential difficulty or preperation required to be maximized such that maximization is rare, and it needs to be balanced around a state that is less than maximization.

Imagine, for instance, if GL was not a fixed duration, but instead extended by relative potency dealt (potency of all weaponskills, DoT ticks, and abilities, as per their multipliers). While GL could still be advanced by Coeurl moves, perhaps even technically to an infinite level, each ascended level burns through that duration more quickly, whereupon it descends to the previous level. You would be fighting for every precious second of GL4, but it would be always there, always possible, and would thereby again allow further modular control. Have both a single-burner (new) and all-burner (Tornado Kick) ability by which to quickly manipulate GL downwards. Now, after due tuning, the whole spectrum is in your hands: it's now a real mechanic, and its heights actually feel like rewards, not just the initial requirement for dealing halfway acceptable damage.

[MauvaisOeil]

No one, especially not me, is telling GL sustaining is fine and fair.

The point is just : things cannot be compaired if they aren't comparable. Armor crush can only be compared to whatever extend the duration of GL : coeurl form strikes. Telling that nin doesn't have to refresh it 3 times as Armor crush is a decision that can be delayed and coeurl form attacks are an automatic cycle. Give +15s to huton on aeolian edge and shadow fang and no one will ever touch AC anymore, because it's a decision, and Coeurl form attacks aren't.

The punishing aspect is none to be compared, because the whole design of GL was turned, as the heavy positionnal, to the relative difficulty to properly play MNK and be top DPS. However, this design is flawed now, and monk is just one amongst other DPS and nothing is a justification to it's exigency.