The state of Monk in Shadowbringers (long)

[PangTong]

I waited until Shadowbringers actually released to post this, since I was foolishly hoping that the Monk changes in the Media Tour build were just some kind of cruel joke, but in the end I'm forced to post my feedback once again. This is going to a long post, so I'll break it up into three sections. The first will be my thoughts on the concept of Monk and what its gameplay should be like and how I feel Shadowbringers has failed the job, the second I will talk about the specific problems Monk has in Shadowbringers, and the third will be some of the changes I'd like to see. Everything in this post is my personal opinion.

Part One: About Monk

To me, the core identity of Monk is about fast, flowing and rhythmic combos. You build up your attack speed, and then you fight to hold onto that speed by attacking with a natural flow and rhythm which gives Monk this satisfying feeling of performing an endless stream of continuous attacks.

Monk held true to this identity in ARR and Heavensward, but it went astray in Stormblood. The new Riddle of Fire ability which slowed down our combos lead to a frustrating feeling of being forcibly slowed down and held back, even though we were doing more damage when using it. What Monk wants most of all is to go fast and stay fast with a smooth rhythm of attacks. Having our attack speed constantly change is jarring and feels wrong. Slowing down feels like a punishment for doing something wrong instead of something you actually want to do. This problem was exacerbated even further by the rise of the Tornado Kick rotation, where Monks were now encouraged to regularly dump all the speed they had built up and then work their way back up. This made things feel even more jarring and less satisfying, to the point where many Monk players simply refused to do this rotation.

This issue was one of the main complaints about Monk in Stormblood, so when I heard they were listening to feedback and were changing Monk accordingly, I was hopeful that it would be addressed. However, it was not. Not only that, but they seemed to only make Monk's rotation less fun and engaging than it already was.

Riddle of Fire in Shadowbringers still has the slowdown effect, so we did not get any help there. The Tornado Kick rotation seems to have been stifled, but it isn't for certain yet. If it is still optimal, it is likely to only be once every 3 minutes. But rather than make Tornado Kick a more useful rotational ability, it still consumes all our speed. On top of this, several of Monk's other rotational actions such as Steel Peak, Howling Fist and Internal Release were removed and replaced with more situational skills. Whether or not you use Tornado Kick, Monk's rotation is now less active and engaging.

Monk did get some helpful things like a better AoE rotation and easier Greased Lightning management, but I feel like these things weren't worth the tradeoff of what we lost. While other jobs feel as though they have been smoothed out, enhanced, or evolved, Monk feels like it's going backwards. The job seems to have regressed to a state that has even less depth than it did in ARR 2.0. When other jobs seem to be moving forward, this is an extremely bitter pill for Monks.

Part Two: Monk's problems in Shadowbringers

1. Riddle of Fire still slows us down.
As mentioned before, this was a large complaint about Monk in Stormblood so it is extremely disappointing to see this effect still in place, especially after they said they were adjusting Monk based on feedback about how it wasn't fun to play. There's not much more to say here really. Using it still feels bad and can cause you to mess up your combos if you're not used to it. If anything it feels even worse now that we have the speed of GL4.

2. Tornado Kick still consumes our Greased Lightning stacks.
Tornado Kick is in a state where it seems to be functionally useless. With the Tornado Kick rotation gone, it seemingly returns to its original intended use of being used for downtime or phase transitions when we're guaranteed to lose Greased Lightning. But the issue here is that with tools like Six-Sided Star, Anatman and Riddle of Earth, the times where we will uncontrollably lose Greased Lightning are rarer than ever. The use cases for Tornado Kick are SO infrequent that a Monk player would be justified in just taking it off their hotbars completely, they'll lose almost nothing for doing so.

Most bosses do not telegraph when they are about to become untargetable, they just do it without warning. The only way to know is to have perfect knowledge of the fight script, which most players won't. If you use Tornado Kick 2 seconds too early, then you've lost more damage than if you simply hadn't used it. If you use it one second too late, then it simply doesn't go off. The only way to get any use out of it in this way is with absolutely impeccable fight knowledge, which is a ridiculous situation to have an entirely separate ability for, as almost no one will be able to get any use out of it. This is assuming that situations where Tornado Kick is actually a sensible option even still exist.

It is maybe still usable right at the very end of a fight when the boss is at <1% HP, but this is surely not worth having an entire separate ability for. Other jobs such as Ninja, Bard, Machinist and Samurai had their "low HP" attacks removed or changed because it was a waste having them when you could have a more interesting rotational skill that you use more often, and even those skills got far more usage than current Tornado Kick.

Between the lack of situations where it's possibly useful, and the difficulty of using it in the situations where it IS useful, Tornado Kick is used so rarely that there's really no reason for it to still exist. On top of this its continued existence just makes it confusing for new players who will assume that this skill has some worthwhile usage when in reality all they will be doing by trying to work it into a rotation is harming themselves and the people they group with. It is a terrible skill and desperately needs to be changed. If there is only one point you take away from this entire post, make it this one.

3. The removal of Internal Release, Steel Peak and Howling Fist.
Just as a disclaimer, I know that Howling Fist was effectively replaced by Enlightenment. However, because Enlightenment shares a resource with The Forbidden Chakra, it can't be considered a normal rotational ability except in AoE, while Howling Fist was used in both single target -and- AoE. The vast majority of content in the game focuses on single-target fights, so my focus is on the single-target rotation. Enlightenment replacing Howling Fist essentially means we lose a rotational button because it replaces an all-purpose attack with an AoE-only attack.

Now, I realize that these skills were not especially complex. You mostly just used them on cooldown whenever they came up. Even so, this helps to make the Monk rotation feel more active. Without these skills, we are pushing fewer different buttons than ever. Assuming the TK rotation is gone, on a single-target fight our only rotational (non-situational) oGCD abilities are: Elixir Field, Shoulder Tackle, Riddle of Fire, Brotherhood, and Forbidden Chakra. Maybe Perfect Balance too. Just six! For perspective: DRG has eleven! Even RDM has seven!

What's even more shocking is that while these actions were removed, highly situational skills that Monk rarely if EVER uses were left in! Including the now functionally useless Fists of Earth! Monk now has more skills used for GL management than they have rotational oGCD attacks. What is the reasoning here? Did the devs think that Monk's basic rotation was so intimidating that they had to remove nearly everything else to avoid scaring off new players? Do they think that hitting your combos with a fast GCD is so incredibly difficult that no one is going to be able to concentrate on anything else so it all has to get removed? I just don't understand the logic. Monk has a good foundation with its combo system, but this doesn't mean it should be stripped bare to just that foundation and nothing else.

To pre-empt this response, the argument of "but you're going faster with GL4 so you're still pressing the same amount of buttons per minute" is not compelling. By this logic you could reduce a job to a single button that you mash as fast as possible and this would qualify as being as engaging as a job like Summoner or Ninja. Having more abilities is an opportunity for greater depth and engagement in combat gameplay. If an ability is not interesting and doesn't interact with the rotation, then the solution is to change that ability to be MORE interesting, not to remove it. For almost every other job, if they lost something it was replaced with something new. While many jobs became easier to understand and play in 5.0, few actually had their total number of rotational actions reduced significantly. Monk is one of the few that has clearly had their level of engagement diminished, whether you used the Tornado Kick rotation or not.

4. Fists of Earth and Riddle of Earth still exist and are unchanged.
This is basically just a continuation of the above point, but even if the devs actively made the choice to have more situational skills rather than more attacks, these two actions feel especially superfluous. The circumstances where either of these actions would be useful are so miniscule that it's unbelievable they were left in while stuff we used all the time was removed.

For Fists of Earth, a Monk is never going to give up the damage benefits of Fists of Fire or Fists of Wind for a defense boost. The only time this might see any usage is when there is nothing to attack but damage is still incoming, such as during a boss's ultimate move. However a 10% damage reduction on the Monk only is still so minor as to be pointless. Why not just replace this with something more useful? Like maybe one of the many useful and fun skills that were removed.

For Riddle of Earth, it has maybe marginally more use than Fists of Earth, but now that we have Perfect Balance, Anatman, Tornado Kick AND Six-Sided Star, the times where Riddle of Earth will be the preferred action are so rare that it's confusing that they chose to keep this action the way it is.

5. Fists stances are now even more situational. Fists of Fire is now rarely used.
Even with the buff to Fists of Fire to make it a 10% damage increase, the speed buff gained from the fourth stack of Greased Lightning in Fists of Wind means that ultimately Fists of Wind deals more damage and is thus the preferred stance. Fists of Fire is only useful when you are at 3 stacks of Greased Lightning or lower, which in most fights will only be for around the first 12-15 seconds before you've built up enough stacks with Perfect Balance to reach Greased Lightning 4. Even if there are times where you are forced to lose your stacks, this still only amounts to maybe 2 or 3 times a fight that Fists of Fire is useful, probably less than a minute total. Essentially it's a skill that only sees significant use by people are playing badly and constantly dropping Greased Lightning, and even then the total amount of damage you gain from using it over just staying in Fists of Wind all the time is almost nothing.

For such a minor buff that's used so rarely, is it really worth having an entirely separate stance button? Surely we should have something more interesting instead.

I can only guess that the reason they are kept separate is that they want Fists of Fire there to accommodate players who think that GL4 is too fast. But without the damage gain being completely equal, this is rather pointless and not something that should be encouraged. Why would you ever want players to think that doing less damage is a real choice? All this does is breed bad mentalities and cause conflict in the community.

6. The "Anatman Rotation"
For those who don't know, it's apparently a DPS gain to use Anatman to gain one stack of GL during the opener so that you can instead use Perfect Balance as a DPS cooldown. Besides having to stand still and stop attacking to make use of it, it's effectiveness is also determined by how well you align with server ticks. I honestly can't imagine that this is even intentional, but really just shows how poorly thought out Monk's toolkit is in general.

7. Extremely small amount of actions when synced
To put how barebones synced Monk has become into perspective, in ARR at level 50, Monk had 13 different rotational actions (i.e. all actions used as part of your normal rotation, both weaponskills and abilities, not counting situational stuff like Perfect Balance or Form Shift). When a Monk in Shadowbringers gets synced down to level 50, they have just 7 rotational actions. 7, total. Your 6 combo moves, plus Shoulder Tackle, and that's IT. At level 80, this increases to... 11. Which is still even less than what Monks had in 2.X. Playing Monk synced to 50 is now physically painful, it's like every instance becomes Sastasha.

If we can't get any of our old actions back then I'm BEGGING that we can at least get them shuffled around so that some of the more useful ones like Form Shift, Elixir Field or Riddle of Fire are learned at a lower level because playing Monk in old content is absolutely unbearable now.

Part Three: The changes I want to see

I think Monk definitely needs additional reworks to truly be considered fixed and for it to reach the same level of refinement and engaging gameplay as other jobs. It actually doesn't need all that many changes, but those changes are dependent on whether the dev team are willing to reconsider their current vision for Monk, because it definitely seems to differ from how many MNK players (or at least I) feel.

While there's plenty of other little things about Monk that could use some work, these are what I feel are the absolutely critical changes that are needed as soon as possible:

1. Tornado Kick no longer consumes stacks, but instead has some other function that allows us to use it rotationally.
This is not only to make Tornado Kick a useful skill, but also to restore one of our oGCD attacks which were so rudely removed.

Just as an example idea, Tornado Kick could be a chakra-spending attack with a 60 second cooldown and 400+ potency. In this case you want to prioritize it over Forbidden Chakra, and use Forbidden Chakra in between. To make it easier to use without wasting chakra procs, it could maybe have two charges and only cost two or three chakra. It could also have some AoE falloff damage so you want to use it in AoE as well. Alternatively it could be something like BLM's Enochian where we get a usage of Tornado Kick for maintaining GL3/4 for a set period of time. I want Tornado Kick to be something we actually use as part of our normal rotation, without having to slow down, and without it just being a thing used right at the end of a fight or when you predict a boss is about to jump and you can't save your Greased Lightning for some reason.

2. Riddle of Fire no longer slows us down, but instead has some other effect.
The simplest change would be to just remove the slowdown on RoF and adjust its damage bonus to compensate. But it would be a bit boring to just have a flat damage buff, and I don't really want Monk's speed to be changing mid-rotation because it messes up the flow of the job. You could instead do something like add the damage buff to Brotherhood and then turn Riddle of Fire into what Internal Release once was. Having two 90 second cooldowns which you always want to use together isn't very interesting so I would like if we had a 60s cooldown back.

3. Fists stances are changed somehow.
The way I see it, there's two possible approaches to the concept of stances on a DPS job. One is that the stances are completely equal in potential damage output but simply deliver that damage in different ways, or have other utility effects. The other is that, in order to maximise DPS, you want to use one stance at some times, and another stance at other times during the rotation.

Fists of Fire and Fists of Wind in some ways seem to be trying to fulfil both, but in reality they fulfil neither. Their damage output is -almost- equal, but not equal enough to make it so you can simply choose which one to be in. For full optimal damage, you DO want to switch stances, but you do it so rarely and for such a short time that the system feels pointless.

So the options for the Fists stances are to either fulfil one of those two criteria, or to replace these abilities with something else.

Going the route of making them equal would likely mean removing all damage buffs and instead giving stances utility functions. For example, Fists of Wind could have ONLY its movement speed increase, Fists of Earth ONLY its damage reduction, and then Fists of Fire could have some other non-damage effect. Some ideas here would be: increasing the duration of opo-opo/raptor/couerl form, increasing the maximum duration of greased lightning, or increasing our melee attack range.

The alternative is to make it so different stances have different uses in the rotation. The simplest way to do this would be to have one stance be for single target, and a second stance for AoE. For example: Fists of Fire might be a flat +5% damage increase, while Fists of Wind instead causes our autoattacks to hit all nearby enemies. Something more complicated than this where both stances were ideal in different parts of the single-target rotation would also be possible, but this would probably be considered too complex.

4. Prevent the Anatman rotation
The simplest course here would be to just make it so Anatman does not build stacks of GL, only refreshes them. If it's a downtime tool then there's no reason that it should build stacks in the first place, and since you need at least one stack to start building them anyway, it means that there's really almost no usage where the stack building is helpful, except in this annoying case where it's a DPS gain to use it in the opener. Whether or not you actually use Anatman in your opener as Monk this is still something that ought to be fixed since it makes the job annoying to play for those who want to maximise their damage, and it leads to confusion for new players who may be lead to think they should be using Anatman to gain GL instead of just attacking normally. I'd also like if it Anatman refreshed the duration of forms, like it does for Greased Lightning, instead of just pausing the timer.

Summary

Besides the above changes, there's plenty of other little niggling things that are still annoying about MNK but which have never been addressed, such as only being able to store 5 chakra (which makes it very easy to overcap), forms only lasting 10 seconds (which often causes them to expire before you can get your GL-saving couerl form attack in), Brotherhood still only affecting physical damage dealers, and an overreliance on critical hits for chakra generation. But compared to the other problems Monk has in 5.0, changing these would be a luxury. Right now MNK needs more drastic fixes of its core skills to save it as an interesting and fun job.

Despite the promise that MNK had been changed for the better in Shadowbringers, it really doesn't feel like the dev team knows what to do with the job at all. The major complaints were not addressed, its toolkit and intended rotation is still confusing for new Monks, and it is still riddled with situational and borderline useless skills. Not only that, but we actually LOST rotational skills, making us less active and less engaging to play. Despite a few cool new things, Monk in Shadowbringers has gone backwards, not forwards. It has regressed instead of evolving. Even a level 50 Monk in ARR had more to think about than a level 80 Monk in Shadowbringers.

What exactly is the development team's vision for Monk? They seem to be under the impression that hitting positionals with a fast GCD is SO unbelievably difficult that if the job has anything else to worry about at all then it's too hard and no one will like it. I'm telling you right now that if you remove everything from a job except their barebones basic combos then that's -really- when no one likes it.

It's outrageous that Yoshida has said that MNK was one of the jobs they listened to community feedback on and reworked accordingly, even saying in a media tour interview that it was the job whose reworks they were happiest with and the most excited for players to try out. The changes that we actually got demonstrate an unbelievably massive disconnect between the devs and the players of MNK. What's even more baffling is this quote from Famitsu's media tour interview:

Yoshida: At the time, we were confident in how complete MNK was at a job, so we went the route of burst damage at the cost of speed, and made it so that there wouldn't be any extreme variance in how it's played. However, it turned out that that wasn't fun for the players who enjoyed MNK.
Q: That's the impression you got from Stormblood, then.
Yoshida: When you're comfortable with the fast speed, then it feels stressful to have to slow down, no matter how much of a DPS increase it is. Even if we do something with the players in mind, if they don't enjoy it, then it's the wrong choice. We simply adjust each job in the direction that we think the players will want.

"When you're comfortable with the fast speed then it feels stressful to slow down", and yet we kept the skill which slows us down. I genuinely cannot comprehend how Yoshida can say this, while giving the green light for Monk's state in Shadowbringers. It legitimately does not add up. His statement is in direct contradiction to what MNK actually got. If the gap of understanding between players and the devs is truly THIS wide, then I can't really say that there's ANY hope of Monk getting better.

I really can't put into words just how upset I am about the changes. After 2 years of being told that the devs were listening to complaints, that a rework was coming, and this is the end result, at this point I simply feel like I am straight up being lied to. It does not seem like the devs are simply trying and failing to deliver on promises, but rather they are knowingly and intentionally deceiving me to some end that I can't imagine. Otherwise I really can't explain how the feedback on Monk and the devs changes to it are so, SO far apart. It just beggars belief. How can I possibly have faith in this dev team and this game when their response to players' complaints and requests is THIS far off the mark?

Playing Monk was the most enjoyable part of the game for me and having that neutered doesn't just diminish a large part of my enjoyment, it also makes me feel like the devs do not care and that there's no point in staying around if the things I like just keep getting ruined or removed and all my pleading just falls on deaf ears.

[KanameYuuki]

-Form Shift refreshes GL timer but does not grant GL stack.
With that simple change we can have the foundation to delete all that stupid amount of situational skills, even TK could preferably be reworked as oGCD skill.

-Where is our disengage skill, I can't believe it would be 8 years and still no sign of this simple and useful ability for the job.

[silverdragontyr]

I agree with pretty much everything you said. What further infuriates me of ShB Mnk is not only did they neuter our abilities as well as keeping RoF slowdown, they removed a large chunk of Sks without melding. Some may view this as a temporary/armor preference but what this ends up meaning is new additional stack of GL doesn't add any speed over SB. It also doesn't add any damage due to not allowing FoF. It does require a fourth stack to build and take longer to reach max power. So what's the point?

What I want from Mnk, what I've wanted since I started playing this game in 1.0 is for Mnk to feel fast. I remember back getting good level 50 gear and thinking "Wow if we stack Sks, in the future Mnk can become a real monster for attack speed." As we can see, that never came to pass. We're level 80 now. I want progression to feel like progression. I want to go from playing other DPS to Mnk and feel the difference.

My Lv.60 Sam with 500 Sks has a GCD of 2.41. My Lv.80 (i411) Mnk with a Sks of 1500 has a GCD of 2.39 which can get down to 1.8-1.9 with four stacks of GL. Mind you this is where I was in SB with 3 stacks. Mnk at max stacks now should have close to double the attack of speed of other DPS. They are meant to be the embodiment of speed. Mind you we also have to maintain those stacks and if they drop it's a far harsher punishment than any other class.

[Silver-Strider]

Why not make Tornado Kick our Disengage ability? We already do a backflip animation for it so just add a travel distance on the backflip and it becomes a solid disengagement tool, granted I expect a huge potency reduction to it as well as the removal of the GL requirement as well but I could live with that if it was at least useful.

Riddle of Fire is probably my biggest painpoint this expansion since the lack of oGCDs makes it so that you really feel that slow down more so than ever before. I wasn't happy with it in SB either but at least it gave me time to weave in oGCDs. Now, it's just something I dread using all together, even with GL4. It doesn't feel fun at all to use and if the damage buff wasn't so necessary, I'd honestly just drop the skill entirely.

[GrumbleBeard]

-I actually didn't mind Riddle of Fire in SB, I got used to it pretty quickly. It's very noticeable to me now during GL4 though and I agree I don't like how it feels.
-I actually like Anatman both aesthetically and for it's intended use. Using it to gain stacks mid combat feels like I am never on the good side of server ticks. I do wish that outside of combat, it refreshed the timer of GL instead of just freezing it as it felt awful to lose GL between every pull while leveling.
-I like Six-Sided Star thematically, but when trying to use it while forced to disengage I find it feeling awkward as it's a weaponskill and feel like it would work better as an oGCD
-70% chakra is such a strange thing to me coupled with the reduction to 1 second CD on Forbidden Chakra/ Enlightenment because without Internal release I barely generate chakra at all. Even when using brotherhood I seem to get less then before.
-For tornado kick, I like the above suggestion to make it into a jump back move and we certainly could use another oGCD or two. I've always been jealous of the other melee's movement abilities
-I really enjoy Leaden Fist, big ol' bootshines are very satisfying but I find myself having to spam true north as much as I can for it as boss/tanks spin things around
-Very jealous of DRGs getting a move that changes depending on hitting their positionals and would maybe be okay with something like hitting all 3 positionals on a combo changes bootshine to a forbidden chakra expy, dragon kick to a tornado kick, etc etc.

I still like monk through thick and thin and I am foolishly optimistic for future balance changes.

edit: goofed up a copy paste

[Shurrikhan]

1. Riddle of Fire still slows us down.
2. Tornado Kick still consumes our Greased Lightning stacks.

I don't remotely consider these problems. I liked the pacing variance brought by RoF (or at least certainly didn't mind it and would have taken it over a smaller damage buff as to come at no cost or potency losses elsewhere), and I liked the 4.2 Tornado Kick rotations precisely because TK was something that demanded synergetic use of surrounding skills.

[Blanchimont]

I feel that much of ShB's changes to Monk did nothing to address the core issues of the class. The same problems from before are still here and it feels like nothing has been done about it. For starters, it is near impossible to carry Greased Lightning from one set of mobs to another because it only lasts a brief 15 or so seconds. This forces you to build it up each time. While Anatman can be used to pause the timer in combat, the fact that you lose it the moment you move makes it absolutely useless outside of raid bosses with long transitions. It is the exact same issue that existed with Riddle of Earth, but slightly better because you don't have to take a hit for it to trigger. This makes it usable in a few other boss transitions where you are not required to get hit. An Enhanced Perfect Form that shortened its cooldown timer would have been miles better in my opinion because I feel much like Riddle of Earth, Anatman will fail its intended purpose of extending GL duration.

Tornado Kick is still as useless as ever. I don't even bother to use it because a back/flank attack with a critical hit will surpass it in damage. The loss of GL just doesn't seem worth it unless you have Perfect Balance to build it up to max again immediately after. Just then, it might be worth it, but I'd rather just save it for the raid transition. Overall, it feels like a skill that doesn't even seem fit for a Monk since the GL loss works against the Monk kit.

[BucklesTrespen]

-Form Shift refreshes GL timer but does not grant GL stack.
With that simple change we can have the foundation to delete all that stupid amount of situational skills, even TK could preferably be reworked as oGCD skill.

-Where is our disengage skill, I can't believe it would be 8 years and still no sign of this simple and useful ability for the job.

Am I the only Monk on these forums who utterly hates the over reliance on Form Shift. Cycling through shift before a boss to stay in Coeurl form for pull. Cycling through shift between packs of mobs in dungeons to arrive at the next mobs in coeurl form. Cycling through shift after a boss jumps, also while spamming any remaining meditate...

My fix: Form shift becomes an OCD with a /shrug 90 second cooldown, and grants one use of whatever the hell coding SAM get to allow them to use any weaponskill in their combo. There. You press Form Shift once when you need it and not upteen times. Brings back the Tornado kick rotation. Tornado kick gets it's potency lowered and a cooldown slapped on for good measure. Use of tornado kick removes your GL but gives the Monk 15% skill speed for 16 seconds.

Remove the damn slow from SSS. Lower the potency if needed for balance, make it OGC but give it a 30 second cooldown. Allow it to extend current form as well as GL timer. Grants a chakra if used when at GL3 (one less meditate to spam when running away from mechanics)

[GrumbleBeard]

Am I the only Monk on these forums who utterly hates the over reliance on Form Shift.

My least favorite part of playing monk is pre-pull trying to time coeurl form in duties where people don't use countdowns. I like your suggestion, I would be grateful to never have to experience form shifting 30 times waiting to go, only to have them pull the second it's about to run out. I'm glad that anatman can at least assuage that a little.

[KanameYuuki]

-Very jealous of DRGs getting a move that changes depending on hitting their positionals and would maybe be okay with something like hitting all 3 positionals on a combo changes bootshine to a forbidden chakra expy, dragon kick to a tornado kick, etc etc.

That was such a wasted opportunity, the one class that needs positionals for every single target skill yet they decided to add that new mechanic to DRG, what were they thinking, if anything 6SS (not with the same effect ofc) could have been our 4th combo skill, only available after having successfully used the previous 3.


At this point why not make meditation II a 100% from crits, still RNG over RNG, and that way even if you had the worst luck ever you could count with a FC every 5 Bootshines.