Complex Monk Problems, Discussion of Job Gauges

[silverdragontyr]

One of the core issues is Monk is the fast class. They're supposed to make you feel like you're hitting hard and hitting fast. They're supposed to be the combo master. To resemble fighting games. The issued being...

• The combo synergy is kind of lacking. There is essentially two combos. Adding a way to expand the combos could go a long way. Saw an idea about emulating Blitz with combos that could work. There are a dozen ways to add more combo feel.

• Speed. When 2.0 started it was all about speeding Mnk up. Everything since Stormblood has been about slowing them down. This doesn't feel good as a class designed about going as fast as you can.


There are reason for the slowdown. Speed is by far the strongest stat in most things, and incredibly hard to balance. It's why attack speed up, double hits ect are so strong in games. Being able to deal out your damage faster, leads to such a massive ramp up it can quickly snowball to making Mnk OP. If you do only 70% damage hits of other DPS, but do it twice as fast, that's a significant boost over other classes. They try to make sure the classes are fairly balanced as to not require a demand for one class. Further, high speed classes tend to be harder to play as they require more perfect timing to squeeze out every DPS full efficiency. So this creates an issue, do you make Mnk complex, high speed high technical and alienate a large number of people who want a casual punchy class? Or keep it simple so anyone can enjoy it with relative easy. If you do make it high tech/speed, do you make it stronger at higher efficiencies? Why Play Mnk if I can do Drg or Sam for same damage without the high punishment for error?

It's not an easy thing to balance. I'm not entirely sure how they can fix it. That said I would enjoy being faster a bit more, that's a big part of why I like Mnk. I would enjoy it if there was more to do. As it stands we have two combos and we throw in some buffs when off cooldown. I wouldn't mind having six+ finishers and depending on the order of WS you do gives different finishers with different effects/power. I also would like it if half our skills didn't feel clunky. Chakra is just there. You charge it outside of battle, you have to hit the button for each chakra, and having less than full is pointless. It barely charges in battle unless under certain buffs and is not worth dropping ws to charge. Meaning in longer fights it's a use once and ignore unless it fills through buffs. Tornado Kick being an attack that goes against the foundation of Mnk, and has never really gotten better should just be removed or changed in it's entirety.

[Physic]

One of the core issues is Monk is the fast class. They're supposed to make you feel like you're hitting hard and hitting fast. They're supposed to be the combo master. To resemble fighting games. The issued being...

• The combo synergy is kind of lacking. There is essentially two combos. Adding a way to expand the combos could go a long way. Saw an idea about emulating Blitz with combos that could work. There are a dozen ways to add more combo feel.

• Speed. When 2.0 started it was all about speeding Mnk up. Everything since Stormblood has been about slowing them down. This doesn't feel good as a class designed about going as fast as you can.


There are reason for the slowdown. Speed is by far the strongest stat in most things, and incredibly hard to balance. It's why attack speed up, double hits ect are so strong in games. Being able to deal out your damage faster, leads to such a massive ramp up it can quickly snowball to making Mnk OP. If you do only 70% damage hits of other DPS, but do it twice as fast, that's a significant boost over other classes. They try to make sure the classes are fairly balanced as to not require a demand for one class. Further, high speed classes tend to be harder to play as they require more perfect timing to squeeze out every DPS full efficiency. So this creates an issue, do you make Mnk complex, high speed high technical and alienate a large number of people who want a casual punchy class? Or keep it simple so anyone can enjoy it with relative easy. If you do make it high tech/speed, do you make it stronger at higher efficiencies? Why Play Mnk if I can do Drg or Sam for same damage without the high punishment for error?

It's not an easy thing to balance. I'm not entirely sure how they can fix it. That said I would enjoy being faster a bit more, that's a big part of why I like Mnk. I would enjoy it if there was more to do. As it stands we have two combos and we throw in some buffs when off cooldown. I wouldn't mind having six+ finishers and depending on the order of WS you do gives different finishers with different effects/power. I also would like it if half our skills didn't feel clunky. Chakra is just there. You charge it outside of battle, you have to hit the button for each chakra, and having less than full is pointless. It barely charges in battle unless under certain buffs and is not worth dropping ws to charge. Meaning in longer fights it's a use once and ignore unless it fills through buffs. Tornado Kick being an attack that goes against the foundation of Mnk, and has never really gotten better should just be removed or changed in it's entirety.

speed isnt that hard to balance unless you have a lot of on hit mechanics, i think they don't like the idea of fast global cooldowns. if you go 10% faster, you do 10% more damage, with some drop off for clipped actions.

the goal wasn't to slow monk down, the goal was to try to create more incentive/interactions with Greased lightning, and at one time to create the feeling of having combos.

people may not like TK or riddle ogcd combos, but once you take them away, the class has no highs and no lows, one pace, and thus becomes a really monotonous job.

the only mechanics left are maintaining gl stacks, but the methods of doing that are not engaging, and mostly designed for bosses running.


If that's supposed to be the whole point of the class, they need higher reward for max speed status, and make it more interactive to maintain, or build up. Basically if monk design is basically supposed to be like race car driving, the max speed needs to feel faster, and you need more turns so it's gratifying to maintain high speeds.

in the race car analogy monk currently feels like a 65 mph max speed car that goes 0-60 in 40 seconds, on a track that is basically a square.

Personally though, i wouldn't make maintaining gl the whole monk mechanic. Combos and creating/finding/exploiting openings of the enemy feel like more of the main concept of a martial arts class. gl only seems to represent the athleticism aspect of monk.