My god, Square *head in hands* - RE: monk

[Gruntler]

What probably annoys me most is how MNKs will find a way to use what's in our kit to push our DPS as much as possible and make the job as fun as we can, but then SE brings down the hammer like "We don't want you playing that way. You need to play this way!"

When said optimization involves running third-party software that was actively used to try to blacklist members of the community, and the monk community decided that this was an acceptable state of affairs, then the level of surprise in the community should be a non-positive number.

Like, let's not sugar-coated, this is the shit that actually happened and monks should not be surprised at the inevitable result.

[IruruCece]

When said optimization involves running third-party software that was actively used to try to blacklist members of the community, and the monk community decided that this was an acceptable state of affairs, then the level of surprise in the community should be a non-positive number.

Like, let's not sugar-coated, this is the shit that actually happened and monks should not be surprised at the inevitable result.

This post is remarkably misinformed, at best.

The monk community didn't decide this was an "acceptable state of affairs", players simply worked with the tool SquareEnix gave us, and when that particular tool turned out to suck harder than a vacuum cleaner, some players, an extreme minority, used a mod to make a crappy tool actually somewhat decent and reliable.

Monks have been upset about Anatman pretty much since Shadowbringers dropped, and SE's response wasn't to actually fix the problem, but to make the problem worse. This is how they've "balanced" monk for the length of the game's existence, so it really shouldn't be a surprise that the people who do give enough of a damn about the job to keep playing it despite the outright neglect are going to be the ones who put a lot of effort into getting everything they can out of the job, or they're going to be players who chose the job because it was 'optimal' as a result of some seriously ill-considered changes we got between SB and ShB.

At the end of the day, no DPS, not a one, should have a button that asks you to stand still for an amount of time you can't gauge with the tools that are naturally built into the game, in order to build up a primary resource or buff, as part of your opener. Whatever BS SE has said about button bloat and QoL in the past is at the very best mistaken when it comes to Monks, and at worst a flat out lie if they're going to give us absolute, utter garbage like Anatman and Six Sided Star, and retain Tornado Kick as is.

[Rockette]

Can confirm, was not happy about the 3rd party software burning hoops to jump through. No one accepted it but what else could we do? Ask Square to rework Monk?


Wait...

[ValStormbreaker]

The 3rd party tool was not actually a requirement, you could use regens to time your countdown for a perfect anatman tick...

Except you sort of miss the point here. The issue is - and has always been - that in order to make appropriate changes to the jobs, the dev team needs to weigh written feedback against the actual telemetry data of what players are doing. Players can say they want whatever changes they like, but it may not work with respect to the balance of the rest of the game, so the data is what needs to be taken most into consideration.

What they did with Anatman is really a sign that they are aware that automation has been a problem. It was written all over the lodestone updates until 5.1 came out, and of all the job guides to come out of THE preeminent theorycrafting community which is the one singular place raiders go to get their info on rotations and openers, the MNK one was the ONLY one to so brazenly and openly advertise and heavily recommend the usage of third-party ToS-violating tools, including ones which were developed and distributed by the MNK mentor Aya Liz herself. I wouldn't underestimate the sheer volume of raiders who use and openly recommend the use of third-party cheating software.

The problem is that this pollutes the data SE has to work with and they cannot weigh the feedback against the data reliably enough to make sensible changes. The Anatman change appears to be targeting specifically the automating tool for inputting a Dragon Kick unnaturally quickly after gaining the second Greased Lightning stack. This prevents that so they can collect the data they need to make reliable changes by 5.2 and see what numbers really have to be adjusted accordingly.

[Lastelli]

When said optimization involves running third-party software that was actively used to try to blacklist members of the community, and the monk community decided that this was an acceptable state of affairs, then the level of surprise in the community should be a non-positive number.

Like, let's not sugar-coated, this is the shit that actually happened and monks should not be surprised at the inevitable result.

Why not use that opportunity to fix anatman and turn it into something MNK could use to effectively manage GL stacks during downtime or during their opener? Or even better...use it to streamline the tornado kick rotation that was popular at the end of stormblood and finally give a little twist to MNK's unchanging rotation? Because right now, MNK really feels like ARR MNK with some minor QoL changes (form shift making GL management non-existent).

[ValStormbreaker]

Why not use that opportunity to fix anatman and turn it into something MNK could use to effectively manage GL stacks during downtime or during their opener? Or even better...use it to streamline the tornado kick rotation that was popular at the end of stormblood and finally give a little twist to MNK's unchanging rotation? Because right now, MNK really feels like ARR MNK with some minor QoL changes (form shift making GL management non-existent).

Actually, the double TK rotation was technically still possible, though it required a GCD speed of 1.86 OR 1.84. It just didn't work at 1.85 because of some weird GCD clipping which would occur due to TK's 10-second recast time, which could easily be fixed by reducing it to 5 seconds. Damage-wise, it was viable for clearing content, but under-performed compared to other openers because of how weak Tornado Kick is and there being little incentive to drop stacks compared to just using Six-Sided Star for disengaging from the spread mechanics SHB introduced for most of its fights around 20 seconds into an encounter, which always shaves an RoF window a bit short and interrupts openers at around the same GCD. If it weren't for those (which I really wish they'd stop doing for future encounter designs), you'd be able to use both a Six-Sided Star AND TK, but either way, TK would need a significant buff and its recast time reduced. That, and Anatman needs to have its recast reduced to 30 seconds, whereby if it gave a GL stack instantly, it could be used during the second TK's recovery rotation to quickly get back up to 4 GL stacks, rather than just up to 3 and then having to wait 3 GCDs to get back to 4.

It's funny you say this, because a big problem I have with a lot of the SHB changes in general (across a variety of jobs) is it feels like they wanted to cater to all the ARR and early HW MNK players who just can't come to terms with the fact that a level 80 job should feel like a level 80 job, and it's not ARR or HW anymore. So, lots of these jobs had their weaving removed. MNK lost a good chunk of oGCDs, and other jobs had stuff put onto the GCD that was previously off of it. It has made the jobs feel more boring across the board, and lowers the skill ceiling rather than lowering the skill floor, in the name of accessibility, which is never a good way to balance these sorts of things.

I'm a bigger fan of using Skill Speed to balance things, but because right now SkS reduces damage output, it isn't viable to do so. I think for players who want to go faster (like me) and find the GCD speed of 1.86-1.84 to reduce much of MNK's current clumsiness (fun fact), and have the pings to handle it, we should be allowed to increase the speed without having to worry about damage reduction. I feel like increasing SkS and SpS past threshold which reduces the GCD speed should grant bonus potency to compensate for the loss of damage-dealing stats. I feel like this would allow for a greater variety of gameplay as well, without punishing players. Those of us who put more effort into executing our rotations should be out-performing slower ones, instead of the speed substat taking away from power. This can also be a way for players who don't like to double-weave to still be viable, without having to remove oGCDs to make a portion of the player base happy at the expense of everyone else's satisfaction.

[Shurrikhan]

Actually, the double TK rotation was technically still possible, though it required a GCD speed of 1.86 OR 1.84.

I can testify to this. Worked fine for me (a SkS-addict) so long as I wasn't lagging much. Each PB allow me to TK, return a stack, PB, return 2 more stacks, fill a global, TK, regenerate 2 stacks again (yes, there are 6 GCDs per PB when not running slow-Monk), and then RoW for the last one. I'd then TK again 30 seconds later, and then twice again 30 seconds after that. The only complication came from RoF timing, which required that I click RoF off one GCD early (at that speed, though, this still allowed for two Demos and a TK in window each time, as PB wasn't yet devoted to DK-LFB spam nor its frequency halved).

It mostly just made me really wish that (1) TK's cooldown would scale with Attack Speed (snapshotted at activation, not after use, ofc), (2) Riddle of Wind a 0-potency skill (and Wind Tackle given its initial potency) available from FoW for 10 seconds after the use of any Tackle, or (3) Wind Tackle gave the full potency and the GL stack instead, as not to require a triple weave.

[ValStormbreaker]

I can testify to this. Worked fine for me (a SkS-addict)...

The way I did mine, after your first TK recovery got you back to 3 stacks of GL in Fists of Fire, due to the TK recast time, you had enough time to slide in a Bootshine (which was a Leaden Fist one since you had the Leaden Fist buff from the Dragon Kick prior that had gone unused) and then quickly hit the second TK. You could get back up to 2 out of your 3 stacks of GL before PB ran out, and then it was back to the vanilla rotation of Dragon Kick>Twin Snakes> Demolish (for the third GL stack), and then [Leaden Fist] Bootshine > True Strike > (swap back to Fists of Wind) Snap Punch for the fourth one. No triple-weave necessary in my version of the opener, and it goes silky smooth, too! ♥ Because of the way 5.0-5.08 MNK was designed, much of the skill bloat in the two recovery rotations from SB MNK's double-TK opener was removed, and making it lots straightforward to pull off the recoveries.

It's important to note that while many players are now advocating that PB get the Ten-Chi-Jin treatment and give a flat 6 GCDs, I'm very against this because if you crank the speed up high enough (1.86 at minimum) and are skilled enough (the entire point behind high-level MNK play), you can actually fit 7 GCDs in the PB window, and that smooths lots out. It's a lot less tight on the timing the faster you go, with 1.84 being the magic GCD speed for pretty much removing about... 90% of the issues people currently have with MNK's jankiness since it allows for all the things people don't like to be done a little differently and much smoother and more naturally instead. I feel it should be on the burden of the player's manual dexterity to accomplish greater feats, without the hand-holding of something like what Ten-Chi-Jin now does for NINs.

The one and only issue I had with the timing here was that due to Tornado Kick's 10-second recast timer, if you had a server tick or a bit of lag, or if you were at a GCD of 1.85, there'd be an awkward pause that would throw you out of alignment while you had to wait for TK to come back off cooldown, and this would result in GCD clipping and possibly a loss of one of your snap punch recoveries.

Now... if the recast timer were reduced to 6 or even 5 seconds, it would be a non-issue, and it would be a much friendlier thing to pull off at an entire range of GCD speeds below 1.90. In fact, if Anatman gave a stack of GL right away, and its recast time were 30 seconds, then it could be used to get back up to 3 stacks of Fists of Fire right after PB ran out, and then Dragon Kick > Twin Snakes > Demolish would get you back up to 4 sooner. For players who are not at a skill speed of 1.86 or higher, be it due to ping issues or even personal comfort, they can use that Anatman a GCD earlier and adjust accordingly, doing something to a similar effect that would be friendlier on their pings and at a skill speed more comfortable for them.

[ValStormbreaker]

When said optimization involves running third-party software that was actively used to try to blacklist members of the community, and the monk community decided that this was an acceptable state of affairs, then the level of surprise in the community should be a non-positive number.

Like, let's not sugar-coated, this is the shit that actually happened and monks should not be surprised at the inevitable result.

Thank you. Lots of replies to you adamantly insist this isn't the case, but it seems they need a reality check because you ABSOLUTELY have the right of it. It really does feel like putting Anatman on the GCD is an anti-automation method meant to inhibit the use of the automated and unnaturally fast Dragon Kick after the Anatman by way of a third-party software. This would in turn allow for SE to have cleaner telemetry data to weigh written feedback against, which is what they require for whether or not they choose to implement changes recommended by the community. They need to see the data of what players are actually doing, and the more players pollute this data through unnatural, unethical and dishonest gameplay, the harder it is for them to discern where and how adjustments need to be made.

I know "not everybody" uses third-party softwares like this, but never underestimate the volume of raiders who endorse cheating and do use these things. MNK's population is much smaller than most of the other DPSes, so it takes fewer bad apples to sour the data at everybody else's expense.

I WILL, however, say I'm pleasantly surprised to see this over the alternative, which would have been a job-wide nerfing, at the expense of those of us who use alternative and more natural openers at higher speeds. This at least buys SE some time to implement fixes come 5.2, once they have cleaner data to work with. It would certainly be nice, however, if the XIV community learned the virtue of personal accountability over parroting rhetoric from Reddit and Discord.