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

[ValStormbreaker]

The problems with this opener are primarily three-fold. First is the GCD clipping which is easily rectified, and second is that TK needs at least +100 potency (arguably even more) for the dropping of the stacks to be viable. This is also just a boost in numbers and is therefore as easy as altering the recast time. Super simple, can be done within the hour. The real problem is that SHB loves its new encounter design philosophy, which is to shove some kind of obnoxious spread mechanic 20 seconds into the encounter which results in an uptime loss and cuts into the RoF/Brotherhood windows, which at a GCD speed of 1.86 would happen right after the second Dragon Kick, and at 1.84 would be right after the Twin Snakes. This happens in 3 out of the 4 Savage fights, both Extreme fights (though it's random in Innocence Ex), and in Akademia Anyder with the first boss using Tidal Guillotine, all at around the same GCD. In all cases, you'd use a SSS to disengage (it's not useless like everyone seems to claim), but because you have to reapply your DoT soon as you re-engage, it kind of defeats the point of using TK then so it becomes a "why bother" situation. If bosses stopped doing this, TK would be used DURING the SSS slowdown, just before the GCD came back up, leaving enough time for a Forbidden Chakra.

But what nobody on the Balance will tell you is that MNK performs most naturally, and eerily lines up with most of the boss mechanics in the game with an uncanny degree of accuracy, when at a GCD speed of 1.84, or at the least 1.86 (SkS north of 2k).

I still think SkS increases need to give a potency buff since otherwise there's little incentive to go faster other than you can. The effort required isn't rewarding without a boost in power to accompany the speed. I believe this is the secret to balancing other jobs, too, like SAM, and even the casters. Instead of buffing action potency numbers, let them receive a potency bonus for each 0.01 that gets knocked off of the GCD speed. If jobs play more naturally when they're pushed to greater speeds, and if you can do fancier things with them as well, then that style of gameplay also places greater burdens on the players to perform. For me, this is why I became a MNK main in Stormblood, since I live and breathe the Daigo Parry and come from the Fighting Game Community, and so I craved a very hands-on, actively-engaging job like how MNK was. If MNK still has the same skills it has right now, but could be pushed faster and feel rewarding for doing so, it would allow for accessibility at the lower levels of gameplay while rewarding those who push themselves to perform, without punishing anybody. The skill ceiling becomes as high as players are willing to push themselves, not forcibly lowered and shackling players who want more out of the job to cater to those players who don't like weaving and/or don't have the ping for more impressive gameplay. Nobody has to be short-changed if only speed came with power, instead of being at the expense of it.

[Shurrikhan]

But what nobody on the Balance will tell you is that MNK performs most naturally, and eerily lines up with most of the boss mechanics in the game with an uncanny degree of accuracy, when at a GCD speed of 1.84, or at the least 1.86 (SkS north of 2k).

@7 GCD PB and the fixed 10s TK CD.
I could only get that work under Arrow or WTFast/Exitlag and SkS food, but yeah I've gotten that a fair few times as well. It's pretty great. As for the TK timing issue, I just had to delay its reuse a GCD; I tried everything I could to still get my full PB use without delaying TK, but nothing else worked for me, and so I just realigned things slightly some 30s prior so I could at least get a good DK in there and a Demo-drop (DK falling before Demo and its own reapp only) later.

@Balance ignoring SkS breakpoints.
Sad, but I have to figure -- why would they? It takes only some 3.8k stat for Crit (decreased with Direct Hit) to outperform SkS even on the lowest oGCD-based-damage job, SAM. We have higher %oGCD damage and an even stronger crit proc than we had before while getting less Crit benefit out of Bootshine now that double-Boot is dead. There's just virtually no way for SkS, a near-linear stat affecting only the majority of damage, to win out again one with so much sharper a curve and an effect on all damage.

...Which is why I've been pushing for SkS rebalancing since ARR (through oGCD damage bonuses or Haste and overclocking, and scaled animation locks or general netcode improvements), but alas.

[Oxdarock]

snip

While it's interesting to see other people use TK in their rotation, as someone who obsessed over it for months and wrote a guide on how to use it mid-rotation in ShB, I can say that you really don't want to use PB for it. the LF Boot spam PB lets you do is a mini-burst phase in an of itself. You also don't want to dump so much sks into your build that you get lower than 1.9sec GCD at GL4, since you're most likely losing a lot of crit and/or direct hit at that point, which are far better stats in terms of damage. Only time you want to put more into sks via things like melds is if it allows you to break the 6 GCD in PB threshold (it's still better than Det as a third priority stat imo though). As far as where you can use TK, the only place you can really do so now is at the end of a RoF window, which is similar to how you used it in SB as you want it to hit as hard as possible.

While people used third-party programs to use the Anatman opener (and for PB windows), prior to 5.1 you could still reliably use it even without said program simply be having 6SS proceed it. You'd get a stack of GL almost every time (on rare occasions you'd either clip for a fraction of a second to gain a stack or gain two stacks). What's really ironic though is that the same third party program now works better with the TK opener (and TK bursts) than the Anatman opener as you have more leeway to use it when you need to.

Honestly, if SE had Anatman give an instant GL stack and keep the server tick gain (or at the very least keep it from clipping GCDs), it'd be fine whether it's a GCD or oGCD (though honestly, I'd prefer the latter).