Monk - Quality of Life Change

[IruruCece]

I disagree strongly with removing positionals, on monk and on any melee DPS. They aren't what keeps players away from any job, and monk was underplayed next to other DPS even when positionals were more of a thing across multiple melee jobs (and had other problems next to other DPS at the time). I recognize, however, that I appear to be in the minority on this.

I suggest getting rid of all the methods Monk (and melee in general) has to ignore positionals instead. It strikes me as incredibly odd that SE left Monk in a state where it MUST engage with the bosses beyond just sitting still and hammering globals, but then gave us MULTIPLE skills that let us ignore than particular mechanic for an extended period of time. It really is an either or at this point, SE should either kill off positionals as a concept (and make the game less interesting IMO), or provide better feedback to players so they know they've landed a proper positional, up to increasing the "reward" for doing so.

KILL. ELEMENTAL. FISTS. These buttons are little more than rotting wisdom teeth on the kit of the job, and have been so since Heavensward. SE has constantly used the excuse of button bloat for nixing off multiple skills that players have actually used in their rotations on the regular, but has somehow managed to leave elemental fists more or less as is: buttons that we hit before a fight, that we switch once we get to a certain part of our opener, and then sit on for its particular buff for the duration. In HW and SB, it was Fire. In ShB, it's Wind. Functionally, SE has tweaked these fists, particularly in regards to our GL4, but practically, players just sit in the same damned fist for 10 minutes until the boss dies. You want button bloat gone? There's three right there. Maybe give us ONE of the actually useful OGCDs we lost between SB and ShB.

[Alahaji]

When we talk optimization, what does the mean? People are still clearing content with mnk as is so its not the damage output. If its for the feel of the class then that's a matter of opinion, not technical difficulties. I've played monk since ARR and whats kept me coming back to the class is the positionals and the frantic feel of the class. Dying sucks and is difficult to come back from (though you can still clear savage with a couple wipes under your belt) so what I do is not die. Having more to lose in a death makes the game more exciting for me. There are other classes melee classes that aren't positional heavy so people who don't like pos have options. Making the positional heavy class like the other melee classes is removing options for people who already like the play style. My opinion is the same for the final chakra.

[FLeet229]

I disagree strongly with removing positionals, on monk and on any melee DPS. They aren't what keeps players away from any job, and monk was underplayed next to other DPS even when positionals were more of a thing across multiple melee jobs (and had other problems next to other DPS at the time). I recognize, however, that I appear to be in the minority on this.

Sorry if there was a confusion, but what I meant by raptor form GCDs, is that True Strike and Twin Snake would have no positional requirements. Opo-Opo form and Coeurl form GCDs still should have positional requirements. It does not give you a buff or anything that lets you ignore positional completely.

Right now, if you have a flawless rotation, you only have to swap positional every 2-3 GCD. Now if you make a mistake in your rotation (say you used Demolish instead of Snap punch) or you come off a downtime and have to refresh Twin Snake instead of using True strike, it screws up the positional so that you have to switch positional every GCD. This is also true if you are one of the hardcore monks that use double True Strike rotation.

If you remove positional requirements from raptor form, that negates the need to swap positional every GCD and you will be able to stay in flank/rear for at least 2 GCD, in all the situations above. You can test it yourself right now by ignoring positional for Twin Snake and True strike.

You could achieve the same result from removing positional from any of the one form and keeping it for the remaining 2. I think raptor form is the best to remove positional since the form bonus for opo-opo is a crit for bootshine and that makes it harder to tweak, and coeurl form has Demolish and Snap Punch that gets used in 1:2 ratio.



Oh and I agree with scrapping elemental fists. I just left them out because removing them is more of a rework than a tweak and requires shifting around what levels you would learn certain abilities. Also it would mess around with lower level-synced content. My goal here was to tweak the abilities so that they are simple enough and could possibly be implemented before the next expansion.