RIP MNK 1.x - 5.x

[wereotter]

Edit: Just went to do a rotation without using the True Strike and Twin Snake positionals, and guess what? Absolutely makes ZERO difference. Because you will still do positionals for two of your abilities every 3 hit combo, you are mostly already in the correct position for them anyway. The change makes absolutely no difference to anything. If you like the positionals, breathe. Nothing really changed. If you don't like the positionals, suffer, because nothing really changed.

Did you pay attention at all to the discussion regarding the removal of the positional requirements on those two skills? They explicitly stated that the reason they were removed was so that you can use them during perfect balance, getting your blitz charged up without having to dance back and forth between every skill. They weren't removed for ease of play.

The new dash skill is 100% welcome to me. I didn't like using my only mobility option for damage, so I appreciate that they gave it a damage-less gapcloser to cement it as the quick footed fighter.

I may be in the minority here, but I have a feeling this will be a skill I almost never use. I can see it being very handy for PC players not using a controller, but the process of targeting a party member to teleport was already not great for controller on black mage, and if the point to use it is to greed more up time, the process of targeting a party member from the list on the controller, then executing the skill will largely negate any benefit it might have had. I'll still work as a gap closer, but that's about it.

[Shurrikhan]

Did you pay attention at all to the discussion regarding the removal of the positional requirements on those two skills? They explicitly stated that the reason they were removed was so that you can use them during perfect balance, getting your blitz charged up without having to dance back and forth between every skill. They weren't removed for ease of play.

A change made so that we can act "without having to dance back and forth between every skill" is not a change made for ease of play? Really?

We already did that with every form of Perfect Balance to date, including under tighter and more punishing constraints, and we did just fine. And it's not as if those two skills lost their positionals only during Perfect Balance; they're just plain gone.

Personally, I'm fine with True Strike losing its positional. Losing Twin, too, seems a bit overkill, but whatever. But let's not pretend that intent remotely matters to any iteration of job design save in that it may accelerate the next iteration. Whether they wanted this to somehow only be used for PB or not is irrelevant when their change was to remove it at all times, not just during PB.

I may be in the minority here, but I have a feeling this will be a skill I almost never use. I can see it being very handy for PC players not using a controller, but the process of targeting a party member to teleport was already not great for controller on black mage, and if the point to use it is to greed more up time, the process of targeting a party member from the list on the controller, then executing the skill will largely negate any benefit it might have had. I'll still work as a gap closer, but that's about it.

On this, agreed. I would have preferred instead for my Tackle to become a backstep when (well) within melee range. Simpler, cleaner, more intuitive.

[wereotter]

A change made so that we can act "without having to dance back and forth between every skill" is not a change made for ease of play? Really?

We already did that with every form of Perfect Balance to date, including under tighter and more punishing constraints, and we did just fine. And it's not as if those two skills lost their positionals only during Perfect Balance; they're just plain gone.

Personally, I'm fine with True Strike losing its positional. Losing Twin, too, seems a bit overkill, but whatever. But let's not pretend that intent remotely matters to any iteration of job design save in that it may accelerate the next iteration. Whether they wanted this to somehow only be used for PB or not is irrelevant when their change was to remove it at all times, not just during PB.

Poorly worded I'll admit... but as it is now I mainly see people using True North in conjuction with the Perfect Balance burst.

My point was the removal seems to be to allow ease of use of blitzes even if it does nothing to change the positions we go to in the normal combo. It may just be muscle memory, but I can't see myself treating them as though they had no positional outside of blitzing since you still have the same requirements on the other four moves. Movement won't be terribly impacted by their loss. So when he complained that the removal of the positional changed nothing when he tested it as-is on a striking dummy, that to me seems like removing two without really changing anything about the core rotation of the job.

[Shurrikhan]

My point was the removal seems to be to allow ease of use of blitzes even if it does nothing to change the positions we go to in the normal combo. It may just be muscle memory, but I can't see myself treating them as though they had no positional outside of blitzing since you still have the same requirements on the other four moves.

I mean it's literally a free GCD per three-form-cycle by which to move from back to flank. If you used Boot, you've got an extra GCD to get in place for Snap. If you used Dragon, you've got an extra GCD to get in place for Demo. In certain rotations where it'd time out about the same anyways, it might not amount to much, but no positionals on ANY Raptor Form skill is still... pretty significant.

...I guess my main peeve with this change is that it doesn't fix the lead issue in that unlike in ToD and Fracture a la ARR/HW, these non-positionals aren't also Any-Form and therefore the advantage they grant is largely subject to luck of timing. If we wanted to actually fix the issue, the obvious solution would have been to give a formless short CD (probably with a couple charges) on a single GCD (unlike SSS) by which to use the given GCD and/or modulate the length of any rotational string or to simply offer a "safety" mechanic, such as building stacks over time by which our positionals would count as having hit successfully even if they don't (consuming that stack).

[wereotter]

I mean it's literally a free GCD per three-form-cycle by which to move from back to flank. If you used Boot, you've got an extra GCD to get in place for Snap. If you used Dragon, you've got an extra GCD to get in place for Demo. In certain rotations where it'd time out about the same anyways, it might not amount to much, but no positionals on ANY Raptor Form skill is still... pretty significant.

...I guess my main peeve with this change is that it doesn't fix the lead issue in that unlike in ToD and Fracture a la ARR/HW, these non-positionals aren't also Any-Form and therefore the advantage they grant is largely subject to luck of timing. If we wanted to actually fix the issue, the obvious solution would have been to give a formless short CD (probably with a couple charges) on a single GCD (unlike SSS) by which to use the given GCD and/or modulate the length of any rotational string or to simply offer a "safety" mechanic, such as building stacks over time by which our positionals would count as having hit successfully even if they don't (consuming that stack).

Riddle of Earth and True North are still on Yoshida's hotbars when he showed it off. But that also assumes that the skills are fundamentally unchanged. So we do have what you're talking about, Riddle of Earth stacks three times, is OGCD and gives you the next three skills as being non-positional. So we already have what you're talking about but better than before not only because of the frequency and ease of use, but also because they don't take a ridiculous amount of TP (which no longer exists, buts till was a problem in Heavensward)

[Shurrikhan]

Riddle of Earth and True North are still on Yoshida's hotbars when he showed it off. But that also assumes that the skills are fundamentally unchanged. So we do have what you're talking about, Riddle of Earth stacks three times, is OGCD and gives you the next three skills as being non-positional. So we already have what you're talking about but better than before

Yes, but that's precisely my point. Given those tools... why remove the positionals from all Raptor skills?

It might make sense, QoL-wise, to essentially turn RoE into a simple stack system as I described before, but short of that... what use do we have for a form losing positionals?

[Andy_T93]

Poorly worded I'll admit... but as it is now I mainly see people using True North in conjuction with the Perfect Balance burst.

My point was the removal seems to be to allow ease of use of blitzes even if it does nothing to change the positions we go to in the normal combo. It may just be muscle memory, but I can't see myself treating them as though they had no positional outside of blitzing since you still have the same requirements on the other four moves. Movement won't be terribly impacted by their loss. So when he complained that the removal of the positional changed nothing when he tested it as-is on a striking dummy, that to me seems like removing two without really changing anything about the core rotation of the job.

It's also telling that the two skills that lost their positionals are the middle skills in each combo/rotation so if you are opening with Dragon kick (flank) twin snakes (any) demolish (rear) Bootshine (rear) True Strike (any) Snap Punch (Flank) you can essentially execute Twin snakes and true strike while on the move moving from flank to rear and vice versa. Ultimately from a positional POV the opening rotation of the GCD is now:

F,A,R,R,A,F which means you only have to move twice, You could essentially go to the flank for dragon kick then move to the rear for twin snakes, demolish, boot shine and true strike moving back to the flank for snap punch. In other you can be F,R,R,R,R,F so only moving twice

These two skills were definitely picked to prick up the constant moving from one to another to allow players to get into position with more time