Monk Positionals 6.0

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not entirely sure what you have in mind with leniency mechanisms.

A simple spitball:

Fluid Strikes (Trait) - Every third flank or rear attack you land from the correct position generates a charge of Fluid Strikes, which are consumed to cause your next would-be missed flank or rear attack to deal damage as if it hit from the correct position. You can hold up to three charges of Fluid Strikes.

Simple. Intuitive. Not invasive. Actually deals with random boss spins and tank shenanigans.

[Miralyth]

A simple spitball:

Fluid Strikes (Trait) - Every third flank or rear attack you land from the correct position generates a charge of Fluid Strikes, which are consumed to cause your next would-be missed flank or rear attack to deal damage as if it hit from the correct position. You can hold up to three charges of Fluid Strikes.

Simple. Intuitive. Not invasive. Actually deals with random boss spins and tank shenanigans.

Thanks for explaining! I understand now; I've seen the idea of automated (old) RoE/TN as a reward for landing positionals shared before. I think it would definitely be preferable to what we have now, or have recently had, though I also think it'd have to be a lot more than a 3 charge cap to deal with all of the game's said shenanigans. I'd still prefer to have no positionals at all, but this kind of leniency would go a long way toward making me not irate with them if the charge cap were high enough.

[Shurrikhan]

Thanks for explaining! I understand now; I've seen the idea of automated (old) RoE/TN as a reward for landing positionals shared before. I think it would definitely be preferable to what we have now, or have recently had, though I also think it'd have to be a lot more than a 3 charge cap to deal with all of the game's said shenanigans.

Given that this version wouldn't count the positionals guaranteed by Fluid Strikes towards further Fluid Strikes generation, I wouldn't hate having 4 charges, but this would already allow for, in effect, 3 & 2/3s charges, since the progress towards the last would just be frozen until the 3rd charge is made open again. That's effectively 3 guaranteed in a row and only a single further success to guarantee yet another.

Honestly... it feels unlikely that we'd need more than ~6s (nearly 10s) at a time or at frequency greater than every ~18-26 seconds.

If a stack point, for instance, is forcing us out of positionals for that long, it's almost certainly just in the wrong place (it should, unless specifically prevented, be centered on the center of the boss's hitbox, allowing positionals even while helping to split the damage).

[Miralyth]

Given that this version wouldn't count the positionals guaranteed by Fluid Strikes towards further Fluid Strikes generation, I wouldn't hate having 4 charges, but this would already allow for, in effect, 3 & 2/3s charges, since the progress towards the last would just be frozen until the 3rd charge is made open again. That's effectively 3 guaranteed in a row and only a single further success to guarantee yet another.

Honestly... it feels unlikely that we'd need more than ~6s (nearly 10s) at a time or at frequency greater than every ~18-26 seconds.

If a stack point, for instance, is forcing us out of positionals for that long, it's almost certainly just in the wrong place (it should, unless specifically prevented, be centered on the center of the boss's hitbox, allowing positionals even while helping to split the damage).

I think uptime strats and very coordinated groups usually don't force monks (before the changes) into a position where they might need more than the TN they have available to them, though it does happen with a select few fights iirc. Current monk would definitely not need more than 3 charges, but previous monk would. I had assumed that this leniency change was hand-in-hand with positionals being brought back, in which case I don't agree that 3 or 4 charges is enough.

However, I'm assuming coordinated groups in difficult endgame content for the sake of these examples. This doesn't solve all positional issues for all of the game's content and playing with random players. I'd personally rather not try to solve a problem for a job with only favorable scenarios taken into consideration, and in specific circumstances (Savage/Ultimate/Ex etc.) at that. The inherent volatility of positionals across content and groups is one of the reasons I'd really prefer to just see them go.

[Shurrikhan]

I think uptime strats and very coordinated groups usually don't force monks (before the changes) into a position where they might need more than the TN they have available to them, though it does happen with a select few fights iirc. Current monk would definitely not need more than 3 charges, but previous monk would. I had assumed that this leniency change was hand-in-hand with positionals being brought back, in which case I don't agree that 3 or 4 charges is enough.

It would come with a return to positionals, yes. But we'll just have to disagree on whether 3-4 GCD's worth at a time would be sufficient.

I cannot imagine any case short of being forced out of melee range entirely (in which case we have SSS and Meditation) that would force over 4 consecutive GCDs in front of the boss and distant enough from the flank and rear (as in, not stacking within the boss's hitbox) that melee would be unable to get positionals.

[IruruCece]

The inherent volatility of positionals across content and groups is one of the reasons I'd really prefer to just see them go.

Some Black Mages also complain about fights that force them to move (and healers complain that some black mages try to sit through damage and stress their resources more as a result). Should we then also remove 3/4th of all castbars from jobs that have them? Some Black Mages also complain about astral/umbral timers because they don't want to feel "punished" for making mistakes. Should we just remove those too?

That's what this argument ultimately boils down to. Should we remove things that actually challenge players who are seeking to put out the most DPS possible? Because at the end of the day, a good Monk not only was able to land their positionals consistently, they could manage their resources to account for times when a boss/encounter was going to make landing them difficult. A good black mage learns the fights, learns where and when they can greed, to slidecast, when they absolutely need to move. Good players strive to follow "the plan", true, but more importantly they understand what to do when the game deliberately throws wrenches into that plan. That's part of the skill. That's what makes learning fights, learning a job as a whole, actually interesting.

I feel like people want to be able to reach the "maximum" their jobs are capable of without putting in the effort required to get there.

[Miralyth]

Some Black Mages also complain about fights that force them to move (and healers complain that some black mages try to sit through damage and stress their resources more as a result). Should we then also remove 3/4th of all castbars from jobs that have them? Some Black Mages also complain about astral/umbral timers because they don't want to feel "punished" for making mistakes. Should we just remove those too?

That's what this argument ultimately boils down to. Should we remove things that actually challenge players who are seeking to put out the most DPS possible? Because at the end of the day, a good Monk not only was able to land their positionals consistently, they could manage their resources to account for times when a boss/encounter was going to make landing them difficult. A good black mage learns the fights, learns where and when they can greed, to slidecast, when they absolutely need to move. Good players strive to follow "the plan", true, but more importantly they understand what to do when the game deliberately throws wrenches into that plan. That's part of the skill. That's what makes learning fights, learning a job as a whole, actually interesting.

I feel like people want to be able to reach the "maximum" their jobs are capable of without putting in the effort required to get there.

I can't agree with the premise of your argument toward me. Your base counter-example uses cast bars, which are not volatile in the same situations that positionals are and therefore have a different feel to them. If you wanted to compare me liking positionals or not to a mechanic that is exactly the same and ask me about it, that would be fine. The base premise of my argument (a few posts back) is that I don't enjoy positionals, and their volatility is "one of the reasons."

Positionals have long since become near-automatic for me. I of course occasionally miss them through no one's fault but my own, I think everyone does some times, and that isn't what bothers me. My desire to see positionals go has nothing to do with difficulty and everything to do with being uninterested in them. I understand that other people find them difficult and enjoy that aspect of them, and I think positional difficulty would be a comparable argument to have with other mechanics, but that is not at all what I'm expressing here.

[meowmaou]

I can't agree with the premise of your argument toward me. Your base counter-example uses cast bars, which are not volatile in the same situations that positionals are and therefore have a different feel to them. If you wanted to compare me liking positionals or not to a mechanic that is exactly the same and ask me about it, that would be fine. The base premise of my argument (a few posts back) is that I don't enjoy positionals, and their volatility is "one of the reasons."

Positionals have long since become near-automatic for me. I of course occasionally miss them through no one's fault but my own, I think everyone does some times, and that isn't what bothers me. My desire to see positionals go has nothing to do with difficulty and everything to do with being uninterested in them. I understand that other people find them difficult and enjoy that aspect of them, and I think positional difficulty would be a comparable argument to have with other mechanics, but that is not at all what I'm expressing here.

I'm kind of inclined to agree now after playing EW MNK, NIN and RPR for a bit. At first I missed the positionals because they were quite challenging when I was newer to the job and that made it pretty engaging. Now I'm doing them on autopilot even though they're not in the game anymore.

I think my problem with them was that they're only a potency boost. If they felt a bit more rewarding, ie rewarding chakra or filling a new, second gauge(I know that'd be more punishing but I don't care, gitgud), then I might enjoy it more. But at the moment I'm kind of getting more of a kick out of DPS jobs that have more resources to manage, and I think that's where I'm at with how I feel about MNK: Perfect Balance isn't a very engaging mechanic, and chakra is poorly implemented. 3 damage oGCDs are gone so I'm not having to manage those cooldowns/stocks anymore, either. So I'm probably gonna play a different job for now unless they ever change some of this stuff about MNK, because whoever's balancing and adjusting DRG, BLM, SAM, NIN seems to have way more of a clue what they're doing than MNK which feels like a sinking ship.

[IruruCece]

The base premise of my argument (a few posts back) is that I don't enjoy positionals, and their volatility is "one of the reasons."

Positionals have long since become near-automatic for me.

That's fair, but I have to question your premise anyway. Anything can become automatic to a skilled player, or at least a player who has put in a lot of time on a given job. That's a big reason why there ARE so many jobs in the game, to help keep things fresh.

Eventually, blitzes will become "automatic" to you, or "near-automatic". Given that you're a level 90 monk, I suspect they already are. What then? Should we remove blitzes and instead replace them with, I dunno, castbars? Just to "mix things up" a little bit?

I feel like positions shouldn't really be a thing so much as combos opening up depending on position should be.

I guarantee that combos that are this reliant on position would get the Navnavs of the world extremely angry about a job they aren't even playing yet this expansion while they run through as a tank, assuming the log in queues allow them to even play to begin with. People already were complaining about Dragoon offering ONE button that opens up for landing a positional. If you think basing the entirety of monk around something like this wouldn't result in even more outrage from people who hop into threads saying "so i tried monk after getting (some other job) to cap and didn't like it so i stopped playing it", you're honestly fooling yourself.

People who simply don't want to be asked to do things that require movement aren't going to accept a job that "unlocks" something for landing a positional. They still wouldn't play the job. And ironically, SE has made an effort with every expansion since HW on to de-emphasize their importance, to simplify the job to make it more "accessible" even as its presence in endgame raids cratered. Pain points like TP were removed across the board. They held back on GL4 because they legitimately believed players couldn't handle that speed. They killed the tornado kick rotation in SB because they didn't like what players managed to put together with the flawed kit.

[Shurrikhan]

Since the Mudras are ranged tools, you didn´t even have to think much about uptime or disengages.

Wouldn't this be the opposite, now that Ninjutsu has two charges and is therefore bankable? Outside of saving for TA, you'd want to save them for relative mobility... which amounts to thinking about uptime and disengages.

I can't agree with the premise of your argument toward me. Your base counter-example uses cast bars, which are not volatile in the same situations that positionals are and therefore have a different feel to them. If you wanted to compare me liking positionals or not to a mechanic that is exactly the same and ask me about it, that would be fine.

They're both gameplay factors that oblige preemptive, and often sequenced, movement.