Proposed changes to Monk's "Fist" passives

[Totalxtc]

While the fist passives certainly have their minor niches within the game, they don't feel very rewarding outside of small necessary boss phases where you may need the extra survivability with "Fists of Earth" or the extra mobility with "Fists of Wind". Apart from these, it has become mandatory to use "Fists of Fire". What I'm proposing is either changes to the abilities themselves or changes via traits as you continue to level up.
The changes are as follows:
Fists of Earth: (Explosive Fists Trait) AOE factor dealing 50% of weapon damage to all enemies around the target.
Fists of Wind: (Flurry Trait) TP regeneration buff with a 25% damage decrease strictly to restore tp. (Further allowing Skill Speed builds to become more viable)
Fists of Fire: (Desecrator trait) Hits add a small stacking debuff dealing 20 damage per second to the target. (Only active on current target) (Stacks up to 5 times)

Thank you for reading, and be sure to thumbs up or tell me what you think in the comments below!

[Viridiana]

Fists of Earth: (Explosive Fists Trait) AOE factor dealing 50% of weapon damage to all enemies around the target.
Fists of Wind: (Flurry Trait) TP regeneration buff with a 25% damage decrease strictly to restore tp. (Further allowing Skill Speed builds to become more viable)
Fists of Fire: (Desecrator trait) Hits add a small stacking debuff dealing 20 damage per second to the target. (Only active on current target) (Stacks up to 5 times)

Earth: The most conservative reading I can think of for this (AA damage only) is about an extra 60(?) DPS per additional target within the AOE range. That's too much.
Wind: How much TP regen are we talking? Because the balance of this one depends entirely on the regen rate and duration.
Fire: 100 extra free DPS for single target? Again, that's too much.

[RhazeCain]

Lol @ this and almost every post that tries to "propose changes". It's fun to think about I guess, but no chance of even getting considered. Plus, almost everybody here is bad at it.

Let's break it down into 2 parts: First there is the 'what's the problem?' and then 'what's the solution?'

This poster says that currently earth gives some defense, wind gives some movement, and fire gives some damage. Maybe that's uninspiring, but there is the admission that they do *something* currently. Not every ability can be the best ability ever.

This poster proposes removing the movement and defense parts and replacing with absurdly good damage abilities. Maybe the amounts could be tweaked down to balance it, but then you've replaced a variety of utility (defense/movement) with damage. I'm not sure if that's an improvement at all.

Not sure why I bothered to post, time on my hands I guess. >.<

[Totalxtc]

Earth: The most conservative reading I can think of for this (AA damage only) is about an extra 60(?) DPS per additional target within the AOE range. That's too much.
Wind: How much TP regen are we talking? Because the balance of this one depends entirely on the regen rate and duration.
Fire: 100 extra free DPS for single target? Again, that's too much.

I do agree that these numbers are too high for the kit in its current state. If the time came for classes to be adjusted, and anything like this were on the table for additions to the class, base damage would need to be toned down a little bit. That, or these skills would have to be stripped down a little bit. But the problem at the moment lies between lackluster AoE outside of a very expensive, not so rewarding AoE rotation and burning through TP at a fast rate if you don't have minimal skill speed. The TP regeneration change would fix this problem and give skill speed a proper place in a build.

[Totalxtc]

The problem with the current passives is that they are altogether unfulfilling. While the base damage bonuses I proposed may be higher in practice than they might be on paper. They are IDEAS. A little bit of meat to add to an otherwise lackluster kit. If you played the class, you would know that the only reason to ever use anything but Fists of Fire is in towns while you can't be mounted. There are three skills in this kit, and one of them is useful. This is a proposition to give all three abilities a proper use. It's easy to criticize without offering up any counter proposals.

[Mcshiggs]

If you played the class, you would know that the only reason to ever use anything but Fists of Fire is in towns while you can't be mounted.

If you knew about the class/job you say you play, you would know that fists of fire is the only monk ability, the other two are pugilist. The damage boost from fists of fire is one of the benefits of going monk and not pugilist, to not use it in combat would be like a paladin tanking in sword oath. They are adding in more jobs to existing classes in the future, and maybe wind and earth will get used more, but we don't know all of that yet, so to say something needs changed because you use a job skill over a class skill just shows all of the "I want it now" attitude that is so common in MMO's these days.

[Garlyle]

If you knew about the class/job you say you play, you would know that fists of fire is the only monk ability, the other two are pugilist. The damage boost from fists of fire is one of the benefits of going monk and not pugilist, to not use it in combat would be like a paladin tanking in sword oath. They are adding in more jobs to existing classes in the future, and maybe wind and earth will get used more, but we don't know all of that yet, so to say something needs changed because you use a job skill over a class skill just shows all of the "I want it now" attitude that is so common in MMO's these days.

That's not only splitting hairs it's kind of a silly argument in the first place.

One of the big advantages to XIV's class design and skill progression is that, generally speaking, skills do not obsolete each other. In FF history, even in XI, Fire II would basically obsolete Fire I; Fire III obsoletes both. In XIV, that's not the case - they're three different spells with three very different functions.

In the example you give, yes, it'd be silly to use Sword Oath when tanking. But in 8/24-man content or playing solo, you're not always going to be Main Tank. You do, actually, have significant reasons to use it because it offers tangible, significant advantages over Shield Oath in certain situations.

Fists of Earth and Wind, in comparison, are extremely hard to make the argument for.

Fists of Earth does sort of have a use - moments like when a Primal's overdrive goes off and, no matter what you're doing, you're tanking a huge amount of damage. But you could get the same effect from having an actual cooldown ability in that slot. It'd be far more useful, too. Unless Pugilist gets a Tank alternative in the future - but that's not now, and the fact is, that skill exists in the Here And Now.

Wind is the real offender though. "I can have a 10% movement speed boost running around town". Okay, sure that sounds nice - but as a job ability, actively taking up a spot that could be filled by another far more interesting skill? Heck no. You don't really use it in battle because, well, Fists of Fire. You're supposed to swap into it to move in/out of AoEs faster, but not only does a 10% movement speed boost feel basically irrelevant you rarely actually need the movement difference, especially in order to maintain Greased Lightning - either you can maintain it, or it's going to reset, and Wind doesn't matter there. Fire existing just completely obsoletes it. The number of times that you might ever activate Fists of Wind can be counted on about one finger, because only the final part of Stone Vigil comes to mind (a dodging sequence where you can't damage anyway).

For a DPS job, sacrificing DPS needs very significant benefits. Bard songs drop their damage while being performed, yes - but their party gets significant benefits (The party replenishing TP/MP can more than make up for the damage loss in an extended fight, because running out of damage/healing is far more impactful than one person's brief DPS reduction). The alternative fists for Monk just don't posess that.

[Mcshiggs]

Unless Pugilist gets a Tank alternative in the future - but that's not now, and the fact is, that skill exists in the Here And Now.

They have to design classes and jobs now with the future in mind, otherwise they would have to totally revamp every class and job whenever new ones come out. As for Fists of Earth and Wind, again these are pugilist abilities, if you didn't have fists of fire would you just not turn one of these on, no you would still have one up. I've seen plenty of monks just learning Titan go in Fists of wind to make dodging a bit easier, or Earth full time so they take less damage when they don't dodge, but it still remains that fire is your main one, because monks are dps, they need to keep as much up time on their dps stance as possible, and again, it is one of the benefits of monk over pugilist, pugilists don't have access to it. Just because you don't use every ability all the time, doesn't make it useless and need to be replaced. Another thing they have to consider is balance with other classes/jobs and utility, monk already has very high dps, they get an off GCD stun, a ranged stun, aoe silence, they can remove enemy buffs, they can cross class invigorate for TP, giving them TP regen on fists of wind would mean they could basically do anything without ever having to worry about TP, and right now if you use invigorate before your TP hits 0, to start the cooldown rolling, you can go single target for a very long time, aoe however is different, you burn TP, but that is how it is on all classes, you have to learn to manage your resources to maximize your dps with aoe vs. single target, otherwise everyone would just run through aoeing everything without a second thought and we would have early WoW frost mages all over again.

[Garlyle]

As for Fists of Earth and Wind, again these are pugilist abilities, if you didn't have fists of fire would you just not turn one of these on, no you would still have one up.

What you are saying there straight up is "Once you get Fists of Fire, you stop using them". This means the ability is obsoleted to them in practice, which means it is a poor ability. There is a difference between Situational - such as One-Ilm Punch, Feint, Sword Oath, etc. - and "In practice you'll never use this because it actively prevents something you actually will use" like Fists of Fire.

As for the part where you argue "but only Monks get Fire", nobody sticks around in just Pugilist for very long after hitting level 30. There is no alternate class out yet - and won't be until at least 3.0, which is an incredibly long length of time to leave borderline-useless skills on a kit. At that time, could Fists of Earth become fine? Yes, maybe it could. That doesn't account for Wind though.

I'm not even aruging whether or not the changes posed by the OP are actually good or not. I just disagree heavily with the sentiment "yeah fire fists outclasses the others but that's okay". Because that shouldn't happen. There's very, very few skills which are just straight up obsoleted by others learned later in XIV.

[A_Magical_Unicorn_Rider]

Unfulfilling… how?

Maybe you're just not seeing the beauty of being a Monk? Monk is fine the way it currently is. If anything "needed" changes, it would just be the attack animations for some moves. Because I like punching turkeys in the butthole nonstop.