Is the Ninja nerf really needed?

[TheMax1087]

15-20 seconds of losing GL once or twice in a fight only puts them at less then 3 skills behind in terms of GCD (excluding the damage buff that GL3 gives)... When MNK's damage is already far superior to any melee currently, the effect is pretty small

I main monk and actually agree with you that it's easier to play than the other two melee(after your opener, ever gcd entails using one of three possible moves). But you are so far off the mark with your comments on greased lightning that it borders on absurd. Every endgame fight added since 2.2(with the exception of t6, shiva ex, and t8, I haven't tried t12 or 13) has at least one mechanic where a monk can be forced to lose their greased lightning stacks when perfect balance wouldn't be up, putting them 9 skills(I have no clue where you got 3 from) behind both other melee, as monks attacks have the lowest potency on their skills of the three, and greased lightning buffs both their damage and attack speed. The 27% damage and 15% attack speed is the sole reason their damage is higher, and as few as 3 losses of that will put them behind a ninja in damage.

[Altena]

snip

GCD gets reduced by roughly .5 seconds with GL - meaning if you didn't lose it, you would be roughly 3 skills better off. Takes 9 without PB to get 3 stacks - meaning an increased GCD of .5 seconds per skill = roughly 4.5 more seconds worth of GCD if you maintained it - meaning 2-3 skills. (This of course isn't taking into consideration the damage buff you also gain, nor does it take into consideration the reduced GCD during the 2nd & 3rd combo while building stacks, however I did state this and it's due to simplicity/my poor math skills).

You are not 9 skills worse off if you lose GL - as you are still hitting those 9 skills, just at a .5 second increased rate to 3 stacks of GL.

That is what I meant by my statement.

T10 doesn't force you off the mob unless you get charged - which isn't a forced mechanic that's "always on the MNK". It's purely RNG. You will lose about as much damage as any other melee would.
T11 is more or less a dummy fight for the most part.
T12 is a dummy fight with adds (provided you have a BRD that is handling a lot of the mechanics).
I haven't touched T13 though so I can't truthfully comment on that one - however considering world firsts (and many other groups) run MNK/MNK for it, I daresay there are reasons for that.

If you simply get unlucky and get "every single charge" in T10 - or at least a tonne of them, then sure it will hurt your damage, but this is the same for any DPS.
I won't deny that MNK does have its weakness in that regard - and that's in places where they consistently lose GL3. However if it only happens a few times in a 10 min fight, it is still pushing huge numbers generally.

[Giantbane]

Would prefer something a bit more akin to 1.0's Power Surge such as a stacking buff that gives a damage buff every time you use a jump (Jump/Spine/Dragon/Elusive). Give them a mechanic. Currently they don't really have any.

However they won't redesign the class.

Lower B4B CD wouldn't be a buff to just DRG though - would also buff all classes that sub it (basically all physical dps). I expect something more like a lower Jump CD.

It would be a 3x stronger buff to DRG than anyone else, and it could also just be part of improved BfB if there's concern about how it works cross class. I mean, what else are they going to do to buff DRG via cooldowns? Knocking another 10s off Jump isn't going to make enough of a difference to fix the problem. Besides, it would be better to just drop BfB down to 60s for everyone. 80s is a weird cooldown timer that doesn't work well with any classes skill rotations. It would just make the skill much cleaner for everyone involved.

[Krr]

Skill ceiling really shouldn't be an excuse for one class being more or less desirable than another. All DPS jobs emphasize certain player skillsets over others and Monk's happens to be 'keeping uptime'.

I don't feel MNKs are threatened by the existence of NIN whatsoever. They are still the HC raid meta. They will continue to be the HC raid meta until at *least* Heavensward, because there will be no more HC raids for NIN to even try to compete in until then. Another job threatening to dethrone them from being kings and queens of the HC mDPS meta isn't a 'problem'. That's 'there is now more than one melee DPS being viable in the HC raid meta'. Dragon Kick and traited Mantra are powerful utility and people conveniently forget this when they list DRG and NIN's party synergy skills alongside the 'Pure DPS' that MNK is.

Balancing classes around their skill floors and ceilings is a falsehood. You will only get useless classes if you design around that.

[Fynlar]

Are you kidding? MNK's need for positionals are definitely not as punishing as you make them out to be. In addition to this, there are very very few fights where this is a thing. The only one that comes to mind is T9 during the final phase - and that is purely due to a strategic choice. Even then, there are only certain times where the MNK does have to stack with the party during this phase (and that is Fire in, and potentially the Thunder that is paired with a Lunar). Every other time DPS can be wherever they want.

Almost every mob that isn't a trash mob will regularly spin around to do special attacks on non-tank targets and cause positionals to fail. The whole "very very few fights" thing is total baloney and you know it.

MNK to play "fairly well" is much much much more braindead and easy then NIN is.

If that were true, it would show in my numbers, considering NIN is a job that's far newer and I have considerably less experience playing it. It does not.

[Shurrikhan]

Dropping the poison buff from 20% bonus damage to 18% would seem to be (more than) plenty. Monks can still outparse them as is (which I personally think should just barely be the case with each job playing at 90-100% <skill>), and DRGs will hopefully soon be buffed to near enough that level. If their TP costs are increased as planned, that's just going to burn holes in Bard's mana pockets. Without the ability to Goad themselves, fighting at MNK speed w/o MNK TP costs is just going to cause another, and likely more significant, DRG mDef-style issue.

On the discussion of skill floors and ceilings, I have to agree that they shouldn't be a complete justification for any job's superiority, but at the same time I'd like to generally see each class having about equal(ly high) skill ceiling in different styles rather than any one class honestly being classifiable as easier or harder than others.

As far as those DRG buffs go, I'd rather not see the CDs or generally form touched (I do find the 80s CDs to have their place alongside the 40 and 60s ones and have no desire to attempt to 'normalize' or simplify that CD arsenal), but would love to see something more than just having Heavy Thrust's bonus buffed. I'd like to see the class made more opportunistic, if possible, without losing the rotational mindset it already has (just, perhaps something equally intuitive but a bit complex and/or more able and reasonable to take risks in) and perhaps furthering on the 'melee burst king' aspect, which it now shares with Ninja for better or worse.

[Altena]

Almost every mob that isn't a trash mob will regularly spin around to do special attacks on non-tank targets and cause positionals to fail. The whole "very very few fights" thing is total baloney and you know it.

Lol wot? I am beginning to believe that you don't even play melee.

If that were true, it would show in my numbers, considering NIN is a job that's far newer and I have considerably less experience playing it. It does not.

I am quite intrigued after reading some of your posts.

[ShanaShirayuki]

Nope. Don't go putting words in my mouth.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...y-needed/page2

[Hammerfist]

It's really amusing to see people saying that ninjas can keep up their max dps at anytime, or that bad ninjas do about the same damage as good ninjas or that they're easier to use than monks... Obviously these people have never done a serious fight as ninja, otherwise they would know that keeping up the same dps you do on a dummy is practically IMPOSSIBLE.

On fights like T9 there are lots and lots of things that you have to keep into consideration, especially when ninja is the only melee that doesn't have a fixed rotation, and the minimal error can lead you to a massive dps drop: did you use dancing edge, suiton, trick attack or kassatsu right before the boss disappeared? Or did you not reapply dots in time before having to deal with other mechanics? Or did you invert the order of the combos because you forgot which debuffs/dots were still on the boss when you started attacking again? Or did you mess up a ninjutsu because of the lag? Oh too bad, you lose 30% or more of your dps.

...And guess what? Even if you somehow manage to do everything right, good monks will still do more dps than you.

[Felis]

You're making positional attacks out to be more then they are. A player just needs to set one step over the line separating rear and flank, then step back and forth as needed. Many players move way more than they need to, losing DPS in the process, when all that needs to be done is press the skill and move during that skill's animation as needed.

So long you don't have a tank who rotate the boss around every 3 seconds