Monk questions, and requests for QoL improvement.

[LoreChief]

Hi all,

Pretty new at Monk so sorry if anything I say sounds outlandish.

1. Fists of Wind: I don't even see a movement speed increase when I use this. Whats the deal? Is it misworded? Does it only work in combat? Requesting that this either be made to be a real movement speed increase like what ROG gets, or change the effect to something else.

2. Arm of the Destroyer: Why is this skill more expensive than Rockbreaker? If you don't use it as part of Opo-Opo, it only does 50 potency AoE damage. Requesting this to be made cheaper, maybe like 60-80 TP instead.

3. Haymaker: What is the point of this skill? Even in solo situations its more beneficial to use other skills instead of wasting the GCD on this. You can't even use it in most group situations either. Make this skill oGCD maybe? Or remove the dodge requirement? Or make it always crit? SOMETHING?

4. Shoulder Tackle: I love this skill. It's just awesome. QOL Request: We dont have any ranged skills other than this. Can this be made to a 20s cooldown instead?

5. Fists of Fire: I think Fists of Earth is right where it should be. Fists of Wind is crap and needs to be overhauled. Can Fists of Fire also get a buff to do something on top of the 5% dmg buff? Maybe 5% life steal or something too? Its not very exciting to use.

[Ricdeau]

1 - There is a movement speed increase. Nothing spectacular, but it's there and working as intended.

2 - Arm of the Destroyer has very limited application, but it does have it's place.

3 - Haymaker was a carryover from 1.0. It's main usage is in solo content or PvP (similar to One Ilm Punch). I agree nothing great about these for PvE, but I see no great need to mess with them too much.

4 - Not much to say here. Shoulder Tackle is insane how it is at 30s and now that they've removed the deadzone on using it. I'm finding that using it as a damage oGCD, when a gap closer is not needed, makes up roughly 2% of my DPS.

5 - Fists of Fire is fine. I don't know why you'd think that a 5% damage increase isn't exciting. Especially coupled with 27% damage increase from GL3 and 10% damage increase from Twin Snakes.

If there's QoL changes to monk I'd hope it would be things not listed here.

[Dajinn]

lol, OP got wrecked.

[LoreChief]

If there's QoL changes to monk I'd hope it would be things not listed here.

How can you think +5% passive always-on damage increase is exciting? Do you find water exciting to drink? GL is exciting and fun to see in action - +5% damage increase is minor and non-interactive.

Do you use Fists of Wind? Would you agree that if it is not used, and is unnoticeable when used, that it should be changed? Do you think that we should have skills in our repertoire that not only have no niche use, but are simply never used? That is acceptable to you?

[Ricdeau]

How can you think +5% passive always-on damage increase is exciting? Do you find water exciting to drink? GL is exciting and fun to see in action - +5% damage increase is minor and non-interactive.

Do you use Fists of Wind? Would you agree that if it is not used, and is unnoticeable when used, that it should be changed? Do you think that we should have skills in our repertoire that not only have no niche use, but are simply never used? That is acceptable to you?

Fists of Fire is great, and yes it's exciting getting a flat 5% increase just for turning on an aura. 5% damage is not marginal or small...it's a sizable increase not to be overlooked. Yes, I occasionally use Fists of Wind, and I use it more than Fists of Earth (in my opinion the least useful of the stances). Yes, there are moves rarely used, but what you've listed are ones I would not put high on the priority list. Monk isn't the only class with abilities that aren't used much, however, with that in mind there's other abilities that I would say would need to be looked at before what you've listed.

Edit - Please don't take what I'm saying as an attack on you because it's not meant that way. I just went down the list of what you had to give the opinion of someone that's played monk since the game came out as well as someone that plays strictly melee DPS in MMOs.

[LoreChief]

I have to disagree with your stance on remaining complacent in regards to currently useless skills. I have trouble figuring out why anyone would use FoW as there is already Shoulder Tackle for gap closing and the ~5% movement speed increase from FoW is a waste of button press and simply redundant with these facts in mind. +5% damage does mean higher numbers, but the excitement in playing any class should come from its playstyle, in which turning on more damage that requires no other activity should not for a second be considered "exciting". Unless you are the type to be super excited about filling out budget reports in a spreadsheet or some such niche. Though my overall stance on the matter is that if it can indefinitely be on and does nothing other than just provide a singular buff (as opposed to the poisons for ROG/NIN which have dual effects and greatly enhance performance as well as tweak gameplay possibilities) - than it should just be converted into a passive trait and an actual skill that contributes to gameplay should be added.

However, for the sake of being back on the conversation of MNK changes; what are the abilities that you would state need to be changed? I never intended for this discussion to only be about my wants/needs - and definitely welcome the constructive contributions.

[Ricdeau]

Well if you want QoL changes for active use. Then look no further than Mediation and Tornado kick. They have their place currently, but in a high uptime fight you will generally only use your Chakra stacks that you built before the fight only once. Tornado Kick has very limited application since it consumes your GL stacks. Consuming the stack is fine in itself, but the damage is pretty low and the timing on when you use TK is very strict so that it doesn't end up causing a DPS loss because you still had a few seconds where you might be able to get off another GCD and autoattacks not benefiting from GL3. These two abilities can provide further activity in battle if they were tweaked, however, as it stands they were designed solely with downtime in mind.

I don't believe that every move needs to have application in majority of the content. Why do you believe that Fists of Fire needs to be interactive? It's a just a stance I see no reason why it would need to do anything else over what it does. In an ideal world all abilities would have their uses and no class would have abilities that get neglected, but sadly that is not the reality of things. There's a number of abilities across the various classes that fall into the category of either occasional use or limited to no use. I think it's best to pick your targets carefully because the dev team does react to fan outcry, and sometimes this will come at the cost of something could use help more.

Of the 2.0 abilities the main one I'd like to see reworked is One Ilm Punch. It would have been a fantastic PvP only move, but it has no real application anywhere else aside from a couple FATE mobs and a dungeon boss. Even then at the current point in time it's so high cost that you could probably work through the Stoneshield in just a couple actual damage attacks.

[LoreChief]

I believe I heard for Meditation the only QoL changes they were doing was something about the noise pollution issue - is that correct? I know what they stated as their intentions for TK in the live letter, but I can't help but think that its real application is to be used as an execute for trash... That said, if the times we'll be able to actually use it are so limited (3 stacks of GL, enemy is about to either die or go invuln, etc) - why does it even need a 60s cooldown is beyond me. Maybe 15s would make more sense, but ultimately it doesn't address the fact that it is very limited in use. If I had to come up with a solution for it, it would be that it has increased damage in order to make up for the fact that you may lose DPS on other moves in the interim. 500 seems to be a popular number for the tank class potency, maybe that would be enough.

Not sure what to change about Meditation to be honest.. Its a strong opener, and the feedback I've seen on Purification is that the 300 TP is rarely needed where you wouldn't already have Invigorate which is stronger.

As far as making FoF interactive, it really stems from the fact that I find a few issues to be very common in the mmo-sphere. WoW made a point of removing talents from their talent system that were simply number-increases for the sake of number increases. They are boring in design, and only serve to enhance skill bloat. When the next xpac comes out, they likely will not continue adding 5 skills at a time - at least not without pruning redundant, super-niche, or non-interactive skills first. A lot of classes have skills like FoF, where its just a toggle that doesn't change gameplay. Rather than wait for skill additions before something interesting happens or solves skill bloat, I think it would be a better idea to simply not implement or quickly remedy skills that don't contribute to gameplay. All of the fist stances are arguably dull in that they are either on or they are not, and they are only increasing or decreasing numbers (except FoW which I'm pretty sure is a placebo stance). Something added to them, much like the ROG poisons - would make them fun and add more utility - which is always a good thing.

1IP is definitely not a very useful skill. Most of the beneficial affects I see enemies using don't even work with it, so its ambiguous in both inception and application. With that TP cost and the fact that it requires Raptor Stance, I think it could better serve as filling the role of a small-damage AoE with a possible heavy effect - at least that way we'd have a congruent AoE combo between Destroyer + 1IP + Rockbreaker.

[Ricdeau]

Well have to agree to disagree on Fists of Fire. Nothing more on that needs to be said. I'm not sure what you mean Fists of Wind being a placebo stance. It definitely has a speed increase and it's easy to test. I will agree that it's not something that you use often, but it can be used and can be beneficial. With that we can move of from that topic between ourselves at least.

SE hasn't commented on actual QoL changes for anyone except bard so far. They noted that they are going to address the sounds on Meditation and Form Shift which I guess classifies as QoL, but never have they said that's all that will happen. Right now I'd wager a number of 3.0 abilities will see some kind of adjustment albeit likely very minor. As for Meditation there's a number of things that they could do if they wanted to make it an interactive part of the battle as well as something to help in down time. Firstly the potency of Forbidden Chakra would be decreased as a result due to more frequent usage (there's no real getting around that unless other classes got buffs), but they could make, say, Coeurl Form abilities give a stack in conjunction with manual usage of Meditation during downtime. Or they could remove the shared weaponskill recast timer on Meditation and make it an oGCD with a lets say 5-6s cooldown so it can be weaved, but not abused. These options would open up both Forbidden Chakra and Purify to be more readily available. But that's just assuming that SE decided to make those something other than downtime fillers. I mean they were designed for downtime fillers, but it seems like a waste of a good thing.

TK when initially shown at some events before 3.0 went live was said to be 500 potency. That changed from the like two week gap and the actual launch. I'm not sure if it was a gut reaction to everyone saying that amount of potency is insane for a class with so much +% damage.

[Urielparadox]

Fist of earth should be switched into every time there is raid wide or unavoidable damage where you can't hit the boss. It has a lot of uses in raid, my old raid group monks used it all the time. When you bounce between fist of earth and fire it gives a much bigger feeling of gratification using fist of fire. It helps take stress of healers and saves them mp. Fist of wind has very little use.