Slight Monk rework

[finalfan]

How about when you build up chakra you can take away TP gain and add " blunt damage to all in range", call it "blunt trauma". Between trauma and chi blast, gives mnk more utility and Dragon kick can be used to give more damage to the raid group not just mnk
You can even make it to as your building up chakra it can hold up your grease lightning stacks making it easier when you're running around.
I don't know not a monk expert I just play it cuz I enjoy it

[Haggenn]

Really hope SE add some utility for us in SB. Honestly it's kinda sad some "hc" statics/pf parties requiring only NIN/DRG.

[Renai]

Before people ask, this is coming from someone playing MNK, but also other jobs, with speedkill experience.

I've been playing with Krindor this past tier. As he said we are the group that pulled the highest scores with a MNK within the group (hi, me) for a while. Our scores were all the time within the tops (let's say top 10ish, for the record #2 A11S).

MNK is the top DPS in term of raw personal output. I saw "True Strike is the only skill doing damage, rest is just buffs/debuffs with annoying positionals" : MNK has "low" potencies yeah, but actually has the biggest multiplier among all jobs : Fists of Fire + Dragon Kick + Twin Snakes + GL3
Do the maths, then compare with other melee jobs. Not gonna mention enhanced IR, nor Bootshine's 100% critrate.

So you'll ask me "Why everyone don't run MNK then ?"
Because making a MNK worth in speedkilling is hard :
1) Fight mapping : to push mechanics, burst is more worthy than a ramping-up-DPS-truck.
2) Raid utility : falls off under the push category. MNK DOESNT PROVIDE A SINGLE RAIDDPS BUFF. All others "meta" DPS do
3) Aggro : tied to raid utility, if you "optimize" at least a bit, you WANT Disembowel so you'll run DRG/MNK. No NIN means no Shadewalker/Smoke Screen. MNK is the only DPS job with no aggro reducing/redirection (Quelling, Shadewalker, ElusiveJump...) resulting in additional pressure on tanks' and an eventual DPS loss on their end. Or on a dead MNK.

I think these 3 points sum pretty well all the reasons you GENERALLY wouldn't want a MNK in a speedkill group.

Oh yeah, you usually also don't want to take one, because the average MNK is bad : don't take it personally or anything, it's a statement. MNK are often underperforming, see people saying here we are on a bad spot compared to other melees.

The reason speedkilling with me as MNK worked for us is simple : if you bring in a MNK, he will usually come instead of your BRD (or caster LOOOOL nice meme™). Given that, you have a simple checklist of points you have to actually validate :
1) Outperform a BRD personal score : this is maybe not sounding hard in itself, but well, some monks already lose their spot at that point Don't forget BRD get use from EVERY single buff a meta raidgroup brings in (hi Hypercharge), making them super big.
2) Outperform the fact BRD brings in Foe, so pushes up A LOT your healers' DPS (which is a really important part of your raid DPS, yes, yes)
3) Make the triple melee composition not a burden for your group efficiency, which is the hardest part when it comes to encounters like A11S, but can be really easy on others. People might have to disengage, or you might have to play around placement, but if you make your group cry or die because of it, no MNK is not worth.
4 5 6 7 8 9...) You are a goddamn MNK. If you aren't top among the melees DPS, change of job. You ARE the strongest DPS.

To end on that specific case : I played all jobs we could use on my spot within this speedkill group, DRG/MNK/BRD/MCH. Before we stopped I was running on BRD/MCH, because even with less experience on it, as soon as I had the gear and the CD rotations for each fights more or less down, the raid utility + the fact BRD and MCH are absurdly good at their personal DPS made our runs equivalent and/or faster than with me on MNK.




H O W E V E R.

All this massive wall of text, whether you read it or not, only applies to speedkill. There is NO reason to not pick a MNK within a casual/regular group.
MNK is the highest DPS.
MNK is the easiest DPS to progress on.
MNK has the easiest time (with/followed by NIN) to adjust and play around mechanics to not lose DPS.
MNK shines even (more) on AoE situations.

If people didn't s*ck on the "Delete MNK" meme among raiders/speedrunners (for the reason i linked in the wall of text), you wouldn't see MNK so hated nowadays, with 95% of the said haters not even able to say why they don't want one.
This, and also if MNKs could learn to actually pull their weight, because we see WAY TOO OFTEN MNKs outperformed by other melees, which should N E V E R happen.

Positionals aren't that hard, that's what makes the job fun, that's the one of the part in mix-maxing MNK DPS, but that's not a reason to end being awful.








TL;DR: MNK isn't "bad", far from it. Speedkilling requires to pull your weight, is doable, but is not optimal.
Regular raiding/content shows no reason to reject MNKs. It's all the contrary, a good one would probably help you more than sticking to a said "meta" composition.

TL;DR²: Really, stop s*cking on the "Delete MNK" meme if you don't understand it.

[Yorukuni]

I think I agree with the slight monk rework here. It's already super difficult to hit from the flank AND from the back. And then you have so much downtime running while range DPS can just do dmg it is really unfair.
We have the fist of fire but WHERE is the fire tho? I think you should have something like Fire IV but you can only use it if you have Greased Lightning II because its super difficult to have Greased Lightning III all the time.
That would make Monk so much more enjoyable and people would start playing it more because you can finally do damage now but not per second.

[Dzian]

her's a slight rework suggestion..

How do you guys think a lower perfect balance recast would impact monks...

I don't play the class that seriously myself but I feel lowering the recast on perfect balance would allow tornado kick to be a bit more functional. as you could use pb to quickly get back upto gl3 after hitting a tornado kick..

which is something I tend to do in some fights especially those with very high uptime.. but a 3minute recast I think is a bit much...

but I shall defer to those who play monk more avidly than myself for an opinion on this

[Shurrikhan]

here's a slight rework suggestion..

How do you guys think a lower perfect balance recast would impact monks...

I don't play the class that seriously myself but I feel lowering the recast on perfect balance would allow tornado kick to be a bit more functional. as you could use pb to quickly get back upto gl3 after hitting a tornado kick..

which is something I tend to do in some fights especially those with very high uptime.. but a 3minute recast I think is a bit much...

but I shall defer to those who play monk more avidly than myself for an opinion on this

I think the damage on Tornado Kick itself would have to be increased for that to be effective. Even if Perfect Balance were reduced to a 90-second CD, it would still be worth more potency to de-sync DK and Twin by one GCD and spend 4 out of 5 hits on Bootshine and the last on Dragon Kick, especially whenever BFB would be up and Inner Release on cooldown. With Inner Release is up, True Strike might become optimal instead(?), but only slightly, now that critical strike chance also acts as crit determination; or, at least, that's 15% more potential damage you'd otherwise waste. (The 26.7% potency increase will not otherwise make up for the loss of auto-crit, especially seeing as the auto-crit's damage is increased by almost the same percentage as the other's crit chance, iirc.)

I'll have to see at exactly what potency this would be the case, but I'd like for Tornado Kick to be viable at the tail of end of CDs and buffs, with both DoTs placed recently enough to last until you return to GL3. It doesn't even have to be a whole 1% dps increase from doing so; it just needs to at least make up for the damage that would otherwise be lost in being faintly more TP efficient when used perfectly.

Just to throw out, for random thought-juice, some other ways Perfect Balance could go, mostly for quality of life changes(?):
:: It could be trimmed into a passive on Fists of Wind, etc., in which you can skip stances at significant mana cost, or on Fists of Fire in which you can duplicate an attack onto other enemies nearby.
:: Perfect Balance could simply make Form Shift, which would be given earlier, a no-animation (or incredibly short animation) oGCD. You can now use 3 keys total for all your weaponskills, which are cycled between stances.
:: Perfect Balance could charge up to 5 hits' worth of "Free Stance" over time, rather than using a cooldown. However, these stacks build faster as the count increases, meaning that it'd be wasteful to pop early (emergency pop for GL, for instance).
:: Perfect Balance provides only 8 seconds of duration, but then grants one hit of "Free Stance" to be used within 10 seconds, slightly reducing irritants of idiot tanks or otherwise loose targets during a final, crucial hit, and allowing for easier timely addition of ToD.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Would it be OP if monk had an ability to AOE your current fist stance to the rest of the party? Obviously with some sort of duration and cooldown.

[Dzian]

@Shurrikhan

I thought it might actually increase damage a bit. hiting the high potency tornado quick and then following up with 3 snaps it seemed the loss of gl3 would be for a very minimal time frame.. but it is likely I am wrong that's why I deferred to more experienced monks for an opinion..
but seems youd like to see tornado kick be a bit more useful as well so least I'm not alone in that..

Using mana to skip stances sounds like it could be interesting. expecially with mana being entirely useless on monk in it's present form.

the stuff below that i'll admit confues the hell out of me. posiibly understand it better if I played monk more I guess.

[Shurrikhan]

Would it be OP if monk had an ability to AOE your current fist stance to the rest of the party? Obviously with some sort of duration and cooldown.

Mantra seems a fine candidate. Up the base a bit, and then add that on to the Monk trait. +10% mitigation, 30% movement speed, or 5% damage.

[Mikazuki_Aura]

It's already super difficult to hit from the flank AND from the back.

it's pretty easy to hit from both flank and back.

• Flank does not mean standing 90/270 degrees to the side of the target. Anywhere from 46 degrees to 134 degrees/226 to 314 degrees is Flank.
• Back does not just mean standing 180 degrees behind a target. Anywhere from 136 degrees to 224 degrees is Back.

So all you do is stand at almost exactly 135 degrees. You move clockwise slightly to execute rear positionals, and anticlockwise slightly to execute flank positionals. On average it should take no more than 0.2s to change your positional regardless of a target's size, which leaves you 1.8 seconds to weave your oGCDs. If your position is denied by a persistent AoE mechanic, switch to the 225 degree position instead. If both positions are denied by persistent AoE and the mob is still held in such a disadvantageous orientation, your tank is incompetent; consider MIPing your other DPS or healer instead.

Ranged lack is a problem, but a small one. Easily fixed also by giving monk a wide cone AoE with a high TP cost, very little damage (and no target requirement), but which refreshes Greased Lightning's duration. People can then use that to maintain GL3 between fights by aiming it in a non-mob direction, maintain GL3 within invuln mechanics/enforced range fights but still do little to no additional range dps that would throw off the balance.