How should Monk 4.0 have been done?

[Shurrikhan]

Feel free to skip the questions below and go straight to your solutions and/or rationale, but I feel that these would be useful to many of those attempting to make such solutions:

(Some may questions may have overlapping answers. Combine wherever you like.)

1. What makes a Monk a Monk?

2. What did you most enjoy about Monk gameplay?

3. In what way were 3.x designs an improvement over 2.x. Which design ideas should have been extended in 4.x?

4. What significant issues did Monk still face in 3.x? To what degree, or under what conditions, were they acceptable?

5. How could these issues have been solved, if necessary?

6. How could the overall experience of Monk gameplay have been improved in 4.0?

With only 10 days left to Early Access, this is more a matter of circumventing boredom and defining our own tastes for future reference, an exercise in class-, raid- and self-analysis.

P.S. I love reading thorough text-walls of suggestions. Don't hold back.

[Shurrikhan]

Alright, my own two cents.

Rationale:

1. What makes a Monk a Monk?

The portion of mindset, ultimately, shared between skills Monks. I realize this sounds vague, but it can still be broken down into more concrete indicators.
1. The attack speed of a Monk lends a heightened sense of immediacy and pre-planning that likewise gradually comes to feel spontaneous. Each action is the start of the next's positioning. Decisions cannot be pondered between GCDs.
2. The versatility lent by the Fists stances can make it just barely possible for a Monk to do things that one would think, by all rights, they should not. Wounded, they may barely survive what others were topped off for with Fists of Earth; Fists of Wind can allow one to stay in a growing AoE for that one global more than the non-NINs; the last is the default stance. The advantages are relatively tiny. And yet when the result is simply whether one made it or not when pushing some other string of decisions to its edge, Fists have saved me more times than I could every tally. This creates an awkward self-confidence, wise or not, that it seems many skilled Monks share. After all, if we can survive off a 10% mitigation buff, what could really kill us?
3. The Monk rotation, over varying attack speeds and downtime durations, has more viable rotational options than any of job, be that ideal or situational. It also has the least space between viable rotation-changing Skill Speed plateaus. (Seconded by NIN, in my experience, though a 2.22 DRG takes the cake as far as rotational complexity goes.) Because the Monk is far better able to slip skills into his rotation to extend (or thereby shave) modulars, there is far more freedom to adapt to varying uptime and make the best of the situation. This makes Monk surprisingly deep in practical gameplay, but without much increased fixation on pre-planned rotations (at least until timing a particular fight down to the second), preferring instead to be guided by intuition and many, many balances and guidelines.

2. What did you enjoy most about Monk gameplay?

Pretty much the same as above. I enjoy being the "Imma punch it" job whose capable of more than one would assume. That tiny bit of extra, albeit non-simultaneous strength, and the smooth ability to adapt to the given situation, just feels so good.

3. In what way were 3.x designs and improvement over 2.x. Which design ideas should have been extended in 4.x?

Though I don't feel as awkward in returning to synced dungeons as many other Monks, I feel that Heavensward's contributions were important, though I feel like some were less directly necessary or less fully implemented than others. Heavensward brought with it increased front-loading, massively increased burst potential (especially in AoE through Elixir Field), viably held abilities (resource skills TFC and Purification), a player-controlled extender for GL duration, greater cyclical/mechanical control, additional options (some of the time) in the form of TK and Purification, and artificial uptime whether for during jumps or between fights.

Of these, I'd say that Form Shift was the best designed ability. It integrates almost perfectly with all prior Monk concepts. Elixir Field by comparison was functional, gave more buttons to press or fill out the opener and spice up its interim, and brought Monk up to a lead AoE competitor, but was otherwise a redundancy for Howling Fist. I enjoy it, and would likely mourn its loss, but it's nothing particularly great from a design perspective.

Tornado Kick and Meditation were both great concepts but shied away from conditional rotational viability, which is problematic to me. No skill should solely be mitigation for a core mechanic or specifically designed absence (e.g. of a ranged attack). If they are to be added to gameplay, they should also stand on their own to some regard. In Meditation, this would have meant another option for controlling the Form cycles' modulars (such as if one would have otherwise clipped their Demolish by exactly a Meditation's length). To do this, it would need to grant more potency per second, however, near-directly through TFC or less directly through Purification. Since TFC already introduces a very large boost to frontloaded DPS and Purification already grants a neatly sized sum of TP, it would make the most sense either to reduce the Chakra count necessary and/or reduce the GCD-recast time Meditation causes. Most of all it needed to fix one obvious issue—unlike the GCD itself, Meditation doesn't scale with attack speed. What begins as 60% of the GCD without GL ends up 70%. It should probably be a scaling 50% of GCD at all times if remaining at 5 stacks needed. Tornado Kick, on the other hand needed just two things: a CD decrease as not to prevent rotational usage shortly before situational usage, and a slight potency increase enough to make rotational use conditionally viable (e.g. for TP efficiency at the tail of maximized CD windows). Again, the point is not to add an obligatory skill here, but to at least give an option both situationally and rotationally.

Should those fixes have been made, however, I don't feel as if there's much left to extend. The additions would then have been essentially complete. Instead, we'd have to look to other areas we've since got used to to flesh out more engagingly.

4. What significant issues did Monk still face in 3.x? To what degree or under what conditions, were they acceptable?

While most will argue that Monk's core flaw was its lack of raid support, I find this argument a bit concerning. Short of x party DPS, any personal DPS advantage y will exceed the product of multiplier z. Given equal skill and gear across all members, a job that allocates that same value that others gain from raid support unto itself can still contribute identical raid DPS. It's simply a numbers game. The only actual imbalance inherent in not having raid support is that to be balanced in full party content, one must be overpowered in Light Party content. This difference however may be minuscule, and as of yet there is no cutting edge Light Party content by which the Monk would receive a guaranteed slot. At that point, the Monk's DPS would need to be allocated party into raid DPS, just as any other DD job's, as to face the same disadvantage of decreased manpower.

5. How could these issues have been solved, if necessary?

As above, balancing simply needed to be more tightly built around cutting edge content. Should that be Full Party content alone, then numbers simply needed to be rebalanced to allow Monks of equal skill to their party equal competitive value for a melee slot. Should Light Party content also join the cutting edge, the Monk's personal DPS would need to be exchanged for raid support in the same proportion as the nearest DPS job (e.g. DRG).

6. How could the overall experience of Monk gameplay have been improved in 4.0?

There are a few options here.
1. We've yet to significantly play with the concept of Light and Dark Chakra.
2. We've yet to have to meaningfully consider the weight of personal DPS vs. raid support. We're always the prior. A shared resource system could make these considerations a part of gameplay.
3. We've yet to really flesh out the concept of Fist stances.
4. Chakra as "Chakra Gates" (e.g. Rock Lee)???
5. Mana usage??? Converting mana into stuff? Granular resources, maybe via converting mana into stuff???
6. We haven't really diversified the cycle of Forms (Opo-opo, Raptor, Coeurl) themselves. (Though, I can't imagine that'd be as lucrative as the previous paths. The Forms are after all just a glorified 3x3 combo system.)

To be continued.

Changes (in progress):

Background Changes:

TP now refreshes at 50 TP per GCD. Enhanced attack speeds no longer increase TP drain. To compensate, certain weaponskills' TP costs have been increased, as to cause players, regardless of gear or buffs received, to drain to their first Invigorate in the same time as would one of the same class operating at the most efficient rotation at the slowest acceptable Skill Speed plateau.

Additionally, all jobs now have at least some use for MP, even if exhausting the resource only in extreme scenarios.

[I would intend eventually to replace the current concept of TP in order to make it a universal resource as "Tactics Points", used for skill-chains, minor LB-like functions, and the like. This would allow both MP and TP to both be applicable to all jobs, but also to be distinct from one another—the first primarily front-loaded and the latter primarily ramping. To do this I'd have to balance high to low TP cost abilities in some other way. (Some such ideas are sampled in the Monk suggestions below.) I'd like to create a tapering formula for AoE damage, such as by making total AoE potency equal to a modifier of (n + √n)/2 as to devalue those somewhat, introduce new effects to AoE skills that may allow them situationally in single-target, and introduce more priority targets and other focusing concerns by which to limit AoE pull sizes by more than just the inclusion of gates or other artificial barriers.]

Focus Points:

1. A more granular version of Chakra usable as a shared resource for either personal DPS or raid DPS bonuses.
2. Revising Fists for far more significance on situational adaptation, macro-rotation, and rotational strings.
3. Light and Dark Chakra for additional banking options and macro-rotation.

Summaries:

1. Dealing, healing, absorbing, or buffing others' damage now converts their relative potency value's worth of Mana into Chakra, which can be consumed through a variety of skills. Rather than capping merely at 5 stacks or 7.5 seconds' time, Chakra converts in a tapered but otherwise unlimited fashion, generally allowing about twice the time or potency values bankable as the current system. As conversion is done on a percentage of overall mana, the more one has already converted, the less converts, applying a slow but exponential taper to encourage spending or discourage banking beyond what one's own arsenal can make efficient (e.g. rather than saving without cost for DPS checks).

2. Your Stances, of Wind, Earth, or Fire, now vary the effects of your Greased Lighting and the majority of your abilities (Steel Peak, Howling Fist, Shoulder Tackle, Meditation, Tornado Kick, and (new) The Soul Convenes). UI has been adjusted from showing your 5 Chakra stacks, which no longer exist as such, to showing your last six Elements applied (or "Seals"). 3 most recent are shown in distinguishing circles to represent your latest Greased Lightning stacks, clockwise from top to bottom-right to bottom-left; the remaining 3 are shown between them in smaller font. All 6 Elemental applications are spendable, starting from the first applied. (If an element applied to a Greased Lightning stack is consumed, it converts to the generic Greased Lightning icon, which has a fourth effect.) All three stances now support long-term DPS in some way, and should be swapped through for reasons of both macro-rotation (e.g. CD alignment and maximization) and situational adaptation or preparedness. Internal Release now enhances theses difference.

:: Greased Lightning itself has also undergone some revisions. Greased Lightning now times out more quickly, duration decreasing per stack, but only drops at one stack at a time. This has a sizable effect on one's ability to actually have 6 Seals active at a time. Normally, this would require at least one third use of Fists of Wind and/or increased Skill Speed.

3. Starting at level 52, one becomes able to embed or instill Chakra into others, be they ally or enemy, as an additional form of banking and the basis for certain raid support functions. As of level 62, these two functions start to take on additional advantages of Dark or Light Chakra. These act as source and center of powerful spenders for raid support or personal attacks, some comparable to minor Limit Breaks. (If TP were to become a skill-chain resource, Monk would serve as your most versatile center for advanced chains through Light and Dark Chakra mechanics and skills.) They also have the side-benefit of instilling a second effect into Twin Snakes and One-Ilm Punch; the latter now implodes embedded Chakra for a DoT, shut-down, or AoE damage depending on Stance.

Stormblood Skills:

The skills added in Stormblood are the Riddles, double-edged mechanics that further flesh out the playstyles of the three Stances, Dark and Light Chakra, and the new especially Monk-ish cooldown ability, Open the Gates. These consume only two ability slots, the rest being given through traits. Their goal is to further macro-rotation and long-term complexity, further bring out the intricacies of Stances, and to do what Monks do best—dauntlessly attack at exponentially increasing speeds. They stand after additions as the DPS most often worth padding or focus-buffing, but also one of the most versatile and thereby applicable across varying comps. Their new cooldown, Open the Gates, may as well be a Limit Break, allowing them to exceed the 3-stack limit for Greased Lightning, but decreasing the duration of Greased Lightning with each extended stack and consuming increasing amounts of Chakra per second. Lasts until out of Chakra.

[Still in progress]
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1. Granular Chakra values...

Toss out the gauge, toss out the five stacks. Instead, when you deal, heal, embonus, or absorb damage you convert Mana into Chakra, which can then be consumed on a variety of abilities.

Some of these use a proportion of current Chakra as their potency, others consume a set amount for a set potency. This resource, Chakra, is shared between:

Open The Gates - Removes the limit from GL stacks, but drains your Chakra and Mana by an increasing rate and shortens the duration of GL for each stack. Effect ends when Chakra runs out. Grants the GL bonuses of all three Fists simultaneously. (GL now applies 5% attack rate and 5% damage per stack. Fists of Wind adds yet another 4% attack rate per stack, Fire grants 4% critical rate and damage per stack, and Earth adds 3% mitigation per stack. See section #2.)

This is your ballsy move. It's also difficult af to master. To make the most of this, ideally one needs to be gaining as much Chakra as they're consuming; in other words, they should run out of Mana (not yet converted resource) before running out of Chakra (converted resource), as to totally consume all possible resources. However, if you actually do that, you're kind of ****ed, because you need Mana to quickly get back on pace, because Fists are now significant and also consume mana. It's basically an LB2 that you pay for out of your smoldering wallet, but more risky.

**I haven't yet decided whether to make Tornado Kick scale with the number of stacks (allowing it to crit for some 25k at GL7), cost only 3 stacks so you can use it rein yourself in, or leave it an unscaled "I give up" move for when you still need some damned Mana.

The Soul Convenes - This buffs you, using your and drawing in nearby accessible Light/Dark Chakra (embedded in allies or enemies) to provide Mana, TP, or Health. Reduces the cooldowns on certain other skills.
Impart - A variable oGCD shaped by your previous weaponskill that allows you to imbue an enemy with Dark Chakra or an ally with Light Chakra which can then be used in variety of ways, making Mantra seem pathetically inflexible by comparison.
Riddle of <Wind/Earth/Fire> - Slot changes based on current Fist stance. Assigns a new, double-edged mechanic to your current Fist, complete with some pretty beast effects and animations. (E.g. Being able to Shoulder Tackle an enemy from every Light-embued ally in succession at the end of a Fists of Fire. Hidden skill name: "<n> Flights."

In this way, Chakra generation in itself does become indistinguishable from normal rotation, and the job may scale a bit more exponentially than most through this mechanic; however, it does allow incredible versatility and freedom over additional effects without having overwhelming simultaneous output.

>> I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with Meditation itself. Most likely I'll be wrapping it into some other half-GCD damageless weaponskill as used by Fists. Out of combat, though, I'll probably just have up to a certain amount/percentage of Mana convert automatically to Chakra, giving the same front-loading as before. (Not sure how best to link Fists with this concept. At present, Fists of Earth decreases the Chakra deconversion/degeneration rate for during downtime, and Fists of Fire increases mana conversion rates (build applicable resource faster, but run out of total resource faster, too) as to bask in DoT / embonused HoT glory, but Fists of Wind just gets you back into the action faster...)

:: Can anyone give me some good, preferably historical, riddles concerning Wind, Earth, or Fire, especially something... double-edged? I want each of the Riddles to introduce a new compensatory mechanic, but I don't want it to be something that simply undoes earlier bonuses like the current RoF side-effect or something that a group could easily just compensate for like a damage taken over time (as awesome as any sort of word-play between Pyretic and Pyhrric victory would be).

2. Revising Fists to be more significant...

[Sarkhane]

I feel like pushing our GL cap up would have been good, if we dont have raid utility then we should at least have a much larger potential dps than out counterparts.

Perhaps maybe give us GL5 and lower the CD on Purification so we can manage our tp, between the crits potentially giving us chakara it would open a sort of do i use my chak for more dps with forbidden or do I use Puri so I dont gas myself out mid fight.

Another thing for GL stack management could be having Tornado kick just remove just 3 stacks of GL. I feel like changes like that would really give us control of when we really need to crank out the damage and still have the invul phases when we cant stack up our GL actually be a good thing as we can use those phases to build tp with meditate and purification

[SpeckledBurd]

1. Monk's characterized primarily by Greased Lightning (specifically the speed buff thereof), huge personal damage, a large number of positional requirements, and sustained damage. If it had to be one of these things, it would be Greased Lightning.

2. The speed of the GCD and the way your combos can freely weave in actions depending on the stance you're in. Also that non-combo GCD's didn't break them was a fun Job-feel thing.

3. HW and ARR are like night and day. Everything Monk got in Heavensward fixed Monk's issues in ARR, to the point where I despise synching down as monk.

4. Quite a few issues. There was the lack of an offensive raid buff, the lack of personal damage to account for the lack of a raid buff, it's TP issues, it's inability to bounce back from losing its stacks during invulnerability phases due to Perfect Balance's long cooldown, and it's lack of an aggro control skill.

5. Brotherhood was a solution to a lack of an offensive raid buff. They could have buffed Monk's potencies to give it the personal damage to be competitive. Purification could have had the 5 chakra requirements removed. Perfect Balance could have had it's recast timer set to 90. Featherfoot could have gotten an aggro 1/2'ing effect.

6. Emphasize Monk's speed rather than slowing it down with Riddle of Fire. Monk isn't a hard hitter, it's a fast hitter. My idea of a good Monk cooldown would be something like Thousand Fists which would reduce your damage dealt by 40% but double all weaponskills, auto attacks, and abilities for the cooldown's duration. Mathematically, it's functionally identical to a 20% damage up (though it's interaction with Demolish would be weird due to the way DoTs snapshot), but the way it approaches it is more in line with Monk's aesthetic. Tackle Mastery should be scrapped as a trait in favor of something entirely different since all "Fist" stances pale in comparison to Fire, possibly something like "Positional Mastery", which would grant you a stacking buff for correctly hitting your positionals that would give you a small amount of bonus damage for 10-15 seconds when it reaches a certain count (say, 15-30). That works towards the devs stated goal of rewarding good play while not making the difference between less capable players and the top percentage a sheer cliff.

[lyndwyrm]

Of the millions of things that could be done, I'll be at least considering the stated goals by the devs (simplification of jobs to close the dps gap, button consolidation, and rework of cross-class/role skills) and my personal feel of monk. I will also assume total potency/damage numbers are expected to increase with the increase of the level cap.

I like most of what monk has been since 2.0, speed, a large number of buffs for otherwise weak attacks, constant movement for positionals, and high sustained damage over burst. To my knowledge monk primarily faced one problem in 3.0, that other job's raid dps buffs generally outshined the high sustain monk brings (and they weren't keen on losing out on LB gains by bringing 4 monks for a ~2% damage buff on 3 of them).

They could fix this in basically one of two ways: increase the individual dps disparity or add raid damage buffs. Since 8-man content is what "matters," which makes raid buffs have more relative effect than in 4-man content. So despite being new to what it is to be a monk, raid buffs would make more sense balance wise than further solo dps buffs. This in mind, I think the buff from Brotherhood is pretty solid, flat damage bonus to the party. Easy. Becasue I would prefer something more "interesting" to at least differentiate monk from others, I may have opted for a speed bonus, a buff based on the monk's current damage buff, or something like a party-wide Wildfire that monk executes (spirit bomb lol). But in results oriented design, a simple buff to damage is just as good as any of these and is easier to balance, so that's what we have.

TP is something I remember monk having trouble with in 2.0, but really haven't had much trouble with in 3.0 content. Most of the time if you knew you would have trouble, then save the initial meditate for a Purification and that'd basically be it. If the reduced TP costs in the media tour stay, then unless we get insanely fast in 4.0, then I doubt we'll ever even need Goad outside of a stray AotD filled AoE pull.

On AotD though, while we don't need more AoE after getting Elixer Field, AotD is just sad. Still a combo-locked silence, still has a huge TP cost, and still has a super low potency, even for monk. I probably would've removed the silence and either upped the potency to ~90 or reduced the TP cost to ~100. I do find it fun to use when fighting 3+ sprites, it's mostly just sad.

The changes to role/cross-class skills are basically what I was expecting, and (I feel) mostly benefited monk. The loss of fracture entirely fits what they were billing with simplification and consolidation. I'm basically ok with the loss of B4B, since a flat damage increasing skill in role skills is a given, in what possible situation would it not be a chosen option?

The choices on consolidation and skill reduction only partially match what I was expecting. Haymaker's effect kinda moved to role skills in Arm's length, which is fine for solo duties and fates. But Haymaker and Fracture are the only skills that match what I was expecting to lose. Despite moving Steel Peak's stun to a role skill, they put a stun on One-Ilm Punch, kept the AotD as is, and left the stun on Shoulder Tackle (and spinshatter dive for DRG). I've only ever used One-Ilm Punch as a joke outside of PVP, and with PVP now being totally separate, and a similarly unique ability on OIP, I don't understand the change.

Put simply, I would've removed OIP. At length, I'm not aware of a single genuinely useful instance to use OIP in PvE, which is probably due to the fact that only monk has an ability with OIP's effect. With no other similar ability added in 3.0, there's still no instance they can make OIP significant or else they require bringing a monk, which they have stated multiple times they don't want to do. The big problem with 4.0's OIP (if the community is understanding the new tooltip right) is that it is in the exact same boat as old OIP. If you can use it to stun things that either can't be stunned normally or after the duration reduction has reduced stuns to zero, then there is no instance that could make it significantly useful without requiring you bring a monk. Unless they added similar abilities to other jobs, I would've removed OIP as it simply takes up hotbar space.

Fist stances have had similar trouble at maintaining usefulness as the Summoner pets. We can use Fists of Earth as a damage reduction cooldown, but you basically want to be in Fists of Fire as much as possible. Fists of Wind, especially with sprint changes, is a waste of space. Because they did not set a precedent of adding fist stances in 3.0, I was expecting them to at least remove Fists of Wind. They could have saved hotbar space by removing FoW and added (even somthing wind related) at the same or a higher level so the total hotbar space wasn't increased. Since we're losing B4B and I don't want to entirely exclude elemental themed abilities, I would probably replace it with a speed buffing cooldown, similar to Presence of Mind on WHM.

On the rotation and simplification of it, nixing Fracture only really brings the ceiling down since it's not required and entirely possible to not equip and still do good dps. Nixing Touch of Death should bring the floor up (and the ceiling down), since it's another DoT you don't have to worry about and is necessary. The problem is that we now have no out-of-combo skills and no non-AoE positional-free skill. While I would admittedly change little in 4.0 with playstyle, I definitly wouldn't have removed both of these. I feel like monk needs some kind of filler move, and to be frank, a DoT makes the most sense to me. A low initial hit, long duration DoT makes the most sense to me, which is exactly what ToD is. Anything I propose to replace ToD would either likely make monk even more complex or be exactly what ToD is.

I would really like to rework Tornado Kick, but since it only puts us 1.5-2 GCD moves ahead at the cost of 30% damage and 15% speed, we end up behind REAL FAST if it's timed poorly. Unfortunately, it's in a funny situation where if it's buffed much over what it is now, then we'd use it any time it's up. I feel like the devs should have just accepted that direction and increased the cooldown to compensate. If it were some ~500 potency and/or only consumed one GL stack, then we'd always use it, but if it was also on a 2-5 min. cooldown, they could make it's total potency per second reasonable and still be a move primarily used when we're about to lose our stacks anyways. It may not be a wholly satisfying solution for some, but I'd take it as an improvement.

Considering the goal of keeping hotbar space roughly the same, if we also remove featherfoot, then given the party buff and FoW replacement we'd have space for 2 or 3 more abilities depending upon how we're counting Second Wind moving to role skills. For the sake of keeping the idea of simplifying the job, I would hesitate to add anything to the main combo (as much as would love to). Instead, I'd add more oGCD abilities, cooldowns, and/or buffs. Of note, that is all what they added in 4.0, but one is a maintentance/defensive ability and another runs counter to my concept of monk.

I already proposed a speed buff in place of FoW, so I don't think even more of the same would be good. With the addition of Direct Hit, and the presense of Internal Release, a buff to Direct Hit rate could be interesting. It could be similar to 4.0 Enochian and be a small buff that stays up as long as either GL or any Monk form is up or a larger buff on a CD just like IR, I'd prefer the former. Though I just suggested DH, it could buff Crit just as easily and synergize with procs (though DH could synergize with procs too if they made them).

They could have also added something in a similar vein to SMN's Fester, something like: "applies 15s debuff, at the end of the duration the target takes damage equal to 50 times each unique weaponskill you hit the target with." There would be a sweet spot in the duration to encourage the use of each main combo skill once without going into AoEs. This could also be moved into the place of Brotherhood, if the debuff applied to all party skills not just the monk who used it's skills, though the potency/cooldown would need to be adjusted.

These are simple to use cooldowns that most players would simply use when up (or keep up) so they should still allow gameplay to be quite simple but have unique effects and at the top level may be optimally used at a slight delay.

On passives/traits, I mostly like Deep Meditation even though it's RNG and not consistent. Others have pointed out that, unfortunately, if we get 1-4 chakra leading up to downtime, it actually reduces the usefulness of having meditate independently. There's also the possibility with Brotherhood that we'll get more procs than we can use at a time (have 4, gain 2+ simultaneously). So long as this kind of overhead is considered in balance, I'm good with DM.

If they had set a precedent in 3.0 (or even now, it'd be fine either way) of adding more Fists, then I'd understand Tackle Mastery better. Problem is they didn't and haven't. Further, the added effects from TM are basically just side effects, and we'll still use it in FoF 99% of the time rendering it mostly useless. Without more damaging Fist options, I wouldn't have tied anything to the Fist in use. If I were to add another trait that is fairly interactive, it would probably be a proc of some kind. If they wanted to destroy fine-timing, they could give X% chance to increase speed by 5-10% for 5-10s on Demolish tick crits. If they wanted to really up the usage of the Forbidden Chakra, they could have paired something like True Meditation with DM, that grants a Meditate on a Direct Hit 15% of the time (thus on a Direct Crit, you could generate 2 chakra). To get off procs they could still do somehting with FoE & FoF, say anytime you switch between the stances, you recieve half again the effect of the stance for 5s. So fast swapping stances would be 3s at 1.075, 2 at 1.025, and 1 at 1.0, averaging 1.045, less than 1.05 discouraging fast swapping. My gut says it'd need to be weaker still to discourage mid-combo swapping for Demolish, but the idea is that it would encourage swapping to FoE just before you take raid damage and back just before you get back to the boss. That could be really neat if balanced right.

Forgive me if some of this gets off topic, but there are a lot of things worth considering. And I have basically nothing to do until Stormblood

[Shurrikhan]

If I may, I have one more question for you guys:
- How could we make Fists stances satisfying for you?

That is to say, having some sort of shared opportunity system between damage mitigation, damage increase, and movement speed increase, or any three such bonuses...

Again, I personally love Fist weaving, especially now that the opportunity cost has heavily decreased, but I could see others as feeling the same way towards truly (or within 1 GCD) cost-free stance-dancing that many, say, WoW Warriors did in Cataclysm where every skill had a sort of obligatory stance attached to it, so it ended up keystroke bloat. In this case it'd at least be situational, but I could see where the obvious advantages of having to swap to Wind/Earth just to swap back to Fists of Fire a GCD later could become tiresome for others.

So how could any elementally-based shared resource system like that be made interesting?

Could we exchange the Fists for oGCD skills that consume a shared granular resource, replacing the % damage bonus of GL with those? Could we have them interact in different ways with core mechanics like Chakra or Greased Lighting? Spread their advantages via skills like Mantra? (Or heck, even just oGCDing immediately after or during an Arm of the Destroyer to create an Aura Pulse, sharing a portion of your Wind/Earth/Fire benefits with the raid.)

Additionally, how could the Fist stances be made rotationally significant (especially without easily creating a new fixed rotation as RoF will)? By giving each some sort of movement and long-term damage benefits (e.g. Earth greatly reduced knockback and reduces status effect duration and/or potency caused in addition to making GL fade more slowly--if it were changed to a more granular system; Wind increasing attack and ability refresh speeds in addition to movement speed, and maybe even generating additional damage on the next attack based on movement speed (stacking with Sprint), which now ramps up with downtime; and Fire buffing something else atop damage)?
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Edit: Sorry for my lateness in getting back to everyone. I have read through everything, but I'm just not sure how much reflection I can offer by which to continue the conversation.

Oh, one thing I absolutely have to mention real quick though:

@lyndwyrm

I love your Elemental Gauge idea. I had also pondered the idea of combining the Fists, Chakra, and GL concept to some degree but I'd worried over how exactly to do that. In the end I've run my spitball solution ideas using a general idea for granular Chakra (mana converts to Chakra with any effective output action, be that damage dealing, buffing others, healing, or mitigating) and then diversifying Fist interactions both with Chakra as a whole, ability variance, and some new dynamic abilities, but I'm definitely reconsidering that older idea now; it just seems to tie in GL far more neatly.

I'd like to see your own take on the "aura pulse" idea if you've toyed around with it a bit further since your second post. So far for me it's just been tied into the idea of generating Light and Dark Chakra within oneself, allies, and enemies, and then being able to either (essentially) explode, reabsorb, or disperse these Chakra over the area of the effect, moving inward or outward from the Monk. I'd love to hear what you plan to do with the variance to how Chakra is consumed based on stance. (At present, I'm just using ally/enemy-embedded Chakra as centers for certain Fists effects, such as being able to use Riddle of Wind or some manner of new Wind-stance Release skill to launch a flurry of Shoulder Tackles from every light-enfused ally towards a given target, or sort of "shadow/flash step" behind a enemy of the opposite Chakra as self during Fists of Wind. Gimmicky shit like that shouldn't add any bloat (just replacing the dynamic skill for Wind if possible when otherwise out of range), and amounts merely to added damage or mobility, but it a properly showy but Monk-ish fashion.)

@Blacktestament

Even when technically viable on paper, people don't seem to be attracted to during-uptime use of Tornado Kick unless it's essentially so powerful as to be used on cooldown. In other words, I guess the situational aspect isn't panning out? At the same time though several others I've heard over the other Monk threads have mentioned that they don't want to see skills that would devalue Perfect Balance, especially if more narrowly tied to mechanics (e.g. only focused on giving GL stacks, rather than counter-rotations, DoT spreads, AoE spam potential, etc.). Would it be less worthwhile to simply reduce Perfect Balance to a 90 second CD than add this new kick?

Alternatively, I wonder if it might be interesting to do something more with the idea of Tornado Kick? Let's just take the two titles thus far: Tornado, Shatter... maybe a third could be something like Daybreak or Dawn or Rising Sun (nope, WoW took that) Kick. Could we maybe do something to integrate the Fists there in a way that could give you varying situational to rotational usage of an attractive ability (or set thereof with a shared resource cost)?

EDIT 2:
Thanks for the movement speed data, lyndwyrm! I guess I'd been working off the assumption of Beta tooltips and hearsay for so long my senses had gotten out of whack. I always figured the movement speed buff was faster than that.

[lyndwyrm]

Extension on Fist Stances

I didn't say much on Fist Stances above since from my point of view most of it would complicate the job further. On the other hand, there is a lot that can be done with the Fists. As it's been since 2.0, FoW is really the only stance I want to be reworked, since I'm not sure whether I've ever benefited from it. Part of that problem being its marginal benefits, and the other part being clarity of its effects (ie. whether I benefited from it in an instance of using it or not). So first I'd probably rework FoW to be an attack speed bonus (4% when under GL3 is just under 5%, 5% would be about a 6.25% damage boost under GL3).

If they did something very much like Tackle Mastery, tying a side effect to some oGCD ability we already have, then literally anything other than Shoulder Tackle would've been better. I'll use Elixir Field as an example. It would be underpowered by simply adding heavy/slow/blind for Earth/Wind/Fire or interrupts (3 of stun/silence/pacify/knockback) for E/W/F, so I'll avoid interrupts and minor debuffs. The "Aura Pulse" Shurrikhan mentioned would be interesting; Elixir Field (or a new oGCD) spreading the effect of your current fist to the party, and this would have the potential to add all the raid damage and utility we could need. It could also be debuffs like reduced damage dealt by 1-10% on boss/increased chance to Crit/DH boss by 1-10%/increased damage taken by boss by 1-10% for E/W/F. Because of Elixir Field's short CD, they could be small numbers with relatively high uptime, or larger numbers that last 5s or less.

If they made the stances focused on a resource of somekind, 3 options come to mind: TP, chakra, or an elemental gauge of some sort.

For TP, they could make FoW a fair speed bonus, 10% or more, and expect you to burn through TP, then switch to FoF to regain it or just sustain it at a low level. This would probably (read most definitely) put Monk as the neediest DPS, but would have the potential for Monk to be the top DPS in the first 2min. and drop off later. While the DPS from this could be balanced over the course of a long fight, it would be more powerful in shorter fights (dungeon bosses), fights with more downtime, and early dps check fights. FoF would also probably require a TP cost reduction if it became the "TP regaining" stance. While I enjoy the thought of 6 monks burning something down at the speed of light with Invigorate, Goad, and Purification, I don't see something like this flying with how the game has been balanced so far.

For Chakra, meditate could give you a temporary buff in battle depending upon the stance you're in when you use it. This could just increase the effect of your current stance for 15-60s, and give you a reason to use meditate in combat occasionally. This doesn't synergize with Deep Meditation well, but also isn't negatively affected much. They could make the buffs not stack, end when stance is changed, or the opposite to encourage switching stances frequently. We could also get a new CD that consumes chakra or alter the effect of the Forbbiden Chakra to have differing effects depending upon stance. Something like 10s 20%+ damage reduction/60s 5% attack speed up/20s 15% damage up for E/W/F on a 60-180s cooldown.

They could also go the other direction with chakra, and make chakra generation depend upon stance (e.g. 30% of crits in FoF, 10% of total hits in FoW, and 10-50% each time hit in FoE). Chakra could also be switched to a gauge like just about everyone else got, 0-100, where Meditation generates 10-20 and abilities cost 50-100. This could solve overhead generation and increase possible granularity (i.e. generate 3 chakra per crit, instead of 10 on 30% of crits), and by increasing granularity increase consistency.

An Elemental Gauge could get incredibly complicated incredibly fast but could also remain simple. Using the new UI as reference, they could add a new light above each GL light to represent stored elements. Each time you refresh GL, it adds a light of the stance you're in. Once you have 3 lights, you gain the ability to consume them with a separate cooldown, not unlike Samurai's Sen. The effect however could be determined by the makeup of the lights, or only trigger when you have one of each. If it depended on the lights, then it would just up the effects of those Fists. If it was even more like Samurai's Sen, i.e. there was one light for each fist, and you could only use it once you have all three for [any reasonable skill to have on an 18s CD]. Most of this seems pretty forced though, it just becomes part of the rotation. On the more complicated side of things, they could add 3 gauges 0-100, one for each elemental Fist, and make any number of skills that consume any assortment of elemental points from each gauge. But that by itself is as or more complicated than Red Mage. Now that I've thought on it most stuff things using an elemental gauge seem to be either needlessly complicated or would be a job in itself.

Of all these, an Aura Pulse-type ability and the buffs from consuming chakra based on stance are the ones I find realistic and likable.

It's only partially off-topic, but for clarity
Fists of Wind is +10% speed
Swiftsong is +20% speed (sprint is likely 20-25%)
Mounting up is +50% speed
Data:

X:15.5, Y:33.0-39.0 Sagolii Desert
dX~0.2, percent increase in distance for that 0.05%
time error dependent upon stopwatch press accuracy, likely less than 0.25s
units in seconds

Normal
N to S
1: 50.22
2: 50.14

S to N
1: 50.32

Fists of wind
N to S
1: 45.63

S to N
1: 45.96

Swiftsong
N to S
1: 41.70

S to N
1: 41.93

Mount
N to S
1: 33.61

S to N
1: 33.68

distance/speed=time

time/timeFoW = SpeedFoW/Speed
N to S ratio: 1.0997
S to N ratio: 1.0948

time/timeSS = SpeedSS/Speed
N to S ratio: 1.2034
S to N ratio: 1.2001

time/timeMount = SpeedMount/Speed
N to S ratio: 1.493
S to N ratio: 1.494

[silentwindfr]

If I may, I have one more question for you guys: How could we make Fists stances satisfying for you?

that the trouble Shurrikhan, first of fire, fist of earth and fist of wind are garbage left of the v1... when do we use fist of the earth, for reduce the damage of one attack. why not make it like a skill with a short cooldown like 15-20 second for block one attack and give us a small buff rewarding people that did react and place them block. a survival cd.

fist of the wind offer a 3% of move speed increase... seriously?? can't it be 10% like ninja? i means at least it will give a reason to exist. because 3% is barely enough since sprint don't cost tp anymore... we don't need fist of the wind anymore!

and the tackle mastery was created in this goal to justify the existance of the this three stance that only one is really wanted and used.

for me the monk core mechanic, what define it is:
- Greese lightning, more longer the fight, faster and stronger we hit.
- free form combo system, we are able to adapt to the situation depending of where we are, what we need we can change our combo for fit our need.

this two point are what define monk, strangely they are the part the less touched in every expansion... chakra system is a garbage. in my eyes it have 0 redeem value. purification? why we do have invigorate and if you are a good player... it's far more than enough. the attack? we need to charge in GCD? seriously? same for the stance change, we need to use a GCD

for the combo system and greese lightning, i will have added a fourth hit to our 3 hit combo, since yes we do use 3 hit combo actually, moving from side to back. anyway i digress, since our goal is to maintain greese lightning, why not make that new skill we can use after the third hit is only usable if you are under the three stack of GL.
and they can go farer, each time you use a 4th hit combo, you gain a stack and after 3 stack you can use a 5th hit combo, rewarding people that keep going, making the monk more and more devastiting as the time pass...

same tornado kick... this skill is nice and seriously bad at the same time. use our GL stack... yes, we have a few time we can't keep going... we need to drop it. and instead to finally give us a ranged skill that will use this stack, we can a melee skill. yes because we still don't have any ranged capacity (and howling fist is a ranged skill) even the enemy of the 60th quest do have one... we still don't have one.

because how many time you are forced to move far and you notice that will loose your gl and can't use tornado kick, loosing anyway your stack, because you was too far or the boss is about disappear. Tornado kick need to be moved into a 4th hit combo, and another attack must take it place, a ranged attack. allowing us to blow our energy to the face of the enemy from far. we do loose GL we need to have a good skill for it.

ohhh by the way, for the people saying, yes, but for add new combo they need to create new skill for this:
- Tornado kick
- simian strike ( for the one wondering here a small video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7UvaSpaMSM )

by example, they are skill that fit the bill to be the skill we use in 4th hit. skill that need to be at top power for be used.

ps: one point that i want to add, yoshi p think every jobs must be as difficult to be played... i feel it's ok to have one to two jobs that will recquire a higher skill for be played. since it will force the player to become better. yes, if the person don't try to become better the other will suffer, but that irevelant... the goal of a mmo (out of meet people and share story with them) is too... to progress and become better.
soo far the change of the monk show only that they are scared to make monk harder to play since they really think the monk is hard to play.... what is actually the inverse than be true... the truth is the way we get our skill make it hard to understand... instead to make use get skill all over the place i will have make the monk get skill from side and back in row...
making more simple to understand that actually monk is a jobs that move from two position. side and back... nothing difficult into that... when you understand this... it's actually extremely simple, it's more muscle memory than real skill... and that why we are all extremely angry that because for the one that do play this game for long all of this is already learned we are hoping for change and evolution... because the jobs is... too simple to play for us. add new skill please... evolve our core feature, instead to try to add mechanic that barely work and can't develop with 5 skill... monk have already all it need for become amazing, all it need it's to develop the combo system and gl. nothing more, nothing less.

we don't need buff that will increase our dps, we want to make our dps... stop give us buff... give us attack and combo!

[Shurrikhan]

snip

Thank you for the feedback. There are just a few things I wonder if you could clarify for me, and a few things I think I might be able to clarify for you:

Personally, I use and have seen other Monks use Fists of Wind in quite a few different raids, namely T1, 5, 7, 9*, 10, 11, and 13, and A3*, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 12, often to significant effect. It's still a good 30% movement speed increase, after all, even if less than Ninja's 35% or Bard's 40% via Swiftsong, iirc.
*Only necessary when group isn't compensating by baiting Jump towards melee or saving last Slime for your Coeurl hit.

While I personally have survived by less than 50 HP thanks to Fists of Earth when I otherwise would have died at least 20 times, I think we can safely write that off as anecdotal or just a fact of playing a shitton of Monk and farming DF trials a bit too often.

Admittedly, however, the balancing damage loss could have as easily been written into Fists of Earth or Wind; Fire itself provides nothing. It remains because that's they only way they could progress skill acquisition without the awkward addition of a trait at x level that is then conditionally removed as part of an extended tooltip on Fists of Earth and Wind after said level.

Otherwise, whereas Fists of Earth at least had value versus Earth-vulnerable enemies and Fists of Wind had an attached Spear effect in 1.x, they're purely situational here.

But, is the problem itself that they're stances, or just that they don't have significant enough effect to feel worthwhile in most cases?

For instance, if by taking damage when in Fists of Earth some portion a shared resource was consumed in order to, if your resource is sufficient, provide mitigation or shielding enough to guarantee your survival, would that make it significant enough? Or would the issue still be that it's a stance rather than an active skill?

I suppose a similar question is technically applicable to Purification, The Forbidden Chakra, Meditation, and Tornado Kick as well.

In my experience, Purification becomes highly useful in dungeons, any fight of at least 15 seconds' downtime that is still at least 15 seconds short of being able to refill your TP at the normal rate, or any extended fight with heightened AoE opportunity. Unlike Invigorate, in periods of downtime, it's basically free. My only regret is the length of its cooldown.

Tornado Kick already keeps very nearly the output of continued GL duration if used at the tail of a CD window. At the end of a stacked Balance, Blood for Blood, and Internal Release, it is actually a faint DPS gain to blow Tornado Kick even during uptime. That said, for it to be general choice it would need to be wholly viable, for TP efficiency if nothing else, even at the tail of just one CD's window (optimal at 25%+ effective damage increase).

I'm not sure what you mean by Tornado Kick needing to be replaced for a ranged attack, however. The only times you'd need a ranged attack are after losing melee range, which in the case of a melee class would mean upon initiation or temporary retreat. But in the first's case you wouldn't yet have any stacks and the second you wouldn't yet want to consume them. Apart from that it's just a matter of making something out of what you'd otherwise lose during downtime; whether it's melee or ranged should have no effect. Do you mean something completely different, rather than as a GL-consuming skill?

Similarly, although we do not have a ranged attack itself, we do generate more potency per GCD where melee uptime is lost than any other melee class, and at no TP cost. While any other melee job can ranged attack for 120 potency (relative potency of 144) over 2.5 seconds, we can generate 126 base potency which at the time of actual consumption (under IR, DK, Twin, and GL3) would have a relative potency of almost 210. It also doesn't break our combos, unlike Throwing Daggers or Piercing Talon. Even if it's indirect, we're technically overpowered in terms of ranged DPS among melee.

Additionally, we effectively have less downtime than any other job in the game because we're still able to produce potency- or TP-generating resources for up to 15 seconds per downtime period, and advance our combos by 2 GCDs (or, making use of up to 20 seconds of downtime in total that no other job can make use of). Though our ramp-up is longest and downtime can therefore be punishing, if no more frequent than Perfect Balance, we technically benefit from downtime in ways that no other job can (well, except the upcoming Samurai, in its own version of "Meditation").

What is specifically that bothers you with these areas? Is it just that their effects are big enough or are too situational, much like the Fists of Wind/Earth? They each feel very strong to me, but that's coming from a specific raid- and speedrun-related perspective.

Also, what do you mean by a "4th hit to our 3-hit combo"? Am I correct in understanding that you want there to be multiple layers alike to the 3 stacks of GL, and each time you complete all three another Form opens up, increasing the interval of skills? While I understand the goal of visible progression over uptime, I don't understand why it would require so much as this. Would these new Forms also have 3 choices each? Would these new Forms' choices be stronger than each previous set of 3, then 4, such that damage is increasing? How would this handle loss of stacks, and how would we balance Monk over the varying downtime durations over different fights?

Sorry if I come off as interrogative at all here. I'd just like for us to be able to refine our ideas, even if that means poking holes where one may. I encourage you to do the same time mine. Gameplay, especially, that I find meaningful might not yet be significant enough for you, whereas performance issues that may not seem significant to you may repel players like me. Different eyes, different angles, or whatever likenesses of an adage might apply here.

[Blanchimont]

1) For me, Monks are a class that should have their damage gradually ramp up as battle goes on, eventually peaking in single target damage. That is at least what I feel Greased Lightning is meant to do. It increases damage and attack speed the more of it you have.


2) The part I liked the most about Monks are their three form and combo system. Unlike many other damage classes that only trigger it by chance, Monks can do it consistently and have a chain of three (I really wish there was more though).

3) Monks got a few skills to address their weaknesses. For example, Purification granted 300 TP. In long fights, you would run out of TP. You also got Form Shift, which made it easier to get that first stack of Greased Lightning and combined with Perfect Balance, it made it easier to get three stacks.

I felt that in 4.0, they should have taken this one step further by making it easier to restack Greased Lightning. Why? It is the core of the Monk's damage and with long transition phases between a lot of bosses, most of those stacks are immediately lost between boss phases. The other option is to extend the duration of Greased Lightning, but I feel that the changes with the other stances in Stormblood makes it even harder to keep the Greased Lightning stacks up.

4) If I had to sum it up, the Monk class felt impractical and contradictory. The chakras were impractical to set up most of the time, except for transitions during boss battles because they shared cooldowns with everything else and you basically needed to charge up five times in like 10 seconds. This makes it even harder to keep up Greased Lightning if it was not already. The same goes for Tornado Kick, which takes away all your Greased Lightning stacks, which might be useful for a last hit before the boss goes invulnerable since you'll lose the stacks anyways. I felt like this remained a fundamental problem in Heavensward and sucked out a lot of fun for the Monk class. I had more fun playing White Mage than Monk in Heavensward.

5 and 6) My focus is on turning the chakras into an ammunition type resource that charges on its own rather than requiring you to charge it up.

Option A: Basically, Stormblood needed a way to keep Greased Lightning up much longer and to get it up much easier. If Form Shift and Perfect Balance did not share cooldowns with the other skills, you could it to 2 stacks quite easy. What Monks need is one more skill to boost you up to that third stack and for skills like Tornado Kick and Forbidden Chakra to be only usable while on that third stack, but have a long cooldown to make up for the increased damage. Over time, expansions could introduce more "conditional" skills that might actually be usable.

Option B: Chakra is a secondary resource that charges up per attack and upon reaching certain numbers of chakras, you gain access to different skills. Upon reaching six stacks, Forbidden Chakra becomes usable, but you will lose those five stacks upon using it and will have to wait for the chakras to charge up again before you can use those skills. Tornado Kick would be powered the same way and would not take away your Greased Lightning stacks upon use.