Quote Originally Posted by silentwindfr View Post
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.