Thread: How should Monk 4.0 have been done?

i will be honest fist of wind and earth, need to be removed. they are skill in our tool that can be replaced by much more accurate skill. they can even make it a trait like we always run faster, what will be more logical since we are normally a jobs that have 0 ranged attack.

like i have said, it's a rest of the V1 like was haymaker. they are skill that was junk and had no reason to be keept. outside the lack of idea on how make the monk evolve. soo far the monk have a huge trouble, they did wanted our dps to be coming from out auto attack, that why we did get soo much boost of damage and skill that have the potency soo low. but by doing this, they have make hard to balance it, worth add anything enjoying for the player, since the dps is coming not from our action, but from the auto attack, yes we have a % of the damage that come from the skill... but the auto attack deal insane damage.

the idea i had offer have the advantage to not change this but just to make us more active. Shoulder tackle must'nt be a focus of our tool, none of the dps or melee class have soo much attention on them charge skill... why that? a charge have only one goal allows us to come back to melee...

worst when you look at the one of the samurai you find it more interesting and involving. one charge, one step back skill and if you use the ranged attack after you have synergie between the skill... brillant.
monk have the less synergy with the group and with his skill. leading to our situation.

we can try to offer them any advice, or a way to make they idea work, in the end it will be detrimental for the monk since it will not be fun nor an evolution. the 4.0 change are bad in way too many way and need to be scrapped and rework. since seriously it's not even an evolution, more a de-evolution of the jobs. less action, less fun... less all... for only get more number? no, simply no.

in the alpha and beta and even v1 we had poll for know our thought, they really need to ask monk player with a poll what we feel is needed instead to try to guess what we are saying or wanting. they are disconnected of our main concern...
about the situation of the monk in HW they are directly responsible of this.
the dragoon was already more interesting in term of raid utility because of the piercing debuff and his damage, they did decide to throws another insane group buff while giving nothing to compete to the monk. brotherhood is not what we have asked for, we have asked for a synergy... since the start the reduction of defense against the blunt, piercing and slashing is the source of a loooooot of trouble. leading to a situation where some jobs are more wanted since they wil buff the raid damage.

it's not different of the elemental wheel in a sense... and they have scrap it... for the same reason for not make a jobs mandatory to a raid because of his gain of dps because of the elemental advantage, here the dragoon is prefered to the monk because of the piercing debuff... and brotherhood will solve nothing.
dragoon still have the piercing debuff (bard/mch buff of damage and probably red mage)... and the battle litany
ninja have the +10% damage takent every minute and slash debuff... (tank damage buff and sam)
monk.... have brotherhood +5% damage (only a melee range) and blunt debuff.... only use by himself!

don't need to do long study for understand the trouble.

Originally Posted by Deithwen

I don't really understand your question. You mean, your rotation changes slightly every 0.04 GCD, but to the core, at least on a dummy, your rotation won't change a bit if you want to play optimally. I don't think there is a rotation to be the least affected by being forced out of melee range, because if done properly, you can come back in a GCD, so you can continue your rotation where you stopped it, and if you can't you just stack a few chakras until you can get back to the fight.

The rotation is pretty much set in stone : opener, refresh DK, refresh TS, refresh demo is needed or Snap punch then Bootshine, true trike, refresh demo if needed rince repeat. The only thing that differentiates top level monks right now is uptime (being able to deal max damages and do mecanics, need perfect timing), CD management and AOE management (oh and ast giving balance).

As your modular varies (the amount by which you would have to clip or delay DK/Twin/Demo/ToD/Fracture at 15/18/21/30s), the relative value of DK and Twin, especially, change, such that it can be more worthwhile to let either fade for a certain amount of time than clip them. For example, at a single GCD lost, DK/Twin fade costs 29 potency; allowing this to fit in an additional Boot/True per DK/Twin window instead of clipping 2 GCDs early (to avoid 1 GCD delay) awards ~83 and 55 potency. The priority system remains, and where manipulable the goal is for your GCDs to align with a given duration's fade (reapplying instantly before server leniency removes the effect from the reapplying strike), but ultimately as attack speed changes and through the use of stanceless skills per DK/Twin/Demo, what is optimal will vary between clipping and delaying. Every .04 GCD, you will see at least one GCD necessarily shift per BFB in order to better match your windows, and an additional rotational variant becomes viable (though some are dependant on multi-DoTing, such as rotations that would drop DK from Twin, Demolish, and the following DK at 44 potency cost for an extra 83 potency via Bootshine which must fall outside one's oGCD refresh timings).

Even on a dummy, these make differences visible across either your rotational strings themselves or in GCD sync with your CD windows, adjusting what is optimally applied within. It's not much, but it does happen to be more than any other class by the mere fact that Fracture is so TP-inefficient that it must be used sparingly and therefore can be fit to the duration, neither it nor Touch of Death break your combos, and your combos themselves have shorter intervals than most. (Compare to DRG's 5 per effective combo until a 2.33 or 2.22 rotation.)

To clarify though (and I will revise it in a moment), I meant this hypothetically: When WOULD the rotation feel different, to you.

For me, it feels faintly different about every 20th of a second second, as this still provides an extra hit per burst cycle, and significantly different after a fifth and quarter of a second. But, I'm hung up on fine details.

Originally Posted by silentwindfr

i will be honest fist of wind and earth, need to be removed. they are skill in our tool that can be replaced by much more accurate skill. they can even make it a trait like we always run faster, what will be more logical since we are normally a jobs that have 0 ranged attack.

They need to be rework not remove. Earth is very specific, but wind can be save if it reduce our GCD. I made some big post in the french forum with some idea, I'll try to translate them to put them here.

Originally Posted by alex4815162342

They need to be rework not remove. Earth is very specific, but wind can be save if it reduce our GCD. I made some big post in the french forum with some idea, I'll try to translate them to put them here.

If you want to fix the Fist Stances, making one also be a DPS increase isn't going to do it. If Wind's GCD increase results in a greater DPS gain than Fire's 5% outgoing potency buff, then you'll just sit in Wind all the time, and if it isn't you still just sit in Fire all the time. You'd have to take the 5% off of Fists of Fire first and then change the effects so either they all increase damage in some way (an increase in Skill Speed, Determination, and Crit Rate depending on stancethat are all balanced such to increase your damage by the exact same percentage for example), or just add that 5% damage from Fists of Fire to Twin Snakes and make Fire's effect something else.

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

If you want to fix the Fist Stances, making one also be a DPS increase isn't going to do it. If Wind's GCD increase results in a greater DPS gain than Fire's 5% outgoing potency buff, then you'll just sit in Wind all the time, and if it isn't you still just sit in Fire all the time.

So long as you're able to swap between them with low opportunity cost, those swaps become obligatory, rather than limited to one stance or another. For instance, if Fists of Wind were to grant 8% attack rate and Fists of Fire only 5% damage, and assuming one had sufficient TP, one would use Fists of Fire only for high per-execute potency GCDs (including same-global oGCD use), and Fists of Wind for the rest.

The decision-making this would cause would be based on uptime lost and your attack speed (essentially, counting modulars as your upcoming Coeurl nearest to Demolish as to make it take as long as possible before you're forced to clip or neglect a global tick, which would result in opportunity cost or lost potential tick damage), wherein the 5 potency lost from not buffing Shoulder Tackle with Fists of Fire, for instance, would be weighed against the rotational benefits of the 8% faster recast on that global allowing your DK to affect your next DK or your Demolish not to neglect a global tick. This would mean high skill-cap, but would still likely fail to interest most Monks, as far as I can guess from the three 4.0-related Monk threads.

Originally Posted by Deithwen

Unless you stack all the speedskill you can, which is not a good idea, you can't skip a DK/TS refresh. It's a DPS loss. And even if you do have enough SKS, the amount of crit and det you lose is so big it will still be inferior. Theory is nice, but numbers speak for themselves.

It's not merely theory. I use it daily.

Due to server leniency, wherein buffs are checked as a skill is released from queue, rather than at end of animation (which is when the duration is applied), the effective duration ends up a little over a half-second longer than stated. Similar to how Iron Jaws can refresh DoTs even after they've disappeared, a debuff like Dragon Kick will still apply to a skill's calculations as long as it was present when the action began, even if it falls off for the animation's duration before being reapplied. In my experience, I can lose DK/Twin on only the DK/Twin with as much as a 1.96s GCD. That's a trade of 150 potency for 29, or a net gain of 119 potency per 3 cycles.

Now, I can't guarantee that even then this would be a net DPS gain given the nearly 500 extra SS necessary, none of which will affect oGCD or AA damage, as I don't have equal item levels within SS and non-SS choices, but I can say that plateau makes a significant increase to DPS upon changing rotations, rather than clipping DK/Twin 2.2 GCDs short. Having spoken to a few top world/server Monks, they suspect that these means of increasing damage over time are not currently fully weighted for, and that, should TP issues be fixed, Skill Speed would otherwise be more viable than its given credit for.

Personally, I'd still guess that for Skill Speed to be balanced, it would need to increase attack speed (also affecting AA frequency) and all periodic damage (taking that to mean both DoTs and damage dealt by (oG)CDs), that it would have to be changed from reducing the GCD by a set amount per a hundredth-of-a-second (although this number does apparently vary beyond what decimals would entail) to reducing the remaining recast time by a specific percentage (such that it does not gradually come to scale exponentially, even if that's a far, far, far distant future), and that the TP refresh rate would have to be changed from 60 per 3s to 50 per GCD (MNK and NIN base TP costs increased to compensate).

(I'm french, so sorry for my bad english)

Here all the change / idea I have for the monk. 4,0 isn't out wet so it's a lot of speculation because we don't know the final product.

All the change / idea aren't final and I will try to not talk about number. If my monk look to powerful, all can be change ! For me, the problem with monk isn't global DPS (the nerf of some skill isn't the most inportant because you can change it), but the concept of the job who is know wrong execute and contradictory. The monk don't have is own identity !

I will come back and judge the job after being Level 70 with some hour in my hand !

Change

Touch of Death :*This skill have to stay. If not, they should make some adjustment to Demolish

Arm Of The Destroyer :*The effect (Silence) should not depend of the form, this skill is to much situational because of this. It should be an oGCD with a short reset. But, for compensate the short reset the skill should become a single target without damage.

Demolish :*For conpensate the lost of Touch of death and Fracture, they shoul buff that skill.

Fists of Wind :*Currently this stance is only use for moving faster in town. This stance should reduce weaponskill cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay plus increases movement speed, to conpensate the lost of DPS du to not being in Fist of Fire. Fist of Wind must become an alternative to Fist of Fire : Power Mode or Speed Mode ! The two stances will give the opportunity to have two kind of monks, but the global DPS have to stay the same between these two. The Fire have to be more powerful, but slower. The wind have to be faster, but weaker and the TP should be reduce. The monk's skills should have different effect because of the stance (like they made for Shoulder Tackle). The difference should be more like QoL and playstyle but the two stance should be viable for combat ! Fist of Earth must be more défensive / support. So Fist of Fire = Power Mode / Fist of Wind = Speed Mode / Fist of Earth = Defense Mode.

One Ilm Punch :*The skill should be remove to let Steel Peak do the Stun. Like Arm of the Destroyer, this skill is to much situational because of form. With the adjustment of Arm of the Destroyer the all thing will be more logic. For not becoming a clone of Leg Sweep who is now a cross role, Steel Peak should have an advantage and keep the damage.

Dragon Kick :*To give monk a better group utility, the skill should reduce the target physical resistance !

Perfect Balance :*The reset should be reduce. 30s min or 60s max. (Maybe 30 with Fist of Wind and 60 with Fist of Fire).*

Tornado Kick :*The potency should be buff. The cost (3 Stack of GL) is too hisgh for the potency and the skill is to much situational. And the new skill Riddle of Earth kill the utility of Tornado Kick in Boss jump phase (keeping stack is more OP). Thats why they should reduce the reset of Perfect Balance because this will grant us the possibilty to make more Tornado Kick (if Perfect Balance resent is good, we don't need buff potency for Tornado Kick. Perfect Balance is needed for the usage of Tornado Kick (it's faster to gain your 3 stack).

Deep Méditation :*It's hard to judge because we only have the tool type. 30% look per critical hit seem a little low. Maybe too much RNG (RNG with crit + RNG of 30%). I'll wait until Stormblood.

Riddle Of Earth :*The skill should give 3 stack of GL and not only refresh GL. This skill kill Tornado Kick usage in boss jump phase because it's more OP to keep your 3 stack of GL. If the potency of Tornado Kick isn't buff, Riddle of Earth have to give 3 GL stacks, because that give you the opportunity to keep using Tornado Kick and then have 3 stack again. Riddle can also give the 3 stacks of GL without being hit, but this would kill Perfect Balance.

Shoulder Tackle (Wind) :* This skill will be useful, only if Fist of Wind is viable in combat !

Shoulder Tackle (Earth) :*This skill like Fist of Earth should be a defensive skill. It would be interesting if we were able to buff to a partner by using Earth Shoulder Tackles. Dash and apply a buff on a ally who grant him a shield or something like cover or maybe heal him (this one can be cool with mantra). With this kind of skill the Fist of Earth can become more defensive / support and give monk some new group utility.

Riddle Of Fire : This skill is here only for conpensate the lost of Blood for Blood. This skill is in contradiction with the design of the monk (because of the lost of the speed) ; the fastest DPS. This skill will be very different with the modifications of the fists.

Brotherhood :*Like Deep Meditation, it's hard to judge without playing. The skill look more RNG than Deep Meditation because of an other level of RNG ; the team. With this skill, monk is to much team dependent. Also, the fact that the monk don't have the 5% buff is strange. I'll wait until Stormblood.

The Concept of (my) Monk

Like I said in the change of Fist of Wind, this stance have to be an alternative to Fist of Fire.
The idea behind this (new) monk is having a 2 in 1 job or maybe 3 in 1. I have in mind something like "choose your monk", and the two stance have to stay viable in combat. The concept will give to the monk something unique, becoming the only job with two combat mode. The stance dance will still be possible, but the change will be more about the playstyle and will change the skills. It's not some kind of a buff ! It's not like a tank who change stance because when a tank change he change his role (MT or OT / Tank or DPS). The idea is to make two kind of monk player some who play fire style and some who play wind style.

A good exemple is the 3.0 Bard
Imagine a bard with minuet (casting) and a Bard without (festest), but the two are viable in combat ! That wasn't the case because without minuet the DPS of bard was too low !

Here an example from an other video game ; Mortal Kombat. When you choose Scorpion, you have to choose a style / variation (Ninjutsu / Hellfire / Inferno). The variation have things in common, some effect change and new move are add. The result is that one character have 3 different gameplay, but without havind 3 completely new moveset.

The Fist of Earth on the other hand will still be more support / defensive and will never be viable in combat keeping is place of an situational stance.

So, monk will be a 2 in 1 job with a situational defensive stance !

The dev idea about making fists more important isn't bad, but it's poorly executed because Fist of Wind base is useless. The idea behind making variation of the skill because of the stance is good too, but not enouth.

The Fists

Fists of Earth :*Reduces damage taken. Cannot be used with Fists of Fire or Fists of Wind, and shares recast timer with both. Effect ends upon reuse.

Fists of Wind :*Increases movement speed. Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time and auto-attack delay. Reduce TP cost. Cannot be used with Fists of Earth or Fists of Fire, and shares recast timer with both. Effect ends upon reuse. Note : It may be possible that with all the speed boost the GCD is too fast, making positioning too hard. It may be good to cancel the positiong with Fists of Wind. That would make the speed playstyle more good and will make a higher difference between Fire and Wind.

Fists of Fire :*Increases damage dealt. Cannot be used with Fists of Earth or Fists of Wind, and shares recast timer with both. Effect ends upon reuse.

Skill variation

(These are exemple of some)


Shoulder Tackle

Earth : Rushes target and increases the physical and magic defense of target and yours.

Or

Earth : Rushes target and take all physical and magical damage intended for another party member. Can only be used when member is closer than 10 yalms.

Or

Earth : Rushes target and Restores target's HP and yours.

Wind : Rushes target and delivers an attack. You can do it twice. (We should have a timer between the time, but I don't know how long)

Fire : Rushes target and delivers an attack. (This one is stronger).

Or

Fire : Rushes target and delivers an attack. Damage over time.


Mantra


Earth : Increases HP recovery via curing magic by 20 % for self and nearby party members.

Wind : Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay for self and nearby party members.

Fire : Increases damage dealt for self and nearby party members.

Or

Fire : Increases critical hit rate of self and nearby party members


Riddle of


Earth : Reduces damage taken. Grant you Greased Lightning III when hit.

Wind : Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay

Fire : Increases damage dealt.


Tornado Kick


Wind : Delivers an attack. Loose one stack of Greased Lightning.

Fire : Delivers an attack. Can only be used when under the effect of Greased Lightning III. Effect fades upon execution.

Other Idea

The Fists of Wind can also reduce the cost of Purification and The Forbidden Chakra. We can also buff the RNG of Brotherhood and Deep Meditation.

The time of DoT like Demolish, buff and debuff can also be different between Fire and Wind stance.

A 4th move can be add on the combo, this one can also be unique with the stance. I think the 4th move should not be a GCD, because it maybe cause some problem for refreshing GL. An oGCD who proc after the execution of Snap Punch, Demolish or Rockbreaker. The skill will have a reset to prevent spam with Perfect Balance. The 4th move with Fire should have more potency but proc lees often (every 6 GCD = 2 combos) and the Wind one will should be weaker but more regular (every 3 GCD = 1 combo).

I said nothing about that but we can also change the GL stack with the stance :
Earth : One stack grant more defense (Yellow lightning in HUB)
Wind : One stack grant more speed (Blue lightning in HUB)
Fire : One stack grant more attack (Red lightning in HUB)

Conclusion

Like I said previously, I tried to not talk about potency and purcentage, because I don't want to put strange number. It's very logic that the skills under Fire are stronger than Wind one, but the Wind skill conpensate with their execution speed. We can translate this like that : If Fire strike one hit at 100, Wind strike two hit at 50. The result must be the same !

With this system, monk will be playable for two type of players ; Players who want big number and the players who want fast gameplay. It's not necessary to switch between the stances, but dancing with stances can make the difference between top player and more casual player ( the top player will look at choose the better stance, in the good situation). The identity of the Fists is more important et the difference between them will give to the monk player the possibility to have two gameplay ! This monk also have a better group utility with more tool to help allies. It still have the core of the job (Speed / Dynamic / Positioning / DPS) and grant him some diversity. The Job will have something unique and is own identity : The only Job with two gameplay / playstyle (not 3 because Fists of Earth will not be able to make the fight. It will be still an defensice and situational stance).

But I know I'm dreaming because all these change are too big for a simple patch. It's look more like a revamp of the job. It's something that won't came until 5.0 but I can still hope !