How should Monk 4.0 have been done?

[alex4815162342]

To many MNK thread, we should post everything in the same

[Shurrikhan]

To many MNK thread, we should post everything in the same

While I likely would have simply posted to Orbaius's thread had I seen it beforehand instead of starting this one, it and this are quite different from the only other English Monk thread you've posted to recently, which is instead made up primarily of reactions to the Stormblood skills as given. This is a "from scratch" thread with fairly distinct purposes, essentially a slightly more detailed variant of Orbaius's in retrospect.

Feel free to post ideas of your own though. Their appearing in multiple locations only risks your daily post count to some extent; it certainly doesn't mute them.

[silentwindfr]

thanks for your answer Shurrikhan
then here my answer about the few question ^^

the boost of movement speed of fist of wind and ninja can be compared quite easily, ninja get this boost as trait, if you start to move at the same time in straight line, the ninja will go faster. same if you do the test with a jobs that don't have a speed boost, yes you go faster but it's not really impressive.

why i say that fist of wind loose all his interest? a few thing:
1) most of the time you will be using fist of fire for the boost of the damage, meaning this skill is from the get go underused (if you remember the talk about the combat change was to make underused skill disappear or changed and neither did happend to this one)
2) sprint will have no tp usage anymore, means we will have more freedom to use sprint without loose fist of fire for flee and such.

this two reason by itself make the existance of this skill a big question.

a bit of history, at the base the game had a elemental wheel, means you was able to find monster that had weakness to certain enemy. at that time the three fist was adding damage of this element to your attack. giving to the monk versatibility in many case. sadly with the 2.0 the elemental wheel was take out, and this three skill did loose them purpose. since the release of ARR the three fist are a meh addition to our toolset since most of the time we will use fist of fire.

another point, about your idea of fist of earth, we are dps, we are not means to take damage... however it's still happend, in raid and dungeon, when i have an aoe i know i can't avoid, i switch of stance for reduce of 10% the damage and revert back to fire fist right after. that must be the usage most people around do.then don't it's a better idea to make it a skill like the third eyes skill of the samurai? a cd we use for reduce the damage of the next attack.

Tonardo kick, i explain my idea, how many time you have to run to an add and notice that it did die before you can refresh your gl and don't have the charge for get back to the boss for refresh nor use tornado kick? must have happend often... same in place like potd the stack are tricky to maintain. and tornado kick as melee skill that consume our gl is not efficient. by changing this skill to a ranged, it will allows to never loose stack because not at melee, no cooldown for get back and such.

an important point about this idea, loose of the GL = a net loose of dps for the next 20-21 second. we can't use it only for gain dps... since we will revert to 0 gl stack. the goal will to have a skill for consume the gl in case we can't refresh it.

about the free form combo, actually we don't really have three choice.
you have 3 form, opo opo, coeurl, raptor. each of this form have 3 skill each.

opo opo :
- Bootshine (back attack)
- arm of destroyer (area silence at 100 potency...meh)
- dragon tackle (side attack)

raptor:
- true strike (back attack)
- twin snake (side attack)
- one ilm punch (stun... attack... seriously SE?)

coeurl:
- snap punch (side attack)
- demolition (back attack)
- rockbreaker (aoe attack.... *sighs*at 130 potency)

if you look carefully in all this skill we have in reality 6 usefull skill and 3 that have... a really really situational or even a questionable use.
i will draw a comparaison between the samurai and the monk, the samurai too have combo of aoe, but sadly they are not soo strange than the one of the monk. in all honesty as stand the monk the aoe skill have no use, it's better to focus dps on one target and destroy it. worst with SB they have clearly as intention to reduce our size of pull with all the nerf of aoe. then...

anyway, i digress, the goal of the 4th form it's to offer one skill on side and one on the back. they are not mandatory, you can perfectly switch back to opo opo form skill. but will offer an evolution of our tool and skill. plus rewarding the people that continue to maintain the 3 stack of gl. all in all, it's a way to continue to make the monk evolve. like i have said our two core mechanic are the gl and the free form combo. instead to try to add another system on top of it, maybe use it.

the goal of the change i have think about it's to give back our versatibility and capacity to adapt to any situation, like the gl consumer ranged based. it will make it easier and more interesting to have one at range since it will be always usable even if not in melee, like said at best (if you use perfect balance) it will take 3 gcd for reuse it or... 9 gcd then not a skill really impacting our dps.
about the evolution of the combo system, the idea behind it, it's to make use more active in the combo and fight, because i don't know for you, but on my side all is done in automatic and i'm sure i'm not the only one on this point. the only active part are the ogcd and it bother me a loooooooot. especially since the dragon get more hit to them combo, while gaining ogcd skill AND utility buff... seriously se?

all in all, the idea is to offer option and more tool to us. while rewarding people that can maintain longer the combo, that where come the idea of the 5th form that will be a big reward and like a sort of finisher. the important point it's the stack of gl will still only be given by the 3th form skill. (coeurl) meaning using this 4th and 5th will create new cycle what we desperetly need after 4 years.

ps: a very important point because of SE decision a large part of our dps come from the auto attack, since we have a 45% of damage put on it it's not little and with riddle of fire it will reach 75% (if the number stay the same) it will be quite important in terms of dps and i'm sure it work.... but it's extremely passive as gameplay.

To many MNK thread, we should post everything in the same

that because the situation is extremely bad.

[Blacktestament7]

- arm of destroyer (area silence at 100 potency...meh)
- rockbreaker (aoe attack.... *sighs*at 130 potency)

AotD is 50 pot unless it was increased for SB, I don't think it was. The reason it sucks is more cost than anything, and that even if it were percentage buffed 100% it'd still only do 100 pot and need to be combo stringed. Rockbreaker is yes 130 pot but it's MNK buffed like everything else so it's the equivalent of hitting several off position True Strikes. For the cost it's really not that bad. MNK's AoE is easily the strongest of the current 3 melee dps due to Rockbreaker, Elixir Field, and Howling Fist.

[alex4815162342]

While I likely would have simply posted to Orbaius's thread had I seen it beforehand instead of starting this one, it and this are quite different from the only other English Monk thread you've posted to recently, which is instead made up primarily of reactions to the Stormblood skills as given. This is a "from scratch" thread with fairly distinct purposes, essentially a slightly more detailed variant of Orbaius's in retrospect.

Feel free to post ideas of your own though. Their appearing in multiple locations only risks your daily post count to some extent; it certainly doesn't mute them.

I'm not against that, it's simply because they regroup all the WHM thread in one

that because the situation is extremely bad.

I know the situation I made some post on the english and french forum.
I was just thinking making a big thread was more easy than making more little thread

[Blacktestament7]

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)?

The overall reason I would rather put more GL management than just changing PB is to overall make the MNK less dependent on it as a whole. Don't get me wrong I don't approve of a 180s cooldown but it shouldn't be lowered past 120s at the most. To be honest, I'd rather have PB stick to openers or rebuilding GL instead of focusing it down to a burst. Even if I didn't include Shatter Kick in my idea, I wouldn't change this. The function of shatter kick is to immediately put players back into GL3 for whatever reason it's lost or the Tornado Kick viability. Either or it gives an alternative to PB instead of PB being the only way to restore GL. I also though of this in the sense of dungeons as I see alot of people say to use it on first pulls. I don't do that due to the 180s cooldown and it doesn't take me 3 mins to get to a boss but that's me. This gives MNK another tool to keep damage high throughout a dungeon instead of having to rely only on Form Shift (which could easily be stopped by a tank or loading screen). All that said, I'm fine with more options than one but it's an either/or case for me. I'm not fully opposed to the PB 90s cooldown idea.

I thought about applying the Fist "Mastery" to TK and my Elixir Blast idea. But I didn't want to contradict my Shatter Kick idea by making an op version of TK. And Also wanted to avoid changing Elixir Blast from a DoT. I'm only against the switching of fists in battle because it adds another layer of complications in how to do damage. My ideas are mostly centered around easing resource/buff management and making it so that lower skilled players have tools to raise their dps back up to a manageable state if GL or buffs are lost. I also made a strong attempt to keep the ideas the FFXIV team made stay but there's only so much I can do to that.

[silentwindfr]

AotD is 50 pot unless it was increased for SB, I don't think it was. The reason it sucks is more cost than anything, and that even if it were percentage buffed 100% it'd still only do 100 pot and need to be combo stringed. Rockbreaker is yes 130 pot but it's MNK buffed like everything else so it's the equivalent of hitting several off position True Strikes. For the cost it's really not that bad. MNK's AoE is easily the strongest of the current 3 melee dps due to Rockbreaker, Elixir Field, and Howling Fist.

i'm not against rockbreaker, just i will have prefer if we had a full combo aoe, it will have make more sense, here we have a opo opo and coeurl, no raptor.
plus i will wait the sam definitive number, because if the number don't change much, the sam will simply outshine us in terms of aoe. and in all honestly i don't feel our aoe dps is our forte. just a nice add, not the main tool, that why i feel it's too situational and not interesting enough for not be counter as main tool of the jobs.

plus with them new intention to avoid big pull, i feel it will only use less and less.
don't get me wrong, i know that the monk will probably throw a very good dps with sb, the trouble is not the number but the evolution of the jobs. do we want to simply get buff that will change nothing to our gameplay (a very artificial way to add stuff to a job after all) or get more tool for make us more active, means more a player enjoying the game.

i'm sure any good monk will admit that we ofte play in automatic because it's not that hard to play more a muscle memory than a real active part of us.

The overall reason I would rather put more GL management than just changing PB is to overall make the MNK less dependent on it as a whole. Don't get me wrong I don't approve of a 180s cooldown but it shouldn't be lowered past 120s at the most. To be honest, I'd rather have PB stick to openers or rebuilding GL instead of focusing it down to a burst. Even if I didn't include Shatter Kick in my idea, I wouldn't change this. The function of shatter kick is to immediately put players back into GL3 for whatever reason it's lost or the Tornado Kick viability. Either or it gives an alternative to PB instead of PB being the only way to restore GL. I also though of this in the sense of dungeons as I see alot of people say to use it on first pulls. I don't do that due to the 180s cooldown and it doesn't take me 3 mins to get to a boss but that's me. This gives MNK another tool to keep damage high throughout a dungeon instead of having to rely only on Form Shift (which could easily be stopped by a tank or loading screen). All that said, I'm fine with more options than one but it's an either/or case for me. I'm not fully opposed to the PB 90s cooldown idea.

I thought about applying the Fist "Mastery" to TK and my Elixir Blast idea. But I didn't want to contradict my Shatter Kick idea by making an op version of TK. And Also wanted to avoid changing Elixir Blast from a DoT. I'm only against the switching of fists in battle because it adds another layer of complications in how to do damage. My ideas are mostly centered around easing resource/buff management and making it so that lower skilled players have tools to raise their dps back up to a manageable state if GL or buffs are lost. I also made a strong attempt to keep the ideas the FFXIV team made stay but there's only so much I can do to that.

honestly them idea are... i will be blunt, they are soo much lazy. a few buff that will increase our number and give utility.... and a mastery that change slightly a 30 sec skill that we use time to time. (with 2 that have a very questionable use) mosty of it don't take long to do a small animation for the riddle and that all... nothing really involving in terms of creation and we can feel that either they had no idea on what to do for the monk or simply not the time nor the will to work on true evolution of the jobs... so far all i see is a very artifical way to make us on par with the other jobs that have all get new tool or new way to fight. when the monk that was the one needing the most evolution have simply get nothing.

[Deithwen]

i'm sure any good monk will admit that we ofte play in automatic because it's not that hard to play more a muscle memory than a real active part of us.

This ! I main monk since 2.1 and the rotation hasn't changed a bit since then, we only got a few QoL tools in Heavensward (which were quite nice) and this is going to be the same again in 4.0 with even less things to do (bye ToD, bye Fracture, hello useless buffs) and buffs that go against the monk meta.

I don't want to spend 2 more years doing the same rotation over and over again.

[Kaonis]

I'm no MNK master, but I played with it a bit through HW as I found it to be more enjoyable to play compared to other DPS. But 4.0 is looking to be no fun. I was hoping they would change and expand on the chakra system. Make it so you earn it through the general course of a fight, instead of hitting a button for any few seconds of off time you have. And maybe having more abilities to use through it. Or something more interesting then "Here's a CD that nets you some stacks while fighting".

[Shurrikhan]

This ! I main monk since 2.1 and the rotation hasn't changed a bit since then, we only got a few QoL tools in Heavensward (which were quite nice) and this is going to be the same again in 4.0 with even less things to do (bye ToD, bye Fracture, hello useless buffs) and buffs that go against the monk meta.

I don't want to spend 2 more years doing the same rotation over and over again.

Okay, a similar question here, because this is another point where we seem to face discrepency based on how much one theorycrafts, etc. My rotation changes slightly about every .04s GCD. (I tend to prefer play at 1.96 or 1.88 GCD because of its rotational options.) When Form Shift was added my rotation became more consistent, but once Meditation was added, too, there became multiple rotations possible to be least affected by being forced out of melee range. To me, this is fairly satisfying, as I find myself adapting more, and to greater effect, than on any other job.

But, clearly that's not the case for everyone. Just as some people by consider the A, B, A, B rotation of a Heavensward DRG as "basically the same" as the A, B, B, rotation of a 2.x DRG, I've heard from many that Heavensward, despite changing Demolish's duration and allowing greater control over Forms during downtime, didn't really affect rotations, providing instead only functionality.

So, at what point would rotation start to feel different? Does the internal balance (how much x skilled is prioritized over all or most others, even if it means clipping duration or wasting potential direct potency) need to change? Does the order need to change? Does it need outright new skills? And if the last, is this for the aesthetic or for new effects?

Though it would require universal changes, maybe something that could be done would be to make Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes more viable even when already active? For instance, if the blunt potency modifier were stackable to some extent, or took additional advantage of itself as to eventually create a nuke skill? Though that would make optimal gameplay less blatantly obvious, it might have a side-effect of reducing skill gap to extent between less skilled and average players, while retaining the same total between those and skilled players.

Or, what about the animations for certain skills changing conditionally? At that point you have the aesthetic varying more than presently. Likely this would be tied to additional effects, either within the skill or attached more broadly to the Monk (e.g. through Fist stances). Would that help?

Or—last idea I can throw out from the top of my head—instead of GL applying on every Coeurl, it instead applies with every completion of all 3 Forms. Lockout is removed; you now have access to all 9 weaponskills at all time, but their "Momentum" (a softer combo mechanic) is retained only when using a new form each GCD and reaching a given form again, after cycling through all others, as quickly as possible. At this point you can open in any Form, thereafter cycle in any order, and even occasionally break from said order (albeit at potency/duration loss), allowing you more rotational variance. The only issue here, were ToD and Fracture kept, would be that they would cost a tiny bit of Momentum as you'd be returning to the Forms of a given cycle per 4 GCDs, up from 3. Their potencies (as might Snap Punch's) would have to be increased slightly to compensate.

2) sprint will have no tp usage anymore, means we will have more freedom to use sprint without [trading Fists of Fire for Fists of Wind temporarily]

Sprint has been my main worry, too, about Fists of Wind in SB. As I've never needed Fists of Wind more often than Sprint's duration per its cooldown, it will be replaced. I'm a little sad. And that's coming from someone who would save Invigorate for Sprint in T9 originally because no one would bait the Jumps to melee and we were right on the cusp of pushing phase. ...I still used it when farming Void Ark for Gobdip tokens in order to get more hits on PlantDog, too, giving myself a quarter second spare to hide from the blast and pop back out the other end just barely with enough time to 5-Chakra. #MonkGimmicks

As such, it almost certainly needs to be something else. The question is what. Should it simply cause all potency dealt to reduce the cooldown on Shoulder Tackle by a small amount (e.g. .005 seconds per potency dealt), so that it is at least providing a different form of mobility than Sprint? Should we make it something that takes advantage of Sprint, too, such as by building bonus potency onto the next strike during movement speed? Should we blend the two and have it increase melee range and allow for some amount of blink-strike? Or maybe even have it turn every skill into a minor linear AoE?

If you look carefully in all these skills we have, in reality, 6 useful skills and 3 that have... a really really situational or even a questionable use.

I feel like this is a concern with every class and job. Sadly, in many cases the situational skills remain unimproved even while output-affecting cooldowns and DoTs have been flattened or removed.

I don't see AoE or status effect weaponskills as being made any more useful in ST rotation short of SE adds new undermechanics. For instance, for Rockbreaker to be useful in ST despite having an inferior base potency, it must have some unique effect. Let's say every enemy has a specific Armor amount at the head of their health, e.g. making up some 10% of their HP. While that Armor is up, they take reduced damage. This mitigation is reduced as the armor points (AP, as compared to HP) are reduced, whether linearly or exponentially or by whatever other formula. However, when you've destroyed said Armor, you're given some additional opportunities. For instance, certain attacks may explode the shredded armor outward for added AoE damage (e.g. One-Ilm Strike, Clean Shot, Empyreal Arrow, Sonic Thrust), or better clear away the damaged Armor away to remove its mitigation entirely (Rockbreaker, Full Thrust, Aeolean Edge). At that point you'd at least have *some* reason to use Rockbreaker in AoE.

One-Ilm Punch is at the same time simpler and more difficult to make viable; it depends simply on how often SE is willing to include its mechanic on the mobs we fight. If they were more frequently given buffs worth removing, it'd be powerful, possibly even overpowered, but left as is, its use exists only in 2-3 PvE fights in the whole game, and none of them serious content. I suspect the unwillingness to include it lies in SE's being more willing to leave one skill dead than to overpower a job through that skill, which means they haven't yet come up with a formula by which to balance it. Now, that's not to say that they could come up with the formula in a day, apply it, attach buffs to mobs, and we're good to go; this would likely require cataloging and categorizing every buff in the game for its relative value, and then weighing that against the relative potency of One-Ilm Strike. In other words, at DK+Twin+GL3, One-Ilm Strike would deal 180 potency of buff removal, first targeting the buff automatically considered most important, and any remainder of that buff chaining on to the second buff and so forth, or possibly detonating for direct damage after having removed every buff present.