SAM out classing all other DPS

[Darian]

Yeah. Once ppl saw world 1st clear had a monk and not a single sam the whole thread got pointless very quickly.

[Svabodnik]

Yeah. Once ppl saw world 1st clear had a monk and not a single sam the whole thread got pointless very quickly.

Ultimately, in its current incarnation, MNK is a pretty niche pick. In order for the job to reach its full potential, all or most of the following need to be met:

-Physical-heavy party composition due to limitations of Brotherhood.
-Consistently heavy-hitting raid-wide damage for Mantra to be of any use.
-Fight needs to have no or little extended downtime (No extended transitions or MNK deaths in frequency more common than three minutes [PB cooldown], or boss vanishing for longer than 11-16 seconds without unavoidable damage [for RoE to maintain GL3] more frequently than once per minute [RoE cooldown].)
-Target needs to have flanks available for the majority of the fight (Examples of fights that do not are ones where the boss is unusually spin-happy or spams AoEs that require maintaining a single - or even entirely frontal - position relative to them. True North is a nice bandaid, but has a punishingly long cooldown for a class that loses a large chunk of its damage each time its rotation is forced away from the appropriate positional).

Have to admit that the fight mechanics of OSV4 relative to MNK's kit make it the exception that justifies the rule, rather than one that contradicts it. In contrast, jobs such as SAM, NIN, RDM, or BRD will hardly ever come across content that is more punishing to them than any potential alternative pick. This isn't to say that picking MNK out of personal preference, rather than looking to match fight criteria, is entirely out the window - but in those situations if one needs a strong melee damage dealer SAM will definitely be a more versatile option.

This isn't to say that I'm on the "nerf SAM!" bandwagon. Personally, if I've got gripes about MNK it's due to its large number of near-useless and/or contradictory abilities (Tornado Kick, Fists of Air, Tackle Mastery, One Ilm Punch, etc.), how downright clunky RoF makes the rotation, and how the damage is heavily dependent on both RNG and party composition (sure, Brotherhood in an 8-man with two tanks and two to three other physical DPS is golden, but try to bring it into a 4-man dungeon run with your other DPS being a RDM/SMN/BLM). Of course, these are all issues completely separate from the existence of SAM, and a few other jobs have glaringly more pertinent issues (ie. DRG, SMN, MCH).

[Atmora]

-Target needs to have flanks available for the majority of the fight (Examples of fights that do not are ones where the boss is unusually spin-happy or spams AoEs that require maintaining a single - or even entirely frontal - position relative to them.

You can hit almost all your positionals in every fight it's down to player skill. Also since you don't understand that bosses with full frontal hit boxes always let you hit positionals means you should stop talking about balance when you have no idea how game mechanics work.

[Svabodnik]

You can hit almost all your positionals in every fight it's down to player skill. Also since you don't understand that bosses with full frontal hit boxes always let you hit positionals means you should stop talking about balance when you have no idea how game mechanics work.

I think you're completely misunderstanding me here. I'm talking about fights where regions of the field adjacent to the target become inaccessible due to AoEs or other Zones of Imminent Doom, tank positioning, incoming knockbacks that will knock you off the platform if you aren't in a certain position relative to the boss, or the target having reflect shields on certain faces. By "entirely frontal", I mean portions of a fight where a boss has positionals but you are forced to stand in front of the boss for a period of the fight (think V2 where Catastrophe casts 100GS, and the safe zone extends only to the front of the boss). This is the very reason why I mentioned OSV4 being good for monk, because after the transformation phase the boss doesn't have positional limitations (one face). Please, reading comprehension first, insults later.

[EbonySeraphim]

You can hit almost all your positionals in every fight it's down to player skill. Also since you don't understand that bosses with full frontal hit boxes always let you hit positionals means you should stop talking about balance when you have no idea how game mechanics work.

Svabodnik called you out well. Just to add to it, the issue could also be a boss with unpredictable spins causing unforced positional-miss errors. Another good example of inaccessibility for positionals is Susano Extreme when he creates the narrow AOE fields that deny access to his flanks. This happens far more often than Truth North comes off of cooldown.

[Atmora]

Snip

I can hit literally every positional in that unless I fuck up my rotation, that's a terrible example. As for V2 you miss like what, 2 positional when he does that? Unless like you're just standing in front of the boss until the mechanic executes but that just means you're bad. Instead of calling me out all you've done is show me you think you can't stand in an orange puddle then move out of it before the aoe hits. As for sudden spinning, you can memorize every scripted spin in this game and if it's unscripted that's a tank problem and tanks playing badly shouldn't be evaluated for how good a job is in raid.

[Svabodnik]

(...)

I gotta say, that's some quantum-computing level ping you've got over in your neck of the woods, then. As for the rotation thing, I'll be sure to inform my tanks that they need to do a better job getting the boss to target the proper party member when they choose to face and target a "random" non-tank for a mechanic.

[Atmora]

I gotta say, that's some quantum-computing level ping you've got over in your neck of the woods, then. As for the rotation thing, I'll be sure to inform my tanks that they need to do a better job getting the boss to target the proper party member when they choose to face and target a "random" non-tank for a mechanic.

The group is usually always stacked if you're running with decent players, so he always turns the same way?