A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

[Mansion]

Aggro has more tools than there really needs to be. adding even more aggro dumps as stuff just makes tanking even more laughable.. tanks already barely ever touch aggro combos or skills as is. that alone kinda higlights how much of a joke aggro and emnity is..

butchers block / rage of halone combos are basically never touched these days.

Jobs dont need even more aggro dumps. tanks just need to learn to use the aggro tools they have available...

If tanks used these tools and dps jobs still had aggro problem then i might agree on adding or buffing some dumps. but i think any aggro problems that exist stem from tanks not using there tools rather than dps not having dumps

Not convinced. It actually takes nothing to almost all DPS to pop Diversion before the opener and then on cooldown. Lucid dreaming for casters is different because the Mana regen effect is to be considered, but it essentially works the same.
AST sects give them agro reduction, and SCH works like SMN; the agro is split with the pet.
Then you have each melee's agro drop that are most likely emergency tools if you need to sacrifice DPS to use them. But these tools are there.
For me, these are just clear in game indications that agro is teamwork, not just a tank's job. Once again I repeat : it takes nothing for DPS to use these tools, so that the tanks can do more DPS, just like self heals/Mantra/Nature's Minne are a way to reduce the burden on healers in a collective effort to put out higher raid DPS.

My point was that WHM, BRD (and MCH to some degree) don't have efficient ways to control their agro while all other jobs have some, and it's something that should be adressed if the game remains how it is on that aspect.

[Rongway]

My point was that WHM, BRD (and MCH to some degree) don't have efficient ways to control their agro while all other jobs have some, and it's something that should be adressed if the game remains how it is on that aspect.

BRD And MCH can drop, on average, half their enmity every 90s. If they start dropping enmity at around 30s in, their enmity at a given time would look something like this:

00m30s: drop from 30s worth of unmitigated enmity generation to 15s worth
02m00s: drop from 1m45s worth to 53s worth
03m30s: drop from 2m23s worth to 1m12s worth
05m00s: drop from 2m42s worth to 1m21s worth
06m30s: drop from 2m51s worth to 1m26s worth
08m00s: drop from 2m56s worth to 1m27s worth
09m30s: drop from 2m58s worth to 1m29s worth
11m00s: drop from 2m59s worth to 1m30s worth


Compare to caster enmity. Assume Diversion only once at the beginning (enmity generation -90% for 30s), and Dreaming (drop half) every two minutes starting 60s in:
00m30s: accumulate only 3s worth of enmity
01m00s: drop from 33s worth to 17s worth
03m00s: drop from 2m17s worth to 1m9s worth
05m00s: drop from 3m09s worth to 1m35s worth
07m00s: drop from 3m35s worth to 1m48s worth
09m00s: drop from 3m48s worth to 1m54s worth
11m00s: drop from 3m54s worth to 1m57s worth

Bolded values for comparison.

And while a caster could Divert every two minutes, it's not necessary unless the tanks die or the tanks are just sitting there not generating enmity. And if just Dreaming every two minutes is enough for a caster, BRD and MCH shouldn't have any problems because they actually better enmity curves than casters.

[Mansion]

snip

In theory, yes.
In reality, it's different. Because Refresh is not primarily an agro drop, but a Mana regen for the party (or milking an extra tick of Foe Requiem). You don't use it on cooldown for agro, it's situational.
I can agree on tactician because TP regen is not useful in raid context most of the time. So that halves agro once every 180sec.
But second thing, Bard and Machinist DPS output is not linear but very bursty. Say a MCH had high agro, uses its Tactician, Refresh being already used ; each 60sec MCH can rip agro in its Wildfire 10sec window, or build just as much as the amount that was dropped just before. And it's the same for a Bard's Wanderer Menuet, though potencies and duration change slightly, but then you have Crit procs and raid buffs coordination that can change the figures.

For casters it's roughly the same, but Diversion is far more efficient since it has been buffed. You can use it on cooldown (as long as you benefit from its whole duration) and never have to worry that much about Tank enmity nor sacrificing a Lucid dreaming for agro when you might need that MP regen later (RDM especially)


@Shurrikhan TP MP Agro ae not designed to rely on these actions, I agree. But it's much more to be considered that it was during heavensward, because DPS output and uptime have exponetially increased. We have stronger tools now and they work fine, but not for a few jobs, which is what I'm adressing right now.
A bard bursting in Wanderer Menuet in Heavensward is nothing compared to a Bard with consistent full Pitch Perfects, Refulgent Arrows and oGCD used with no clipping, on cooldown, buffed by the holy crit Meta.

[Rongway]

But second thing, Bard and Machinist DPS output is not linear but very bursty. Say a MCH had high agro, uses its Tactician, Refresh being already used ; each 60sec MCH can rip agro in its Wildfire 10sec window, or build just as much as the amount that was dropped just before.

Yes, they are bursty, but that actually doesn't have a real effect on enmity drops. Burst is more relevant to enmity suppression. However, for enmity drops, it doesn't matter when a burst happens in relation to the drop ability cooldown, as you drop half of all enmity that happened before the ability. And even if, for some reason, you used it immediately before a burst instead of waiting another ten seconds, that would just make your next enmity drop ability more valuable, ultimately resulting in the timing of the burst not mattering.

In reality, it's different. Because Refresh is not primarily an agro drop, but a Mana regen for the party (or milking an extra tick of Foe Requiem). You don't use it on cooldown for agro, it's situational.

This also should have little effect on the overall analysis. If you're using it specifically for Foe Requiem, then you will delay it at most 60s, after which you will only be 30s farther ahead on enmity than expected. On the next Tactician, you'd only be 15s ahead on enmity than expected, if at all (this will depend on if you decide to delay Tactician since you used Refresh so recently). None of this is enough to rip aggro off a competent tank.

And if you're using it for MP recovery, well, don't just sit on it just to sit on it. Use it. Healers have their own recovery abilities that will hold them over until Refresh cools down.

[Grimoire-M]

Yes, they are bursty, but that actually doesn't have a real effect on enmity drops. Burst is more relevant to enmity suppression. However, for enmity drops, it doesn't matter when a burst happens in relation to the drop ability cooldown.

Aggro dumps are not meant for the opener to begin with. They're for mid-fight aggro management. They gain in value the longer you can wait before you can pop them. From experience I can tell you that any ranged or caster DPS's burst is enough to rip aggro within the opener without Diversion with enough direct crits, and the same is true of any Melee DPS. And that's really the only place you need Diversion. Dumps in that period generally don't do enough because it's the beginning of the fight. The value you gain on that is extremely low relative to later on, yes, but it's also extremely low within the context of those moments, because everyone is trying to front load their burst and double weaves during that period the most in order to do so, which leaves little time for an aggro dump in the first place, and specifically highlights the real reason Diversion is good in the first place, it's front loaded. Our WAR always pulls and he does everything he's supposed to in order to get snap aggro fully in that regard, and because we don't have a NIN at the moment pretty much any one of our static could rip off of him if we didn't do our part correctly, and BRD/MCH specifically suffer because they have the worst tool to do so.

Ultimately, the best way to fix this issue is just to give Diversion to every non-tank and add a dump to Invigorate instead of Refresh/Tactician. That way everyone is covered.

A caster of lesser MP now sees a % increase in Mana Shift effectiveness equal to the % difference in their maximum MP. Overtime, this does mean fewer necessary Mana Shift casts. Sure, a healer could mishandle their MP to ask their casters to drain themselves even further to further enable the healer, but overall, that is a buff which stretches to the caster as well.

Because by "compete with Refresh" I mean that a composition that forgoes a Ranged should still be capable of similar effective mana generation per minute, or, more simply, that a composition without a Ranged should be feasible.

I've done the math before. It currently takes three Caster DPS spamming the current Mana Shift on cooldown to equal the contributions of just one ranged DPS spamming Refresh on the two healers. That doesn't include any of the side benefits a PLD, BRD, or RDM would get from it.
I personally consider 'competing' with Refresh to mean that any single caster DPS is able sustain Mana Shifts in order to provide the same benefit Refresh does to a single healer.

While your boost to the % MP difference and cooldown would in theory close that gap to two caster DPS, it would only do so provided your healers were willing to meld or gear for extra Piety. Hell, I'm in a triple caster comp again right now, and I can tell you in practice that I'm the only one using it because of what I outlined earlier. If our RDM dies in prog he simply can't afford to use Mana Shift during his next two lucid cycles. Our BLM refuses to use it unless things are absolutely dire enough to warrant it. Making it cost no MP to use only makes it easier for BLM and RDM to use it as much as possible without majorly impacting SMN one way or the other, thereby making the requisite number of Mana Shifts to match Refresh in the manner I described more achievable in the first place. We're in a WHM/AST comp too, which only puts further pressure on them to manage their MP well (and arguably would benefit the most from your change as a result) since SCH can completely cover their own MP issues and alleviate the need to use Cure III by being able to Indom in a number of places that Assize and ES simply can't cover. Looking at my WHM's MP, it would be about a 30% boost before factoring in the cooldown (which I've gone over), and I trust that my AST would gain a similar benefit, but that's taking into account current gear. Early on in an expansion it will invariably be worth less in comparison.

Ultimately, the better solution to this is for SE to make every class self-sufficient when it comes to their resources as part of the TP/MP consolidation next expansion. Then balancing Refresh & Mana Shift strictly as ways to pay for Raises would occur naturally. Piety in its current state is a comfort stat, not a desirable one, and that's the real problem. It needs a rework, perhaps as a pure healing potency boost. As long as SE tries to keep Piety around in its current state as a balancing mechanism for healer resources rather than giving healers themselves the tools they need to handle their own MP (preferably treating Lucid as an option not as a requirement), then a Bard or Machinist is always going to be a part of the best party composition, since that's going to allow healers to strip it out of their gear as much as possible.

I just hated that Bard gets to double-dip from double-Ranged while Machinist gets doubly shat on, and disliked that even if they were perfectly balanced you'd pretty well have to choose one or the other just due to their CD timings, which felt somehow wrong to me in that they are considered definitively "support" dps.

I'm less worried about it, because those edge case synergies are part of what is making Bard mandatory in the first place, making it pretty clear to me that it should be removed, or perhaps given its own resource as a replacement (such as charging up the ability by rotating between songs as an example). People will play what they thematically like unless the implementation is complete garbage or the balance is too far out of whack. Hell, I'm fine with MCH being the 'selfish' DPS of the pair too, provided that actually meant something. I just don't see the point in keeping a mana drain song around given what we know.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about single-target MP generation. Allowing for far broader changes, I'd like it, but so long as we've only one Ranged skill with access to MP generation functionality, I don't feel like I would. Bard, especially, feels like it ought to be affecting everyone with that kind of effect. That singing isn't some form of focused telepathy. Promotion, likewise, felt like an omnidirectional emission. And while Refresh feels, aesthetically, like a poor replacement for the original skills, I still want to consider its sources and what would be expected from as close as we get to "Support" jobs.

Bard does have an 'Aura-Bot' theme to them, which I can appreciate, but the only alternative that leaves is making it a bit stronger than a spread Ewer, or making Mana Shift as strong as a single target Refresh regardless of which class uses it. Neither of which I see mattering until SE shows us what they're doing with the TP/MP merger. For all we know the problem may have been solved.

I'm aware, but I think that would be the best solution. Consider there as being an Level 0 Max MP value...

Last I recall Cure's base MP cost something like 4 while Raise is 20, at level 0 that is. I do get the idea, but I have to wonder if SE's just gonna give everyone TP and be done with it rather than continuing this system. If they phase out TP instead of MP then I worry that'll reinforce the idea that Bard and Machinist are simply mandatory because of how powerful Refresh is already.

Same hope, same belief. Though, I'm sure many would argue that the clipping is just a matter of skill-gap (every oGCD but TC should be within TC and TC should only ever follow F3) and just tell me to "get gud" for thinking as much. I'd like to eventually see animation breakpoints and layers so that we can clip a bit further and more naturally (in appearance), regardless of the job, but that's probably a pipedream of a very distant end.

Clipping in the manner that BLM would have to honestly winds up costing them 2-3 GCDs over a fight even on average ping, potentially a whole AF rotation if you use macros. You can't really precast out of an oGCD, though you can certainly queue the oGCD itself. Macroing abilities like this is pretty common too, which hurts it even more because those can't be queued at all. It's not even really a skill gap, it's just bad coding. BLM really just needs a reliable way to weave that isn't worse than using F1 or doesn't cost MP to use, perhaps both. Or they could get a resource to store TC/FS procs like that one thread suggested.

Nonetheless, to answer your question as to whether Piercing belongs in the game at all beyond DRG itself -- I'm not certain. [/U].

I'll admit that I'm partial to adding it on the Ranged DPS because keeping it has some merit to it in multi-dot and multi-target scenarios, but SE seems determined to phase out situations like that as much as possible. The synergy doesn't even bother me. What does bother me is they're in this weird spot where only a few classes have any interactions like this at all and they all seem to coalesce around Bard specifically. Either add a ton more, such that at least one class in each DPS role gets such an absurd benefit (which yes, does fit in with what you're doing for RDM, and arguably any of the melee DPS could be options for this as well) from common buffs, or remove it entirely. With RDM I worry more about having a similar overlap between physical and magical buffs that normally never stack together leading to particularly high multipliers that their melee combo then takes advantage of, putting too much emphasis on it as a result. Giving them the tools to make sure they always have their melee combo when its the best time to use it and letting that naturally put emphasis on timing the combo appropriately seems like a better solution to me. I have that problem with pretty much every DPS though. SE could learn a thing from WoW and let you store up certain oGCDs so you could shift your burst windows around without losing overall DPS.

The alternative then would be to allow for a few different extents of movement, as I ultimately want to do for all dashes as well. For instance, holding S/<stick back> when triggering Displacement would launch you further (e.g. to the current amount), but the base length would be shorter.

My only concern with this is it would likely be as clunky as Rescue despite not having another target and translating it onto an input other than from controllers would be odd to fit in.

(If I seem to be ignoring the obvious solution here, it's not usually because it hasn't caught my attention yet, but just because there are some things I'm weirdly comprehensive in inspecting the contexts of. This one on the other hand... equal parts bias, forgetfulness, and pipedreaming.)

I've got my own biases too. Hell I'd love it if Monk or Dragoon had a fixed distance AoE charge as an oGCD, but I also agree that it would be completely impractical. I don't trust SE with that kind of idea to begin with. I overthink these things too because I like to analyze it, but your reasoning makes sense to me. Hell I miss potential reasons why things are the way they are too. Someone in my static tonight theorized that the reason why AST cant stack regens with another AST is likely because that one quirk (whether buffs are allowed to stack of now) is assigned to the buttons themselves, not the buffs. If that were true, then in order for the regens to stack then their shields would have to be allowed to as well, which is an example of the kind of engine baggage that is nigh impossible to fix without specifically dedicating someone to it for a patch and making sure it doesn't break everything else.

Simply put, because I enjoy that "timing tension", as do most people I've ever raided with. It would seem a disservice to the game, imo, to remove its sort of poster (or, problem) child.

I can appreciate that kind of thing too but to me backloading or ramp up fits a personal ability better. Flat-lining the buff allows it to be moved to a more comfortable position as well without any major hiccups. And in terms of tension, I'd rather have some inherent flexibility in how I manage my resources and let the tension arise from managing them according to each fight's mechanics, which this game in general does not inherently support on any DPS class other than SMN currently (arguably SAM too, but they're more about rotation management than cooldowns). Tanks have some options and Healers have it in spades, but SE's scripted fight design doesn't help them leverage deviating from that script aside from specifically abusing LB generation or padding mistakes.

I don't doubt it. But I don't feel like I know the insides of XIV's code well enough to point out exactly which fixes should be made to make pets more responsive. Which is why I left it at "mutatis mutandi, pets be less shitty" for the time being.

You can typically infer enough from observation and testing to get an idea of what's wrong, even if offering a solution isn't always easy. I only have a few years of computer science university under my belt and some unfinished game projects with their own bugs to sort through, which helps with at least understanding why it's so difficult to fix some things and not others, but the implications from what you can observe in trying to figure out how XIV's underlying engine works are overall not good. I know enough to say that SE could use buffs to effectively override a pet's default AI behavior in a way that feels at least more consistent than what we have now, but even I'll admit it's a hack job, and fixing the underlying system governing pets would be massively better in the long run.

Not sure how I feel about this. The separate cooldowns gave it a sense of options in rushing expenditure, if necessary, at cost of ST/AoE potency that I actually enjoyed. I'd mostly just like to see Bane revised and also placed on a 5s CD. ...And ideally for all 3 to scale with Speed...

To me, the choice you have in picking which Aetherflow abilities to use each cycle is the only real meaningful decision to make. Accelerating the opener isn't all that interesting in practice because of this. In this situation ED replaces Painflare if you really need to do so mid-fight, but the lower cooldown in the opener and the potency loss for having to use ED over Painflare is enough to push it out of common use. I'm of the opinion that SMN needs an aetherflow ability to use during jump phases too to solve the problem of having nothing to do during those phases, much like Monk had in ARR. I'd also be fine with Bane and ED sharing the same cooldown, but held off on it since only Fester & Painflare need that consolidation to accomplish that goal. A similar rebalance could also be applied to SCH as well, with Indom getting toned down to compensate for sharing Lustrate's cooldown.

How has it been doubled?

That line was specifically referring to the current Bane's reduced damage over time potency. The current version has the second enemy take 80% of the original DoT's damage. The third enemy takes 60%, the fourth 40%, and all remaining enemies take 20%. I lopped off that last step, to make every enemy take a minimum of 40% of the original DoT's damage, which is twice as much as it does now. It's a partial revert of the nerf it got in Stormblood. Heavensward had a similar formula where the damage drop off was incremented by 10% each stage, and the minimum was 50%. That was too much, and I suspect with all I did, it will be too much as well, but I'd rather keep Bane than Tri-Bind's DWT buff. The goal was to make Bane worth using in mass AoE and to give SMN a niche in being the only DPS who can spread their Raid debuff for AoE situations too. Pets already don't count as the same source as you for the purposes of the debuff change, so neither interact with this at all either. The Contagion/RS reworks are intended to bring the two closer together in that regard.

Hmm... Not sure how I feel about never seeing Inferno or Aerial Blast ever again. I think most Summoners would prefer this, though. Bigger boom. Though, it does seem like it would end up awfully redundant with Deathflare...

Whoops. For Enkindle Bahamut, I meant it should replace Enkindle during Summon Bahamut, not DWT. It doesn't really accomplish anything other than removing the button entirely, admittedly, so I suppose I should keep it seperate and only allow it to be used during Bahamut, or perhaps treating it as Enkindle II could work. I'm torn on that because I'd like to tone down the burst provided by Bahamut to allow more room for his phase to be improved further in 5.0. On that note, Deathflare isn't usable during Summon Bahamut either. That sort of lets it and Enkindle act as an Akh Morn replacement if you do die. Of course that doesn't really solve the problem of dying in the first place, but it does mitigate the loss of a Bahamut somewhat. I'm not sure how better to close the gap there and still retain Bahamut as a meaningful increase without being frustrating or accounting for potential additions in 5.0, but barring the obvious 'retain buffs while dead' change there isn't much else that can be done, other than I suppose buffing DWT windows outside of Bahamut specifically.

Do we really need more rDPS moments that aren't really noticeable or at all worth adjusting for?

I agree that overall Bahamut's Vul Up is pretty meaningless, but it is about equal in contribution to the respective Egi. I was trying to account for Bahamut himself counting as his own pet in this scenario without really affecting the numbers we have already while also not relying on the current Contagion's interaction with him to boost Garuda up. Doublechecking the current Egi while he's out feels weird to me, though I think you can resummon during his window and the new egi will appear afterward, so it is possible. I do think the choice between the pets is a meaningful one.

I debated about swapping DWT and Tri-Disaster around and simply making it so Tri-Disaster can only be used in DWT/Bahamut but decided against it as I remember that quest line in particular specifically mentioned some of those abilities before you learned them. The other effect these changes have is it kills all of the pet swap openers, which is by far the bigger deal to me with this change. I'm assuming that SE can't shift the pet keybinds around in order to kill that interaction in the first place though, or that they're fine with it.

I think I like this, though I'd want to see it for myself. I'm not too sold on taking so many keys for what don't appear distinct, either. And consuming 90-110 potency in the form of an FR stack just for an instant cast via R4 as compared to R3 seems a bit... much. I feel like this is an improvement, but not quite there?

Yeah, the intent was to improve on the micro management of HW Ruin III without having to drain your MP in the process. The result is messy for sure. I didn't want to buff Ruin IV further since the intent was for it to replace the instant-cast Ruin III inside DWT and Bahamut, but keep it similar in value to Ruin II outside of it, with the notable advantage in that it is more burst DPS if you can afford it. The math is wonky because it depends on your GCD usage and FR stack count but it can act as a dump if you get a lucky streak of pet procs and need to move/weave anyways, and alternating between it and Ruin I is more DPS than alternating Ruin II and III if that's how a fight pans out. The clear way to get the most damage is to spam Ruin I into Ruin III x2 repeatedly until a pet proc comes and then spend it immediately on Ruin IIIs, but you can deviate from that. The pet proc gets to charge up FR stacks during the DWT/Bahamut phases basically without any restrictions too. Hell I could see buffing Tri-Ruin using the resource as well but opted to avoid it as the baseline 60 potency is already strong enough to matter outside of DWT. It's straight up better than using Blizzard II back in HW in every regard as is.

You've said this before, I think? What cooldown are you referring to, though? PP has no cooldown. Or do you mean the removal of the cooldown isn't necessary? If so, again, the it's just because it helps with EA and the last 2.9 seconds of WM.

Yeah, I definitely misread it. Looking it over again, you're putting the cooldown on Bloodletter/Rain of Death back in as a timer for gaining Repertoire stacks without any procs. I guess my concern now is, does that timer keep ticking even if you get a proc? Or does it reset like it would in Ballad? It may be a good idea to lower the cooldown in the latter case to at least make WM more reliable, but by how much I'm not sure. I like the idea, regardless. Though I suppose there's some ambiguity to clear up in the wording there too.

Wait, so, you want a Foe Requiem that isn't a rDPS buff but instead some sort of AoE song or AoE augmentative bonus song? Could you describe this in a bit more detail?

The basic idea is it acts as the AoE counterpart to Wanderer's Minuet, being the strongest song at that role, but incredibly weak as a single target song to the point that Paeon and Ballad outstrip it. The easiest way to accomplish this within your paradigm would be to nerf Rain of Death's potency to 80 (to weaken Ballad relative to it) and move Dissonance over to this song, with Bloodletter being disabled for its duration while Rain of Death would be disabled for WM's duration. I believe that should allow your version of Paeon to outstrip it in single target but maybe not AoE (Again, Twin Bolt/Arrow Helix are really good), but that's me going off of intuition rather than hard numbers.

The only reason for wanting this in the first place is to make picking between the four songs somewhat meaningful in order to accomodate keeping all four of them in the current rotation. WM and Foes would be specialized, while Paeon and Ballad would be filler, with Paeon specifically being tuned to be better than either of the specialized songs at their weakest areas while still being worse than Ballad, meaning you'll drop Paeon between each RS window if you get an opportunity to use both of your specialized songs fully instead. All it really does is change your song rotation from fight to fight if SE makes that worthwhile to have, but I suspect they won't.

What similar properties? And why have yet another oGCD pair, on the same timer as the original oGCD pair? And if the concern with the others is that it'd have minimal effect on their gameplay, then why is this minimal effect a good thing? I'm guessing you mean a mass-proc for instant max Repertoire stacks, as per EA-Arrow Helix? If so then you'd definitely want the Pitch Perfect CD removed, no, as not to waste it when DoTs are up?

It could be used in a similar vein as EA to proc a bunch of Repertoire stacks, but I don't think it needs to be a carbon copy to accomplish that. Altering the cooldown so it's say, 20-25s baseline and gives two stacks instead while retaining its AoE cone component would be enough. Yeah, it adds another button to manage and double weave, But it also adds to Bard's resource tracking without being as overwhelming as your Ballad change, since it's ultimately predictable by the player. And while I sometimes find it frustrating that Bard has to keep track of all these small cooldowns, I have to admit that the primary appeal of Bard is the fact that it is so busy as a result of having to track those small cooldowns within the different pace of each song. Mashing Bloodletter/RoD in Ballad is the busiest moment for sure, but priming PP in WM while keeping EA and Bloodletter rolling is also distinct enough in flow, while the brief but important downtime in Paeon is a key part in giving the player some breathing room. Having less to press overall and maintaining the same rate of presses throughout each song other than Ballad just winds up taking away from what distinguishes its rotation, yet I also agree that it's hard to make it any busier in a meaningful manner. If I was gonna do anything to make Paeon's downtime more meaningful without adding more buttons, I'd say make it into the HW throwback song. Let it buff your GCDs up by some meaningful amount and add cast times back into them for that period that the repetroire stacks then gradually remove.

Shoot, I forgot to include that. I'm not sure what you mean by the latter clause, though. If you mean the suggestion above is impossible because of the necessity of snapshotting, note that this would still be (ratio'ed) snapshotting. 9 second left on TA would have affect 30 seconds of damage by an average of 3%. So, Overdrive's total damage would be 3% higher with 9 seconds of TA. It just also wouldn't be shit without TA, because it would now benefit from the MCH traits and anything else the MCH has on him. But alas, I may revert that too in order to maintain that skillgap element. I mostly just don't like what the interaction does to AoE on B-OD. On ST it's mostly fine.

It's kinda impossible to avoid with Overdrive in general. Calculating that kind of damage boost would have to be done in a similar way as Wildfire, where it's incremented over time. That makes Hypercharge the better candidate to pre-empt such an ability, similar to what you had in mind with Detonate letting you end Wildfire early. It would take too long to crunch in order to be done instantly, and adding a delayed check to ensure it was calculated right just nerfs the potential damage further unless you're able to pre-empt your party's raid buff usage in order to maximize the value of it.

It would be easier just to leave it as is and retune the damage and debuff timer according to where you feel it ought to be, and maybe so it's specifically bad except when you have downtime in a fight the same way Tornado Kick was originally supposed to be.

50 Heat seems mechanics-destructive, but I like the idea of using it as a piercer. I guess if that were the case, Straight Shot would turn into Bard's? At that point, though, Bard would be the one enabling both MCH and DRG, lol...

Not by much, admittedly. MCH would absolutely use Hot Shot for Piercing early in their opener though, since they can do it without expending heat if they wanted to. With the 50 Heat addition they could intentionally use a variation of the 2 ammo opener so they can use a combination of it and Barrel Stabilizer to instantly Overheat on the 3rd or 4th GCD, which is potentially useful. It has some surprising ramifications. Using it mid fight basically requires you to use Cooldown or Ammo on it though, which is a downside, but one that adds some stress to overall Heat management. The downside is the potential to proc Overheat every single Reload, which is a big issue admittedly, but doing so without all the 1-minute cooldowns to tip it over does make a huge difference in how viable that really is. I believe it's actually close to not being worth it because of the lost heated shots, enough that a 3-5% nerf on the Overheat boost that's then shifted into Wildfire would be enough to discourage using it twice every minute entirely, without impacting the WF window itself.

I don't wholly get what you mean by 1.5 Chakra, though, unless... each strike gives 2 Chakra and Meditation gives 3 or it's a 50% chance of a 2nd Chakra?

Yeah I screwed up here too. You'd treat 1 Light + 1 Shadow as equal to one of our current Chakra, at least for the purpose of costs on the current Chakra abilities when transitioned over to the new system. Attacking can only generate 1 Light or Shadow Chakra at a time, based on where you stand. Meditation from that viewpoint would grant 1.5 Whole Chakra, but really it's 3 of the Light and Shadow Chakra, prioritizing the lower bar where possible. There's no RNG involved in generating more. You always get the same amount. Using True North and hitting omni-positional bosses would operate in a similar manner where equalizing the bar is always prioritized first, and when it's equal, what you get on your next attack is random. I don't want to treat it entirely like RDM's bars where you have to balance it all the time either, that's just the logical way to make True North and Omni-directional bosses work. I'd actually like it if you had the freedom to unbalance your chakra as long as you had what you needed when your major cooldowns were up, with explicit mechanics calling it out.

The original intent with the idea was to remove all the positional requirements from Monk without really removing them, by using this system as the replacement for traditional positionals entirely. However, when I brought it up on Reddit ages ago to Monk mains as a potential solution they complained that removing the positionals on Monk's weaponskills to add this in as a replacement basically ruined the point of the class entirely to them (even if it's really comparable to the positionals on SAM in practice), hence why I offered the compromise to Coeurl Form up for you. Since you only use your DoT every 3 cycles instead of 2, neither could retain their positional requirements if you wanted to allow any choice in at all, while also not forcing you to generate more of one side compared to the other. The intent of removing them all originally was to allow Monk to be where they need to be for their GCDs, while still making positioning matter, just in a more strategic way. It would give them the ability to pre-charge chakra based on upcoming mechanics that force them to the back/flank depending on that fight. That way they could adapt to each fight's requirements without having to use True North at all except when a boss explicitly forces them to stand in front of it, which I believe was True North's intended use. Reducing True North's cooldown is more of a patch over MNK's problems in that regard.

In general I'm for positional mechanics that let you be more flexible without entirely eliminating their requirements, or if they're explicit, then minimizing the time they have to be considered would be preferred. SAM and NIN already accomplish this pretty well. DRG has some problems but their combo length bothers me more than their positionals. Monk is the only melee really hampered by the current system. They're required to land every single one of their attacks from the right spot with no flexibility whatsoever outside of True North, and to me that is a problem. Sure, it creates risk and reward, and I can appreciate how it feels on a dummy and in casual content too, but it also isn't strategic and doesn't provide any real long term depth that you couldn't get from playing any other Melee DPS. It just makes you learn how to greed for and dance between positionals faster. Once that's mastered, you have to follow where the rails take you, or you lose damage, and that comes at the compromise of the design of certain fights. Every 3 positionals they miss essentially cuts out an entire GCD out of their rotation. Miss them all and you might as well not have GL on you at all. Whether it winds up being a punishment mechanic or a reward depends on the fight more than the player's experience.

As for DRG, I could see tuning their positionals in a different way. Imagine if attacking from the Flank or Back for the first hit of their combos determined where they want to stand for the rest of that combo's sequence. That would actually allow them to adjust themselves based on the mechanics they're dealing with in a limited fashion, without changing their overall movement by much. This could be telegraphed with a client-side marker on the target showing where you first attacked, and the positionals on their subsequent attacks would be marked as Start/Pivot instead of Flank/Back. It would even allow SE to add more positionals back to DRG if they wanted to, which feels intuitive, given the debuff combo fits a dance in an attempt to make an opening better, while the triple thrust combo makes more sense if you have to stay still, at least thematically speaking.