Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[3ureka]

I want to punch things faster.

I want a couple of animation changes.

Actually, I mostly just want to punch things faster. Monk has always felt like the most engaging DPS job to me because of all of the constant positioning and how the stance rotation works. Sometimes though, when you're in that two back hits or two side hits or whatever part of your combo, it almost feels agonizing waiting for the GCD while standing still. Speed it up more! I want to break all of my gamepads and fingers and keyboards speed mashing monk abilities!

What else do I want? A few of the same things everyone wants - no useless skills, or skills with such specific uses that they almost never get used.

Completely agree. Niche skills are too niche.

Also, what would you say to a 1.5 gcd? I feel like that's as low as SE would comfortably go.

[Shurrikhan]

Completely agree. Niche skills are too niche.

Also, what would you say to a 1.5 gcd? I feel like that's as low as SE would comfortably go.

For many players, that wouldn't be enough time to even single-weave given that there's no ping mitigation on oGCDs (only GCDs, and only up to 250 ms). It may well also be the GCD cap, meaning that all SkS would then be wasted.

If used for just certain skills, as a sub-GCD similar to 5.1+ Mudras, so that other more normal-length GCDs (e.g. 1.8s+) could still weave oGCDs, that might be fine, but it'd still create noticeable discrepancies between high- and low-ping players in terms of timing flexibility.

[3ureka]

It may well also be the GCD cap, meaning that all SkS would then be wasted.

Ahh. Good catch. The reason I brought up the 1.5 second cd was because that's how long Heat Blast and Autocrossbow have for MCH. Timing isn't super tight for single weaving between those skills, but that's with *good* ping, so I can imagine how bad it'd be for those with higher latency.

[Shurrikhan]

Ahh. Good catch. The reason I brought up the 1.5 second cd was because that's how long Heat Blast and Autocrossbow have for MCH. Timing isn't super tight for single weaving between those skills, but that's with *good* ping, so I can imagine how bad it'd be for those with higher latency.

A 1.5s GCD should have the half the remainder after the 600 ms of the skill itself ((1.5 -.6)/2 -> 450 ms) as a safety margin before latency could affect uptime, but it seems a whole lot more finicky than that, for some reason that doesn't seem accounted for by any on-paper generalities.

Granted, XIV's exact latency margins have always been a little... odd. For instance, for the brief period where during HW where the servers moved to within a couple hundred miles of me but they hadn't yet added additional protections from speedhackers, I could pretty consistently double-weave at a 1.8 GCD (my Howling Fist would barely get off the ground before being clipped). Now, even at that same 40 ms I need a 2-second GCD to consistently lose zero uptime (even with a VPN and Turbo-ing the oGCD keys), whereas I should theoretically need only 1.96.

Put simply, if they could allow for consistent single-weaving at a 1.2-second GCD (as would be possible if oGCDs had the same ping protection as GCDs), then that would probably be our cap and I'd love to see Monks thereby use multiple GCD lengths as to feel faster and more furious but still varied rather than merely wrist-breaking. Given the present workings of the game, though, ~1.75 is probably our lowest limit.