Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Malmstrom]

On the Fists buff, I thought I read somewhere that because of the way damage is calculated that Fire still ends up being stronger than Wind.


How about just do away with it altogether and come up with something else? Make a 4th GL stack a trait at whatever level it is now for FoW, because honestly Fists of X needs to go the way of Ninja poisons.

[SpeckledBurd]

On the Fists buff, I thought I read somewhere that because of the way damage is calculated that Fire still ends up being stronger than Wind.


How about just do away with it altogether and come up with something else? Make a 4th GL stack a trait at whatever level it is now for FoW, because honestly Fists of X needs to go the way of Ninja poisons.

Correct, because damage buffs are multiplicative Fists of Wind/GL4 is a flat 1.4x modifier on your potencies, while Fists of Fire is a 1.43x modifier. GL4 ends up being stronger over the course of the fight in spite of Fists of Fire's higher multiplier because of how it buffs auto-attacks to be absurdly strong on Monk compared to other jobs.

The Fist Stances going away is something people thought would happen going into Stormblood and instead we got 4.0 Tackle Mastery, which was more an appeal at the Fist Stances doing something than actually making them useful. I can only assume the reason there's two traits is because the devs were still terrified of GL4 being too fast for players, so they left in Fists of Fire to give people a choice between playstyles. But it’s just an illusion of choice in the exact same way Tackle Mastery was. People will always choose the option that does the most damage in this game, so the only time you'll ever use Fists of Fire is winding up to GL4 or for the last GCD of a fight. It's another piece of evidence that the devs don't know how people will play this game and that they had no vision as to what they wanted Shadowbringers Monk to be, so we of the same even though much of that was stuff we disliked as they patted themselves on the back about how well they'd done.

But I digress, At this point since the devs have proven that they aren't going to do anything worthwhile with the Fist Stances, I would happily see them go and have those traits remade into something else.

[ForteNightshade]

Correct, because damage buffs are multiplicative Fists of Wind/GL4 is a flat 1.4x modifier on your potencies, while Fists of Fire is a 1.43x modifier. GL4 ends up being stronger over the course of the fight regardless because of how it buffs auto-attacks to be absurdly strong on Monk compared to other jobs.

The Fist Stances going away is something people thought would happen going into Stormblood and instead we got 4.0 Tackle Mastery, which was more an appeal at the Fist Stances doing something than actually making them useful. I can only assume the reason there's two traits is because the devs were still terrified of GL4 being too fast for players, so they left in Fists of Fire to give people a choice between playstyles. But it’s a false choice in the exact same way Tackle Mastery was. People will always choose the option that does the most damage in this game. Really it’s more telling to me that the devs continue to have no idea how people play this game, and its further evidence that the devs had no vision on what Shadowbringers Monk actually would be. It’s just removing the Fist Stances would actually involving changing Monk and they're deathly afraid of that to the point that it's the least played job in the game.

The irony is they lack this same fear when it comes to Machinist. It really does go to show how completely out-of-sync the dev team seems to be at times.

[Oxdarock]

The Fist Stances going away is something people thought would happen going into Stormblood and instead we got 4.0 Tackle Mastery, which was more an appeal at the Fist Stances doing something than actually making them useful. I can only assume the reason there's two traits is because the devs were still terrified of GL4 being too fast for players, so they left in Fists of Fire to give people a choice between playstyles. But it’s a false choice in the exact same way Tackle Mastery was. People will always choose the option that does the most damage in this game. Really it’s more telling to me that the devs continue to have no idea how people play this game, and its further evidence that the devs had no vision on what Shadowbringers Monk actually would be. It’s just removing the Fist Stances would actually involving changing Monk and they're deathly afraid of that to the point that it's the least played job in the game.

Yeah, they're very out of touch with the class. You'd need to reach GL5 or 6 before the class becomes overwhelmingly fast for players, which it wouldn't. It'd actually be busted AF, lol. And what Fortnightshade pointed out was something I didn't even consider. Why can't MNKs be as fast as Hypercharge MCH? Lol! XD

[SpeckledBurd]

The irony is they lack this same fear when it comes to Machinist. It really does go to show how completely out-of-sync the dev team seems to be at times.

I think they had that fear on some level, but Stormblood Machinist was so mechanically broken and unpleasant to play that it probably would have been harder to make anything of it that people would like than it would be to rebuild it. Even if they'd failed to make it as popular as it is, they'd have been hard pressed to make something worse, and even then they at least made a good faith effort of cleaning up their mess.

They are definitely out of touch with the Monk playerbase, you don't need to look much further than how proud they were of Shadowbringers Monk compared to how poorly it was received on Launch, or indeed how its currently the least played job in all content other than Ultimate, which is prone to sampling bias because it caters to such a small population of the playerbase. There was almost a glimpse that they might have gotten a clue in 5.05, but 5.1 just making Anatman a new addition to our gigantic useless action pile cinched it. They might make us eat our words in the next live letter and bring sweeping changes to Monk and make Anatman have a use, fix the fist stances, and even make Tornado Kick be something we use, but I wouldn't count on it. It'll probably be nothing again and we'll be left to rot till the next expansion as usual.

[Malmstrom]

Yeah, they're very out of touch with the class. You'd need to reach GL5 or 6 before the class becomes overwhelmingly fast for players, which it wouldn't. It'd actually be busted AF, lol. And what Fortnightshade pointed out was something I didn't even consider. Why can't MNKs be as fast as Hypercharge MCH? Lol! XD

I would break my hand if GL5+ was implemented.

And I would love every second of it.

[Malmstrom]

COUGH BUMP THIS TOPIC IS TOO GOOD TO NOT SEE MORE DISCUSSION.

Ahem.

[Oxdarock]

On the Fists buff, I thought I read somewhere that because of the way damage is calculated that Fire still ends up being stronger than Wind.


How about just do away with it altogether and come up with something else? Make a 4th GL stack a trait at whatever level it is now for FoW, because honestly Fists of X needs to go the way of Ninja poisons.

It does slightly, but the haste buff from Wind and GL4 makes it a dps increase over the long run because:
-you get more GCDs and auto-attacks out of it.
-you're able to fit 11 GCDs within RoF
-you're able to fit in 6 GCDs within PB.

As for removing fists, yeah, that would make things easier and simpler, but I've always felt that knowing which fist to switch to in a given moment was one of those things that rewarded playing the class well, even if the damage increase was only minor.