Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[ValStormbreaker]

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That's not actually what I was saying. I use a high speed opener which is viable, albeit not AS powerful, and is a variation on the Anatman opener that reduces the Anatman problems to a minor annoyance more than anything. No third-party tool use or anything, and I never switch back to FoF mid-rotation or do any of that. Imagine if the Anatman opener was buttery smoothe and had zero jankiness to it, was actually straightforward and didn't require any double inputs, with the only slight annoyance being from a possible and relatively minor pause for Anatman, which half the time is a non-issue. It feels so good to use, and it's not only viable in Savage content, and seems to magically line up with all the fight mechanics of every raid, but it also works really well for TEA without having to remeld or alter my rotation and I can keep consistent uptime.

What I was saying with regard to FoF is that players who have higher pings, as well as players who may have lower pings but just don't like to go fast, have the option to keep the damage output at a lower speed. You have to remember, the overall population of raiders in this game is small, so you will have players who want to dip their feet into a job but aren't necessarily going to be raiders. This is an accessibility option for those players.

My biggest suggestion 6.0-wise would be to separate MNK and SAM gear so they can be balanced separately. Right now, since they're shackled by gear, and are the ONLY melee jobs to share a gear set, when one is balanced nicely, the other winds up being total garbage, and when they're both balanced equally they both sit in the "mediocre" territory. It's like a see-saw of nightmares for both jobs. I'm willing to bet it's a headache for the devs as well, so it'd just be easiest to give SAM its own gear set and call it a day. Would probably work wonders for the cosmetics, too, since there's very little you can do with a middle ground for SAM and MNK glamour that doesn't just look ill-fitting on both.

I'm still waiting for my Saint Seiya crossover, Yoshi-P! :P

[ValStormbreaker]

I come from the fighting game community, so I like the idea of TK running on a meter management system, and I like how chakra is used for tFC and Enlightenment. What I don't quite like is that dropping GL stacks slows you down, and both GL stacks and chakra are an all-or-nothing sort of thing, so it's not like you can store them up for more powerful versions of the attacks (like EX attacks in Street Fighter). I don't mind SSS, because at my SkS, if you use it to disengage, by the time you re-engage you can use your GCD moves again, so it lines up very perfectly.

It really feels like 90% of the problems most players are experiencing with Anatman, SSS and TK are the result of slowing the job down for more power. And I get it, for clearing DPS checks this gives you better output... but it just feels clumsy and unnatural, so my rule of thumb is, no matter how much DPS it gives you, it if feels wrong, maybe that's not what you're SUPPOSED to be doing, even if you CAN. BUT, most of the talk concerning MNK is an outgrowth of very specific rotations people are doing at very specific skill speeds in accordance with the current meta, so there hasn't been a whole lot of experimentation encouraged as a result of the people who are driving the rhetoric and what they want to popularize. It's not popular to bring up that the double TK opener is still possible under the right conditions, and that its problems are minor and easily fixed in a few minutes with adjusting a potency value here and a recast timer there, so sometimes I feel like I'm the only one bringing this stuff up. At higher speeds, DPS optimization comes from being able to more seamlessly bounce from mechanic to mechanic and greed more comfortably with far less risk, so long as you can handle the speed it requires (which for me is still far too slow). I wish more people would try to spread playing the job like I do, and maybe they'd find a lot more comfort in it compared to what the Balance has been spreading. But hey, I'm not some celebrity in the community so nobody wants to hear what I have to say, even if people would really enjoy giving it a shot...

I actually recently tried out Black Desert Online's "Mystic" job, and OH BOY do I wish MNK in XIV played like that!