Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Kalise]

That depends entirely on the reward. Clearly even with a 30% bonus to oGCD damage and a relative ~47% increase to weaponskill damage over time during SB, it was still quite able to be utilized as a mechanic. Even now TK openers are viable.

From what I've read, TK openers are DPS losses.

Also, I mentioned, that the only way they become a mechanic, is when you can basically skip it by quick stacking to the point of there being no actual reason to have TK consume GL in the first place.

But therein lies the question. Do you mercy-blow any and all of these mechanics because they've been so gutted, or do you revitalize them?

I guess it would depend entirely on if you can think of any way to make them interesting mechanics despite their innately passive nature. Without giving way to clunky design for the sake of making them "Interesting" (I.e. What would most likely occur with Fire IV Mage)

speed manipulation is hardly the issue. The issue is control.

And yet, many Monks have complained about the slowdown on RoF as well as the slowdown post TK.

Both things are controlled. You know exactly when you're going to suffer the slowdown, since you induce it.

But it feels crappy either way, especially when one of the main draws to MNK is its faster attack speed (2.5s GCD's suuuuuuck)

While that might sound like a similar direction, it'd most likely nearly antithetical. There are only three ways such a system could go:

Or, option 4: Stances are restricted in the same way as AST's sects, in that you cannot change them in combat.

Thus, people find the stance they like the most and pick that. Instead of being arbitrarily stuck sitting in Fire/Wind 24/7 depending on what is SE's FotM mandatory stance (With the slight exception that is current Fire while at 1-3 stacks and old "Switch to Wind for literally 1 skill for free 2 GL")

Stance dancing is an unneccesary when literally the core rotation of the job IS stance dancing. If element based "Stance Dancing" is desired, I'd rather it come in the form of the Riddles. Provided Riddle of Earth and Riddle of Wind become something notably interesting to contrast Riddle of Fire's flat damage boost.

We can have just as much choice and flexibility in speed without needing that bloated approach to stances.

Except, your suggestion doesn't help poor players who can't function at high speed. They will HAVE to be jumping up and down in speed in order to utilize their Ki. Heck, everyone will, including speed demons.

It's not a particularly elegant design to make people have such varied speed, while in theory, yes you can open up a lot of decision making in doing so, one might argue you open too much where you might end up in the same situation as SE's designed MNK where you have no idea if you're supposed to be attacking fast or slow or some mix of both.

It honestly sounds like such a system would serve to piss off everyone, except specifically you.

Not to mention, it will get mathed out what the optimal rotation will be. No matter what, people will figure out whether its better to spend Ki or sit on high GL stacks and then you're left with the same "TK Optimizing" scenario, only you've put MNK through the wringer to get it.

When, there are far more ways to add interesting mechanics to MNK, especially if GL stack preservation isn't mandatory for passive DPS boosts (Since then GL maintenance skills can be repurposed). Not to mention the potential for a Chakra rework to make it something other than an oGCD that has an RNG CD that also causes MNK's to be slaves to Crit (Thus, also have the "Bard" issue where they go from horrible to amazing for DPS over the course of an expansion due to the scaling of Crit on gear)

[Shurrikhan]

Also, I mentioned, that the only way they become a mechanic, is when you can basically skip it by quick stacking to the point of there being no actual reason to have TK consume GL in the first place.

Except that, even with RoW massively overtuned, it wasn't always the best choice for how to spend Tackle, it had vastly different interactions with or without PB, and back then we couldn't maintain GL indefinitely so TK still had a place outside of RoW and PB. It functioned on its own, functioned better with RoW, a bit better with PB, and better still with the two together, and it felt great for exactly that reason. It really brought the kit together, but not in the half-assed way that RoE and Anatman have where they function as bloat, existing only to invalidate something else. That TK was worth far more in the presence of RoW and PB did not remove its value outside of PB and RoW.

Or, option 4: Stances are restricted in the same way as AST's sects, in that you cannot change them in combat.

That's literally option 2. One that's also been shat on since AST was introduced and was forced to be a SCH- or WHM-substitute rather than wholly its own job.

Except, your suggestion doesn't help poor players who can't function at high speed.

They will HAVE to be jumping up and down in speed in order to utilize their Ki. Heck, everyone will, including speed demons.

No, they wouldn't. I was quite explicit in saying that overspending, the same thing that would drop BotD entirely during HW (but here only reduces you by a GL level at a time) reduces your speed, not any and all use of Ki.

Think of it like Tsubame-Gaeshi filler/rush GCDs. Without raid buffs, "ad hoc" play, especially at speed demon levels, is just as good as aligning perfectly to TG's cooldown. As more raid buffs come into play, syncing to them will naturally matter more -- just as it does for every job in the game -- but it's still not going to suddenly make a massive difference in performance. Even at the highest level of play, based on gear type one can choose how they play with only minimal change to performance. That's what I'm talking about here: putting control into the hands of the player, allowing for more flexibly timed burst, player-created peaks, and so forth, so that engagement remain high between CD periods rather than following the typical WAR/DRK burst-sleep-burst-sleep model.

Playing at full speed 100% of the time, especially in a comp not super dependent on snapshotting into raid damage windows, is still likely to net you 95%+ performance or so.

...one might argue [if] you open too much [decision making] you might end up in the same situation as SE's designed MNK where you have no idea if you're supposed to be attacking fast or slow or some mix of both.

What, exactly, is the problem with having some freedom to choose, some balance around the kit that could present two choices as near enough to equal that you might want to consult a guide for the minutiae of each's benefits or do what you want?

The only pitfall here would be if there was a clearly wrong answer presented in the same way as everything else (a la Ice Mage), despite making full use of the kit. But, there's been no example of that. Every "wrong" but sane answer (one that still makes full use of a kit, apart from whatever is for a time laughably underpowered, such as using Flamethrower for direct damage rather than Heat) has resulted in minute losses despite offering far more breadth of play.

We've seen it in Fuma vs. Raiton, where Raiton is best used to prevent clipping Shadowfang, except when nearing TCJ and/or where less potency clipping on SF is prevented than the potency in the difference between a final Aeolian before a Jump or just missing it. We've seen it in BLM's use of Thunder. Is BLM's identity destroyed just because it may have periods where Thunder is less worth maintaining? Is it wrecked because not everyone will immediately know whether they should use Thunder always, never, in certain circumstances, or in all but certain circumstances? These are precisely the things that offer jobs their skill ceiling and a sense of really and progressively learning a job. To throw all those out the window just because it causes people to question how they play is ridiculous. They should question how they play. That's a large part of the fun of any job.

And let's be clear: I am not advocating that one should have to obsess over decisions of GL. I merely want it to have actual decisions that one can make in regards to its use, thereby offering flexibility in timing and scrapping bloat and anti-QoL in favor of more efficient and manipulable design.

It's four birds with one stone:

• we get back forking rotations and thereby rotational variance and returning the ability to deal with positioning through preemption rather than merely through positionals-negating bloat skills;
• we get back the ability to sync our rotations to CDs, bypassing the awkward timing issues otherwise forced by all but certain SkS tiers and melee downtime;
• we negate the need for bloat and anti-QoL (e.g. FS spam) skills for GL and reinvigorate GL-dependent skills without having to remove decision-making by separating them from interactions with core mechanics or making them a mere side-effect of normal rotation;
• we get back GL as something that feels good to maintain (e.g. making it at least a little difficult to maintain, say, GL4 when having to move about, without making it so punishing to lose it, since it'd be lost only a stack at a time). This would be especially lucrative if do something like the frequently requested Chakra Gates ("Rock Lee mode" or what-have-you) allowing access to extreme speeds for as long as we can keep feeding it now that it wouldn't utterly crush you to lose GL and drop back to normal speed or so.

Simple as that. I'm not asking for a grand change here, only that we go ahead and use the tools already given to us when they can be so lucrative.

Not to mention, it will get mathed out what the optimal rotation will be.

Which has no effect on diversity of play so long as the circumstances behind play aren't limited (as TK windows mostly were) solely to CDs with zero interactions with other circumstances. There would be optimal rotational strings, but no one optimal speed or behavior that would divest you of all other means of play.

One need look no further than Double-Boot/True vs. Fracture/ToD per Demolish vs. ToD only while alternating post-reapplication Demolishes and clipped Demolishes in previous iterations of Monk play. Or look at Fuma usage on Ninja, or filler/rush usage on Samurai, especially at higher speeds. There is no one constant answer. They are context-dependent -- on downtime, on how long the fight will go on, on jump timings. That optimal play existed in no way restricted what could be used over a longer span of time, only which ought to be used in that particular 15, 18, 20, 24, or 30-second span while keeping in mind something some minute or two in the future.

There will always be optimal play. But if it reduces what skills you effectively have access to or what decisions need to be in the context of a encounter itself or the happenings therein, there is a problem with the toolkit. No amount of fatalism would make that any less lackluster of design.

You yourself have mentioned this time after time in the context of whether customization is possible. Yes, external balance will give us a best choice. Should we therefore remove all jobs not in the absolute highest performing speedrun composition? Maybe we could just rotate between which jobs are made available each month so we still see them all, but no one feels "pressured" to play the optimal ones, since those would be the only choices? Surely not.

The only difference here is that this is internal balance, the balance between choices that can be made in combat rather than outside of content (i.e. by choice of class, gear, or talents). Should we remove the ability to hit a 3-eyed-Geirskogul before BfB is ready just because it wouldn't be optimal in most raid settings? Should SB have removed Fuma just because it's going to be better at events 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 for this character in this fight while Raiton would be better at 4, 6, and 8 and players might not want to bother figuring out what's best? Surely not.

I want to balance for a larger variety of playstyles and make available (again, in many cases) a greater breadth of gameplay to the job. That's it. Therein, you could happily stay 24/7 speed demon at no negative effect prior to speedrunning Savage content. As for me, I'll probably be spending the majority of time as a speed demon, but occasionally banking for raid buffs because I just really like having the ability to sync my skills in smoothly order to deal with otherwise awkward SkS tiers. I probably will bite a bit more than I can chew, complexity-wise, and end up performing almost exactly the same. That's all there is to the suggestion: a desire for greater breadth of play and to eliminate a number of core problems in one of the simplest ways possible. Fix GL, and you fix four other issues that have since sprouted over the expansions. Fix, rather than leave yet another part half-done just to throw more random junk into the toolkit.

None of that precludes what can be done afterwards. It does not preclude fun new Chakra interactions. It does not preclude elemental effects. It does not preclude yet further GL mechanics. It merely doesn't leave anything to rot and does not scrap depth

[Kalise]

back then we couldn't maintain GL indefinitely so TK still had a place outside of RoW and PB.

You mean spending GL stacks on TK when you're guaranteed to lose GL stacks due to transition timing?

Such mechanics. Many interactions. Wow.

That's literally option 2. One that's also been shat on since AST was introduced and was forced to be a SCH- or WHM-substitute rather than wholly its own job.

Except, AST's sects are complained about because they simply offer AST the ability to become "WHM-lite" or "SCH-lite" instead of AST being its own unique job. Not the inability to switch in combat, but the fact that AST itself wasn't designed as a unique job.

With the stances, you still pick between "Monk", "Monk" and "Monk". You're not becoming a "DRG-lite" or "NIN-lite" as you're still fundamentally and uniquely a Monk irregardless of which stance you use. The only difference between them is are you a MNK that punches fast or a MNK that punches hard?

No, they wouldn't. I was quite explicit in saying that overspending, the same thing that would drop BotD entirely during HW (but here only reduces you by a GL level at a time) reduces your speed, not any and all use of Ki.

GL duration (Ki) can be spent to add additional effects to your damaging abilities.

You literally even highlighted the fact that you said Ki can be spent.

Then implied: Do I want to remain in GL3 just for my auto-attacks, Twin Snakes, Dragon Kick, and Snap Punch, or would it be worth spending Ki now, dropping a level, and then maxing it again before my next Coeurl skill for full Bootshine, True Strike, and Demolish damage?

If spending Ki doesn't drop a level... Then why would you not simply sit at GL3 and only spend enough Ki to stay at GL3 constantly? Therefore not only maintaining full speed and damage, but also benefitting from the Ki usage with maybe times during burst windows where dumping all your GL stacks into Ki would be worth it (AKA: Exactly the same situation as with TK)

What, exactly, is the problem with having some freedom to choose, some balance around the kit that could present two choices as near enough to equal that you might want to consult a guide for the minutiae of each's benefits or do what you want?

The problem is when the choices are too unclear so that it feels unintuitive to actually play. When you don't know whether you should be doing one of many things, and feel like you have to consult a guide in order to figure out how to play properly, rather than optimally.

Much like how TK usage in StB was. In regular play, it was unintuitive because you'd use it, lose all your GL stacks and feel like crap while you rebuilt it. Only to read a guide and find out that you're supposed to stance dance into FoW to pop RoW or use PB to try and negate its downsides.

Jobs should feel intuitive to play, with the minutia of choices taking place when trying to optimize. Someone should have a reasonable understanding of what they're supposed to be doing when playing the job and how to utilize the kit as it is presented to them.

[Shurrikhan]

You mean spending GL stacks on TK when you're guaranteed to lose GL stacks due to transition timing? Such mechanics. Many interactions. Wow.

That small part was still a hell of a lot more than literally zero interaction, as was suggested by removing GL from Monk.

Except, AST's sects are complained about because they simply offer AST the ability to become "WHM-lite" or "SCH-lite" instead of AST being its own unique job. Not the inability to switch in combat, but the fact that AST itself wasn't designed as a unique job.

They're one and the same. AST Sects being designed as a simply out-of-combat SCH/WHM mode toggle, rather than actually building around hastened/periodic and empowered/preemptory mechanics to be used with synergy between them, is what made AST feel like a WHM/SCH-lite.

With the stances, you still pick between "Monk", "Monk" and "Monk". You're not becoming a "DRG-lite" or "NIN-lite" as you're still fundamentally and uniquely a Monk irregardless of which stance you use. The only difference between them is are you a MNK that punches fast or a MNK that punches hard?

Why are you condemning me over it, even ignoring the fact that imitating a DRG-lite or NIN-lite is not what we'd want? It was your suggestion. I simply pointed out that having the stances do so little would amount to only bloat, either in terms of relatively useless features or CS-like empty apm.

You literally even highlighted the fact that you said Ki can be spent.

Yes, as BotD duration could be. Did we always want to burst our way out of that, too? It's distinctly less ambiguous than TK was given that the StB gave no in-game information on its bonus damage or attack speed and had the wrong damn potency written for TK. (Yes, TK's true potency was a result of a bug. That doesn't make the errant information any less incorrect.)

If spending Ki doesn't drop a level... Then why would you not simply sit at GL3 and only spend enough Ki to stay at GL3 constantly?

It drops a level only when you consume the entirety of your duration, just like BotD did. And you absolutely can sit at GL3. The only difference is, again, that you are not effectively punished for dropping GL during low-damage GCDs and can therefore use it to sync to CDs and positioning requirements despite varying downtimes and base GCDs. It's the same exact thing you've always had, except in that it allows for many of the same things we had before and lost (being able deal with positioning and sync to CDs or downtime through changes in rotation as aided by changes in speed). The idea is literally just two parts: (1) GL falls off stack by stack and (2) you can consume excess GL duration.

Therefore not only maintaining full speed and damage, but also benefitting from the Ki usage with maybe times during burst windows where dumping all your GL stacks into Ki would be worth it (AKA: Exactly the same situation as with TK)

Given that TK spammers were only as common as Ice Mages and outside of meta comps one could still perform highly without using TK rotations, even despite TK dealing 30% more damage than intended, I would be perfectly fine with that.

[Kalise]

That small part was still a hell of a lot more than literally zero interaction, as was suggested by removing GL from Monk.

It's basically the same as not having GL. When you only use it when you have CD's that bypass it consuming GL or when your GL is going to fall off irregardless.

As mentioned, so long as GL is tied to a passive DPS gain, it's going to be near impossible to get an actually worthy "Mechanic" from it and at best you'll get something watered down into Huton/Blood of the Dragon/Enochian where it's a binary toggle on at the start of a fight and oh look you can now use X ability every now and then.

Since what will always happen, is someone will do the math to find out if/when consuming GL is a DPS gain and then it will only be a "Mechanic" in those circumstances where it is (Which, has so far been predominantly "When GL doesn't matter")

This is effectively a non-mechanic. Just as much as crap like Darkside/Enochian/Blood of the Dragon/Huton are a non-mechanic. Where you only think about them once or twice in a fight and only in very specific scenarios.

They're one and the same. AST Sects being designed as a simply out-of-combat SCH/WHM mode toggle, rather than actually building around hastened/periodic and empowered/preemptory mechanics to be used with synergy between them, is what made AST feel like a WHM/SCH-lite.

But that's what I was pointing out. AST Sects are crap because they're simply "Be a WHM" or "Be a SCH".

If they were instead designed around making AST do uniquely AST things it would have been much less of a problem. But no, it was "Here, have Regen and Medica II" or "Here have a shitty Adlo and Succor"

At least we're getting some mixing of the Sects in combat through skills like Celestial Intersection and Neutral Sect... Though, that's still just being WHM/SCH-lite these days...

Why are you condemning me over it, even ignoring the fact that imitating a DRG-lite or NIN-lite is not what we'd want? It was your suggestion. I simply pointed out that having the stances do so little would amount to only bloat, either in terms of relatively useless features or CS-like empty apm.

Since you seem to miss the point.

I mentioned that the stances are NOT making MNK into DRG-lite or NIN-lite. Which is the opposite of how Sects were designed, which instead of allowing AST to be AST, were simply WHM-lite and SCH-lite toggles.

Stances that are actual stances that have actual impact on how you play, while still retaining a uniquely MNK gameplay have yet to be seen and nothing similar has existed in the game (Outside maybe old Darkside? Where without it you got normal MP regen but with it you relied on an increased MP generation from skill usage?)

With an actual appreciable effect on your gameplay, rather than useless Earth stance and mandatory Fire/Wind depending on what SE feels like making the best with a particular MNK change.

To say nothing about how it would interact with optimization, where you might alter which stance you use depending on how much SkS you have on your gear if you wanted to min/max DPS.

With the final point being, it would allow the devs to be able to let MNK's go as fast as they want. They've already noted how they don't want the rift between top and bottom tier players to widen because of the bottom players difficulty playing fast. This is why they gutted a bunch of MNK's oGCD's when they added the 4th stack of GL.

They not only already expressed concerns, but also made detrimental changes to MNK's because of this.

Meanwhile, a static, out of combat choice that enables a player to tune the speed of their MNK would completely alleviate this concern of theirs, because it would mean that the bottom tier players who struggle with speed demon MNK play could opt for a lower speed and get increased damage to compensate, allowing them to still be on par with other MNK's while playing at a more managable pace.

Thus, it would let them actually add in fast gameplay with all the oGCD's MNK used to have for all the players who wish to play that way.

Trying to shoehorn in a pogo style alternating speed into the core gameplay of MNK, will just have them continue to do things to curb MNK's maximum APM so the people who can't play speed demon MNK can still utilize the job.

This could be even more relevant if other changes are made to MNK's kit, such as an improved Chakra system, better Riddle skills, more skills to use in combos, enhanced combos (I.e. Each skill functions like a Mudra and gives a different bonus to the final Coeurl skill) and the plethora of other things that could be altered to have more engagement attached.

I don't suggest something as simple as 3 stances that are functionally the same DPS increase for the sake of being redundant or poorly thought out, but instead because such a feature will serve to help MNK grow in potential complexity because instead of being designed in a vacuum, it is an idea designed with a problem that the devs have outright stated in mind.

So, yes. Convert the current useless Stances into "Useless" Stances, to allow for the betterment of the job as a whole. Rather than trying to cling on to useless features that serve to only hold back the potential of the job or outright cause detriment to it.

[Shurrikhan]

It's basically the same as not having GL. When you only use it when you have CD's that bypass it consuming GL or when your GL is going to fall off regardless.

That is already more thought than required by most decisions to be made in this game. But, you know what, fine, let's just get rid of all choices since they amount to nothing, even if somehow everyone was, in just your last post, being utterly baffled by that very same "non-decision".

But that's what I was pointing out. AST Sects are crap because they're simply "Be a WHM" or "Be a SCH".

If they were instead designed around making AST do uniquely AST things it would have been much less of a problem. But no, it was "Here, have Regen and Medica II" or "Here have a shitty Adlo and Succor"

That's my point. So why would you possibly want to do the same thing to MNK?

Stances that are actual stances that have actual impact on how you play

Are not what you are suggesting here. You are suggesting, effectively, SkS tiers, but as uses up three different buttons. They have zero use in combat, especially if, as you suggested, we were to lock them out like AST Sects. And I do not see how you could possibly throw out any all ideas of in-combat speed manipulation, because there could be a faintly more optimal choice -- albeit a different one at any given point in time -- yet not see how much a Damage-based permanent speed option would favor raid-buff-heavy compositions do to synergies with oGCDs, LF, and Demolish, effectively removing all higher speed options because you cannot switch them in combat.

You worry about the chance that burning GL might be optimal once or twice per minute yet are completely fine with being stuck in a low-speed mode permanently? How do you reconcile this?

If the threat of losing at most 5% performance for not making use of GL-burns (similarly to TKs, but without suddenly dropping your speed completely) in a raid-buff-heavy comp is enough to say that all choice was removed from Monk's speed, how is a permanent AST Sect, for which there will be a single best choice at all times, not just at a given moment, somehow better?

[Kalise]

That's my point. So why would you possibly want to do the same thing to MNK?

I'm not suggesting the same thing for MNK.

I'm not suggesting MNK get stances that simply turns their skills into DRG's dual 5 point combo or into NIN's Ninjutsu or into SAM's Sen combos and Iaijutsu.

Since, as I've said repeatedly, the main problem with AST's Sects is that their effect on AST's skills is to literally just copy one of the existing healers skills.

Had AST gained unique skills from Sects, they'd be less of an issue.

not see how much a Damage-based permanent speed option would favor raid-buff-heavy compositions do to synergies with oGCDs, LF, and Demolish, effectively removing all higher speed options because you cannot switch them in combat.

You worry about the chance that burning GL might be optimal once or twice per minute yet are completely fine with being stuck in a low-speed mode permanently? How do you reconcile this?

I can reconcile this by the nature of not being so narrowminded as to not have the capacity to comprehend potential designs for skills.

Given that I have literally stated no numbers for a reason.

Thus, it would be possible (Also, necessary) to balance the numbers of the increase in damage to the increase in SkS.

In addition, it's possible to adjust exactly how skills interact. Such as if oGCD's are a concern, then make the damage up be Weaponskill Damage modifier and thus not affect oGCD's. If Demolish is a concern, make the increased attack rate an actual Skill Speed modifier so the DoT damage is increased.

how is a permanent AST Sect, for which there will be a single best choice at all times, not just at a given moment, somehow better?

It is better because it allows for more flexibility in the design of Monk as a whole.

Rather than focusing entirely on a MNK playing with his speed for ~5% difference at the cost of the rest of MNK's kit being poorly designed due to dev's concern for high speed potential on MNK.

The stance suggestion is intentionally simple because it then allows for the entire rest of MNK's kit to be more interesting.

Unless you're so delusional to think that the same devs who gutted like half of MNK's oGCD's when adding in an extra 5% recast time reduction from 4th GL stack due to concerns of MNK APM would be prepared to keep said 20% total recast time reduction whilst also making something like Chakra be more interesting than RNG oGCD?