Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

I do recall that fights like Avatar were almost a race against TP (that and, of course the, abuse of fracture+ToD+Demo) so it actually makes sense that chakra (with TP in mind) works the way it does.

Man, I was a Fracture-ToD-abusing* SkS junkie. That fight got me so bad it made me wish Bards had a single-target song-focusing option. Like, just imagine if the benefits were allotted based on proximity. I'd force my Bard to be glued to me between every ranged mechanic.

* Before anyone gets up in arms, I'm not saying it was somehow an exploit. I was just the jerk who'd sooner ask my Bard for Army's Paeon 40 seconds early than have to clip Twin Snakes a couple seconds early every other rotational string.

In fact this makes me wonder about SkS as a whole, at least in the melee side. Does any melee actually uses SkS melds or pieces?

SAM actually puts it to decent enough use and it makes the job so much more fun that I have to say it's pretty useful. The excess can be perfectly absorbed through a Yuki-HG or Gekko/Kasha-HG, or when your comp has no significant raid buffs, you can actually just plow right through to get more Shoha stacks at the cost of some delay to TG. I run about 3.3k SkS with food, maybe a little more and since it hits breakpoints I'm still barely missing on Monk (getting Twin to last to all but Twin itself in Double-True was more than 600 SkS ago, iirc) I've actually been enjoying it a bit more than Monk itself. Well, for that reason and that TK, SsS, Anatman, etc. are more than kinda crap right now.

As for what it would mean for TP to still be a thing, or MP a thing for all classes, all I can say is it'd definitely require a minor change and would best be exploited with a few larger ones. For instance, I'd been pushing to make MP and TP ticks GCD based (at 20% less raw value, ofc) since... early ARR, I think, just because of how badly it punishes SkS builds. That said, I'd like to more or less remove the ability to outright TP/MP starve, such as by having their costs reduce the lower your %TP/MP is, but with a proportionate decrease in output. It'd then be punishing, but never removing potential gameplay. And voila, now you can steadily return Rockbreaker as even a single-target utility skill (batter him up, break his armor, or maintain GL from range) balanced around its TP cost. Etc., etc.

Following that line of thought, while most classes benefit from not having TP, MNK is the one that, kind of, suffers from the lack of it.

While I don't actually think it was that big a deal on Monk (contrary to what I just put above, I know), though only because so few opportunities were taken in the first place, I think you're noting something far too many have forgotten. A restriction or restrictive resource, even if literally a limitation, can be a very good thing for design because it actually opens up the potential for complexity and skill-diversity over the gameplay it limits. So long as the considerations it causes create a playflow that is more engaging and fun than without them (all relevant annoyances or lack thereof included), that's an improvement.

I even try to put myself in the shoes of others that think monk is fine the way it is, AND try to change my rotation or playstyle. But the annoying issues keep rearing their ugly heads.

As often the case, added SkS does help, but unlike with late SB, it can't completely solve anything. In late SB, you could build up enough speed that DK would only fall off before DK itself and Twin before Twin, costing you a "whopping" 29 to 38 potency for a far larger increase when performing a Double-True rotation, and safely get an extra TK per PB volley to boot, or use it with RoW alone while still precisely hitting Twin/DK timings. It felt great, just by pushing through the no-mans-land to the side of true SkS junkies.

But in ShB? SsS is still garbage, TK is still garbage, and you're actually even more obliged to use the Anatman opener than lower speeds (though, I guess every build is now, given that RoF and PB are now synced).

Outside of that (and only because i have high ping) make PB be 11 seconds, that simple change would almost certantly kill 90% of high ping complains.

Not to be overly nitpicky, but, GCDs aren't going to be affected except perhaps on the very first action that requires the oGCD's activation, until over 250 ms ping, simply because the client will ping the server for any GCDs 500 ms in advance. oGCDs, on the other hand, take roughly twice one's ping in uptime cost. (That's largely why RoF really did have a positive impact on lower SkS, high-ping Monks in regards to double-weaving. I sure as hell felt the difference before upgrading my internet.) Worse, extending the duration to 11 seconds means that high-SkS and (now) low-ping players like me will be able to get an extra action out of it, even while the high-ping players are unlikely to.

You'd be much better off having the duration have a "pre-stage" of sorts, or begin to tick down only after the completion of a relevant action, and offer it a bit of extra strength in the form of depositing the Monk into a "Chimera" or "All-" stance of sorts when it ends. That way one could at least recover if packet loss ate their Coeurl input and gave them their following non-Coeurl skill instead as their last PB action.

I would like postionals to feel meaningful, not just "LOL if its not leadenfist who cares if i miss it"

Final note: Even ignoring Leaden Fist, Monk positionals are still at least as significant as those of the other melee if you put them in the context of positional ppgcd. SAM has 73 positional epotency per combo, at most 73 positional epotency in a given GCD, 146 per rotational string, and therefore averages some 14.6 positional eppgcd. DRG has at has most 44 epositional potency in a given GCD, 176 per rotational string, and therefore 17.6 eppgcd. Ninja has at most 60 epotency in a given GCD, 60 in each combo, averaging a little under 20 ppgcd. Given Monk's 1.54x damage modifier under Twin + GL4, Monk's raw 20 potency per positional is already more than 30. Even exempting the massive value of Leaden Fists, Monk would already be holding 30 ppgcd, more than double that of Samurai, for instance.

But, admittedly, I would also prefer for the potency variance to be a bit larger, especially if we could have back some stance-less, position-less skills to weave into our rotation appropriately (a la Fracture and ToD as just over average ppgcd so that they can be flexibly timed but still afford some skill-gap with further optimization of their own).