Positionals

[LeonKeyh]

My point in the above post is that monk having omnipresent directional requirements and a massive haste buff is counter intuitive. Given their speed, they're already losing dps from having a shorter window to reposition and keep track of their buffs. So adding yet another button, which adds yet another buff to keep track of on top of all that, does nothing to dismiss the issue whatsoever. It just exacerbate the issue.

Dragoon works because its a single long rotation, so at some point you just know what to press. Samurai is about building up burst DPS. Monk's key feature is being fast, so lessening the number of positional requirements does not detract from the job's character. It just makes it more balanced with the other melee dps. Otherwise, what is SE going to do? The only thing left besides eliminating positional requirements would be buffing its raw damage through the roof so that it matches the performance of other melee in hard content, and make it an utter god in all casual content.

Edit: Another perspective is that its the speed of the monk that weighs more negatively on the job, because each button press represents a decision, an expenditure of mental resources, from the player. So the monk has to perform more button presses than a dragoon or samurai to achieve the same result. Forcing directionals on top of that just adds more human resource consumption to each button press. So it wears out players faster, and then performance degrades. It's a significant issue in FFXIV because of how long some boss fights take.

I've admittedly only leveled MNK to 80 then set it aside, but I only remember Back and Flank positional requirements which, if you're close to the transition area, 1.5 seconds is more than enough to move between. Also, even a MNK not hitting positionals or hitting positionals sporadically would do good DPS. The fact that there are so many positionals give them a higher skill ceiling which is great for players that are looking for a complex melee class.

Also, the MNK rotation may be a little complex, but it was fairly easy to get into a rhythm with the positionals and it _feels good_. You brought up Dragoon and that has something that I would like to see with MNK though. MNK has very little visual indicators on whether or not you're actually hitting positionals (bigger numbers, if you know what the numbers should be). Whereas Dragoon has 1 ability that I'd love to see at least on MNK; Raiden Thrust. It replaces the combo starter with a slightly higher potency ability if you hit your positionals. It'd be great to see something like that because it's a nice visual indicator that pops up and says "Good job!" Having Dragon Kick replacing Bootshine with another ability if you hit the positional would be more interesting than the current Leaden Fist (double Bootshine potency) at the very least.

Maybe it's just me though

[Fendred]

I've admittedly only leveled MNK to 80 then set it aside, but I only remember Back and Flank positional requirements which, if you're close to the transition area, 1.5 seconds is more than enough to move between. Also, even a MNK not hitting positionals or hitting positionals sporadically would do good DPS. The fact that there are so many positionals give them a higher skill ceiling which is great for players that are looking for a complex melee class.

Also, the MNK rotation may be a little complex, but it was fairly easy to get into a rhythm with the positionals and it _feels good_. You brought up Dragoon and that has something that I would like to see with MNK though. MNK has very little visual indicators on whether or not you're actually hitting positionals (bigger numbers, if you know what the numbers should be). Whereas Dragoon has 1 ability that I'd love to see at least on MNK; Raiden Thrust. It replaces the combo starter with a slightly higher potency ability if you hit your positionals. It'd be great to see something like that because it's a nice visual indicator that pops up and says "Good job!" Having Dragon Kick replacing Bootshine with another ability if you hit the positional would be more interesting than the current Leaden Fist (double Bootshine potency) at the very least.

Maybe it's just me though

Yeah, having some kind of visual indicator that we are hitting from the right position would help. In practice, mobs move around and come in various sizes, so its a fact of life that monks miss positionals very often in comparison to other melee jobs. The devs moved large chunks of our damage out of positional bonuses and into our base damage to compensate. If a dragoon or samuarai has to fight a large turtle, they have several abilities to use before hitting their positional related ones, so they have very generous amounts of time to move into the correct position. Monks don't really have that option without blowing abilities, which leads to more buttons to consider on a class with a 20% built in haste buff.

[Mikey_R]

If a dragoon or samuarai has to fight a large turtle, they have several abilities to use before hitting their positional related ones, so they have very generous amounts of time to move into the correct position. Monks don't really have that option without blowing abilities, which leads to more buttons to consider on a class with a 20% built in haste buff.

If you have time to prepare for your positionals on Dragoon/Samurai based on what an enemy is going to do, you have time on Monk. Any experienced Monk doesn't even have to think about what position they have to be in for each ability, they think, Bootshine is next and instantly know it is a rear positional. Also, Dragoon alternates Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw, a rear and flank positional, if you say you struggle to do it on Monk, so you also struggle to do it on Dragoon as well?

It just sounds like you need more practice on Monk rather than there being a fundamental flaw with the job.

[Fendred]

If you have time to prepare for your positionals on Dragoon/Samurai based on what an enemy is going to do, you have time on Monk. Any experienced Monk doesn't even have to think about what position they have to be in for each ability, they think, Bootshine is next and instantly know it is a rear positional. Also, Dragoon alternates Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw, a rear and flank positional, if you say you struggle to do it on Monk, so you also struggle to do it on Dragoon as well?

It just sounds like you need more practice on Monk rather than there being a fundamental flaw with the job.

Of course the monk knows where he needs to be to do max damage. He just physically can't get there in time all the time. Try doing that when trash mobs are running around. It takes a few seconds for tanks to pick them up, and the monks attack speed means its better to hit him in the face than wait. Another example is when bosses decide to turn around without warning to do some mechanic like Argath. Because monks attack so quickly and Argath's hit box is so large, you're guaranteed to land a hit out of position before you can even consider hitting true north or that other ability we have now. That's just life when a dude has a 20% haste buff and 100% positional requirements on all attacks.

[Mikey_R]

There are no positiionals required on trash packs except the initial use of Twin Snakes, which, who cares, it's a dungeon, it's one use of twin Snakes you are going to miss.

As for bosses, you need to know what they are going to do. I believe Argath is the last boss of Rabanastre? If so, when he does special attacks, he always faces south, you need to remember the line between rear and flank and be straddling that, remembering you can go inside the hitbox to straddle these lines as well to make movement to the correct position easier, which is something I very rarely see people do. They always seem to want to go around the outside.

However, at the end of the day, you just have to accept you will miss some positionals, it is not the end of the world and it will not tank your DPS unless you do it constantly. So, just like BLM, fight knowledge is crucial.

[wereotter]

If you have time to prepare for your positionals on Dragoon/Samurai based on what an enemy is going to do, you have time on Monk. Any experienced Monk doesn't even have to think about what position they have to be in for each ability, they think, Bootshine is next and instantly know it is a rear positional. Also, Dragoon alternates Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw, a rear and flank positional, if you say you struggle to do it on Monk, so you also struggle to do it on Dragoon as well?

It just sounds like you need more practice on Monk rather than there being a fundamental flaw with the job.

It's more that the monk player has less time to prepare to adjust on the fly and hit the positional than the dragoon does.

One is a high speed job, the other is not. One has positional requirements on every skill, meaning you have to CONSTANTLY be watching for any time an enemy might turn (like if it's doing an attack that targets a healer) while the other has the majority of skills not having this requirement. And this doesn't even consider bad tanks that either spin the bosses around erratically, or who hold a boss with just its nose sticking out of an AOE, making it impossible for the monk to hit any positional requirements (this happens SO much in the newest level 80 dungeon)

I play both jobs, and positional are a much bigger deal that you have to watch constantly on monk than on dragoon. If a boss turns in the middle of a dragoon's rotation, they've lost nothing, except on three skills in the entire rotation.

[Jirah]

I suggest a separate bar to tell where the hell we are fighting from cuz the little circle reticle isn't doing it for me especially since its supposed to be a central mechanic for 3/4 of the DPS



Xenoblade for example, has a icon that shows where we are at like Side/Back/Front and id wish ff14 had a similar bar

[JisKing98]

I’m of the minority and that I want positionals to go. I hate having to bob and weave around a boss. I’m to used to games where positionals don’t even exist. Just let me do my combos in peace without worrying about if I’m in the proper place to do more damage.

[IruruCece]

The most valuable aspect to this discussion for me is that it pretty much confirms that the change to Greased Lightning was poorly conceived on every possible level. Now Monk is "too fast" and positionals are "too hard" or "annoying" for some players as a result, on top of the rest of the kit still being a garbage fire dating back to poorly conceived systems from ARR, stacked on another garbage fire of changes from Stormblood, stacked on yet another garbage fire that is pretty much everything related to 5.X. I'd rather SE left well enough alone if they were going to failblog into an absolute nothing of a change near the tail end of an expansion. At this rate I don't think there's even any real value in learning the ins and outs of the job right now, because there's no way to guarantee that 6.0 Monk will even resemble what it was beforehand.

[Kolsykol]

Why would Monk be '' too fast '' now after GL was made into a passive?
We had it before, it makes no logical sense.
If it's '' too fast '' now then it was before too.
No offense but sometimes when I read people talking about Monks I get the sense that people don't play it.

And if people think that Monk is too fast then there are other Jobs to play, I really have a hard time believing that people who have actively played Monk for years ( I've played it since ARR, Pug was my starting Job ) wants Monk to be slower.
Monk being fast paced is literally one of the main selling points.
I really don't sympathize at all with the whole '' it's too hard and annoying '' either, again it just sounds to me like the job isn't for you then which is totally fine not every job needs to be for you.

I guess that my only real problem with it is that it could feel more rewarding.
The Bootshine guarantee crit for example feels rewarding, but most of the others are just like 30 extra potency.
In a potential rework it'd be cool if they made it a bit more interesting.
Sure it'd suck more to miss positional tho, but again it's part of the Job fantasy and being rewarded for playing properly feels good.
I don't think that Monk is even difficult to play, but I empathize with the fact that not everyone enjoys and/ or is capable of playing fast and keeping up.
But at the same time I don't see why that means that every single Job needs to be slower, there are people who enjoy the fast pace who wants something to play too.

But I dunno... I've always had a great distaste for this whole thing about '' I don't like something so it needs to fundamentally change '' when you already have other options available to you.
It's the same with people who don't like certain character designs and try to get them changed instead of playing something they like and letting people have things they like too.
Like it's not just about you.
And we're talking about some pretty fundamental things about Monk here in terms of the Job fantasy and gameplay.
To me it's sorta like arguing that BLM needs to be more mobile because positioning is '' too hard and frustrating '', when it's just not part of the Job fantasy at all and you have that in Red Mage.

Edit: Too be clear, not directed at Iruru in particular but just in general.