How is monk after the rework?

[VentVanitas]

MNK suggestion for 6.0:

-Every two rear-positional leaden bootshines will proc a "super bootshine" with a flashy animation and higher potency. They can implement this into the job gauge and will reward Monks for hitting their most important positional. This addresses the complaint that MNK doesn't "build up to anything" and is less flashy than other classes.
-Each PB phase will end with one of these super bootshines to replace the usual final bootshine. In order to prevent drifting and a snowball effect if you miss a bootshine, I propose that activating PB should reset your "bootshine stacks". Correct me if I'm wrong, but in your downtime between PB you should be able to do two of these super bootshines (six bootshines in total) and this PB will prevent you from having an excess stack going into your burst phase. This way PB always ends with your most flashy and satisfying move if done correctly.

Would any MNK players like a mechanic like this? I would love something along these lines for Endwalker to add to the satisfaction of the job and reward players for hitting positionals.

I'd like something to build towards like Polyglot or Shoha, especially in regards to positionals, but if it's just a bigger/stronger Bootshine, then no.

More emphasis on Bootshine is the last thing MNK needs. If the job receives a mechanic like this then it'd be better off as a separate weaponskill entirely.

Furthermore, your PB suggestion implies that you're doing nothing but Bootshine, no thanks, PB is already too similar to Inner Release.

[Powercow]

I was kickin' around an idea, it aint perfect but it'd be a damn sight more interesting than what we have now.

The Forbidden Chakra, Enlightenment, Tornado Kick, Perfect Balance, Shoulder Tackle and Anatman are all redesigned. The Fist of Element abilities are removed because they're useless. Make Fists of Wind a passive if it's so important.

So Chakras get split into the Light and Dark chakras from our job quests. Also we have a max of 7. (Why did they make such a big deal about 7 chakras of Light and 7 of Dark and then give us 5 of Yellow? Ugh.)

Every time you land a positional, or if you use an on-GCD aoe skill and hit 3+ targets, you get a Chakra of Light. 5 light chakras is Enlightenment.
Every time you land an autoattack, you get a Chakra of Dark. 5 of these is The Forbidden Chakra.

Anatman is now a 3-minute cooldown. Using Anatman takes 5 Light and 5 Dark. It's on the GCD and is essentially your power-up phase (accompanied by a cool animation and sound effect). After activation, you gain a huge buff for 20 seconds: no positional requirements, +50% movement (so Sprint), +30% damage, and +30% haste. However, you can no longer generate chakras for the duration. This prevents an overflow on oGCDs and keeps this phase from getting too out of hand, while still keeping it super fast and powerful. And since you don't need to sweat positionals during it, you can focus on just beating the everliving hell out of your enemy. Re-activating Anatman during its duration will use Tornado Kick, which is now on the GCD and deals a much greater amount of damage (and we can actually see the cool animation), but ends the effect. Sorta similar to Confiteor for Paladin in that it ends a damage mode, and can be used early if there's a phase transition or a need for some immediate burst.

Perfect Balance is redesigned so that every 90 seconds, for 15 seconds, autoattacks also generate a Chakra of Light, and positionals also generate a Chakra of Dark. Let the oGCDs floooow. (Also it fits thematically methinks, balance between light and dark and all that.)

Shoulder Tackle no longer deals damage, just closes the gap. This will slightly slow down oGCD usage, since you're gonna be using a lot of Chakra abilities. Also you'll always have it available if you need to get off a boss for a bit.

With 7 max chakras you should never theoretically overcap unless you're neglectful on spending them, and you generate them so frequently that you'll be weaving in an absolute buttload of oGCD abilities. Might be a few too many, in all honesty. Ah well.

Lastly, re-add Riddle of Wind as its own button, a 2 minute cooldown that increases the range of your melee weapon skills to 20 yalms for 10 seconds. The ultimate disconnect move to make up for the inability to generate chakras off a target. Your autoattacks will not continue if you move out of range, and your oGCDs most likely won't reach, so you're still losing a lot of damage but you're not entirely helpless. Or add Chi Blast which gives 1 chakra of each, but that feels way too similar to Ninja and Samurai's generic ranged filler move. SSS will stay more or less the same as-is, but now it has a more distinct role without manual chakra generation. Riddle of Earth could do with some tweaking but I'm not sure on how to get that working. Personally I'd remove the no-positionals thing and just make it a pure defensive skill of some sort, but I know a lot of people want it to keep the anti-positionals functionality it has now.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

I'd like something to build towards like Polyglot or Shoha, especially in regards to positionals, but if it's just a bigger/stronger Bootshine, then no.

More emphasis on Bootshine is the last thing MNK needs. If the job receives a mechanic like this then it'd be better off as a separate weaponskill entirely.

Furthermore, your PB suggestion implies that you're doing nothing but Bootshine, no thanks, PB is already too similar to Inner Release.

MNK is gonna have an emphasis on bootshine unless you want to radically redesign the job from the ground up. This just makes the current gameplay more satisfying. Also I don’t know what you read but my PB suggestion was just to prevent misalignment. You are still alternating DK and BS. If you want to de-emphasize bootshine then you could do a mechanic like this on other forms. I originally tried to think up a version of this with your couerl form third combo buttons, but it was much harder to align everything while also fitting it into the burst window.

I just like my current suggestion because it wouldn’t change up the flow of the rotation too much which I actually quite like, just make it meatier with a little less margin for error.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

Additionally, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Bootshine besides the fact that it’s a level 1 skill with a basic animation. This seems to be most people’s issue with the skill, but during the normal rotation it comes up once every two 123 combos. I do like seeing that big crit number at regular intervals in regards to the feeling of playing a fast paced hand-to-hand job tbh. A more flashy attack to build up to would make the job more satisfying however.

Would you maybe be in favor of this if you also had to hit the other two positionals correctly for the proc? (So basically your entire combo leading up to bootshine has to be positionally correct). And then PB could also be redesigned somehow. (It’s still a far cry from inner release imo with the weaving and positional switching).

[SpeckledBurd]

MNK is gonna have an emphasis on bootshine unless you want to radically redesign the job from the ground up. This just makes the current gameplay more satisfying. Also I don’t know what you read but my PB suggestion was just to prevent misalignment. You are still alternating DK and BS. If you want to de-emphasize bootshine then you could do a mechanic like this on other forms. I originally tried to think up a version of this with your couerl form third combo buttons, but it was much harder to align everything while also fitting it into the burst window.

I just like my current suggestion because it wouldn’t change up the flow of the rotation too much which I actually quite like, just make it meatier with a little less margin for error.

You really don't have to radically redesign the job from the ground up to take the emphasis off of bootshine, you just have to change Dragon Kick back to an effect that slightly buffs every action instead of hyper charging one. That's functionally what it was as the blunt debuff, and if Dragon Kick were just a 10% Crit or Direct Hit buff to the Monk then it would do that without the need for a phase where you spam Leaden Bootshines.

There's been a lot to dislike about Shadowbringers Monk and while Leaden Bootshine isn't the worst thing about it, I still don't care for it. It's still part of the continued trend where Monk's original design has been weakened by implementing system wide changes to Monk when the job's form based combos made it work differently. I'd rather they change it back to something more similar to what it was pre-Shadowbringers rather than lean into Shadowbringers errors any further.

[Ceasaria]

They should just let the guy who designed Tifa gameplay from FFVII remake to do the design for 6.0 MNK.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

You really don't have to radically redesign the job from the ground up to take the emphasis off of bootshine, you just have to change Dragon Kick back to an effect that slightly buffs every action instead of hyper charging one. That's functionally what it was as the blunt debuff, and if Dragon Kick were just a 10% Crit or Direct Hit buff to the Monk then it would do that without the need for a phase where you spam Leaden Bootshines.

There's been a lot to dislike about Shadowbringers Monk and while Leaden Bootshine isn't the worst thing about it, I still don't care for it. It's still part of the continued trend where Monk's original design has been weakened by implementing system wide changes to Monk when the job's form based combos made it work differently. I'd rather they change it back to something more similar to what it was pre-Shadowbringers rather than lean into Shadowbringers errors any further.

This sounds less satisfying and fun than the current iteration of the job where you work toward bootshine as the big damage attack. MNK already has a damage buff they maintain during their combos and another one to maintain sounds boring compared to the leaden fist buff. I also don’t see how it makes the monk more about the form based combos since there’s still gonna be an optional rotation to stick to, just without the satisfying bootshines. And if you don’t like perfect balance, suggest a better version of a burst phase. Saying it’s just spamming bootshine is still kinda disingenuous, but if you wanted to make it more complex to build towards a big attack that could be cool.

[Shurrikhan]

This sounds less satisfying and fun than the current iteration of the job where you work toward bootshine as the big damage attack.

That depends on how it's situated. Personally, I found Dragon Kick in the context of ARR and StB gameplay (due to Demolish's duration at those times allowing for Dragon Kick to be dropped just before Demolish and its own reapplication in exchange for a Bootshine and True Strike to notable net potency gain) more interesting than the current Leaden Fist combos.

I also don’t see how it makes the monk more about the form based combos since there’s still gonna be an optional rotation to stick to, just without the satisfying bootshines.

Again, the past (and especially the StB Riddle of Fire slow-down) has done this part better, as optimal play then often tended to itself rotate between different rotations, while further changing more or less on the fly based on add spawns, number of DoT targets being maintained, and forced downtime.

And if you don’t like perfect balance, suggest a better version of a burst phase. Saying it’s just spamming bootshine is still kinda disingenuous, but if you wanted to make it more complex to build towards a big attack that could be cool.

For my part, Perfect Balance was a plentifully interesting mechanic back when it offered distinct advantages in AoE, utility, and ST throughput, and especially when those throughput affordances depended on one's other abilities and starting form (e.g. Riddle of Wind, Coeurl form). If anything, it was the siphoning of AoE potency from Rockbreaker to other (new) AoE GCDs, the loss of our utility, and the removal of our core mechanic so devalued that pinnacle ability, not any flaw in the concept itself.

But, of course, I'm the in the apparent minority who actually liked Greased Lightning as a mechanic, perhaps most especially when it was a challenge to maintain (e.g. Brayflox HM speedruns, T10, etc., back when it had only a 10s duration), and would rather not have had the job's core mechanic gutted rather than revised and polished, let alone on a vague hope that, contrary to all recent job designs, we'd get something interesting in its place.

That said, it's not disingenuous to say that PB is currently Leaden Fist spam. Optimally used under an ideal GCD length, it is.

They should just let the guy who designed Tifa gameplay from FFVII remake to do the design for 6.0 MNK.

Sadly, I doubt much of the spectacle of that system would carry over to one where it's very obvious you're just punching vaguely in the direction of a generic cylinder unaffected by your actions, in place of VII-R's in which the actual timing and geometry matters.

[SpeckledBurd]

This sounds less satisfying and fun than the current iteration of the job where you work toward bootshine as the big damage attack. MNK already has a damage buff they maintain during their combos and another one to maintain sounds boring compared to the leaden fist buff. I also don’t see how it makes the monk more about the form based combos since there’s still gonna be an optional rotation to stick to, just without the satisfying bootshines. And if you don’t like perfect balance, suggest a better version of a burst phase. Saying it’s just spamming bootshine is still kinda disingenuous, but if you wanted to make it more complex to build towards a big attack that could be cool.

It's fundamentally the same feel and it opens up the opportunity for the big hit that you build some other way as Vent suggested rather than doubling down on Leaden Bootshines. Again, I frankly don't consider Leaden Bootshine to be satisfying as a big hit at all and the amount of potency tied up in its positional is so high that it's actually something of an issue since it's functionally the same as missing every single positional a Dragoon would have in both combos all tied up on one GCD. I'd rather see Tornado Kick be turned into a Weaponskill so we can actually see it's entire animation and have it be the final blow of a Riddle of Fire window, or properly executing 15 positionals consecutively giving you a resource that would cut the recast of Six Sided Star in half allowing it to be used rotationally. There's plenty of more interesting things that can be done with Monk's kit than leaning into Bootshine.

It's no more disingenuous to say that you spam Leaden Bootshine during Perfect Balance than it is to say you spam Fell Cleave in Inner Release. That's just what you do in it, to the point where it's optimal to allow Twin Snakes to fall off in the middle of Riddle of Fire to continue spamming it.

As for something else Perfect Balance could be: Blitzes. I said this during the 90 page Monk Needs a Rework thread, but Perfect Balance could be used to tie the Form Based combos into the Blitz System. You activate Perfect Balance and will be able to do a short string of Weaponskills in an order that would correspond to a given sequence of Opo Opo, Coeurl, and Raptor skills. The correct sequence would allow you to use some sort of finishing move like Suplex, Dolphin Blow, Rising Phoenix, or Phantom Rush. Unlike Dances or Ninjutsus, you'd still execute the skills during your Blitz period rather than just doing some other animation.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

That said, it's not disingenuous to say that PB is currently Leaden Fist spam. Optimally used under an ideal GCD length, it is.

It's literally not though, and it's not close to being like Inner Release.