Controversioal Changes to Monk

[Sooru]

This is assuming Anatman stays, or, if they have more ideas for Monk in EW that could give Anatman a use. However, if they don't give it another use that isn't just ignoring positionals number 3, then I do think it should just be scrapped.

So just remove even more abilities? I mean I understand the philosophy behind "if it doesn't serve a purpose, just remove it", but I'm sure Anatman could find a place in Monk's kit. What about empowering Rockbreaker by having it apply Demolish for X amount of time?

Enhance was probably the wrong word, granted, however, if you actually put your suggestion of rotating demolish to every 2, it wouldn't line up. AT the most basic level, the first thing you will do is get Twin Snakes up, then Demolish, flank, rear, next would be True, Snap, rear, flank and repeat. Even after Perfect Balance, you will always Twin Snakes > Demolish...

You could just twin snakes twice on your first two rotations (Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Demolish, Bootshine, Twin Snakes, Snap Punch) and sacrifice 40 potency (the difference between True Strike and Snap Punch) for your rotations to line up smoothly, but if you really care about maximizing DPS then yes, I suppose you're right. Play less comfortably but more optimally or play more comfortably but less optimally. I think sacrificing optimal damage for comfort is a reasonable trade-off.

Yes, removing them entirely. If they have to stay, they could just be weaker versions of their riddles...

I like the idea of them being weaker versions of Riddles and then having them be upgraded, especially with Fists of Wind/Riddle of Wind being a trait.

And the pure power behind Leaden Bootshine is one of the issues with Monk. Granted, it could be changed so that Leaden Fist isn't so overbearing, however, you also have the whole misalignment issue...

You're right, Form Shift being an oGCD would mess up rotations aligning, which is something I hadn't come to realize at the time of suggesting it. On the topic of Leaden Fist however, what would you say if Leaden Fist applied to True Strike's damages? Perhaps half of the potency could go to the base damage and the other half could go to the positional boost. It would not reach the amount of damage that Bootshine gets because of guaranteed crit from rear while in opo-opo form, while still maintaining the different positionals between Dragon Kick's Leaden Fist and the Weaponskill that applies it.

[Mikey_R]

So just remove even more abilities? I mean I understand the philosophy behind "if it doesn't serve a purpose, just remove it", but I'm sure Anatman could find a place in Monk's kit. What about empowering Rockbreaker by having it apply Demolish for X amount of time?

With ShB they made an attempt to get rid of all 'extra' abilities...so if it serves no purpose, then it can go. However, I did say if the extra stuff they add in EW can benefit from Anatman, they can repurpose it for that, or even replace it with something else.

You're right, Form Shift being an oGCD would mess up rotations aligning, which is something I hadn't come to realize at the time of suggesting it. On the topic of Leaden Fist however, what would you say if Leaden Fist applied to True Strike's damages? Perhaps half of the potency could go to the base damage and the other half could go to the positional boost. It would not reach the amount of damage that Bootshine gets because of guaranteed crit from rear while in opo-opo form, while still maintaining the different positionals between Dragon Kick's Leaden Fist and the Weaponskill that applies it.

While it does reduce the damage of Bootshine, it just changes where the issue lies. Assuming a crit modifier of 1.5x, Bootshine currently gives 555 potency. By moving it to True strike, you make True Strike 470 and Bootshine would go down to 300. You essentially just moved the problem to a different weapon skill and just reduced the potency by 85. Ideally the damage increase would be applied across either the whole kit, or just for the weapon skills. The problem is working out what to do. You could divy up the 170 potency between the weapon skills, giving just under 30 potency per GCD. You could then make it extra damage on hitting positionals, but would that then make positionals far too important?

So, it is a balancing issue, not only in trying to avoid making one weapon skill too powerful, but it also has to be something that is good enough to prevent just forgoing Dragon Kick completely and doing double Bootshines.

[VentVanitas]

If MNK's identity is built around its freeform combos then it still fails in that regard because it does not take advantage of it like its previous iterations did. Making Leaden Bootshine weaker does not deal with the fact that you're still ultimately just alternating between Bootshine and DK, and double True Strike is still dead in the water because there isn't a big enough of a potency difference between it and Twin Snakes.

As for the fist stances... I've said this so many times in the past and a lot of MNK players have as well. They need to be deleted. Repeating the mistakes of SB and ShB by trying to make the fist stances relevant is not a worthwhile endeavour.

[Kolsykol]

Fist stances don't need to be deleted, they need to be merged.
I am still salty over losing the extra movement speed when we lost GL since we went back to fire stance.

They might as well make them a passive but I don't want to just lose more stuff again.
MNK running faster just makes thematic sense too, I do think it makes sense for NIN as well but considering that we rely the most on positionals and are such physical fighters that are also the fastest it only makes sense that we could run faster.
I know it's not a huge deal but still, you do feel the difference and it doesn't make sense that we lost it.

[Sqwall]

Fist stances don't need to be deleted, they need to be merged.
I am still salty over losing the extra movement speed when we lost GL since we went back to fire stance.

They might as well make them a passive but I don't want to just lose more stuff again.
MNK running faster just makes thematic sense too, I do think it makes sense for NIN as well but considering that we rely the most on positionals and are such physical fighters that are also the fastest it only makes sense that we could run faster.
I know it's not a huge deal but still, you do feel the difference and it doesn't make sense that we lost it.

With the way the game is going. Seems only tanks will have the stances moving forward. And DNC being perfectly happy with Closed Position.
I will play devils advocate here.

If we kept the stances in? Then merge fists into riddles.

Fists of Fire ---> Riddle of Fire (+5% damage + 20% damage = Broken...but awesome!)
Fists of Earth ---> Riddle of Earth (-10% damage taken + Positionals negated = keep combo and avoid damage)
Fists of Wind ----> Riddle of Wind (new skill) (+15% run speed + %20 evasion = need to get somewhere fast and avoid damage if possible)

Riddles now extend the bonuses to the entire party/raid. Riddles can no longer be stacked.

You effectively merge the stances into riddles and give more emphasis to riddle swapping to buff the party, kind of how strong Trick attack is and also the importance of timing your riddles.

Would this break the game...yup.

Would it be fun....YEP.

Will they do this....NOPE!

[Garnix]

I can imagine them doing a bard-ish thing for the fists.
Like, Fists of Fire increase your crit rate for the next 20s, earth makes it so that you charge a chakra when doing a positional correctly during the next 20s, wind increase your skill speed and run speed for 20s.
Not sure it would work well, but I can see them going that way, and push further into the proc-based design of chakra, and making MNK the proc-based melee.

[Sooru]

If we kept the stances in? Then merge fists into riddles.

Fists of Fire ---> Riddle of Fire (+5% damage + 20% damage = Broken...but awesome!)
Fists of Earth ---> Riddle of Earth (-10% damage taken + Positionals negated = keep combo and avoid damage)
Fists of Wind ----> Riddle of Wind (new skill) (+15% run speed + %20 evasion = need to get somewhere fast and avoid damage if possible)

Riddles now extend the bonuses to the entire party/raid. Riddles can no longer be stacked.

You effectively merge the stances into riddles and give more emphasis to riddle swapping to buff the party, kind of how strong Trick attack is and also the importance of timing your riddles.

Would this break the game...yup.

Would it be fun....YEP.

Will they do this....NOPE!

I agree with the merging of the fists into Riddles, but making them raid wide? No thanks, Monk would just become borderline mandatory on every high difficulty raid because of having access to so many party/raid wide buffs (Mantra 10% increase to healing actions, Brotherhood 5% damage increase and now 3 more?). Not only is Monk one of the better performing DPS jobs but with these changes it would also become one of the best supportive jobs available. And then they'd have to either make the raids more difficult which would only feed into the problem or nerf/rework Monk which would defeat the entire point of the changes in the first place.

I can imagine them doing a bard-ish thing for the fists.
Like, Fists of Fire increase your crit rate for the next 20s, earth makes it so that you charge a chakra when doing a positional correctly during the next 20s, wind increase your skill speed and run speed for 20s.
Not sure it would work well, but I can see them going that way, and push further into the proc-based design of chakra, and making MNK the proc-based melee.

While this would increase the speed of Chakra weaving and by default the speed of the job, which on the surface seems like the right direction, as long as the Chakra gauge is as shallow as it is currently (get 5 chakra, use oGCD damage skill gated behind chakra, repeat), it will not do anything other than to pump more damage into the job. I think the concept is a neat idea but it definitely needs more fleshing out.

[Kolsykol]

Personally I feel like the animations on MNK are a mixed bag, bootshine, true strike and snap punch feel very outdated.
But demolish and dragon kick looks great and should be what the others should live up to imo, and twin snakes is okay I guess.

But the three former kinda just feels weak and not like a '' Master Monk ''.
I also think that they make us feel slower than we actually are, if our animations were more like demolish for example overall then suddenly it'd feel way faster to play because more would be happening on screen.
With true strike and snap punch in particular tho there's these long pauses, I can kinda accept it with twin snakes since it's a buff tho.

[Jirah]

Personally I feel like the animations on MNK are a mixed bag, bootshine, true strike and snap punch feel very outdated.
But demolish and dragon kick looks great and should be what the others should live up to imo, and twin snakes is okay I guess.

But the three former kinda just feels weak and not like a '' Master Monk ''.
I also think that they make us feel slower than we actually are, if our animations were more like demolish for example overall then suddenly it'd feel way faster to play because more would be happening on screen.
With true strike and snap punch in particular tho there's these long pauses, I can kinda accept it with twin snakes since it's a buff tho.

Animations are a massive mix for MNK, Forbidden chakra and TK are fun to see visually and Demo and twin have that blunt force to them that makes them fun to use. But bootshine is way too drab to be used as it’s main attack for Crits (Ledan fist should’ve upgraded Bootshine to somthing else similar too Ruin IV not assigned but upgrades on its own or another example being refulgent)