Monk Identity and Blitz ?

[VirusOnline]

As for positionals being part of a Monk's identity, probably not, however it has always been a key part of how the job plays in the same way that one of the key features of Black Mage is finding that spot to stand still on.



Monk used to be a quick attacking crit machine between guaranteed crit on Bootshine and Internal release increasing critical rate. It was also the highest DPS which was balanced by GL stacks and doing positionals. You want the high damage, you have to work for it.

Over the years it has lost Internal Release and so it wasn't as much of a crit monster as it was before, Lost GL management and is now no longer the highest DPS. All Monk has from it's inception from ARR is it's positionals. As Monk players, we are literally holding onto one of the last things that made the job unique and stand out from the rest and, to top it off, Monk hasn't gained anything else unique to try and offset what was lost. Want positionals lessened? Give me a reason to want to lose positionals, don't just take them away for the sake of taking them away.

I agree. And that was MNKs identity. GL speed + crit. So fast that even NIN mains have a hard time keeping up at full GL.

And that's the issue in bold I'm pointing out. It's apparent that SE no longer cares about positionals or MNKs last dying identity. It will be lessened whether we like it or not for this expansion. And hopefully because they want to completely redesign it.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like the positionals. Always have. It makes it unique but after 6,7 years of a stagnant MNK that has slowly been drained of its core identity - if one is given the ultimatum of a class redesign vs. hanging onto an archaic last stand I'll risk the redesign. The thing about BLM is that its immobility is not all it's known for. If a redesign allowed for full positionals but make it so that it's not it's only identifying factor - even better. Gameplay of a class is only part of how we come to love a job. The other part is the animations, perhaps its lore, its ability themes, etc. Right now MNK is the weakest of near all of these areas. As for positionals, though it may not be a 1:1 comparison, DRG is a close tie for it and thus lessens the positional "is our unique identity" even more.

[VentVanitas]

MNK needs to identify as MNK in the same way we play a NIN and know why it's a NIN.

Positionals aren't MNK's sole identity but they are unique to the job and I believe it should stay that way for the sake of making melee DPS more different from one another.

[VirusOnline]

Don´t know what you´re talking about. The stealth actions which never get used? Or that you stay 95% of the fight behind the boss?
Only Mudra is specific. Ninjutsus is what you expect from a NIN of course as much as i would expect really fast and movement based gameplay from a MNK. I haven´t seen any MMA fighter or similar pugilists which are like "Sry bro, we don´t move today. Let´s clap in our hands instead.".

If you´ve only one positional heavy class, where the whole rotation and even escape skills are based around that, then of course it´s an identity. Both classes are even the only ones with some kind of identity imo. DRG and SAM are completely standard just with animations. Caster differences are "cast - dot - melee combo". And we don´t even need to talk about tank or healer identities.

I didn't say MNK should be a NIN.
Also MNK being positional heavy is a crap identity. A class should be able to be identified by style, and theme as well.

MNK needs to identify as a MNK in its design as a whole. I.E.
DRG ? We might think dragons. Estinien. That burst phase. Eye of Dragon. Jumps autolock. Floor tank.
SAM ? Katana. Midare Setsugekka. Tsubame-gaeshi. Powerful strikes. Selfish, but makes up for it.
NIN ? Trick attack. Ten Chi Jin. Ninjitsu. Ninja run. Movement passive trait.
MNK ? "Oh that one job where you gotta get positionals on like every ability" and uh fists. *clap*

MNK has some good things going for it in EW though. The new abilities are flashy and make sense to its theme and design and MNK needs more of that.

EDIT: Reaper has more of an identity than MNK from what I can see in the trailer.

[ssunny2008]

I didn't say MNK should be a NIN.
Also MNK being positional heavy is a crap identity. A class should be able to be identified by style, and theme as well.

It´s your opinion, not the one of a lot of players who actually enjoy the fast positional heavy gameplay. It´s a unique game-design and far away from being crap even objectively seen. There is no other game out there with a class like MNK.

MNK needs to identify as a MNK in its design as a whole. I.E.
DRG ? We might think dragons. Estinien. That burst phase. Eye of Dragon. Jumps autolock. Floor tank.
SAM ? Katana. Midare Setsugekka. Tsubame-gaeshi. Powerful strikes. Selfish, but makes up for it.
NIN ? Trick attack. Ten Chi Jin. Ninjitsu. Ninja run. Movement passive trait.
MNK ? "Oh that one job where you gotta get positionals on like every ability" and uh fists. *clap*

MNK has some good things going for it in EW though. The new abilities are flashy and make sense to its theme and design and MNK needs more of that.

EDIT: Reaper has more of an identity than MNK from what I can see in the trailer.

Your claims are just about animations, not about a gameplay identity.

- Katana? Sword? Staff? Bow? Axe? Book? Which weapon do you want?
- Midare? Melee combo? Apex-Arrow? Any finisher button when you´ve collected some signs or your gauge got filled on any class?
- Eye of the dragon? Dancepartner? Päan? Heart of stone? Any other buffs, which either effect one groupmember or the whole raid?
- Jumps? Chakra? Elixier-field? Off GCD´s at its best?
- Trick attack? Pretty much the same like a whole raidbuff, but placed as debuff on the enemy. We had more in the past, but SE was like "uuuuuh let´s rework and homogenise some classes". You could put it even together with feint or so. Boss debuffs...

Pretty much all classes have only visual identities and not gameplay-wise. Being a positional heavy class IS an identity. Playing around Mudra is an identity too. AST had more identity with his old cards and shield / curestance. But hey cards got nerfed and 6.0 destroys the last variation on it. Even SMN / SCH should have a real identity with the pet system, but it´s so worthless designed... imagine Selene and Eos would be still different and they would´ve added more on top of it and you´re forced to switch them. That would be an identity. But no, they´re there to be there and it gets even worse with 6.0 SMN and the rotation into Midare ähhh burst-primae button.

EDIT: Btw if we´re actually talking seriously about visual identities. Why the hell does ppl run with a white dress as SAM in a fight? Or half-naked as Tank? Or?! They seem to care a lot about uwu owo glam glam or being able to j... on the character instead of real class identities even in that way.

[VentVanitas]

I cannot argue whether or not SE's implementation of Blitz is good for the job, we don't have all of the information we need to make that claim yet.

SE seems somewhat aware of Bootshine being too strong, (though not aware enough to just change Dragon Kick's effect entirely) since they reduced the potency in the live demonstration from 370 to 300. However even with a potency nerf it doesn't stop my concerns that it will still be too polarizing because of its forced crit and Chakra generation still making it stronger than every other combo weaponskill, and Blitz will end up being irrelevant in favour of spamming more Buttshine.

But nah, clearly Arm of the Destroyer is the one that needs an upgrade. The skill that literally no one complained about.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

...I have a idea about Leaden Fist...thought about it two days ago. I thought about the Leaden BootShine issue, and what to do about it.

I could see Leaden Fist being a stacks-style passive, similar to how Perfect Balance and Riddle of Earth function, of which buffs the next three actions that the Monk uses, both WeaponSkills and abilities.
In most cases, the Monk would either spend Leaden Fist on one GCD and two oGCDs, or two GCDs and a oGCD, which would also get rid of it before Dragon Kick activates it again; under the assumption that the Monk is going through a normal 1-2-3 GCD rotation, any way...

For a bit of elaboration, Leaden Fist would still buff BootShine, but it would also buff other actions, which may or may not exclude kick actions, while the intent behind this.. is that those buffs are relevant enough.. to not just use BootShine three times and ruin the intent of this change.

What do the rest of you think about this? Any thoughts, suggestions about buffs, or alternate suggestions to fix the issue?

[IruruCece]

What do the rest of you think about this? Any thoughts, suggestions about buffs, or alternate suggestions to fix the issue?

Your idea is better than the currently existing Leaden Fist, but lets be honest, the bar is literally laying on the ground, and you have the decency to not have brought a shovel to dig under it. I do like the idea, speaking personally, because it resolves one of the problems with Monk's overall design by making the combos more meaningful. Part of this is also addressed (potentially) by the existence of Blitzes.

The reason why bootshine spam is part of our burst phase is that it's way too damn strong. Your idea would have to come with a dramatic rework of potencies for our combos across the board. Rather than front loading our damage, I'd prefer having the finishers be where the money is. Ideally, we'd reward proper execution of our basic mechanics (postionals, we still have 4) with even more damage. Ideally we'd also flat out ignore everyone who whines that being asked to move a little to the left or right of a clearly marked place next to the boss is "hard", there's plenty of other jobs they can play.

Since I seriously doubt SE's ability to fix Monk, they probably are going to leave Leaden Fist more or less as is. The best move they're probably capable of, IMO, is to straight up remove it from the game. Regardless, there is absolutely no good reason why our level 1 dps move should have the level of outsized importance it currently enjoys. Bootshine should serve as a starter, not a goal of any sort, not as a centerpiece of our damage when we're fully buffed. We're literally the only melee in the game with that problem, and it begs the question why.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Your idea is better than the currently existing Leaden Fist, but lets be honest, the bar is literally laying on the ground, and you have the decency to not have brought a shovel to dig under it. I do like the idea, speaking personally, because it resolves one of the problems with Monk's overall design by making the combos more meaningful. Part of this is also addressed (potentially) by the existence of Blitzes.

Sure, I prefer honesty. To be honest, I need to set the bar on the ground, and let some other person set the standard, because my personal standards are too much for FFXIV to handle. I would set the bar too high for the poor game to even be able to reach...

As for Blitzes, that is my hope, at least. Leaden BootShine spam needs Perfect Balance to even function, so if the Monk spends all Perfect Balance on Blitz, under the assumption that Blitz is good and always worth it to spend Perfect Balance on, there goes Leaden BootShine spam straight out of the window.

The reason why bootshine spam is part of our burst phase is that it's way too damn strong. Your idea would have to come with a dramatic rework of potencies for our combos across the board. Rather than front loading our damage, I'd prefer having the finishers be where the money is. Ideally, we'd reward proper execution of our basic mechanics (postionals, we still have 4) with even more damage. Ideally we'd also flat out ignore everyone who whines that being asked to move a little to the left or right of a clearly marked place next to the boss is "hard", there's plenty of other jobs they can play.

I already thought about the potency issue and made some theoretical changes to potencies across all actions, albeit that does not account for Blitzes...
The concept exists only in a world where Monk will remain ARR Monk Mark IV(ShB Monk), so I chose to not copy-and-paste all of that deeper stuff, since I plan to re-do all of that once I know what the Blitzes are worth and how Monk will change...
I have found it fun to re-design ARR Monk Mark IV(ShB Monk), but since HW(EW) Monk is about to be a thing...I will need to re-design my re-designs, around the all new HW Monk. ...Which is another reason why I chose to post my re-design idea for Leaden Fist, with the bar on the floor... Almost all of the current risen-bar effort that I put into it, is liable for change, except for the BackBone of the concept, so I chose to share just the skeleton, the part that is not liable for change.

That said, I can dance to your tune... What if the Leaden Fist buffs have positional requirements, or buff the positional requirements that already exist, then? As for finishers, that will have to wait for more Blitzes information, since those should fit that bill, if their design turns out to be done well.

Since I seriously doubt SE's ability to fix Monk, they probably are going to leave Leaden Fist more or less as is. The best move they're probably capable of, IMO, is to straight up remove it from the game.

To be honest, I also doubt, yeh... At this point, I wonder if the bad job design is just Squeenix has given very specific orders to them...
Aaaaaany waaaay... As for to delete Leaden Fist, that would.. be way too easy to do. Just set BootShine base potency to 370 and call it a day... That would more or less be the same ScapeGoat that they took with Greased Lightning... Just delete the problem, instead of to fix it, and make what the old thing did permanent... -_- I would hate that so much, though.

Regardless, there is absolutely no good reason why our level 1 dps move should have the level of outsized importance it currently enjoys. Bootshine should serve as a starter, not a goal of any sort, not as a centerpiece of our damage when we're fully buffed. We're literally the only melee in the game with that problem, and it begs the question why.

And I do agree with that BootShine should not be so important... to be literal, Leaden BootShine hits so hard that only Demolish hits harder, across a duration, and Tornado Kick hits harder once every 45 seconds... (sarcasm warning)At this point, they may as well at least switch Dragon Kick and BootShine. It is obvious that Leaden BootShine is the real Lv50 skill, so we may as well start with Dragon Kick, and then get BootShine and Leaden BootShine at Lv50.

I would prefer that they do away with Leaden Fist entirely and give Dragon Kick a maintained buff/debuff. Leaden Bootshine just sucks and it's not fun to play around with because it ruins any kind of potentially interesting interaction the job would have with Perfect Balance or Form Shift.

Either that, or just make our weaponskills function differently whilst under PB so using it strictly to set up Leaden Fist spam isn't possible.

A buff or debuff to maintain, hmn... The first thing that came to mind 5 seconds after I read that, would be if Dragon Kick is like Twin Snakes, a second damage buff to maintain as a side thing... That would be kind of a bore, though. I would prefer either a idea of interest that takes more than 5 seconds to think up, for a more of interest re-design of Dragon Kick itself, or a re-design of Leaden Fist to make at least that more of interest.

[IruruCece]

That said, I can dance to your tune... What if the Leaden Fist buffs have positional requirements, or buff the positional requirements that already exist, then? As for finishers, that will have to wait for more Blitzes information, since those should fit that bill, if their design turns out to be done well.

In general, I'm for positionals actually providing a noticeable indicator to the player that they've successfully pulled them off. Whether it's a damage increase to that specific move, or a buff that benefits the combo later down the line, both would resolve another problem people keep bringing up: a lack of feedback from the job. A lot of newer players apparently complain that it doesn't "feel" like they're doing a lot of damage on monk, or they're struggling to determine if they're "doing things right".

Part of that issue, again, lays directly on current Bootshine/Leaden Bootshine's doorstep. As you point out, outside of Tornado Kick and Demolish's full DoT duration, Bootshine's the most significant numbers a player is going to see, the most immediately obvious indicator that they "did something right." It was so significant that you could say it encouraged players to say it's "good enough" to only hit your Bootshines. That simply should never have been the case, ever.

Positionals should ideally be a significant enough damage increase that lazy monks won't cut it in hard content, and they'll be lagging behind other DPS that are playing better, especially behind a better monk. The reward for playing the job well should put those players more than 10-15 percent ahead of a dude that's only landing their rear positional. In your concept, tying leaden fist buffs to landing positionals does solve that, so I already like it better than the existing implementation.

I'm leaning more towards Vent's idea of just up and removing Leaden Fists entirely, however. It's too connected to an existing problem (Bootshine being too important), and Vent also brought up how it's tied to Perfect Balance. Tweaking how Leaden works means we also have to address Perfect Balance, because the last thing I personally want to see is that it gets used to spam a specific weapon skill when we're in our burst phase.

[Shurrikhan]

...I have a idea about Leaden Fist...thought about it two days ago. I thought about the Leaden BootShine issue, and what to do about it.

I could see Leaden Fist being a stacks-style passive, similar to how Perfect Balance and Riddle of Earth function, of which buffs the next three actions that the Monk uses, both WeaponSkills and abilities.
In most cases, the Monk would either spend Leaden Fist on one GCD and two oGCDs, or two GCDs and a oGCD, which would also get rid of it before Dragon Kick activates it again; under the assumption that the Monk is going through a normal 1-2-3 GCD rotation, any way...

For a bit of elaboration, Leaden Fist would still buff BootShine, but it would also buff other actions, which may or may not exclude kick actions, while the intent behind this.. is that those buffs are relevant enough.. to not just use BootShine three times and ruin the intent of this change.

What do the rest of you think about this? Any thoughts, suggestions about buffs, or alternate suggestions to fix the issue?

Kind of like a more interesting, multi-charge Life Surge? I'd take it over the current version, sure.

That being said, I do kind of hate how something like this and the new "Perfect Blitz" would work together to make the standard rotation feel largely irrelevant, with only oGCDs (especially this and PB) giving any real punctuation to the job. Of course, I'd actually rather delimit Blitzes (or rather, find a different way to make Perfect Balance useful to them, rather than Blitz just outright subsuming Perfect Balance) than not bother with this over the current Dragon-Fist mechanic.


Food for thought:

Way back when... maybe in ARR, I had wanted to make to make MP not just be UI bloat for Monk, and I had planned to do that through our various stances, wherein each stance would consume increasing amount amounts of MP per second while in combat (albeit with certain ways to also generate back MP -- Fire from the DoT damage it inflicts, Earth from absorption, resistance, and counterattacks, and Wind passively). Such would force a soft rotation but also, more importantly, provide a centerpiece for Internal Release (an old 1-minute hefty crit buff CD that you'd often try to align Bootshine away from so long as it wouldn't force desync), which caused you to consume hugely more MP over time to double (or triple) that stance's effects and could be hit again to instantly spend even further MP on stance-based effect for the following GCD. Gimmicky, but it seemed a fun idea at the time.