Monk Identity and Blitz ?

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

[...]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.[...]

A fair concern... I had to think for several minutes, to think through a good response.
My answer to that would be my re-design of Greased Lightning stacks, which would replace the current Greased Lightning traits... the concept fixes the Greased Lightning stacks old duration issue, also makes the upkeep and maintenance of Greased Lightning stacks both more demanding and interactive than Storm's eye, DarkSide, or Huton; and even makes if the Monk fails that upkeep, less of a harsh loss...
While.. since the only way to gain Greased Lightning stacks, is to go through the normal combos and do proper form-to-form shifts, this would make the standard rotation and normal combos important and relevant, so I hope that it would resolve your issue and ease the concern.

If you want, I can post my re-design concept of the Greased Lightning stacks, for you to examine and evaluate.

[Shurrikhan]

A fair concern... I had to think for several minutes, to think through a good response.
My answer to that would be my re-design of Greased Lightning stacks, which would replace the current Greased Lightning traits... the concept fixes the Greased Lightning stacks old duration issue, also makes the upkeep and maintenance of Greased Lightning stacks both more demanding and interactive than Storm's eye, DarkSide, or Huton; and even makes if the Monk fails that upkeep, less of a harsh loss...
While.. since the only way to gain Greased Lightning stacks, is to go through the normal combos and do proper form-to-form shifts, this would make the standard rotation and normal combos important and relevant, so I hope that it would resolve your issue and ease the concern.

If you want, I can post my re-design concept of the Greased Lightning stacks, for you to examine and evaluate.

Though it'd come at risk of someone telling you that any and every possible iteration of GL is a concept beyond redemption, sure, feel free to share.

[VentVanitas]

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 optimal.

[Absurdity]

and give Dragon Kick a maintained buff/debuff.

Funny you mention that, it's exactly what Dragon Kick did prior to ShB. It applied a "Blunt Resistance Down" debuff to the target which basically just meant you did more damage to it since Monk was the only job that benefitted from it. (iirc technically also WHM & BLM since the staff dealt blunt damage but you're not really sitting in melee and whacking things with your staff on those jobs)


Unfortunately it got pruned together with all the other "resistance down" debuffs, which made sense for all the other jobs since you essentially needed a Dragoon for the piercing resistance debuff if you had a Brd or Mch in your party.

It wasn't entirely necessary on Monk since you pretty much just buffed your own damage.

[Nyarlha]

As it stands, when using PB to ready Blitz, 2 of your 3 hits will probably always be DK-BS, except when you go for Rising Phoenix which needs 3 different forms.

Still way better than current PB.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

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.

Perfect Balance... I am not quite certain what to do about, to be honest. Unless how Perfect Balance itself functions, is what changes.. I can only see that Monk players would just continue to poison themselves through optimization obsession. The issue of the use of Perfect Balance to spam a single action, is a bane that the player-base does to themselves...
Let us say BootShine is made to be weak... The player-base will just choose some other action as the next "best" action, and spam that, instead. The only way to solve that issue, that I can think of, is a heavy-hand balance of Monk actions, to make no action better than any other action, just enough that Monk players lose any reason to spam any one action... Alas, to cull player-made meta is neither easy, nor always a good idea...

That said, I hope that Blitzes will solve this problem... If the design of Blitzes comes out well enough, and monopolize the use of Perfect Balance, then the use of Perfect Balance to spam a single action, will for the most part not be a thing, any longer; except in the case of the three/all same blitz... And then there is my concern about Blitzes in and of themselves... Just how shallow and dull will the Blitz mechanic end up to be in the reality... Perhaps as dull as only three Blitzes, similar to Iaijutsu...

As it stands, when using PB to ready Blitz, 2 of your 3 hits will probably always be DK-BS, except when you go for Rising Phoenix which needs 3 different forms.

Nyarlha has a good point here, and it will disappoint me... If Blitzes are as shallow as we spam one Blitz in the same manner that Samurai spams Midare Setsugekka... Albeit that would be a improvement, twould be not much of a good one in my perspective, because then Blitz will be a bore of a burst, and the use of Perfect Balance to set that Blitz up, will not be interactive or much of interest, since it would be static, just the same thing every time.
If Blitz ends up like that, I will end up just to re-design it in the same manner that I re-design Iaijutsu and Mudra, and then wallow in disappointment, after the thrill of the new toy wears off... ...Albeit that it is not that I do not enjoy to play Monk, or will not, as I do like to play as Monk, and perhaps more-so in EW...

I just love complexity more than aught else, but wherefore is complexity in FFXIV? no where, so I am easy to disappoint... >.<

[VentVanitas]

As it stands, when using PB to ready Blitz, 2 of your 3 hits will probably always be DK-BS, except when you go for Rising Phoenix which needs 3 different forms.

Still way better than current PB.

Is it though? Until we learn everything about the mechanic we don't know that. For all we know, what we do with PB is the exact same. I can very easily see PB being [BS -> DK -> BS -> Elixir Field -> DK] or [DK -> BS -> DK -> Elixir Field -> BS] with the current information we have.

If Leaden Bootshine remains as it currently is then I don't see any reason to not use it in PB. Not even a 650 potency attack in Rising Phoenix would outdo the crit damage and Chakra gain from two/three Bootshines which is where my concern lies. I'm concerned that we won't be using Blitz for Blitz, we'd be using them because it's Form Shift with a potency behind it. I really don't want this to be the case and I hope there's some information we don't know yet that proves me wrong.

[Nyarlha]

Is it though? Until we learn everything about the mechanic we don't know that. For all we know, what we do with PB is the exact same. I can very easily see PB being [BS -> DK -> BS -> Elixir Field -> DK] or [DK -> BS -> DK -> Elixir Field -> BS] with the current information we have.

If Leaden Bootshine remains as it currently is then I don't see any reason to not use it in PB. Not even a 650 potency attack in Rising Phoenix would outdo the crit damage and Chakra gain from two/three Bootshines which is where my concern lies. I'm concerned that we won't be using Blitz for Blitz, we'd be using them because it's Form Shift with a potency behind it. I really don't want this to be the case and I hope there's some information we don't know yet that proves me wrong.

You can't just spam Elixir Field (or the supposed single target equivalent), it will only give you one type of chakra (either Yin or Yang I don't remember which). You HAVE to use Rising Phoenix to get the other, otherwise you'll be locked out of Phantom Rush which will be the real big hitter.

[VentVanitas]

You can't just spam Elixir Field (or the supposed single target equivalent), it will only give you one type of chakra (either Yin or Yang I don't remember which). You HAVE to use Rising Phoenix to get the other, otherwise you'll be locked out of Phantom Rush which will be the real big hitter.

The thing is though if Phantom Rush can't make up for the Bootshines we don't use just to get it, then it won't even be worth using. I seriously hope this isn't the case though, because SE designing a new integral part of MNK's kit just for it to be a DPS loss and ignored would be such a blatant oversight.

...But we can't even put it past them considering the job's history with that exact problem already happening before.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

snip

We can measure the effectiveness of each PB window and compare them against simply spamming DK BS into EF Blitz. As of now Rising Phoenix is the only way to get Light Chakra by doing your normal form to form rotation except in a PB window which means that there will be a weaker (DK - Twin - Snap) and stronger (BS - True - Demo) variant. We'd need to average out the cost of obtaining a Light Chakra along with the payoff of Phantom Rush PB window to see whether that is better than straight up DK Boot EF spam.

So here goes:
Note: Base crit is around 1.4x multiplier with no extra crit stats. All BS in the equations are assumed to crit with Leaden Fist buff. TFC is 370 potency as of now and will be ÷5 to work out the average potency of obtaining a chakra (74 potency).

Dark Chakra window: BS (420+74) - DK (260) - BS (420+74) - EF (550~) - DK in Formless Fist (260) = 2058 ÷5 = 411.6 potency per GCD for that window.

Light Chakra window weak variant: DK (260) - Twin (230) - Snap (300) - RF (650) - BS in Formless Fist (420+74) = 1934 ÷5 = 386.8 potency per GCD.

Strong variant: BS (420+74) - True (270) - Demo (110 + 80*6 = 590) - RF (650) - DK in Formless Fist (260) = 2264 ÷5 = 452.8 potency per GCD.

Note2: Light chakra simply just wants you to go through the rotation. So the potency isn't as static as the Dark Chakra route. However if we average the strong and weak variant against Phantom Rush window we can estimate whether it will be worth it.

Phantom Rush Window: BS (420+74) - DK (260) - BS (420+74) - Phantom Rush (950~) - DK in Formless Fist (260) = 2458 ÷5 = 491.6.

So to work out if Light chakra is worth getting over Dark Chakra Spam window... we can average both variants against PR and see how it compares to Dark Chakra spam.

Weak: 491.6 + 386.8 = 885.6 ÷2 = 442.8 potency.
Strong: 491.6 + 452.8 = 472.2 potency.

We can see then that it is always worth going for Light and Dark Chakras over just Dark, because Phantom Rush window pushes the damage average above simple Boot and DK spam.

Note3: we don't know what the Two Seal Blitz will be, nor what chakra it will give. Therefore take all of this with a grain of salt. In general conclusion from what we know so far just spamming BS and DK under PB will result in a loss and it is better to go for Light AND Dark chakras for Phantom Rush. This could all change depending on any potency changes in the final build. Moreover, this is only in a vacuum without taking into account buff windows, fight design etc...