Monk Identity and Blitz ?

[wereotter]

Maybe it's something lost in translation, the wording during the presentation made out like we were still building stacks and they said something about it being removed.
Perhaps they experimented with bringing it back and then 180'd and for some reason still talked as though old GL was a thing.
Or maybe it's a one and done trait now rather than a progressive trait and that got mixed up in translation by the interpreter?

"The gameplay element of stacking Greased Lightning will be done away with - So to compensate for that Chakras will be unlocked at a lower level." the quote, which seems a bit redundant with that already being gone. [2:21:51 on Live Letter Stream]

We'll have to wait for more info, but to me that sounds like Greased Lightning 4 (or it'll just be level 4 equivalent just called Greased Lightning) will just be a passive trait that gets unlocked when monk is unlocked, making it a job that just starts fast rather than something you have to unlock over time. And to make the job still feel like you're making progress, rather than unlock greased lightning levels 1-50, you'll get chakras. I wouldn't be surprised if it's sometime around level 30 or 35.

[Hammerhorn]

Whats the matter guys? You dont like Monk the 3rd new job added for End Walker lol!

[IruruCece]

If not... would it be so bad to have one?

A melee job without positionals would be fine if those players are also happy being MCH-tier dps, sure, because that is where such a job would deserve to be.

Jobs that demand less from an individual player should be less personally rewarding (in terms of Big DPS numbers) and instead be more about enhancing other players in the group. Were I a nin-main instead of being trash at that job, I'd be pretty peeved that SE made a melee job that was both less mechanically demanding yet somehow more powerful than mine, because a good nin has to put in more effort than players who want positionals out of the game are often willing to put into the jobs they want positionals removed from. You yourself just said that jobs with any positionals are things you barely play. Why should their design cater to you in the least? There are other jobs whose gameplay hew closer to what you want mechanically.

But those players would (rightfully) complain that their job is too streamlined AND too weak (a problem that MCH is currently going through). To maintain a job that has zero positionals means that it needs other trade-offs, so what are SE's options? Add more mechanical complexity to job? Add cast timers? I guarantee that melee players who are complaining about positionals would also be upset if the job added either one of those things, too.

If you want a melee that doesn't worry about positionals for themselves whatsoever, play a tank. But in all honesty, and I mean this without any malice, it doesn't sound like melee dps in FFXIV is for you. And until SE does make such a job, or finally caves, they probably won't be.

I don't think positionals need to be removed or de-emphasized in every job.

The problem is that they have been de-emphasized for every melee job as of Endwalker. They are removing some from Monk, and for every other melee DPS that has them, SE has regularly reduced their value over the course of THREE expansions now to cater to people who aren't even regularly playing those jobs, who don't take them into content that is actually demanding in any way. They have been de-emphasized to the point where they can be pretty much ignored on every other melee except Monk and Dragoon, and their output is barely affected.

There's really very few ways for SE to fix that particular problem. One would be to make positionals hit considerably harder... but players who hate positionals would complain they are being "punished" for missing them. They could make it so that positionals are required to continue combos/get big pay off attacks... but those players would complain about that as well. Positionals upset them, complexity upsets them, and consequences for failing to keep up with their job's own mechanics upsets them, and one or all three of those things drives them off to play something else.

I don't think SE should be trying to design one or any job specifically to keep those kinds of players happy, and we've already seen what happens to jobs where they have tried to make everyone in the argument happy. It's called Monk (and also all the healers and tanks).

[Sorzai]

I don't think positionals need to be removed or de-emphasized in every job. I just think that not every melee job needs to have positionals. That Reaper has positionals at all is disappointing to me and it relegates the job to something I'll level just to level, and then never actually play it because I really don't like positionals that go beyond "hit it from the back". Any job that has positionals that requires me to dance between rear and flank basically gets leveled and then put in the bin for me. I'm not saying I want other jobs to have their positions removed or de-emphasized, I just wish Reaper could have been a melee job that doesn't have any positionals. Are there even any melee jobs currently that don't have any positionals at all? If not... would it be so bad to have one?

Positions are optional, you don't HAVE to do them. That's the beauty of it, but if you want to play the best u can at monk then yes positional are important.
If the positional are removed for increased speed, I'm fine with that. It might get too busy have to juggle positionals, boss mechanics, etc. And if that's the reason for removing it sure, I don't see any issue, but if they remove it because plebs are too lazy to play the damn job optimally and git gud then wtf that's just bs.
Removing something to please the greater audience is just bad game development because they don't regularly play the damn class. Whereas us monk mains have to suffer because our job identity is slowly getting taken away.

[Ardour]

But those players would (rightfully) complain that their job is too streamlined AND too weak (a problem that MCH is currently going through). To maintain a job that has zero positionals means that it needs other trade-offs, so what are SE's options? Add more mechanical complexity to job? Add cast timers? I guarantee that melee players who are complaining about positionals would also be upset if the job added either one of those things, too.

Maintaining melee uptime is a challenge innate to the role that's frankly already more difficult and impactful than landing positionals. While I don't support MNK losing its positionals, the argument that it's impossible for a melee class to have an engaging design without positionals is just nonsense to those of us who have played melee classes in other games.

Ranged DPS is a different story since the role truly has no innate drawbacks, but even then, BRD/DNC's heavily proc-based design has proven to be a reasonable (if imperfect) solution to the problem. A melee job with a similar level of randomization to those jobs could certainly be difficult enough to warrant strong DPS numbers. In fact, I could easily imagine it ending up more difficult than the current melee DPS paradigm of more or less extremely static rotations with minor potency gains from positionals.

At the end of the day, positionals are just one way of adding depth to a class, in the same way that DoTs or procs are just one way of adding depth to a class. Arguing that every melee job needs to have positionals makes about as much sense to me as arguing that every caster needs to have DoTs. It's just unimaginative and promotes a homogenized role design for no good reason.

[ICountFrom0]

If this leads to us using suplex on a train, I'll call it a win.

[IruruCece]

It's just unimaginative and promotes a homogenized role design for no good reason.

The existence of positionals is hardly homogenization. Homogenization is what has happened to tanks and healers over the past four years. Homogenization is what people are demanding, while claiming to hate it, when they talk about removing them entirely from the game.

Positionals, as they currently exist, is a major reason why melee jobs are more than just a shorter range version of MCH or DNC. It's a means of actually distinguishing melee from other DPS options, and the "dependence" on positionals varies among the melee DPS in question, which in turn contributes to their individual identity.

Similarly, the existence of castbars on every magic DPS/healer isn't homogenization. Each caster has additional mechanics that build off that in different ways. Obviously, BLM is the immobile glass cannon that wants to find a certain spot in the fight to stand and deliver. A RDM offers a seemingly speedier form of play with its dual cast mechanic, which also ties in to its unique class meter. Summoner was the DOT caster.

If a caster dps had zero cast bars to be concerned with, that'd sure be a unique design. I wouldn't want anywhere close to BLM or RDM in terms of personal dps unless its personal mechanics were somehow challenging enough on the player that it could be equal to the struggle a BLM faces in fights that demand a lot of movement, and I feel the same about a melee without positionals.

As you succinctly point out, Ranged dps don't necessarily have innate drawbacks... save for their limited damage. That's the trade off SE has gone with, and it makes perfect sense. Ranged DPS get to maintain uptime without the same risks that a Monk would have to take during certain mechanics. It also would make perfect sense for a melee without positionals to not have the same personal output as a Monk, a DRG, or a SAM, because that would be a melee that doesn't have to work as hard to maintain optimal uptime as any of those three.

If you're worried about homogenization, you probably shouldn't want more jobs added to the game that do what legacy jobs do, but better and with less difficulty. Inevitably, SE will choose to borrow elements from more popular jobs wholesale to try and correct for that. All it takes is a fancy animation to get people to ignore that bit of homogenization, after all.

[SchrodingersWaffle]

The existence of positionals is hardly homogenization. Homogenization is what has happened to tanks and healers over the past four years.

As a random note, it's kind of hard from a design aspect to avoid some level of homogenization with tank and healer roles, especially if your design goal is for any content to be clear-able with any combination of tanks, healers and dps, as both of those roles have certain functions that they *need* to have in order to perform properly, e.g. raises, cleanses, oh shit buttons, gap closers, aoe abilities, damage reduction, invulns, etc.

[Yokubo]

[QUOTE=IruruCece;5664256]

Positionals, as they currently exist, is a major reason why melee jobs are more than just a shorter range version of MCH or DNC. It's a means of actually distinguishing melee from other DPS options, and the "dependence" on positionals varies among the melee DPS in question, which in turn contributes to their individual identity./QUOTE]

This is a good way to put it. Basically without positional DPS would be no different from WoW where all you do is faceroll the attacks mindlessly, where it adds depth to the class to move around. With a large influx of WoW players, of course we'll see people complain about the existence of having to use their minds, but that's what makes the class fun.

I didn't watch the live letter but heard they remove positions from form 2 attacks (true strike and twin snakes) and that's what my gripe is. At this point the rotation is so ingrained in my muscles for playing monk I hardly have to think about it, but the removal of something that's just natural to me is deeply upsetting that SE feels they need to gut part of the class to appease the players that are upset about doing 30 potency less per attack because they aren't familiar with the class.

Basically without positionals melee class DPS is just mindlessly hit the buttons, but the concept of positionals is what makes melee DPS have a bit more depth than other DPS classes. Classes have already been dumbed down a lot and the consistent dumbing down makes it hard to distinguish a 'good' player from a 'bad' player to put it objectively. Not saying that to trash on new players but it's nice to be able to shine and have a reason to keep at a class and have a mastery to achieve.

[ssunny2008]

While I don't support MNK losing its positionals, the argument that it's impossible for a melee class to have an engaging design without positionals is just nonsense to those of us who have played melee classes in other games.

Other games have way complexer designs than FF14. You can´t compare them that much...Just take 2 serious trinity MMORPG´s as example. Starwars the old Republic and World of Warcraft. (especially SWTOR)

- Both of them have a GCD time from 1,5s! FF14 has 2,5s, which is way slower in comparison. Not even MNK is able to reach that. Therefore you´ve 100 years time to place your positionals and to play your rotation easily.

- Then those other games has priority skills, not a flat rotation which is nearly 100% timed on the given content like it is in FF14.

- On top of that, you still have to care about dots, movement, healthbars and DPS checks. In other games you don´t spam buffs on cooldown since they´ve 5 minute cooldowns or something. The most fights have huge DPS checks where you need your cooldowns. DPS might has to kill or interupt adds asap, meanwhile tanking them on their own, because the tank have to take care about 1 or more bosses. You do even have tools to take an add out of the game for a while and if you don´t do that, you´re going to die.

Tanks on the other hand have to use cooldowns wisely, because they don´t have "invul gg". They have to take care about a bunch of skills, which either increase their armor or debuff the enemy. They might need to kite, they need to tankswap every couple of seconds, they´ve to take care for adds with massive taunts and what the most important thing might be, they´ve to be the first in the aggro-list. There is no braindead tankstance, they need to know their stuff.

Healers are not 100% DPS classes like it is in this game too. You need to focus on the stuff you´re doing. You don´t have 10 off gcd heals and maybe only 1 aoe heal. Between your heals there might be time to put a DoT on the boss and that´s it, just because everyone will get damaged through different mechanics, which aren´t perfect in line with an AST star or assise, whatever. You´ve to focus and take care for everyone at any time especially when a boss spread random DoTs.

- As next all classes have ressources to manage. You can´t just play 123, you need to swap between your hard hitters and ressoruce skills. That´s why you´ve priority skills and you need to keep an eye on them, otherwise you´re going to lose a lot of DPS or in case of some heal characters, you´re going to lose life to gain ressources.

- All classes are played different. Tanks for example might be divided in an armortank, a shieldtank and an evasiontank, while the 1st might be more a single-target maintank, the 3rd an add-tank and the 2nd something in between.
Healers on the other side might be caster or some mechanical healers. SWTOR went even so far, that the force-healer have been the only ones, who´re able to cleanse force-debuffs, meanwhile the others took care for phys. / techn. debuffs. And all of them had to play completely different around their ressources.
Even DPS classes have their souls and aren´t homogenized in any way, but all of them are fast and fun. You´ve way more to do than punching a boss for 10mins. You´ve to play mechanics on your own, you need to use your DPS and def cd´s wisely, you might have to swap between bosses permanently or kite one on your own.

- Pretty much all of them has/had different skilltrees too. You could prepare much better for what is coming, change between burst or DoT´s on the same class. Mabye even more defs, less utility cooldowns or bigger aoe´s on the same class.

- And again, 1,5s VS 2,5s standard GCD. It´s really like 100 years of time for decision makings.

And that´s just the classes... based on the most given content, you don´t have 10s longs castbars, stack / spread markers or whatever. You don´t have the expected early aoe / tb, bosses will hit hard anyway and sometimes lose aggro randomly on purpose. You´ve multiple bosses at once or need to make use of the arena / the boss itself to kill adds.

Man i really could write and endless posts about FF14 and other trinity MMORPG´s. But in core it should be enough.

As summary:

- 1.5s VS 2.5s GCD
- multiple bosses with different mechanics, which force everything of any class VS one boss with well scripted mechanics, stack´n´spread and move to marker A stuff.
- different subclasses with different stats, a different ressource-management, skills, skilltrees and a different gameplay VS homogenized subclasses with pretty much the same skills, roleskills, a perfect lined 123 rotation, no real ressources to care about and a gauge to fill.

If you´ve played atleast 1 of the 2 named MMORPG´s, you should know that difference and why such games can live without positionals. They´re way more complex, force more out of the players and of course they´re faster and more movement depended. They don´t have multiple rezzes or healer LB3.
Playing melee in FF14 without positionals would be lame af. Just play a tank once in the current content and you know how boring it´s going to be. All you´ve to do is to spam invul or all other defs in a tankbuster, go OT if you want to watch netflix nearby while playing 123. Range-DPS classes are pretty much the same so...