Thread: Monk Positionals 6.0

Personally, i am in the boat that the positionals (at the very least to Dragon Kick and Bootshine) should return to Monk.
In my opinion, it adds way more to the gameplay experience than it could ever detract from said gameplay experience.
If there are positionals, then that doesn't mean you absolutely have to do them, no one is forcing you. It's There as merely another option for players who want to attempt to challenge themselves with optimizations and higher damage numbers, a way to express skill if you will.
Of course not to mention that positionals has been a staple of Monk ever since A Realm Reborn (as far as my knowledge of course), so the removal of those positionals just seems very odd considering how unanimous Monk has become with moving and positioning through the years.

I personally Disagree about the thought that positionals makes it 'too difficult' as it is just another thing that people can learn as a part of their learning curve to getting better at the job. If Positionals were such a huge problem or were adding a lot of difficulty, then i am a little bit confused due to Samurai (commonly seen as the easiest Melee job to get into) being given Changes to Gekko and Kasha which are positionals in potency and Kenki both, which for those who do not play Samurai have never had any positionals in potency before.

I am just sharing my opinion of course

Originally Posted by jerome15

so on fflogs checking total number of parses, monk is 2nd from the bottom on trials and 3rd from the bottom on dungeons. 2/3 of the positionals have been removed, but it's still at the bottom in terms of people playing it. curious what the excuse is now that people aren't playing it since you seem to think it was the positionals

MNK fell off hard in SHB - its going o take some time to get more people wanting to play as it.
Right now, MNK damage is HUGE.

After the balance patch we can go back and see what things look like - but if MNK damage stays at the top like this, more people will play it.

Originally Posted by nelothi

MNK fell off hard in SHB - its going o take some time to get more people wanting to play as it.
Right now, MNK damage is HUGE.

After the balance patch we can go back and see what things look like - but if MNK damage stays at the top like this, more people will play it.

As far as i remember MNK has been top damage in early Shb too, but the playercount didn´t increased. The most ppl play whatever they want, not because it´s some DPS meta.

Originally Posted by nelothi

MNK fell off hard in SHB - its going o take some time to get more people wanting to play as it.
Right now, MNK damage is HUGE.

After the balance patch we can go back and see what things look like - but if MNK damage stays at the top like this, more people will play it.

Damage wasn't the problem with Monk in Shadowbringers, and fewer people played it in endgame content despite this. Monk was consistently among the top 5 dps in the game.

Monk's current standing on that site, which again only reflects people who bother to use the tools to submit parses there, comes after:

-4 positionals removed
-Greased Lightning removed.
-Elemental Bloatfists removed
-Fancy animations added for Blitz.

High damage or fancy animations alone don't actually make a job popular. More people are bringing Bards, Machinists, Summoners, and Dancers into endgame content. Why do you think that is?

Originally Posted by IruruCece

High damage or fancy animations alone don't actually make a job popular. More people are bringing Bards, Machinists, Summoners, and Dancers into endgame content. Why do you think that is?

It's not as if Dancers, Bards, and Machinists offer much more than fancy animations, though. Summoner at least has rez to make up for its low dps. The rest are just barrel-bottoms with, if one exempts "fancy animations", no redeeming feature beyond "I really, really like procs!" or "I really, really don't like doing anything but 1-2-3 cycling while hitting whatever CDs pop up."

Originally Posted by ssunny2008

As far as i remember MNK has been top damage in early Shb too, but the playercount didn´t increased. The most ppl play whatever they want, not because it´s some DPS meta.

Exactly.

Damage has never been the complaint monk players have had. The complaints have been the long line of questionable decisions that the developers have made when adding and removing skills from the job in Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and now again in Endwalker. And to make it worse, it's a job that has felt like it's regressed over the years rather than evolve like other jobs have. I wouldn't be surprised to see, even, that monk players numbers are even lower than before with many people like myself dropping the job entirely after the most recent changes. Reaper and summoner have taken a lot of players from a lot of jobs, and monk was already at risk of losing players.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It's not as if Dancers, Bards, and Machinists offer much more than fancy animations, though. Summoner at least has rez to make up for its low dps. The rest are just barrel-bottoms with, if one exempts "fancy animations", no redeeming feature beyond "I really, really like procs!" or "I really, really don't like doing anything but 1-2-3 cycling while hitting whatever CDs pop up."

What this suggests to me is that these jobs, even as simplistic as they are/are perceived to be, have managed to do more for players' enjoyment in endgame content than any of the changes for Monk have for now three expansions in a row. And of them, Summoner is the only one I could argue is being carried by its presentation (because boy does it have some PRESENTATION at level 90). It allegedly feels wildly different from its previous incarnation (which I have limited experience with, and I certainly haven't had enough time to play it in Endwalker to fairly judge it one way or the other), which I think contributes to more people coming back to it.

The Monk rework doesn't reach this, IMO. There's enough of the old job in there that it feels familiar enough that the call for positionals to return makes legitimate sense from a mechanical standpoint, arguably even the return of a system like GL makes sense given that we're still on a 15 second timer with Twin Snakes, and losing that buff is just as bad for our DPS, and we still have a whole button dedicated to preserving it when we can't touch the boss ourselves. We still have chakra rng (albeit greatly reduced). Leaden Fist is still a thing (thankfully at a reduced level of importance).

Blitzes feel like something that was shoved into a hole the developers dug, but it wasn't big enough to fill in that hole by itself, and then they didn't bother putting back in enough dirt to fill in the rest of the hole.

I'm still wondering why Ranged Caster DPS Summoner has a gap closer that does damage, while Melee DPS Monk got theirs replaced with the damageless ZWEE FIGHTING utility that is also supposed to serve as a potential gap closer OR disengage (if we're targeting a friend), AND also has Six Sided Star to serve as a disengage, on top of the universally available sprint button.