Monk Positionals 6.0

[IruruCece]

The base premise of my argument (a few posts back) is that I don't enjoy positionals, and their volatility is "one of the reasons."

Positionals have long since become near-automatic for me.

That's fair, but I have to question your premise anyway. Anything can become automatic to a skilled player, or at least a player who has put in a lot of time on a given job. That's a big reason why there ARE so many jobs in the game, to help keep things fresh.

Eventually, blitzes will become "automatic" to you, or "near-automatic". Given that you're a level 90 monk, I suspect they already are. What then? Should we remove blitzes and instead replace them with, I dunno, castbars? Just to "mix things up" a little bit?

I feel like positions shouldn't really be a thing so much as combos opening up depending on position should be.

I guarantee that combos that are this reliant on position would get the Navnavs of the world extremely angry about a job they aren't even playing yet this expansion while they run through as a tank, assuming the log in queues allow them to even play to begin with. People already were complaining about Dragoon offering ONE button that opens up for landing a positional. If you think basing the entirety of monk around something like this wouldn't result in even more outrage from people who hop into threads saying "so i tried monk after getting (some other job) to cap and didn't like it so i stopped playing it", you're honestly fooling yourself.

People who simply don't want to be asked to do things that require movement aren't going to accept a job that "unlocks" something for landing a positional. They still wouldn't play the job. And ironically, SE has made an effort with every expansion since HW on to de-emphasize their importance, to simplify the job to make it more "accessible" even as its presence in endgame raids cratered. Pain points like TP were removed across the board. They held back on GL4 because they legitimately believed players couldn't handle that speed. They killed the tornado kick rotation in SB because they didn't like what players managed to put together with the flawed kit.

[Miralyth]

That's fair, but I have to question your premise anyway. Anything can become automatic to a skilled player, or at least a player who has put in a lot of time on a given job. That's a big reason why there ARE so many jobs in the game, to help keep things fresh.

Eventually, blitzes will become "automatic" to you, or "near-automatic". Given that you're a level 90 monk, I suspect they already are. What then? Should we remove blitzes and instead replace them with, I dunno, castbars? Just to "mix things up" a little bit?

I again cannot agree with your example, despite the fact I don't feel it applies here. You're comparing positionals to a GCD with an entirely different build-up and interaction. Also, the automation of positionals was not my premise - positionals being unenjoyable for me was.

I briefly touched on the automation of positionals just in reply to difficulty, and how that isn't a consideration for me in if I like them or not. Everything else is about fun factor for me. I don't find positionals fun, automatic or not. I do find blitzes decently fun (they are not yet automatic for me btw, but I just like doing them). However, and again, my posts are only about positionals right now. Not if they're difficult for me, or if they have merit as a difficult part of the game, but if they're fun for me. They're not, full stop. That's what my posts are about.

I kind of feel like you're selecting small parts of my post out to reply to and attempting to shift my argument into something that it isn't about. I don't necessarily think you're doing this on purpose, but that you're perhaps assuming or expecting a bit too much about my feelings on the subject. If you want to criticize what I find fun or not, that's totally fine by me, but it won't make those things suddenly fun or engaging for me. I absolutely respect that other people find them fun, that's great, but I don't. I'm here to share that people who don't like positionals on their fun factor alone do exist, because I am one of them.

Edit: I forgot to close quotes, derp.

[Adonan]

You know what, you guys go ahead and enjoy the new monk. I was like many of the people in this thread for a while, albeit less belligerent. I still am to an extent, as I probably won't be playing the monk again any time soon. Then I saw the thread for the Summoners changes. It was eye opening to see the similarities between this thread and the Summoner thread. So many people dislike the rework to Summoner, whereas I love the rework. It feels like I'm playing a Summoner of the previous FF games now more than ever. I was wrong to think any less of any of you, and I apologize. You guys enjoy the Monk, and I'll be over here enjoying the Summoner. Both classes lost fans but gained new ones, although I was a fan of Summoner since SB.

[Shurrikhan]

Damn man, I think they made a HUGE mistake putting positionals in this game full stop. Especially 6 on one job. You'll got used to lazy class design and now beg for it, rather than asking for an actual engaging class.

Positionals have never taken the space of or otherwise precluded other mechanics. In ARR and HW, Monk still had as much mechanical depth as any other melee (and certainly more than ARR DRG) even when disregarding positionals.

[Kolsykol]

Why does DRG feel more fast paced than MNK lel?

[Shurrikhan]

Why does DRG feel more fast paced than MNK lel?

A more oGCD-crowded opener and ~60s threshold. Outside of that, it's noticeably slower. That's not to say MNK is quick, just that DRG's far from it either. (My other char is a Maiming main -- DRG, then RPR.)

You know what, you guys go ahead and enjoy the new monk. I was like many of the people in this thread for a while, albeit less belligerent. I still am to an extent, as I probably won't be playing the monk again any time soon. Then I saw the thread for the Summoners changes. It was eye opening to see the similarities between this thread and the Summoner thread. So many people dislike the rework to Summoner, whereas I love the rework. It feels like I'm playing a Summoner of the previous FF games now more than ever. I was wrong to think any less of any of you, and I apologize. You guys enjoy the Monk, and I'll be over here enjoying the Summoner. Both classes lost fans but gained new ones, although I was a fan of Summoner since SB.

Tbf, getting people's opinions on things will also always be complicated by how much stake they put on a job's (or its core's) potential vs. its present execution. For instance, I think MNK has about C-tier gameplay, but is only a few tiny changes from being A-tier and a couple more from S-tier. That makes it hard to shit on the job, but I can still be a bit dissatisfied with (and all the while defend its new core mechanics). I suspect it'd be the same for SMN and its phases if I played them in depth, as I think we should have more control over their cycles and timing and there should be more to do in each, but there being elemental phases --in itself-- is very much to my liking and perhaps even preferable to DoT-centric gameplay (so long as the former complexity is eventually made up for).

[ssunny2008]

Me, that guy that has predicted everything and who made the rules SE catered all us mighty casuals out there, is so happy that 4 positionals are finally gone, so i´m able to enjoy MNK! Call me MNK-Master FF14, because i know the only truth and i´m able to see a lot of fun when i play MNK after i finished Warrior, Summoner, Sage...

Good SE is catering to guys like you, who "are so glad about the changes", that they still don´t give af about maining MNK at all. Really, stop talking.

[Barghest1210]

Monk has been my main job since I started playing ARR some six years ago. Being positional heavy and having to maintain GL stacks were the cross we had to bare but I took pride in it because the dance is what made us unique. Its practically apart of our class identity. I understand it must have been frustrating as hell to try to design and expand on monk over the years. Each expansion felt like rather then expanding on our toolset they were instead trying to lift the burden of GL stacks. Its in that endeavor with EW they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Frustration aside I was sad to see GL stacks go but having only two positionals like every other melee class leaves monk feeling hollow and homogenized.

[Noraiga]

Why does DRG feel more fast paced than MNK lel?

I was thinking the same thing 2 days ago but i got the feeling that maybe i'm too crazy or super mad about MNK now that's why i was thinking this way...
Well, it seem that i'm not alone on the "speed" of MNK ! DRG feel hyper quick !!! Even at lvl80 it's insane.

I repeat myself but MNK should had the same or close to the same treatment than DRG. Not a copy paste ofc but simply in mech wise, MNK should not feel so hollow. Blitz is fun ( Blitz work like GL but with less pressure ) it just feel like the Dev team worked just the strict minimum to get MNK passed, like a 10/20 or 5/10( for them to me it's more a 3/10 lol ) it's safe.

[Mikey_R]

Dragoon is going to feel quicker just due to all the oGCDs it has. It has been said alot that Monk has too few GCDs. You have RoF every 60 seconds, RoW every 90 seconds, Brotherhood every 120 seconds, Perfect Balance, which are used every minute in the ratio of 2-1 (IE. Start with 2, minute 1, use 1, minute 2, use 2, minute 3, use 1 etc.) then the absolute RNG fest that is TFC. So really, you are looking at a slight busy period at 60 seconds, and a more busy period at 120 seconds and...not much else.

Go to DRG, Lance Charge every 60 seconds, Battle Litany every 120, Life Surge every 45 seconds, Spine Shatter Dive every 60 seconds, Dragon Sight every 120 seconds and then High Jump every 30 seconds, which allows Mirage Dive, 2 of which changes Geirskogul to Nastrod after a use, Nastrond having a 10 second cooldown, which then puts you into LotD which also gives you access to Star Diver effectively once a minute and going by a 2.5 second GCD, you get a Wyrmwind Thrust every 25 seconds.

Despite Dragoon having a slow GCD, because it has so many more oGCDs it will feel busier than Monk. Dragoon has more positionals than Monk and it has more oGCDs. It has basically taken what made Monk unique due to no fault of its own. This is all due to the changes made to Monk.