A NuMonk Rework

[Shurrikhan]

Larger rework not yet revised. Hiding it for now.

Major Rework Version:

HIGHLIGHTS

• Blitzes are now integral, frequent and varied. There are also now varied Full Blitzes, to which regular Blitzes act as setup (instead of just Tornado Kick or later Phantom Rush).
• Positionals are back but their management is far less bloated and Leaden Fist no longer makes or breaks you through unfortunately timed boss-spins.
• Form lock-outs are removed. Form Shift removed.
• Chakra as a 5-point system is gone, replaced with a more granular and bankable spender gauge. Meditation is gone; you should optimize your melee-uptime like a real Monk.
• We can go Super-Saiyen (doubling resource generation and your traits' Speed bonuses) but draining gauge over time. It ends (complete with an exhaustion phase of variable duration and intensity) when you run out of resource.

BACKGROUND CHANGES

• "Rollover GCD skills" added to the game.
• They solely add an amount of time to your GCD, rather than refreshing it.
  
  
• "Partial GCD skills" added to the game.
• They use a % of the normal GCD, rather than a fixed time -- e.g., 60% GCD instead of a fixed 1.5 seconds.

POSITIONALS

• 40 potency on every skill except for Demolish (20).
• Bootshine now just always crits. As such, its "40 potency" is effectively 60.
• New, unbloated ways to guarantee positionals have been added (as a side-benefit of new gauge-spenders).

FORMS

• You can use any form at any time.
• Lockouts replaced with a softer control, a new trait.
• The new Flowing Strikes trait causes each skill within a particular form to grant a buff which increases the damage of the other two forms by 10%. Only two iterations can be present at any time.
• As such, you ramp up to a 20% damage bonus over your first 2 GCDs and thereafter, you are obliged to rotate in order (else lose a sixth [the effect of a 20% damage buff) of your damage for hitting the same form twice or an eleventh [the effects of a 10% damage buff] for not rotating evenly).
  
  
• Blitzes give the buff for all 3 forms, freeing up all but your most recent form for use. This allows you to flex your rotation a bit around Blitz timings, especially useful for optimizing Demolish.
• The Flowing Strike buffs (Simian Speed, Raptor's Reach, Coeurl's Crash, and Fluid Form) weaponskills buffs are optionally managed through a new job gauge element. Check/uncheck an option from the config setting on this element to show or hide these buffs from your Status Bar.

BLITZ

• Masterful Blitz renamed to just Blitz.
• Perfect Balance is gone. Blitz itself is now available starting from level 30. (Remember also that forms are no longer locked and Blitz gives some further flexibility.)
• Instead, you simply have access to a Blitz every 20 seconds. 2 charges.
• You now have access to 1 Blitz by level 30, 4 Blitzes by lv50, 5 by lv60, and 7 by lv76.
• Blitzes can now use 1, 2, or 3 steps. They account for all different forms but the last one used.
• This means your possible combinations are x, Ax, Bx, Cx, ABx, ACx, BCx.
  
  
• Shorter Blitzes tend to have less damage but more (not rDPS-related) utility.
• Blitz Mastery causes all successful other weaponskills to decrease Blitz's cooldown by 1 second and allows for Ax, Bx, Cx.
• Blitz Mastery II causes Blitz itself to reduce Blitz's cooldown by 5 seconds and allows for ABx, ACx, BCx.

FULL BLITZ

• At level 82, you gain access to Full Blitz.
• Additionally causes Blitzes to proc setup for 20 seconds.
• This setup is not cancellable and separate instances of setup drop separately; Blitz does not refresh any prior Blitzes' setup.
  
  
• Like Blitz, Full Blitz can be used from 1, 2, or 3 steps.
• These further steps are unlocked at lv86 and lv90.
• (For now) Full Blitz accounts only for the number of steps, allowing for only 3 choices.

THE GAUGE

• Chakra has been replaced by Greased Lightning, a Kenki-lite with some over-time generation.
• Meditation is also therefore gone. Just maximize your melee-uptime like a real Monk.
• Maximum of 40 points. Gain one point per second and one point per weaponskill hit, including that of any Blitz or Full Blitz.
• You can spend GL on Steel Peak (15 GL for an ST oGCD with a DR-less stun), Dive Kick (20 GL for an oGCD movement AoE), or Tornado Kick (20-40 GL with partial AoE damage and up to 10 yalms gap-closer to target; 1-GCD rollover; grants up to +40% movement speed, fading at 5% per half-second).
  
  
• A new trait, Breaker's Fist, causes your GL-spending skills to grant Unbreakable for 4 seconds, guaranteeing positionals and preventing would-be fatal damage up to an amount equal to twice your GL-spender damage dealt. You are healed for half the remaining stored effect of Unbreakable if/when the buff expires.
  
  
• Greased Lightning increases your movement speed by half your current GL value (up to +20% at 40 points).
• Greased Lighting rises and falls (at 1 pt/sec) to a resting value of 20.

SUPER-SAIYEN

• A new skill, Opening the Gates, added.
  2 charges, 40s recharge.
• OtG increases Movement Speed and Attack Speed by further 20% and doubles all on-hit effects (Blitz CD reduction, GL generation) but causes GL to drain, instead of increase, over time. The drain interval shortens by 5% (multiplicative) each tick (losing 1 GL per .35 seconds by 20 seconds in).
• Converts Steel Peak to The Forbidden Chakra and Dive Kick to Enlightenment. TFC and EnL both use 40% GCD rollovers and, as weaponskills, refund some GL. This is mostly for ping-friendliness, keeping the total APM about the same and allowing one to actually see complete animations (instead of just having empty animation time between clipped-animation skills) by moving these oGCDs over to partial-GCDs.

MISCELLANEOUS

• New skill, Vault, added. It shares a cooldown with Thunderclap and propels you up to 12 yalms forward and grants a 2 second movement speed bonus (equal to Sprint). If Vault is not on any hotbar, Thunderclap will change to Vault whenever you have no applicable target. Their recharge time has been reduced to 20 seconds. Anatman just pauses all duration or resource to be lost over time. 2 charges, 40s recharge.
• Twin Snakes potency decreased by 20 and True Strike potency increased by 20, increasing their potency-gap to 60 (i.e., a point where True Strike is actually worth keeping on one's bars and a 2-True-per-Twin rotation at high Skill Speed would actually be competitive).
• Anatman has been taken off the GCD and its cooldown reduced to 20 seconds. It no longer extends Disciplined Fist or present form to maximum, but instead simply reverses their drain (causing duration to instead increase over time). It now additionally generates Chakra over time and Thunderclap and Vault recharge 400% more quickly during its channel.
• Riddle of Wind and Riddle of Earth removed. Unbreakable fills the later's purpose just fine (and with more gameplay involvement) and the current Riddle of Wind is just an embarrassment.
• Note: I'll likely just make SSS just another Blitz, effectively replaced by TK (since TK was the traditional GL spender and disengage skill).
• Yes, there will be at least 10 Blitzes in total, and thus 5 new animations required. No, I would not mind Omnistrike, Rising Uppercut, and Dolphin Kick to be among those, either.
• Some Blitzes may include rollovers (likely the SSS Blitz), a cast time (likely before a gap-close), recast elements (it turns into an oGCD that may be hit another time within 3s until you reach another 2-step or higher Blitz) or even a channel (think Phantom Kick). They needn't all be standard weaponskills with the partial AoE.
• No, you will not be wasting any Blitzes (nor Blitz animations) to leveling up. If they get upgraded, it will be by a %-increasing trait that affects all of them.

WORK IN PROGRESS

• I still obviously need to come up with the different Blitz effects.
• I'm probably going to add more depth to Full Blitz, which means the Blitz count may be even higher.
• The numbers (especially, the potency values), obviously.
• I may add back SSS as a 1-GCD rollover weaponskill.

PREEMPTIVE ANSWERS (to likely questions)

Opening the Gates as the name for going into the bursty drain phase? Why?

You're opening your Chakra gates. I suppose Anatman could also have worked, but...

Why copy Ninjutsu?

Because the actual execution involved in current Blitz is effectively just a Meikyo-Midare (always exactly 4 actions), which is less flexible than Ninjutsu (up to 4 actions, where order can matter).

Or more simply put, because it allows for more options and higher frequency. These Blitzes should still nonetheless feel plenty different from Ninjutsu.

Why drop the Solar/Lunar aspect?

More accurate would be to say that it's switched from two orders by which to pass through a forced 3-part loop, similar to Bard's songs, to many more possible combinations (and now permutations). Why have only one possible advanced Blitz (Tornado Kick, upgrading to Phantom Rush, at present) that only offers the choices between Lunar-first and Solar-first (or, yes, a 40s offset if that'd math out to be better over a long fight with a very predictable completion time) when you could have several choices?

Why the Kenki-lite?

Because it's a hell of a lot more fluid than a 5-point RNG-based bar with zero bankability and I feel the nuance in timing, especially around Unbreakable, allows more available complexity than did the previous bar-watching and the occasional delayed rotational oGCD to get out one's TFC before overcapping.

What's the point of all these Blitzes if you're still only likely to use the 3 3-step choices?

Having 3 choices is still better than our current mere 2 (which are quickly reduced to 1 for all but 1 in 3 parts of our rotational cycle). Additionally, I hope to tune the effects on a couple more to make 4 or 5 of them worth using rotationally, and all of them worth using situationally.