Monk, Beast Chakra, and Perfect Balance | 6.05

[yuguPixel]

Hello, Warriors of Light! I'm just here to share my experience playing Monk, complete with all the emotion it comes with. Thank you for being patient with me!
Also, please keep in mind the reason I have so much passion to talk about this is because I am a big fan of the direction Monk is going in for Endwalker. Whoever was working on it should be proud, because the changes to Perfect Balance, and the Beast Gauge/Masterful Blitz are SO much fun to play with! Thank you!

What inspired me to create an account on the Forums and look for discussion:
Two very interesting things happened to me the day that I hit 90 with monk. I died to Extreme Hydaelyn's ice mechanic due to no fault of my own (Another player unfortunately ran their ice into me, killing us both.) I had two nadi stored, waiting for Brotherhood and the other raid buffs to go out, which pushed my Perfect Balance rotation out of sync by 80 seconds. This kind of thing happens, no one dies unpunished, but the realization of my costs for dying was the single worst feeling I've ever experienced playing a Job in FF14.

Later that day, I was running roulettes with a friend, and we were placed in a level 60 dungeon. This is the level you learn Perfect Balance, but before you have access to Riddle of Fire, or Brotherhood. I had the most fun playing monk in this dungeon, and enjoyed my rotation much more than I enjoy it at level 90.

Those two experiences shaped my perspective of Monk's current state pretty significantly.

If I am to throw my two cents into the discussion of monk, I would say that this desire to make Monk fit into a perfect two minute rotation is rigid, and brittle. It is far too frustrating, and is holding monk back from its gameplay identity.

A few things I think would help Monk gameplay feel healthy:
Consider removing Riddle of Fire and Riddle of Wind. Maybe merge them with the Beast Chakra system, or Perfect Balance somehow. But Riddle of Fire creates an overarching gameplay cycle that indirectly punishes a player that wants to use Perfect Balance in their own way. Riddle of Wind is just... inconsequential.

Consider lowering the cooldown of Perfect Balance. I think the most elegant, most enjoyable way of doing this, would be to keep the 40 second cooldown, but to lower its cooldown dynamically when the monk has high uptime on the boss. One way I can think to do this is to lower its cooldown by 2 seconds every time the monk successfully finishes a 3-hit combo.
If it's implemented in this way, you can also have Anatman accelerate Perfect Balance's cooldown. People will love Anatman if you do this, so... food for thought.

[ssunny2008]

A few things I think would help Monk gameplay feel healthy:
Consider removing Riddle of Fire and Riddle of Wind. Maybe merge them with the Beast Chakra system, or Perfect Balance somehow. But Riddle of Fire creates an overarching gameplay cycle that indirectly punishes a player that wants to use Perfect Balance in their own way. Riddle of Wind is just... inconsequential.

Consider lowering the cooldown of Perfect Balance. I think the most elegant, most enjoyable way of doing this, would be to keep the 40 second cooldown, but to lower its cooldown dynamically when the monk has high uptime on the boss. One way I can think to do this is to lower its cooldown by 2 seconds every time the monk successfully finishes a 3-hit combo.
If it's implemented in this way, you can also have Anatman accelerate Perfect Balance's cooldown. People will love Anatman if you do this, so... food for thought.

Won´t happen, it´s a strict rotation game and everything is getting more and more aligned within the classes and even based on boss-mechanics. There is no chance for unique stuff and variety.

Even if they get ride of RoW, RoF and brotherhood, you´re still in the need to align your hardhitters with all other raidbuffs for the best damage output in raids. In dungeons and normal raids? Just spam your stuff as you want, doesn´t matter anyway...

[yuguPixel]

Won´t happen, it´s a strict rotation game and everything is getting more and more aligned within the classes and even based on boss-mechanics. There is no chance for unique stuff and variety.

Even if they get ride of RoW, RoF and brotherhood, you´re still in the need to align your hardhitters with all other raidbuffs for the best damage output in raids. In dungeons and normal raids? Just spam your stuff as you want, doesn´t matter anyway...

I find that a somewhat hard pill to swallow, so I reserve my right to speak my feelings about it. :')

The part of raid buffs going out isn't something I haven't considered either. I think it'd be more fun to align with as you go, instead of sticking with this brittle 2 minute CD philosophy in classes that it doesn't make sense on. The 2 charge thing already gives you a damage economy you can reserve for raid buffs, so I'm not fully convinced.

[Navnav]

They should do away with raid buffs and just make give the game talent trees and add some job diversity. Same rotation for two years is mind boggling.

[ssunny2008]

The part of raid buffs going out isn't something I haven't considered either. I think it'd be more fun to align with as you go, instead of sticking with this brittle 2 minute CD philosophy in classes that it doesn't make sense on. The 2 charge thing already gives you a damage economy you can reserve for raid buffs, so I'm not fully convinced.

The game would need to change drastically in its class and content-design to get ride of that plague. But sadly the game is moving more and more into a "braindead-mode" instead of leaving us uniqueness, variety and decision-making.
I´m fully on your side in some way. They should get ride of raidbuffs on nearly any class, make DPS selfish... it´s srsly a dumb idea that some DPS lack behind because you´re not going for 8-man content. Give 2-3 classes only a buff with a high cooldown, so it´s gonna used for DPS checks.
There are a lot of possibilities to make the gameplay more engaging, but i guess we can just sit here and watching how SE continues their strict braindead road. Gonna wait for 7.0, when raidbuffs are automatically activated every 2 minutes and your standard skills will become hardhitters with 1000 potency only available in this 20s window, meanwhile playing 123,123,123 the next 100s.