Removal of Positionals

[Shurrikhan]

You absolutely cannot say that you find that monk has nothing unique about it and then in the very next sentence praise the patch that removed monks most unique mechanic, Greased Lightning. What you want for monk is to just faceroll your keyboard with OGCDs when OGCDs are already a huge problem with monk since its impossible to every double weave anything thanks to the already extremely low GCD time. Tornado Kick rotation monk is and always will be the best iteration of monk where it was at the peak of its own class design.

While I'll agree that TK Monk was the job's peak, it was also the only time Greased Lightning was an actual mechanic, rather than merely a wind-up cost incurred once per continuous fight with a partial compensation likewise once per (continuous span of) fight. In T9 and a couple Extremes (Leviathan, etc.) that challenge was at least interesting, but it took all of a Tornado Kick bug giving it 30% more damage than was intended, old Riddle of Wind, and a less absurd CD on Perfect Balance for it to actually be a resource that offered the job additional agency.

Without that context, honestly Blitz's little rotational adjustments made possible offers more nuance than Greased Lightning itself ever did. That's not to say that Blitz is great, only that forming job identity solely as a penalty/constraint, rather than anything leverageable or even anything sufficiently compensated for, is rarely a good idea. More so even than positionals, Greased Lightning required appropriate surroundings to feel like a real job mechanic (whereby you might time a speed-drop in such a way as not to waste [de]buff uptime, or knowing that there's raidbuffs enough to compensate, or because you really do need the burst then and there more than you need total damage, etc.).

It still ticks me off that they didn't go deeper into the elemental and mini-burst-heavy route of late Stormblood, though. Small issues aside in terms of polish and some skills being left lackluster for the time (The Forbidden Chakra, especially), it was such a good direction.

I'd rather they had double down on the stance-based Riddles, actually made the stances themselves worthwhile and/or replaced filler-APM The Forbidden Chakra with a couple stance-dependent skills each with additional effects and able to spend 1-7 Chakra per cast instead of the fixed 5 with no bankability (or a single button, but the action depends on the number of Chakra spent).

Of course, would I still take a (more varied) Blitz system atop that? Sure. I want my Phantom Kick, Suplexes, Flint Kick, and Phantom Rush all (rather than good animations going to waste, replaced with level). I likewise wouldn't have minded seeing a take on the Dark and Light Chakra concept, especially as that seems about the only way Elixir Field would ever make any sense.

[Ransu]

Tornado Kick rotation monk is and always will be the best iteration of monk where it was at the peak of its own class design.

Absolutely not lmao.

[VentVanitas]

snip

With how PB/Blitz currently functions, old Tornado Kick/GL would've legitimately worked better with each other. I would've taken that synergy over the pure oGCD filler that is Chakra. 2 charge 45s cooldown PB with GL3 would have been amazing to have and it pretty much would have solved almost all of the problems ShB MNK had with GL. (I say GL3 because the 4th stack never should have happened let's be real.)

Alas, we could only have one of them... despite Blitz in its current form not really doing anything that would have conflicted with GL.

Absolutely not lmao.

What is, then? Sure as hell wasn't the colossal failure that was ShB MNK.

[Shurrikhan]

[1] With how PB/Blitz currently functions, old Tornado Kick/GL would've legitimately worked better with each other.
[2] I would've taken that synergy over the pure oGCD filler that is Chakra. [3] 2 charge 45s cooldown PB with GL3 would have been amazing to have and it pretty much would have solved almost all of the problems ShB MNK had with GL. [4] (I say GL3 because the 4th stack never should have happened let's be real.)

[5] Alas, we could only have one of them... despite [6] Blitz in its current form not really doing anything that would have conflicted with GL.

[Numbers appended above in place of breaking this into a ton of small quotes.]

1. Agreed.
   
   
2. Same, but it's not either-or. Chakra was, after all, coexistent with even the brief period Tornado Kick was actually integral (4.2-4.55).
   
   
3. Sure, but ShB Monk didn't really even have an issue with GL beyond turning Riddle of Wind from a way to generate GL to needing to generate one GL more (effectively taking twice as long to reach full performance). More generally, too, I'm just not a fan of creating new mechanics just to "solve" another, especially if its 'constraint' already amounted to a leverageable mechanic (as GL was between 4.2 and 4.55).
   
   I consider Barrel Stabilizer utter bloat for that reason, for instance, with a tweak to the mechanic itself being preferable to how that skill was used in practice, especially after Stormblood. (Old Ikishoten, on the other hand, in the context of gauge management amounting to more than just Shinten charges, at least worked with and enhanced the existing considerations/optimizations, though, so even Barrel Stabilizer's being crap may have had at least as much to do with tuning.)
   
   
4. Agreed.
   
   
5. What actual warrant is there for this belief though? Those in charge of a given decision shitting the bed does not mean that a bed could only ever have been intended for feces.
   
   
6. It doesn't, but I don't think anyone, even the devs, have ever implied the two were conflicting. Greased Lightning, like so much else, was removed because they gutted it to the point that it was no longer a means of gameplay, only of annoyance, and many therefore asked for its removal.
   
   (And, again, without TK and/or sufficient DPS for a mechanic that is more legitimately hard to maintain [e.g., a far shorter duration but falling off one stack at a time instead, though even that would depend on frequent downtime to be entertaining]... it really is/was a dead mechanic. There's no point in keeping Greased Lightning by itself -- i.e., without any means of leveraging it.)

[Picker]

If they get rid of positionals then black mage should do at least 10% more damage than melee, because we have to actually try

[Ransu]

If they get rid of positionals then black mage should do at least 10% more damage than melee, because we have to actually try

BLM should always be on par or slightly better than SAM imo, with SAM always being the top melee damage.

[Valence]

haha good joke

[Picker]

BLM should always be on par or slightly better than SAM imo, with SAM always being the top melee damage.

But why should samurai be the top melee? They’ve had all their interesting mechanics removed. No more gauge management, no more merciful eyes to gain dps from taking damage, no more disengage for increased potency enpi when fighting for uptime (melee get perfect uptime in all mechs now), no more kaiten, no more directional aoe, auto crits. I know this issue goes beyond positionals, but where’s the skill expression or difficulty in playing melee at this point? What’s the incentive to play blm/rdm where you need extensive fight knowledge and split-second improvisation to compete with a role that has none of these concerns. Hitting a positional is like the last brain cell left for melee, they can’t take that away from them or they’d better have something good in the design works to make melee engaging again.

[Shurrikhan]

But why should samurai be the top melee? They’ve had all their interesting mechanics removed. No more gauge management, no more merciful eyes to gain dps from taking damage, no more disengage for increased potency enpi when fighting for uptime (melee get perfect uptime in all mechs now), no more kaiten, no more directional aoe, auto crits. I know this issue goes beyond positionals, but where’s the skill expression or difficulty in playing melee at this point? What’s the incentive to play blm/rdm where you need extensive fight knowledge and split-second improvisation to compete with a role that has none of these concerns. Hitting a positional is like the last brain cell left for melee, they can’t take that away from them or they’d better have something good in the design works to make melee engaging again.

My guess is Ransu is referring to personal DPS, rather than rDPS, at which point the reason is simply that SAM offers nothing else, while all other melee have at least some form of raid buff.

I say this because the claim that "BLM should always be on par or slightly better than SAM imo, with SAM always being the top melee damage" otherwise makes no damn sense, as SAM is now one of the simplest DPS after non-BLM ranged.

[Valence]

Listening to people trying to craft job damage hierarchies out of subjective difficulties hurts my soul.