What is the deal with dragon kick?

[Cabalabob]

So I heard about this whole deal of the top parsing MNK using only dragon kick or something a while back but I didn’t think much of it at the time cause I don’t play MNK much.

But I just got round to levelling it since endwalker and… yeah… what is that? It’s the highest potency attack for absolutely no reason. Once you get it there’s pretty much no reason to use any other attack but twin snakes and demolish ever again and before you get beast chakra there’s no reason to use perfect balance anymore either since you can spam dragon kick without it and it’s your highest potency attack.

It just seems so weird and there’s no reason for it, some slight potency adjustments and all this goes away. Yet if I recall it’s been like this since launch? Why? What have they done to this job and how have they not fixed it for an entire expansion?

[VentVanitas]

to be fair, it's just a meme and it shouldn't really be taken that seriously. I'm not gonna deny the fact that it's anywhere near comparable to the regular rotation is absurd though.

as for why SE hasn't nerfed it yet, I'm going to chalk it up to them insisting on their "no nerfs mid expac" shtick. I expect DK's potency to lower come 7.0 where it's far more easier for the dev team to stealth nerf things under the guise of new changes.

[Silhart]

For what it's worth, the person behind that Dragon Kick rotation has said that if he played normally, he would have done more damage--enough to get a rank 1 MNK parse. Spamming Dragon Kick means missing out on Bootshine's guaranteed crit and chakra generation, and MNK's BIS doesn't give enough crit rate to make up for that loss. The average person won't have the killtime or crit luck needed to pull off those numbers, and they'll be worse off for following a meme rotation. So, essentially it hasn't been fixed because there is nothing to fix.

to be fair, it's just a meme and it shouldn't really be taken that seriously. I'm not gonna deny the fact that it's anywhere near comparable to the regular rotation is absurd though.

Honestly, as far as absurd rotations go, this isn't the worst I've seen. There was a SAM in Asphodelos who parsed orange in Savage by spamming Yukikaze -> Hagakure (also known as ice SAM--at one point it was apparently only 30 DPS less than the standard looping rotation). And then there was the infamous No-F4/Paradox rotation that made rounds near the beginning of this expansion. It is kind of silly, and there might be a conversation to be had about whether it's healthy for the game for meme rotations to be this viable, but eh, I don't think it happens often enough for it to be a concern. I feel like the people who would unironically use these rotations are off playing SMN instead.

[Arohk]

Jus do some simple math and add up the potencies, and you will see that spamming dragon kick does less dps, the only reason to do dragon kick over the other combo is if you miss your possitional.

[Valence]

It is what, a hundred dps less than the normal rotation, give or take? A bit more those days since this was in asphodelos?

Way too close for comfort, but I guess you can play MNK like you play SMN and scrape by.

[Cabalabob]

Jus do some simple math and add up the potencies, and you will see that spamming dragon kick does less dps, the only reason to do dragon kick over the other combo is if you miss your possitional.

It just reminds me of WARs old butcher’s block. Where it was the highest potency combo but if you took into account beast gauge generation the lower potency storm’s path combo was actually higher dps. But the butcher’s block potency being so high was completely unnecessary and just led to easily avoidable confusion that, again, could have been rectified with some simple potency adjustments.

[Post]

Yeah, they could have changed Butcher's Block potency when they went into StB. They made a lot of dumb decisions in the job design that expansion so they could have their flashy gauges. Butcher's and Storm's Path/Eye were conceived of in ARR and only built upon in HW, but many HW systems got funky when they tried to cram em into gauges that they tried to make seem central to each job when they sometimes were just fancy buff indicators, to bring this back to MNK.

I actually liked MNKs because GL was so important to track, and now the Beast Chakra and Nadi thing is well represented, but damn I actually wish they put Twin Snakes and Leaden Bootshine on that gauge too. I think making those easier to keep track of in the world where you get 8+ party buffs knocking em around your UI every few minutes would make MNK more accessible.

[Arohk]

I actually wish they put Twin Snakes and Leaden Bootshine on that gauge too. I think making those easier to keep track of in the world where you get 8+ party buffs knocking em around your UI every few minutes would make MNK more accessible.

You see, they only do that for Ninja (Huton) and Black Mage(Enochian) , their UI design is completly inconsistent.
Maybe it is lazyness or the don't care.
Sorms Eye, Twin Snakes, and co should all be part of the job gauge and not in the buff list.

[Rongway]

I actually liked MNKs because GL was so important to track, and now the Beast Chakra and Nadi thing is well represented, but damn I actually wish they put Twin Snakes and Leaden Bootshine on that gauge too. I think making those easier to keep track of in the world where you get 8+ party buffs knocking em around your UI every few minutes would make MNK more accessible.

Leaden Fist affects a specific action, so it goes in the Conditional Enhancements group. It's a good idea to move Conditional Enhancements to the middle of your screen and enlarge them so that they're easier to see. I keep mine under the Enfeeblements bar with them extending in opposite directions.