Dev Tracker - Discussion

Really bad? Excuse you, but Maat's Asuran Fists beg to differ—it put all of those other jobs in their place!

Also, Salvage was a pretty big thing for a very long time where MNK was useful/popular.

Can't think of a time mnk was really "bad" outside of initial release, which several jobs had the same problem, it's hung in high-top tier for majority of its life "worst" part was probably post ws update but even then it was far from bad.

Now THF, hoo boy, i love being the cheerleader job

Gonna side with Aerix on this one if I base it on my connections and experiences in-game over the years.

I always remember there being 3 groups of people regarding MNK:
1. The fanboys who wanted to be double the dps while just engaging and auto-attacking over any other DD class.
2. The legit MNKs who understood how to get the most out of the FF-version of a MNK, and were almost always happy with where the job has been.
3. The rest of us who honestly never think twice about MNK unless absolutely forced to bring them due to content.

Can't honestly say I ever heard complaints about under-performance of the job, except from those who wanted it to be something it simply wasn't in Final Fantasy. But it always has had a very unique die-hard fanbase within the playerbase that could rival any in terms of dedication to the job- its just a very dichotomous mix of realists and complete fanboys.

There was a period where MNK kinda sucked, it was right after they did the big WS overhaul where H2H and Katana got shafted. The games damage meta had shifted towards WS's being an extreme part of total damage contribution, like not even the old 60/40 but some silly 80/20 or 90/10 type of split. This was remediated when SE updated the H2H WS's to not suck. Katana WS's still kinda suck, but at least NIN can use do Naegling/TP Bonus and rock some hard core damage with their incredible TP gain rate.

There is a fourth group, those that think MNK is "fine" and didn't need any changes at all. Thankfully those folks were shutup when SE did the H2H WS update and MNK become cool again.

Then SE went overboard and hyper-tuned h2h ws' instead, so now it has similar DPS output while feeding a fraction of the TP, shame katana never got that perk but i guess they can ride on the hybrid wagon for a bit

Nah H2H WS's aren't close to the best, but their good enough that MNK's other benefits make them a solid choice in any lineup. None of the H2H WS's have high fTP scaling, it's all multi-hit fTP transfer stuff. There is a reason why Resolution has fallen out of favor lately.

What? XD

fTP scaling is not the same as whole fTP on first hit. MNK has lots of high fTP scaling WSs and at least several that are Top of the Top. Resolution is also one of the best fTP scaling WSs. You completely confuse fTP scaling, with majority of fTP on first hit.

MNK was always practical for any content that had difficult TP moves to deal with, low or no regain, and didn't require you zerg it. Increasing time between TP moves and reducing the average TP the mob has at time of TP move are both extremely beneficial. By increasing the time between TP moves, you give the healers additional time to react to anything(whether it's their personal reaction speed, or the ability to cast 1-2 more spells to get everything cleaned up more effectively).

Combining this with MNK's higher HP pool(which also buys an additional hit before death in many cases) and potential access to Mantra makes for a whole lot of leeway. MP has been effectively unlimited since abyssea era introduced a ton of ways to increase the potency of refresh buffs and the completely broken WHM empyrean legs, so the only real factor in wiping to something is ability to clean up damage/status effects between one TP and the next.

Stronger groups may never have 'needed' MNK to get anything done, and preferred jobs that do higher DPS. But, it's always been adequate to clear within any given time limitations, and it made fights much easier, even during the periods where it lagged behind in damage. It also had access to Kendatsuba during the period prior to malignance when few other offensive jobs could get that level of magic evasion.

Addressing this part specifically, bandwagon players using it because it has high DPS does not in any way show that it was not usable beforehand. It just shows that when you overtune a job, everyone flocks to it. But it's ok, I don't think there's any chance of changing your mind anyway, you tend to dig in on bad arguments.

None of that stuff existed in the first 10 years. These always take on a different form.

It just wasn't practical to feed tp while doing single digit damage (and 0's) to bosses.

You'd take a monk to farm sky(sea limbus), but you wouldn't use a monk (other than chiblast) on the things you farmed for. Cause there's no point punching genbu(jol omega fafnir et all) for zero. And that was pretty much monk in general until abysea.

Heroes of Abyssea was 8 years in, and Monks became the.most dominant melee by a longahot in it 6ish months in.

8, 10 same diff

Okay Pchan.

Once AU came out and we got chaos roll and some ways to give def down outside of dia and even further angon mnk along with most DDs were easily worked in, and again when dnc got its buffs and t2 merits and we started regularly zerging everything

Salvage was 3 years in, dropped some of the best gear in the game, and was dominated by MNK. MNK was also arguably the best melee job in dynamis, einherjar, limbus(though mages still better for most zones). The value of reducing TP moves was much greater in those days, because MP was far more limiting and yagrush was near-nonexistant. In dyna's case, this is assuming you were doing <18 man runs and not running 40-60 people in a slave pod to farm someone's relic. It was also very strong against most midrange NMs(ungur, bune, serket, KA, sim, roc, kreutzet, charybdis, etc..), though it was often more practical to just have a THF and no other melee, or solo as RDM.

I'd point out that you spend much longer farming than actually fighting the gods(sky or sea), but the most efficient way to do most things of that nature was lowmanning with RDM tank and additional mages anyway. I wouldn't say MNK was the best job in that era, or even close, but the things that make it strong now still largely applied then. A top end group with access to gjallarhorn and yagrush probably wouldn't care about the benefits then, just as most top end groups didn't care much in recent years. The catch is that most groups were just blindly using 12+ unbuffed melee with a couple healers, either due to lack of knowledge or lack of available support jobs.

We didn't use MNK in salvage for it's lack of TP feed, we used it because it was effective while being completely naked and with no weapon skills. The moment they introduced that initial pool of cells, MNK became much less necessary.

But sure PChan.

It's terrible when saevel knows whats up. you used monk for the first 5 minutes of salvage and then they're glorified thieves while the real party does the content.

Not sure why you guys think MNK was that far behind in DPS back in the day, but outside of Hagun/Tomoe SAM and Ridill WAR the other jobs at the time were neither putting out considerably faster WSs nor did they hit substantially harder (aside from SA WS).

Other jobs had DA, Absorb-TP, Jumps etc. but Kick Attacks were similarly solid. MNK could afford to /NIN for added safety against a lot of things (or /WAR to pull hate and die miserably) whereas 2H had to choose between Hasso or Seigan and deal with recast timers—and it additionally messed with DRK spellcasting. Healers back during ToAU days still struggled with MP and if the DD died that was zero DPS right there. Formless Strikes was also great against a lot of annoying families, like Flan, which slowed down other DDs considerably.

1k+ WSs were considered solid and Asuran Fists generally hit for 600-1k+, which was competitive when paired with the white damage. Not to mention Black Belt MNKs were often the only ones that were near or at gear haste cap because Speed Belts with HQ Dusk weren't exactly a common sight, largely making up for the lack of Hasso.

I'll concede that SA WS was largely the way to go for HNMs and MNK didn't do great there, but we had tons of other content where /THF wasn't ideal or relevant.

"MNK was a safe and serviceable DD that could compete with most other non-redlined DDs of the Era in a majority of content" is a completely accurate take. Let's not even begin to point out that even MNK's Grail item, Black Belt, was far easier and cheaper to get than a Ridill or Hagun. MNK was not the best but no one here is claiming that it was, and let's not forget that the difference between the best and good/average was smaller at 75 cap than in any other Era of this game's history when you consider how much more restricted every job's kit was, how much weaker gear and support was, overall smaller damage numbers, etc. unless you want to count extreme outliers like Souleater zerging. Eiryl and Saevel posting cringe.

You say that like DRK had anything worth casting at the time anyway. I remember a two page argument over on Alla about wearing Plastron to sustain Absorb-TP usage at MJSP. Hagun SAMs ruled merit parses because they wouldn't care about WSing a mob at 1% to pad it out (another multipage argument).

The differences between jobs were purely circumstantial. All DDs were garbo back in 75 era. We were counting off individual accuracy points below 95% that could instead be attack and math out to be more damage in the long run.

This got better through Abyssea and some DDs got more defined and useful, despite Atma favoring crit so much, and then Voidwatch's free WS spam ruined everything again but was roughly the golden era of speculative DD theory and potential outside of VW (like how Neo Nyzul was a great application of OaT Fulgurante).

Been back for all of a month and a half and the game feels way more vertical and stratified now than it ever did in the past and I love it.

-discoid
-homing missile(if you missed any gears)
-mortal revolution
-frog song/chorus

just because you weren't knowledgeable enough at the time to realize that TP was the primary way in which anything did damage back then doesn't mean you weren't benefitting from it, if you consult strategies from the era penance rotation is always mentioned too

Keep the gaslighting up Pchan if it makes you feel better. Nobody used MNK for subtle blow back then. They were super popular at first because we started with no weapons, no abilities, no magic, nada, and MNK can actually operate in that situation. A week after the starting cells were introduced MNKs became scarce. Unless your Pchan, then you insist on using MNK to magic burst.

Cult of the Monk is real it seems. No we're not joining your cult so kindly step off our porch.

https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/53426-Salvage-mnk-question

presented, for your observation, a debate on whether you should use hades sainti for additional subtle blow or if only using handpiece/black belt/rajas is adequate, dated from january of 2008

Even though we're talking MNK Cult in FFXI, can we do a throwback to FF7 and call them "Jenovah's Witnesses"?

What jobs were considered DD/tank in salvage was almost entirely based on how much tp they fed to the bosses. It's no wonder I always see bitching about Salvage if yall were this bad at it the whole time.

We did it with drks and nins, doesnt make mnk any less appealing considering you can do a penance rotation and almost lock down anything while doing virtually the same dmg overall

I like how Pchan is being used as some kind of derogatory insult as if it's 2006 BG forum

It was harder to hit the subtle blow cap at 75 on MNK than it is now, when you basically don't have to think about it and Auspice exists. They also added AGI-based TP feed reduction (-50%) in 2011 and Subtle Blow II (another -50% at cap) far more recently.

That said, the TP rate of chariots with two underbuffed MNKs vs. two underbuffed WARs or something in Salvage was never a close competition.

MNK was always a little slower than a balls-to-the-wall zerg with other DDs, but always safer. I've been referring to it as the "easy mode DD" for quite a few years now.

To this day I am still torn 50:50 on whether pchan was an absolute genius or completely mentally incapacitated. The reality is they and their French friends were succesfully completing new end game content before a lot of people though, even if he was a spaz on the forum. They were worse on here than BG.

He was mathematically and mechanically very intelligent, he just had some... colorful beliefs