I’m not trying to be rude (since saying no offense really doesn’t help), but I believe you do not understand how the nature of no-cooldown skills and Tree of Savior’s multi-class character builds screws with simply comparing damage between 2 specific skills in general.
(Taking kTest numbers for calculations for bosses, undeniable that Monk is nothing right now in iToS)
Energy Blast does 240% x 8 in 3 seconds, so 1,920% per Energy Blast which is laughable damage even now in iToS, much worse in the bloated skill factor meta in kTest right now. When used with Arts Attribute, it does roughly double the damage per hit (first second doesn’t get damage boost, second gets double and third gets triple so for simplicity’s sake I’ll just make the whole thing roughly double), so 480% x 11 in 3 seconds, about 5,280%.
Monk’s Art Attribute now only works on critical hits from Monk skills only (One Inch Punch bleed crits don’t count), so it will be harder to get those 5 critical hits as opposed to using multi-hits to get those 5 critical hits. With that, I’ll assume a MINIMUM of 5 seconds (Double Punch > God Finger Flick > Palm Strike + Hand Knife x4) to get 5 critical hits and a minimum of 5 Energy Blasts per Monk Arts buff (less Energy Blast if one misses a few seconds from the 15 second window). From there, it’s fair to say that Energy Blast can be used 15 times per minute, so about 79,200% per minute. Divine Stigma gives 50% damage and double hits, so I’ll just assume a 200% additional (from my testing the boost is less but I can also blame that to physical attack range) damage boost for 50% up-time at most, thus 198,000% in the span of 1 minute with Divine Stigma. Players have to buff and move around as well, so that damage number goes down in practice.
Palm Strike + Hand Knife does 3377% (30% defense ignore) and 3961% (20% defense ignore and additional damage based on enemy SPR) respectively with 4 Overheats, so about 29,352% in 3 seconds. In 1 minute, both skills can be used 4 times (with Golden Bell Shield, since there is no point using Golden Bell Shield to reset Energy Blast), so 117,480%. With God Finger Flick, that’s 176,112% per minute. Throw in the damage boost from Divine Stigma and Golden Bell Shield, and it’ll be evident that what Energy Blast takes in a minute with 45 seconds of channeling + the set-up time is overtaken by what Palm Strike + Hand Knife can do in 12 seconds over a minute (takes like almost 3 seconds max to use 4 overheats), which is abysmal in comparison of DPS. A 50,000% difference sounds odd in that regard.
While Energy Blast will take up almost all of your time to spam, Palm Strike and Hand Knife leaves ample time left to use plenty of other skills to buff up, heal up or do damage to widen that gap much more (there are quite a few classes that can easily weave in their damage in-between Palm Strike + Hand Knife cooldowns or just buffing up in general, and this is only talking about the classes that so far has received the skill factor changes). With Breaking Wheel, that’s double the Palm Strike + Hand Knife damage + most physical skills you have. Most skills, both magic and physical, now do at least 2,000% skill factor minimum with multi-hits with only about 1 second of skill animation or something instead of Energy Blast’s 5 seconds to get the buff and then taking 3 seconds to pull off. The new Moringponia 2H-Mace’s 145% final damage modifier with God Finger Flick also makes Smite a very good skill to DPS with, so there’s really no shortage of skills with better DPS than Energy Blast to spam until the next cooldown of Palm Strike + Hand Knife.
On the other hand, the nature of no-cooldown skills is that any time spent using any other skills, including skills from other classes, means less damage on no-cooldown skills. Any time spent using other skills means less time on Energy Blast. Since only Monk skills can trigger Monk’s Art Attribute, any non-Monk skills used means less time to set-up 5 critical hits for Energy Blast. This would probably be easy in a fight with mobs, but in a boss fight with only 1 target, setting up 5 critical hits with Monk skills becomes harder. If 5 critical hits cannot be done (maybe sometimes you can’t get 5 critical hits with Palm Strike + Hand Knife), then you’re stuck Double Punching until you get the buff (5 hits every 2 seconds). Any time spent doing anything else (buffing, moving out of damage AoE, using other skills) adds on to less time for Energy Blast, dragging that damage number down more and more.
On top of that, along with that set-up time, Energy Blast has a minimum requirement of having to use Double Punch stance, which limits Monks out of using Druid for Lycanthropy damage boost, something that most other cleric damage builds are free to use (and usually use). Druid has a lot of great skills to deal damage (takes like less than a second to use each) and also give more critical damage as well, so Monk misses out on that as well unless they abandon Double Punch and Energy Blast entirely. Most other buff classes do not have 100% damage buff up-time, at most 50%, while debuff classes, especially Oracle Death Sentence, is tricky to use with Energy Blast spam. Palm Strike + Hand Knife does not need that Double Punch requirement, and can simply be used any time you want. It should also be noted that while Breaking Wheel doubles the damage of Palm Strike + Hand Knife, it does not double Energy Blast’s damage. Even before the bloated skill factor patches after Monk’s Art Attribute came, kToS players have already caught on in less than a week that Druid-Zealot-Inquisitor is still better than using Energy Blast spam in Challenge Mode as Melstis’ and Drakonas Frieno’s damage play a big part of its damage (damage clearly fizzles out in boss fights). Energy Blast’s damage was just half full of hot air filled with fixed damage, and this will become worse in the face of the bloated skill factors in kTest as compared to the miniscule fixed damage of Drakonas Frieno and Melstis.
A Monk build focused around spending time to buff and use Energy Blast is ultimately worse than a Monk build simply buffing and using burst skills. Even in a burst damage build, Energy Blast will only be used as very short filler until a more important skill is off-cooldown (thus wasting time on Energy Blast buff AKA less Energy Blasts used until the next buff). In the long run considering whole character builds, Energy Blast’s damage is much worse in practice, and ultimately worse than Palm Strike + Hand Knife. I won’t try comparing between two classes for now since the numbers are still being adjusted, but I can argue the same points with Monk and Exorcist with mostly 15 second cooldown skills, though I don’t feel like doing it at all.
Double Punch … to be honest I believe IMC already gave up on this skill and just made it a buff trigger for Monk Arts Attribute. IMC had already openly admitted in Re:Build that they are bad at balancing Double Punch, or no-cooldown skills in general (probably the reason why Energy Blast is what it is now in kTest), and had been trying to balance it since ages ago to no avail, even now. At least it doesn’t use SP, but still, with how skill cooldowns for most classes are decent or quite low to begin with, there’s more than enough filler skills with more damage than Double Punch until the next skill goes off-cooldown.
I agree with this, to be honest this wave of skill factor changes simply came about because favorite classes aren’t allowed to be nerfed to avoid backlash from kToS players who only play meta builds with such classes. All this time taken into skill factor changes could’ve been used for more important things like the points you made with the balance issue, but alas.
The game right now is in the middle of a failing overhaul that won’t fix much. Can’t wait to see how many months it will take for IMC to decide on another overhaul.