Originally Posted by
AyinDygra
I agree that every update does not need to be a boost to overall possible damage coming from Monk (depending on what other jobs get), parts of Monk do need some attention to remain or become useful, such as Footwork and Guard.
Improving these things would be a step in the right direction:
Footwork needs a niche where we'd choose to use it over normal hand to hand for good reasons, not to slow down our damage and control our hate production (maybe stronger attack against enemies with high defense with 2-hander type bonuses and/or the ability to randomly short-stun enemies.) and Guard is a unique and significant method of damage mitigation that actually helps us against enemies that use "job ability attacks" that cannot be countered, but it needs some help (higher activation rate, maybe part of Footwork is increasing guard rate, etc). These would be in addition to the areas that they're already focusing on in the above post.
Neither upgrade is expected to make Monk even "more powerful" than other jobs. They focus on the lesser-used or less useful aspects of the job. I guess the biggest argument against any such upgrades is that it's so-called "wasted time" that could be used on "more useful" updates (a point on which I disagree.)
(A suggestion that fits into the proposed changes to Monk: A job ability: Grapple. Using this ability may prevent the enemy from defending itself against other party member's attacks. (turning off Counterattack, Shield blocking, Evasion, Guard and Parry) The drawback: While grappling, the monk's auto-attack rounds may be consumed each time it prevents one of the above defense actions of the enemy.)