Originally Posted by
Xaert
So Stormblood, the Monk expansion, has no right to be called the Monk expansion as is, seeing as how SAM has replaced Monk in both body and soul, taking the essence of extremely high physical dps with little utility (A.K.A. The Selfish DPS). With that said, pushing Monk out of that role has left it in a very fickle spot that the development team has obviously never trifled with in any way. The main identity of Monk was to deal high amounts of physical, lowered potency moves at increased speeds as long as you were able to successfully pull off all of your combo in its positionals, highlighting adaptiveness to enemy movement. (See Mechanic: Greased Lightning), sacrificing readily available high potency moves or consecutive hitting moves (See: Full Thrust, Duality). Later on, you unlocked Fist Stances (See: Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire), which allowed for Monks to adapt to the situation quickly to maintain the most damage uptime; Fists of Earth mitigated damage so you did not die, Fists of Wind increased movement speed for when bosses jumped away so you could get into range with Shoulder Tackle, and Fists of Fire was the general all-rounder for the more than welcome 5% increase in damage.
In Heavensward, you introduced Chakras, which was a lovely and welcome addition to Monk's core mechanics with the addition of a situational high potency move, The Forbidden Chakra, and the counter to Monk's previous Achilles Heel, TP regeneration. Both of these allowed for adaptive playstyle while not sacrificing Monk's core mechanics. On top of the previous two Chakra skills, the main game changer for Monk was Form Shift, the ability to rotate Forms outside of combat, which were previously required by executing a weaponskill to move into the next stance, which allowed Monks to prep their stances to which they desired, mainly being Coeurl for the Greased Lightning stack generation. These abilities completely changed the dynamic of Monk for the better without taking away from its core theme: generating Greased Lightning stacks to hit harder and faster than all the rest.
Nearing the end of the Heavensward expansion, changes were made to Monk's scaling ratio of Skill Speed, which affected recast timers, to also include a portion of Damage over Time (DoT) potency. This was seen as a generally well-thought change to Monk, seeing as how Monk no longer had much TP problems with the cross class skill Invigorate and using Chakras for Purification and Monk had plenty of DoTs available for use (See: Touch of Death, Demolish, Fracture). This gave Monks a slightly more impactful and rewarding use of DoTs in their rotation and rewarded them even further with lower Global Cooldowns and increase rates of generating Greased Lightning.
With the release of the long anticipated expansion, Stormblood, the destination was to be set in Garlean-ruled Ala Mhigo and Doma. With this in mind, they made Monk the main role of the expansion rather than the later added Ninja, who also possessed Doman related backstory and lore. Monk has always had a dedicated playerbase for those who loved the faster paced action than the other classes, so this excited most all of the players who mained this Job. Seeing as how the Monk population was already dwindling due to the raid meta of Heavensward (3.x) since Monk only offered self buffs, it fell out of relevant fast due to the meta being centric around raid utility also added in Heavensward (See: Divine Veil, Battle Litany, Trick Attack). At one point, there became a strong emotion from the more hard-core playerbase that Monk should be deleted due to its selfish playstyle that none of the other classes benefitted from, save for the INT debuff that affected the bosses that may or may not have had mitigation effects on the tanks continually dwindling HP bars and Healer mana pools, and Mantra, which provided 20% healing-based HP regeneration..
With this expansion, two Jobs were announced to be released with it: Red Mage and Samurai. This is where the conflict between Samurai and Monk come into play, with both classes having high "selfish" DPS. Monk was the DPS that was able to hit hard and hit fast, whereas Samurai was a much slower, harder-hitting DPS, utilizing Kenki Gauge and Sen Symbols at the cost of having cast timers added to Global Cooldown Weaponskills. Having two Jobs that had the same performance in mind, disregarding of playstyle, would most likely have been problematic seeing as how both mostly benefitted themselves rather than other members along with them and two Jobs essentially having the same role in Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood. With the Development teams decision, they decided to move Samurai to the role of "selfish" DPS with its incredibly high combo potencies, leaving Monk in a very precarious spot, due to its main purpose being removed.
As shown in the San Francisco Media Tour, Monk did not have any unique changes made to its core gameplay in Stormblood. Instead, the additions made to Monk were the implementation of Greased Lightning stacks and Chakras being condensed into unique UI elements, Deep Meditation, a trait that allowed for Chakra generation inside of combat by performing critical hits at a chance to generate stacks of Chakra; Tackle Mastery, which changed Shoulder Tackle's base function depending on what Fist stance you were in; Riddle of Earth, which provided damage mitigation on activation and upon receiving damage adding additional damage mitigation along with refreshing the Greased Lightning stack to full duration; Riddle of Fire, which increases damage dealt by 30% but reduced Weaponskill Recast time by 15%, and Brotherhood, a utility buff that increased physical damage by 5% along with granting 30% chance to proc an additional chakra stack to the Monk who casted the buff. The Monk skillkit provided in the Media Tour caused an upset among those who held passion for the Job, saying that the skillkit was poorly thought out and seemingly rushed, saying that the abilities added to Monk went against Monks core purpose: hit hard and hit fast with Greased Lightning.
To begin, we'll start with Deep Meditation. Previous to Stormblood, Chakras were only able to be generated outside of combat up to five times, when the stack limit was reached. With the introduction of Deep Meditation, it allowed for Chakras to be stacked within combat. However, Monks were generally displeased with how this was introduced, due to the generation of Chakra stacks being too dependant on the rate it was triggered on Critical Hits, with only a 30% (later 50%) proc chance on every critical hit. To accompany this generation, Monk's second highest potency Off-Global Cooldown (oGCD) was nerfed from 320 potency to 250 potency, taking away from their only reliable hard-hitting skill that had a devastating downside to use. However, even with this change, Monk does not feel enjoyable to play knowing that the damage you output relies heavily on the Critical Hit chance you have along with the 50% proc chance that a Chakra stack will actually be generated. From personal experience, the amount of Chakra stacks generated inside of combat does not make up for the decreased potency on GCDs and The Forbidden Chakra.
Tackle Mastery introduced something long awaited for Monks: Stance-based variations of oGCDs, with each stance having different effects. Fists of Earth reduced the range of the gap closer, but added a knockback effect. Fists of Wind had reduced potency (100 to 65) but allowed for a follow-up additional tackle called Riddle of Wind, which also has a potency of 65. Fists of Fire simply increases the potency of the attack from 100 to 130. To state simply, it was clear that these design choices were clearly meant for PvP and not for PvE. A gap closer that has an included knockback serves no practical function. Two Shoulder Tackles allow for an increased crit proc chance for Chakra generation, but take away from total damage dealt despite having the same potency as the Fists of Fire variation due to the innate 5% increase in dealt damage. These changes applied to Shoulder Tackle are counter-intuitive to how Monk was previously played.
Riddle of Earth is a buff that mitigates damage by 10% on top of switching to Fists of Earth for an additional 5% mitigated damage, along with extending Greased Lightning to full duration. Initially this skill seems useful, but the damage mitigation and extension on Greased Lightning only apply on-hit. This tells that you have to fail your role as a DPS and intentionally take a hit in order to save your core mechanic or risk dropping it, the ultimate Monk taboo. While this skill does have its function for times when bosses are untargetable and deal damage with long periods of downtime, that seems to be its only practical use, making it more often that not, highly situational.
Now for Riddle of Fire, which is what I feel is the worst designed skill of this expansion. Riddle of Fire increases Damage Dealt by 30% while reducing Weaponskill Recast Time by 15%. This is the equivalent of Monk’s Blood For Blood replacement from the 2.x/3.x cross-class skills. While the increase in damage is massive, the 15% reduction in Weaponskill Recast Time is what breaks how grandiose this damage increase displays. When using Riddle of Fire, the haste effect granted by Greased Lightning that lowers GCDs is nullified, making Monk feel like it’d lost all of its Greased Lightning stacks without actually losing the stacks, but keeps the haste effect applied to Monk’s auto-attacks. Not only does this conflict with Monk’s core purpose of “hit hard and hit fast,” it also conflicts with Chakra generation due to reduced amount of GCDs you’ll be performing. While being the most effective skill at increasing Monk’s damage output, it defeats the feeling that builds Monk up from the ground.
The last skill, Brotherhood, is Monk’s signature skill, providing raid utility along with Chakra generation. The effects of this skill are mostly balance, with the range at 15y and the 30% chance to proc on every Weaponskill used for 15 seconds. While only affecting physical damage increased dealt by allies to enemies, most team compositions have at least one additional physical DPS, on top of tanks performing as well. This benefits most of the team and yourself heavily, giving Monk what it lacked in the previous Heavensward expansion. While arguably not as useful as Ninja’s Trick Attack or Dragoon’s Battle Litany that has beneficial effects for the entire party, I feel that the skill is not perfect, but the Development Team is moving in the right direction.
On top of the lackluster and conflicting skillset, Monk has also had global potency reductions tacked onto it. With all the GCDs receiving a 10 potency nerf, base damage output is innately lowered at the cost of having reduced TP, generally reduced by 10 TP cost as well. With the removal of Touch of Death with the heavy 120 TP cost, Monk no longer has any problem with TP preservation, especially with the amount of TP regen skills already available to it (see: Goad, Invigorate, Purification). With this in mind, outside of incredibly lengthy battles, Monk doesn’t have any problem with TP whatsoever, and Purification feels like it is rendered useless seeing as how outside of the Area of Effect skills on the GCDs that Monk has, there is virtually no TP drain.
While Yoshida promised to re-evaluate currently unused skills in the game, the development team seems to have poorly re-evaluated two skills in Monk’s kit: One Ilm Punch and Tornado Kick. One Ilm Punch has been the longest unused skill in Monk’s kit outside of the recently removed Haymaker due to its extremely situational and borderline dysfunctional effect: Remove one Beneficial Effect from the target. This was changed with the release of Stormblood, changing the additional effect to a one second stun with no diminishing returns, meaning it ignores the three stun limit on enemies. While this may seem like a welcome change to those who do not normally play Monk, I assure you it is not the case. One Ilm Punch is only available in the second stance of Monk’s playstyle, the Raptor form. This entails that executing this skill is only available in that form, despite the already high TP cost of the skill. As this skill gains a stun, another one loses one, Steel Peak, one of Monk’s reliant oGCDs executables. With this change, an oGCD with a cooldown of 40 seconds and a stun duration of 4 seconds was replace with a GCD executable only in one of three forms and with a 1 second stun duration, making it much harder to perform a stun when needed at the cost of non-diminishing returns.
Tornado Kick was the final move learned by Monks at the end of Heavensward, weighing in at a hefty 330 potency at the cost of expending all three of the Greased Lightning Stacks. Designed to be used as a finisher or as a situational move on whether or not you would lose Greased Lightning anyways, this move still goes largely unused in combat at it removes Monk’s core mechanic along with damage and haste buff. While seen a generally positive addition to Monk’s core kit, its usefulness has been long debated on viability in general content. The sole reason for this is the cooldown of Monk’s crucial ability Perfect Balance. Perfect Balance has been the most critical part of Monk’s opener since 2.x, allowing the execution of any Weaponskill regardless of what form you’re in. The price of this highly useful ability is the stagnant fact that the cooldown of Perfect Balance has remained at a 180 seconds (3 minutes). This allows Monks to immediately generate their full three stacks of Greased Lightning before Perfect Balance’s effects end, giving Monks the power spike for their burst rotation nearly immediately after generating the final Greased Lightning stack. This makes Tornado Kick still a very heavily taxing skill to use in Monk’s core skill set and therefore rendering it rarely used. The only change made to Tornado Kick after the implementation of Stormblood is the reduction of the 30 second cooldown to 10 seconds.
With the changes made to Monk in Stormblood, most of the Monk community has felt their class has been gutted, only to be overshadowed by the outcry made of White Mages after their showcase at the Media Tour. Despite Yoshida’s reassurance to wait for the release of Stormblood to play the class for themselves before making any final suggestions, the hysteria from both Monks and White Mages was not quelled. After seeing virtually no changes made to Monk and White Mage receiving the the changes it needed for Lily generation and usage, most of the Monk community became discouraged about playing Monk as their Job of choice, saying that Samurai was the replacement for Monk and the Development Team had no idea what to do with Monk at the time being and even currently. This being said, the Monk community hasn’t given up hope saying they are confident in the Development Team taking notice of how poorly designed the Stormblood kit for Monk is made.
TL;DR Monk’s Stormblood kit contradicts itself and relies heavily on RNG to do damage, much like 3.0 MCH, still having some skills that are ineffective and making already poor skills even worse and people are not happy about that.
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