On the Nature of Monk

[echo78]

stuff

The main issue with MNK right now imo is the slowdown and RNG so I love your changes. Would make MNK much more enjoyable to play then it is right now. I'd tack back on the return of touch of death and fracture while making demolish 21 seconds again too, though the devs really seem to hate dots now...

Unfortunately since its fairly obvious the dev team doesn't care about MNK I'd expect zero changes again in 4.2. At best they'd give MNK something pointless, like a 10 potency buff to steel peak.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

stuff too :P

Agreed. I really dislike the slowdown and rng. I hate that for 4 years RNG was never a factor for MNK and then they added not just one but 2 layers of RNG. I feel like brotherhood is such a terrible raid utility right now because its balanced around the mnk getting 3 TFC out of it with RoF up. I honestly hate this synergy within our skillset. Its a forced slowdown because of a knock-on effect from the RNG from brotherhood. It drives me crazy when i see so many awesome ideas that people have thought up and keep the monk aesthetic and wonder how the hell the developers couldnt have thought up something better.

[Hestzhyen]

So I'm a nub at MNK, but I have played it off and on since 2.x. A friend of mine was a MNK main in HW and he's been vocal about his opinions to me. Some random thoughts...

From my (a scrub's) perspective, MNK is trying to cling to outdated design principles that other classes have mostly shed with the 4.0 reworks. They kept the very basic idea of the job -stance flow/dance with the enemy- but tried to keep its useless Wind/Earth stances as NOT DAMAGE stances. As we all know, XIV has an overbearing focus on damage for every role. But MNK not only kept the stances that didn't give them damage, they gave players little reason to use them even after adding stuff to them. SE also kept the damage/utility combos (stuns on One Ilm and Shoulder Tackle) that they removed almost everywhere else because they didn't want optimal rotations to cause issues with mechanics due to earned CC immunity. Seems like inconsistent adherence to design principles by whoever was working on MNK.

My humble suggestion for the Fists issues would be to make each fist give you a timed amount of damage, kind of like BRD's songs- Fire buffs DH, Earth buffs det, Wind buffs crit, and when you use them you get a large initial boost that wears off after some time and leaves a smaller permanent one behind for as long as you're in the stance. I genuinely like the idea of swapping stances on the fly to hit as hard as I can, and even if one stat is favoured over the others by min-maxers, the small buffs would not be worth passing up the larger bonuses to other offensive stats. At least, that's the concept. It feels like SE wants us to use the other stances but if they don't give damage, we probably never will. You could make Earth Stance grant total damage immunity on activation and it would still be niche (though OP). So why not change what kinds of damage we get by using them? If stat buffs are no good, what about additional effects on the basic skills?

And please, gating fun buttons behind RNG is AWFUL. Even if it's balanced. Us WHM mains threw such a fit about having our stupid flowers gated behind random procs that SE gave in and made it 100% for Cure I and II (the system still sucks but that's neither here nor there). It's great that MNK doesn't have to wait for downtime to regain Chakra any more but hoping you get lucky and have a good comp for it sucks.

I don't think One Ilm Punch will ever be used as long as it has a utility effect. The situations where 1) it's available and 2) you need/want to use it are so, so rare. I don't want to go so far as saying that it should be removed, but if they can't think of anything better to do with it... well, one of the things my friend hated most about 4.0 MNK was the loss of "stuff" to do (RIP Touch of Death). Maybe make it grant a timed self-buff effect? I know the theme of One Ilm Punch is supposed to be a tiny punch with a huge disabling effect on the opponent, but it doesn't seem to be working out after all these years.

I agree with a lot that's in the OP. MNK is a huge mess of RNG and conflicting bad design decisions that combine to make it still recognizable as the punching job, but slower and less fun to play. (Why did they think making a stance that forced you to trade speed for power was a fun thing that people would like on a job that's all about fast-flowing combos and constant movement? Did they learn nothing from 3.x BRD?) My friend gave up MNK and hasn't looked back since it was so simplified up to 60 then slowed down if he wanted to do max damage at higher levels. Like a lot of things in SB I wonder if the devs balanced jobs they played, or even knew why people liked to play them. There's no mandate saying everyone has to enjoy a job the same way but from what I understood most people liked MNK for its speed and flow. Why ruin that, even if it's still great power-wise?

Also, just as a thought, the biggest thing keeping me from actually liking MNK has been part of it's design since 2.x- I hate, hate, hate the short timer on GL stacks. I know it's gone up but every time a boss jumps away I die a little inside. Especially with the long Perfect Balance CD. Gee I'm sure looking forward to rebuilding all my stacks before it jumps away again. That's more of a petty, personal nitpick though. But please consider decreasing the current CD on Perfect Balance- I'd like the job a lot more if I didn't have to spend so long ramping back up almost every blippin' time the dungeon boss decides it's time to run away. It's not fun, it's tedious and annoying.

Thank you for reading this nublet's complaints about a job they want to like but just can't seem to get into.

[Phireblast]

You have to take a damaging hit for the effect to trigger.

Very important fix. If you take 0 HP(aka having a good scholar), it won't proc, because game design. Yet, we have Samurai's Third eye being procable off of 0 HP hits because why not!

[Phidippus]

You have to take a hit for the effect to trigger.

The other fun thing is that you have to take damage from that hit, so if you have a sch who is good at their job, baby, you're losing those stacks anyway

edit: dang too slow

but yeah maining monk is an exercise in frustration
is your tank a fraction of a second too slow between pulls? enjoy sucking for the next 20 seconds! does the boss have between-jump phases less than 3 minutes long? of course it does, enjoy doing worse dps than jobs with more utility because your stacks fell off! is your tank watching their parse like a hawk and doing as little aggro as humanly possible? your face is getting eaten because even though you lost gl3 twice already, your aggro is still sky high and you have no way to dump it
allll of these problems have been complained about for literally years at this point so I doubt they're getting fixed, but, it would be nice?
Monk Is A Good Class guys

[Tigerlilley]

Is it me or does Riddle of Earth not extend GL duration at times? That bugged me because sometimes I'd see the timer reset, and sometimes it doesn't. Do I need to be targetting the enemy for it to trigger the reset or am I doing this wrong?

If you get a good shield, like a crit adlo and you don't take damage, your stacks don't reset.

Source: I've dropped my stacks multiple times during Ultimate progression for this exact reason.

Glorious design.

[Silver-Strider]

Posted this in another thread but I figured it would work here as well.

PB: Reduce CD to 80 seconds
Form Shift: Added effect to refresh GL when switching from Coruel to Opo Opo
Deep Meditation: Always grants Chakra on Crit
Tornado Kick: Changed to AoE Chakra move. Reduced CD to 5 seconds with a reduced potency at 250 with the 80%/2nd target - 50%/5+ targets clause. (Not sure it would be able to realistically keep the 330 Potency cause then it would be used instead of TFC on single target so either it got nerfed in potency or TFC got buffed in potency. Although I think buffing TFC to 280 wouldn't be terrible either.)
Arm of the Destroyer: Remove Silence, Up potency to 110.
One Ilm Punch: remove stun, change to Line AoE with 100 potency
Steel Peak: Gains a silence effect.
Riddle of Earth: Altered to provide a 8% damage mitigation to the group.
Purification: Removed from Chakra system. Changed to reduce enmity and restore TP.
Tackle Mastery: Taken into a dark alley and shot, repeatedly. Replace with Riddle of Wind Proper and just have it grant a 2nd Tackle within 15 seconds of use. This is more to help with MNK's mobility, which is questionable at best since we need to use Shoulder Tackle on CD to keep our DPS up, so the 2nd tackle would have no potency.

[KanameYuuki]

To add to those lovely changes something I'd like to see.

We need a disengage skill, it could give us some seconds on timer and work exactly like Elusive Jump on DRG reducing enmity by half, they could use even steel peak so we don't get yet another extra button. Our only mobility option is our gap closer which is also our stun and another damaging skill so we cannot rely on just that skill for everything.

GL stacks should decrease from 3 to 1 gradually on timer instead of loosing them all at once, this way it would even be possible to keep Perfect Balance the way it is, something that could also work is that Form Shift refreshes timer but you cannot gain stacks from it, only trough damaging coeurl weapon skills.

Riddle of earth to become party mitigation and since we could reduce useless skills, Mantra would evolve with a trait making it Riddle of Earth or be like that from the very beginning.

Riddle of Wind weak party refresh MP or and TP that just like Tactitian and Refresh would reduce enmity by half if not added on disengage skill.

[Tigore]

The biggest thing that can get to me with the Monk class is the ramp up with Greased Lightning. It kind of feels like an intentional troll mechanic that laughs at your DPS plummeting anytime the boss runs away or god forbid you are targeted with an onslaught of AoEs. So far the Form Shift ideas I see here would be great on solving that. I am also thinking they could do something similar to what they did for Dragoons to improve on the ramp up effect. The damage increasing portion could be removed from GL and migrated into potency buffs to all of the attacks. That way if you do lose the buff, only the haste bonus is noticed.

The Fist Stances could also use some rework so we aren't always stuck to the highest DPS one. It may be possible all 3 should have the 5% damage increase so we just use the stance with the secondary effect we want. Fist of Wind could have an enmity reducing modifier added with the speed boost. Fist of Earth would already be good with the 5% damage boost added. Fist of Fire would be the tricky one and the best I can think of for the moment is either a healing increase self buff or a minor leech heal effect of maybe 30% of damage dealt from Coeurl moves.

The Riddle abilities are also odd since they have unneeded costs or restrictions on them. For starters, they should work with any of the 3 Fist Stances. Riddle of Fire could guarantee all your weaponskills grant an extra Chakra and the haste cost can be removed in exchange for the damage increase effect to be nerfed down to around 10%ish. Riddle of Earth's effect also shouldn't need you to take damage to trigger it and just give you the buffs it offers.

[Silver-Strider]

Fists and Riddle stuff.

I like that suggestion on Fists all granting the 5% extra damage but I think it would all need to be balanced a little better then just add 5% extra damage + extra.
I can see Fist of Earth and Fist of Wind gaining 3% damage up but Fist of Earth would also increase the damage of Crit hits while Fist of Wind increases Skill Speed to help balance them out with Fist of Fire's current 5% extra damage.

Riddles also being independent from Stance requirements would also be a boon as now, we can get those benefits without having to sacrifice our damage to do so. I'd still be for Riddle of Earth being a Raid wide damage mitigation but as for Riddle of Fire, I'd like it and Brotherhood to be combined into a Single Skill since they're completely dependent on each other already.