So we all know the attempt to help get monk back on its feet last year came short of doing anything significant, and we still get laughed at for entertaining the notion of playing the job. In hopes that this might reach the eyes of the devs, let's go over what's holding monk back, and present the simplest ways to adjust it, in order to bring monk back to its role in the game. This is from the perspective of endgame play, as lower difficulty content is easy enough to allow the use of any job.
What is causing monk to be dismissed for events today is quite simple. It is a damage dealer intended to contribute to the encounters with increased survivability for themselves and others, and they fall short on both ends.
Damage:
Their dps is unreasonably low due, not to their white damage from punches and kicks, but to their very lackluster arsenal of weapon skills. In today's game, we have a meta that has allowed for melee damage to be viable, thanks to a lot of buffs and much more powerful gear that allow for a higher frequency of weapon skill use than last time monks were viable. Monks however lack weapon skills that allow them to keep up with any job able to utilize weapon skills such as Chant du Cygne, Resolution, Torcleaver, Tachi: Fudo, Rudra's Storm, Last Stand, etc. This is the primary issue with monks right now, and needs to be addressed. Many have voiced concerns about Puppetmaster receiving too strong of a buff if this were to be fixed, which I can see the reasoning behind. The two jobs require very different setups and buffs however, so I do not see this becoming an issue. (An alternative would be to focus on Ascetic's Fury otherwise.) In order to deal with this issue, let's compare some WSs that share traits with the obvious choices for receiving adjustments, Victory Smite and Shijin Spiral:
Victory Smite (Current):
Effect: Increases chance to crit 10-45% based on TP.
fTP: x2.25. Does not carry across all hits.
Mod: 80% STR
# Hits: 4
Shijin Spiral (Current):
Effect: Increases chance of plague based on TP.
fTP: x1.0625. Does not carry across all hits.
Mod: 85% DEX
# Hits: 5
Chant du Cygne:
Effect: Increases chance to crit 15-40% based on TP.
fTP: x1.6328125. Carries across all hits.
Mod: 80% DEX
# Hits: 3(4 when dual wielding)
Resolution:
Effect: Increases fTP from x0.71875 to x2.25 based on TP
fTP: x0.71875 to x2.25
Mod: 85% STR
# Hits: 5
Looking at these, it's clear why Chant du Cygne and Resolution are viable, wheras Victory Smite and Shijin Spiral are not. The main issue is not having their fTP modifier carry across all hits of the weapon skill. Simply making some changes to Victory Smite and/or Shijin Spiral would be all that is required. An example of what could be:
Victory Smite (Suggestion):
Effect: Increases chance to crit 10-45% based on TP.
fTP: x1.6328125. Carries across all hits.
Mod: 80% STR
# Hits: 4
Shijin Spiral (Suggestion):
Effect: Increases fTP from x1.25 to x2 based on TP. Additional Effect: Plague.
fTP: x1.25 to x2. Carries across all hits.
Mod: 85% DEX
# Hits: 5
Survivability:
Their contribution to the group's survivability was once very attractive to parties and alliances, thanks to mantra, penance, and chakra allowing monks to take some of the load off of healers during heavy debuff/damage situations. With the gear improving over the years, the impact monks have in this regard is greatly diminished. However, thanks to mantra and penance being percentage based, this could still be enough as long as monks could once again contribute to damage in a meaningful way.
The only major change I would suggest in regards to these abilities would be to change mantra's hp boost to be based on a % of the monk's max hp at the time of use, instead of giving everyone an individual % boost.
Other issues:
First off; Relics, Empyreans and Mythics are all over the endgame scene, and they are for the most part great. However, the hand-to-hand weapons are severely nerfed by not having the aftermath effects (or relic damage multiplier) trigger on the offhand swing. This causes Glanzfaust, Verethragna, and Spharai to operate at half efficiency compared to every other weapon class's counterpart. Fixed easily by allowing the offhand to proc these effects.
Issue second; Accuracy cap. Why it was decided to give the main hand for 1handed weapons a 99% acc cap, when they are the ones who needed it the least is beyond my comprehension. Even more so however, is why hand-to-hand was not included in this change. This is more of a game balance issue than a monk issue, but hopefully the acc cap can either be raised to 99% on all weapons, or just be 100% like it always should have been. Nothing is worse than not having control over your reliability in a group. And missing at 500% the rate of 1handed dps with equal accuracy gear is not really acceptable.
The last major issue that has more recently become apparent, due to the stats on gear increasing over time, is the lack of a Sub slot gear piece. This is a huge amount of acc/atk/hp/wsmod, if you look at Utu Grip for example, that monk is completely missing out on. An easy change would be to simply allow grips to be equipped.
To summarize; Adjust Victory Smite and/or Shijin Spiral to carry fTP and we're good. Making changes to the other things mentioned would also be a great help, but fixing those WSs would allow us to play the job again.
So please, Dev team. Show us that you care. We miss playing our monks.