MNK 4.0 Changes . . . I'm not a fan tbh

Bootshine is used every 12 seconds currently with a ~2 second global under GL3. That means you get 5 free crits every minute. At a 30% proc chance, that's worth 1.6 chakra a minute.
You use 5 non-guaranteed weaponskills in a 12 second period. With a 50% crit chance, you'll average 2.5 crits. That's an additional 12.5 crits per minute, or 3.75 chakra.
Adding it up, our base chakra generation through Deep Meditation is 5.15 chakra/minute, or 1.03 TFC a minute. With 30 weaponskills used during a minute, that makes Deep Meditation worth roughly 8.5 potency per weaponskill.

And thats with a such high unrealistic 50% critical chance, this is our new mechanic for what we were nerfed almost everywhere, aside for a 15 seconds 5% party buff...

What was the point of slowly buffing Monk over the past 2 years if it's just going to be nerfed damage wise? And for what?

Just get rid of Brotherhood for Axe Kick and take away our the slowness on Riddle Of Fire. Reduce PBs cooldown to make it a Bootshine crit fish skill for chakra. I'd rather 0 utility and great DPS with RNG funsies than lackluster, RNG dependent output being our only hope for DPS relevance.

Someone better at potency math than I should see, post buffs, how much more Potency a Sam has than the Monk. I feel like if it's 10% or higher, Monk... has no real value over Sam, since it's damage becomes so stupid it actually will make up for it's lack of utility. Not that I might I mind that. I'd just rather Monk be the same. Two sides of the huge DPS coin.

I'll cool my head tho. I, like everyone​ else, is getting more upset the more I think about how funky these change are. Let's all reserve final judgement for when the lvl 70 numbers and damage profiles come out. Who knows. We may yet still be Badass.

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Originally Posted by Blacktestament7

If Riddle of Earth was just going to give GL3, they could have saved time and effort and just made Axe Kick a PvE move instead of a PvP only move. Which is a far superior move than everything they came up with to give monks this xpac.

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It would have been better to give Monk an entirely new ability altogether and just reduce the Perfect Balance cool down to be in line with Blood of the Dragon and Enochian's. As it is it's a new button to solve a problem that should have been fixed by changing an older button.

And again, because I cannot emphasize this enough, this makes Tornado Kick even more situational, which runs against their supposed goal of trimming down on the unused buttons this expansion.

They make me want to not play my favorite job anymore.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

It would have been better to give Monk an entirely new ability altogether and just reduce the Perfect Balance cool down to be in line with Blood of the Dragon and Enochian's. As it is it's a new button to solve a problem that should have been fixed by changing an older button.

And again, because I cannot emphasize this enough, this makes Tornado Kick even more situational, which runs against their supposed goal of trimming down on the unused buttons this expansion.

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That was why I brought up Axe Kick because it makes TK alot less situational. It pretty much puts it in rotations since you can use it, expend GL, use AK and get GL3 back immediately. Axe Kick could even replace PB in the way to be put in line with BotD and Enochian. I don't think PB's cooldown is bad, it relates to other job buffs that governs damage poorly. GL is far eaiser to lose and harder to recover from than BotD. Don't know about Enochian, I'm not a fan of BLM and never have been.

All I want to know is why did they lower the cooldown of tornado kick to 10 seconds.

The monk changes feel half baked. Like there is a piece of the puzzle that we are missing. Lowered potencies losing ToD just lower damage in general. And theres no way we are going to get enough extra chakra to overcome those potency losses since we're relying on RNG behind an RNG.

I see no positive changes at all to the monk job. I only see negatives.

Even the utility they gave is a joke. Physical only over a short distance and only 5%

I'd love to be wrong. I love monk. I just don't see the benefits here.

I thought it would be cool if as soon as we hit 5 Chakra we get a short mini buff to either ourselves or to the party, then before the timer runs out just expend it on Purification or FC.

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Bootshine is used every 12 seconds currently with a ~2 second global under GL3. That means you get 5 free crits every minute. At a 30% proc chance, that's worth 1.6 chakra a minute.
You use 5 non-guaranteed weaponskills in a 12 second period. With a 50% crit chance, you'll average 2.5 crits. That's an additional 12.5 crits per minute, or 3.75 chakra.
Adding it up, our base chakra generation through Deep Meditation is 5.15 chakra/minute, or 1.03 TFC a minute. With 30 weaponskills used during a minute, that makes Deep Meditation worth roughly 8.5 potency per weaponskill.

And thats with a such high unrealistic 50% critical chance, this is our new mechanic for what we were nerfed almost everywhere, aside for a 15 seconds 5% party buff...

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At a 1.88 rotation, you can slip in an extra Boot/True/Snap per Demolish while losing perfect-reapp potency only on DK and Twin, gaining 75 (minus natural crit margin) +40 + 100 WS potency. This satisfies the lowest modular for maximization of DK/Twin duration, making it ideal to for increasing the frequency of Bootshine in order to better fish for Deep Meditation procs through crits. It is not, however, the most efficient modular for Demolish (11.17 GCD per Demo), and will forgo two ticks per minute. As it would require a 1.75 to perfect Demo even with a perfectly continuous server poll, and the 100 potential potency of tick globals between Coeurl GCDs without Demolish applied falls short of the opportunity cost of a clipped Demolish (50-100 potency less than Snap Punch depending on the next global sync), this seems acceptable.

Some more maths, using a Deep Meditation-optimizing rotation.

At a crit rate of 30% (37.52% with IR factored in since at 1.88 GCD it affects 8 skills per minute or contributes .0752), the increased attack rate of 1.4 seconds per Demolish allows for:

an increased auto-crit worth 50 TFC by delaying DK from per 6 GCDs (.97 GCD or 2.1s DK/Twin clip) to per 9 (1.92s or 1.02 GCD gap, where tolerance barely treats this as a sub-single GCD gap, costing only one skill's bonus potency)

and, by delaying Demolish from per 9 GCDs (with .76 GCDs' clip) to per 12 (.83 GCDs' gap), an opportunity gain of 69+40 WS potency per 9 GCD (16.92s), 100 WS potency per 12 GCD (22.56s)—or 10.88 WS pps,

an additional 2 WS per 56.3s or cycle per 84.45s resulting in an additional 400 to 544 WS potency or 4.74 to 6.44 pps

and 1 more WS in IR window for an additional 24 to 63 Crit ppm or .4 to 1.05 pps

and a TFC potency bonus of 50 per 9 GCDs, and 15 per IR, * a 30% chance, or a total of 192(.3) 57.6 ppm or .96 pps

TOTAL of up to 21.57 pps gained

at an opportunity cost of 29 Bonus potency (DK to DK, Twin to Twin) per 9 GCDs and a tick cost of 50 per 40.66 seconds, or 2.28 pps
and relative potency loss from reduced Det/CR/DHR.

NET of 19.29 pps gained.

Appendix:
At a 30% crit rate (37.52 at 1.88 or 37.5 at 2.15 with IR included) increasing Bootshine cyclical usage by 50%, 33% in actual proportionate frequency, from 1 per 6 GCDs to 2 Bootshine per 9 GCDs, increases Deep Meditation ppWS contribution by only 7.24%.(?)

1/6 Auto-crit and 5/6 Natural: ((50 + 18.75*5) / 6)(.3) = 7.19 ppWS
2/9 Auto-crit and 7/9 Natural: ((50*2 + 18.76*7) / 9)(.3) = 7.71 ppWS

NOTE: Difference between the above suggested DM /WS potencies and these are due to the reduced crit chance, trading 50% for a more reasonable 30% (37.5% with IR factored in).

Conclusion: Especially given that we can no longer use finer plateaus by shaving modulars on stances via Fracture and Touch of Death, it'll be very difficult for Deep Meditation to make up for the base potency lost, even in a rotation that optimizes DM contribution.

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Originally Posted by Raionx

Relying on RNG behind an RNG.

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Please do consider that the new way to attain Chakra does not overwrite the old method, you can still get Chakra manually while disconnected via Meditation, so Chakra itself is not totally RNG dependent...
The part that is RNG dependent is just the passive method to collect them, which is something that the MNK was lacking in 3.x.

About the Potency drop, its not like I can say much, my guess is as good as any other person's atm.

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Originally Posted by alex4815162342

Maybe not determine good or bad, but things like parser or FFlogs will but completly random for MNK, maybe more than the other job !
I'm sure after the release, we'll see some saying "Job is great, I can hit FB 10 time in the fight", and other "Job sucks, I can hit FB only 3 or 4 time in the fight"
They said they want to reduce the gap between good and bad player, and RNG will not help !

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That's some reactionary bullshit right there, by that logic things like Bloodletter make bards dps completely RNG. Or saying WF Crits are what differentiate top MCHs.

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Originally Posted by Atmora

That's some reactionary bullshit right there, by that logic things like Bloodletter make bards dps completely RNG. Or saying WF Crits are what differentiate top MCHs.

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Compare a 150 potency attack with the second best attack of the monk with 320 (now 250) potency ! GG !

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Originally Posted by alex4815162342

Compare a 150 potency attack with the second best attack of the monk with 320 (now 250) potency ! GG !

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I mean there's a 420 potency randomly resetting skill in the expac too, there's currently a 200 potency skill that you have to win 2 50/50s to use as well. There is tons of RNG to this game and if anything it's raised the skill floor.

question about monk's new skill riddle of earth.
it says it grants you a buff (earth's reply) when you take damage while riddle of earth is active. and earth's reply's effect is damage reduction and greased lightning duration refresh.
my question is does this mean you have to get hit twice to get something out of it? once to activate earth's reply, then again to proc its benefits which is the damage reduction and buff refresh?
so you can't use it for boss' ultimate attack? the ones that is usually accompanied by fancy effects, mostly before their final phases.
if what i'm thinking is right, then it's very stupid design.

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Originally Posted by Chokee

question about monk's new skill riddle of earth.
it says it grants you a buff (earth's reply) when you take damage while riddle of earth is active. and earth's reply's effect is damage reduction and greased lightning duration refresh.
my question is does this mean you have to get hit twice to get something out of it? once to activate earth's reply, then again to proc its benefits which is the damage reduction and buff refresh?
so you can't use it for boss' ultimate attack? the ones that is usually accompanied by fancy effects, mostly before their final phases.
if what i'm thinking is right, then it's very stupid design.

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At present, that is correct. It seems designed not to be usable against raid damage unless occurring in successive waves. I'd wager that it's existence means that such designs are even less likely now, though.

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Originally Posted by alex4815162342

Compare a 150 potency attack with the second best attack of the monk with 320 (now 250) potency ! GG !

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Because that 150 potency skill fires more than once per battle...

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Originally Posted by alex4815162342

Compare a 150 potency attack with the second best attack of the monk with 320 (now 250) potency ! GG !

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thing to take into account(imo) now, is how we'll have to play into two phase I think, the regular one fast passed and positional.

and our burst which is brotherhood+riddle of fire we'll be busy firing those forbidden chakra to the point we'll barely be able to use positional, I think.

and I bet the extension of GL to two sec and Riddle of earth is here to prevent it from falling.
I mean, in a raid team there's usually another melee, a ranged dps brd or mch, you, and the two tanks so yeah 5 person and 30% per weapon skill to get a chakra over 15 sec.

I think it's gonna fill in pretty fast. (then again potency and whatnot have yet to be seen, game isn't out nothing is set in stone, yet.)

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Originally Posted by DatPotato

I mean, in a raid team there's usually another melee, a ranged dps brd or mch, you, and the two tanks so yeah 5 person and 30% per weapon skill to get a chakra over 15 sec.

I think it's gonna fill in pretty fast. (then again potency and whatnot have yet to be seen, game isn't out nothing is set in stone, yet.)

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How much Chakra exactly do you think you are going to get during the 15 seconds of brotherhood? it's a 30% proc chance on weapon skills used by people within 15y of you. Assuming your party is all melee and 2 tanks for the best possible situation with an average recast time of lets say 2.25(which is super generous) seconds lets say generously(very) during that 15 seconds all 5 of your party members use 7 weapon skills for a total of 35 weapon skills on average you'll get 10 chakra or 2 forbidden chakras in a 15 second period.

And the potency of The forbidden chakra is known it is been taken down from 320 to 250.

Im not entirely sure of the reasoning behind lowering the cooldown of Tornado kick, unless the function has changed somehow. I might use it maybe a max of 3 times depend on the encounter and only if i know i can get my Gl3 refreshed.

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Originally Posted by alex4815162342

We lost touch of death but keep some useless skill !

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Pretty much every job that had a 30 sec DoT lost it. Mutilate, Phlebotomize, Scourge, Fracture are all gone.

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Originally Posted by Vallhallix

BLM got nerfed? because to me it seems like they got nothing but buffs and skills to make life easier on them during mechanics, and a cross class skill to restore mana when they have unlimited mana lol, meanwhile the classes that actually need the mana got their mana restoration skills nerfed. BRD seems to be improved as well.

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Fire 2, Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 were all reduced by 20 base potency (36 at Astral 3 for F2 and F4). Flare AoE scaling changed, which is a nerf, unless you hit six or more mobs.

I will give my feedback here too. I am deeply sad about this cr*p change for the MNK. I am a main MNK since the beta, it was always fun to play it, but now, what, it's seems not that fun. HS made some changes in the MNK, like the chakra stack and tornado kick, and at that time, I thought "Does the devs knows how to play MNK or they just don't care this class?". Well, I mean, every MNK knows that losing our GL3 is a f*cking pain, and they'd released a skill who consume our GL3. Well don't mind that, we only use it 1/2 per fight, as finisher, and now they reduce the potency and reduce the CD, does they even test it first or...?

So yeah, I'm happy too see that I'm not the only one who think that the MNK will be useless at the release of SB, we're completely outclassed by the SAM (nice balance btw), we've been nerfed on our potency, losing some useful skills and the cross-skill thing is utterly useless for us. What a nice "MONK EXTENSION", our class will just disappear with that. So yeah, losing some potency, why not, guess we have a little too much dps compared to others (which is not), losing some skills for introducing new skills, why not, but make the MNK based on the RNG on a skill which is nerfed and now... Useless? I must say I don't know what's going on atm.

The concept of playing based on our Fists is a good one, I mean it, I truly love the idea, but the idea I don't love, it's our Riddles are... Well, stupid and everyone knows the MNK will stay on Riddle of Fire for increase our dps, sometimes using the earth when the battle start to be a little unconvenient for us, but that pretty much the thing is. If you're trying new things like this, just do something great at least, let's have a whole impact in all the others skills (or a good amount of them). Like, when we're using our Fist of Wind, we got reduce on our GCD/oGCD or some skills doing some DoT with a reduction of our potency, when we're using our Fist of Fire, our dps is greatly improved, but we have less time on our GL etc...
Instead of that, we have just have two Riddle useless and unplayable, with lot of skills loss. Also, what is the point of keeping Tornado Kick? We're losing potency on it and less CD, but don't you know it won't change the fact is still useless (even more now) and we're only using it twice on the battle? Even if we can keep our GL even easier now and stack it a bit more easily. Did you seriously play the MNK for more than two minutes? This skill need a solid rework, like losing just one stack at the current potency or greatly buff it, like 800 potency, losing all our GL but with a CD of 200s?

I mean, what is the point of playing a class when a better one doing the same thing but better? We got our raid buff (useless btw) and losing our solo utility, and at the same time, your releasing a class which is useless for a raid but terribly OP when it comes alone.

There is so much thing to say about this MNK 4.0, I hope this post will be read by a member of the dev' team and all of this will change because I don't even want to play this game anymore 'cause I truly love my MNK and no other class can change it.
I know that you want to make this game easier (it's already easy), but why killing some class like the MNK or the WHM? Just keep the MNK a little bit more difficult to play, like this you'll make a lot of people happy.

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Originally Posted by UshioOkazaki

All he said

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He is totaly right,cause,one thing that is not logical from the Dev,is that they did 2 paradoxal skill,i mean riddle of earth,and cyclone kick,before,we used cyclone kick to use our GL stack,but ith riddle of earth that refresh it...no one will use the cyclone,better keep full start for starting at max power that do a weak ass cylcone kick.

And Ushio said,it was a good idea that the dash have different used depending on wich elemental fist you use,but they should have done that to a lot more skill,,as he said fire fist hit stronger but GL is shorter,wind put DoT etc....
Its like they invented electricity,for then just using it for doing some spark. that dash elemental thing should have been on way more skill !

Monk extension my A**

I feel like in order to really understand how disappointing these changes and new actions are, we have to actually take a look at what defines Monk, and while I'm not a top percentile Monk I have cleared every fight in the game with it barring two or three with pretty respectable DPS so without further ado:

What Defines Monk


Monk is, at it's core, defined by Greased Lightning, a massive stacking buff that boosts our damage and attack rate substantially that requires constant attacking to maintain due to it's short duration. Due to just how large of a buff this is our potencies were relatively low on all actions due to how much the buff and other actions inflated them. This made us a DPS defined by our sustained damage since we never really have a large burst phase. Beyond this, Monk is a Greedy Job, we never contributed damage buffs to the party, the best we had was Mantra, the Intelligence down effect on Dragon Kick, and the highest personal DPS of all jobs. In general I'd say that our defining characteristics are being a greedy DPS, consistent damage, and probably most importantly our fast GCD.

Now some of this design worked against it in Heavensward. In Gordias, the DPS checks were so high that actually taking a Monk was detrimental, as it's high personal damage wasn't actually stronger than the DPS adding utility of other actions such as Disembowel, Battle Litany, Trick Attack, and other skills. In Midas, there were several aspects of fight design at their core that worked against Monk. In A10S there was downtime between each robot where a Monk would lose Greased Lightning while waiting on cool downs to refresh; other Jobs with similar buffs to Greased Lightning were able to refresh those on a one minute cool down so the wait was manageable and you could get all four robots fought before the enrage. Monk couldn't, Perfect Balance, the equivalent skill to BotD and Enochian being on a 180 second cool down prevented waiting on it, the best Monk could hope for was being allowed to chain pull, which took away the rest of the parties openers. A7S and A8S were actually okay, relatively speaking, however Monk was uniquely terrible to handling the Melee Jail mechanic of A7S due to it forcing a loss of Greased Lightning and the positional requirements. Creator is where everything came to a head, and the meta became about clearing the fights as quickly as possible rather than just getting a clear, and it really put Monk's problems under a microscope. Despite having the highest personal damage, it still didn't offset Dragoon, Ninja, or even the casters who required less comparative coddling due to being able to control their aggro and having theoretically infinite MP. It's complete lack of Burst was another major problem, as some fights required controlled DPS at specific points to skip long mechanics (Skipping A11S's Lapis Lazuli phase), and actually skipping those mechanics prevented Perfect Balance from being up after the Action Time Maneuver at the end of the fight.

Which finally brings me to Monk's Stormblood actions

The Good: Brotherhood
Brotherhood is a 5% buff to the Physical Damage for all party members within it's range on a 90 second cool down. The Monk itself is unaffected by this buff on its own, however it still benefits by having the chance for any weapon skill used by a party member to open a Chakra and allow us the use of Forbidden Chakra, a hard hitting oGCD. Conceptually I love this ability. It allows Monk to provide a damage buff to the party while still maintaining the Job identity of being a selfish DPS. We're scratching everyone else's back entirely because it benefits us and allows us to get more of those sweet sweet Forbidden Chakras. The only issue it has is minor, opening Chakras is RNG gated so it has the chance to be inconsistent in how much it benefits us.

The Mediocre: Meditation, Riddle of Fire, and Riddle of Earth

Deep Meditation: A decent idea with some serious problems
Deep Meditation as a trait is at best just okay with a handful of problems. It does a few things well, by providing more Chakra's over the course of a fight, it gives us more opportunities to use Forbidden Chakra and actually makes Purification a semi-reliable TP regeneration resource since it actually has the chance to be up at a time where we've actually been using TP instead of naturally regenerating it. The problem it has is two fold. The first is it's RNG based layered behind RNG for 5/6 of our weaponskills, so it can't be relied on for a burst of high damage or more TP. The second problem is that it actually makes standard Meditation a bit worse, as it will now be possible to go into a downtime phase and only be able to build one Chakra.

Riddle of Fire: An action that runs contrary to the Job's core design
Riddle of Fire is a 30% Damage Boost that costs us Greased Lightning's haste for it's 20 second duration on a 90 second cool down. This skill is our replacement for Blood For Blood, with it's timer made specifically to line up better with pretty much all of our oGCDs. The cost to our haste that comes with it doesn't make it a true 30% damage buff, it's closer to about 10% like B4B's buff (by my Napkin math it's roughly a gain of 100 potency if you cram all of your off Globals into it).

On paper, it looks okay, however the cost to the Haste runs contrary to one of the three core characteristics of Monk. Losing our faster GCD is a miserable experience, when our stacks drop and we don't have PB to pick them up, we don't notice that our attacks are dealing 30% less damage in the same way we actually feel how slow we're attacking. It's like having to slog through molassus, and this GCD is going to require us to experience that about a bit over a fifth of the time, and it is something I very much do not look forward too. The reasoning behind the haste loss however, is at least sound. This action is designed to compliment Brotherhood's chakra building, because forbidden Chakra has Benediction levels of animation wind up that causes some pretty frequent GCD clipping. However that really isn't good reasoning to ruin the Job feel, especially when the animation lock can be reduced by just speeding up Forbidden Chakra's animation.

Riddle of Earth: An Ineffective Solution to a Big Problem
Riddle of Earth is a 60 second cool down that changes a Monk to Fists of Earth. On it's own it doesn't do anything, but when the Monk receives damage it grants them Earth's Reply, a 10% damage reduction and restores Greased Lightning, it does not actually grant it. From the way it's designed, it's meant to be used during phases where the boss goes invulnerable and does a big AOE so that you can maintain your stacks.

There's a lot of problems with this.

First, it's a skill that requires a DPS to get hit to proc. That's a no-no, effects like those belong on tanks. There's a reason you Eye for an Eye isn't usually used on anybody else after all. I fully imagine there's going to be a number of Monk's eating AOEs to restore their stacks and that's just... really really bad design. This also gives the skill anti-synergy with raidwide mitigation such as shields. Because this action procs on damage, if your healers (or Paladin) are working overtime/crit their Adloquium, it's not unheard of for damage to be completely eliminated. So in the event that that you get super shielded even though you actually need to take damage, you can say goodbye to Greased Lightning.

The second is this skill doesn't actually work with the fight design of pretty much every raid and trial in the game. After examining every fight in Heavensward, I found that of the fights with forced downtime, the ones which actually featured undodgeable AOEs that would refresh your stacks were... Zurvan's soar and that's it. The others either last significantly too long (Pretty much every Ultimate attack and quite a few of the downtime phases in savage), only had dodgeable AOEs so the goal was actually to avoid it (Sophia's tilts and charges, Ravana's Charges), or had no damage at all (A11S's QTE, 12S's time gate loading screen).

Lastly, and most annoyingly, it's just a new button that provides a highly situation and ineffective solution that could have been better solved by cutting Perfect Balance's recast time in half. Despite one of the goals of the design team being to reduce button bloat and useless/highly situational actions they gave Monk button bloat and a highly situational action. They also made Tornado Kick worse, as it still costs all your Greased Lightning stacks but it will now only be used even less since there will be a few fights where Earth Riddle might see use.

And speaking of situational and terrible skills

The downright Terrible: Tackle Mastery, or how SE used an entire new Trait to add 20 potency to an attack

For the life of me I cannot understand what they were thinking with this trait. Where other classes got new traits that gave them dynamic new ways to interact with their job or cool new effects, Monk got a kick in the teeth. Essentially, what it does is it changes the effect of our gap closer depending on the stance we're in. If we're in Fists of Fire, it adds 20 potency. If we're in Fists of Earth it adds a 10 yalm Knockback. If you're in Fists of Wind it's potency is cut in half, but you can use it twice.

So the core problem with tying any trait to Monk's Fist stances is that you really only ever want to be in Fists of Fire 99% of the time. The 1% of the time you want to be out of it, you've got Brink of Death and the next mechanic that requires you to get hit is just going to up and kill you. However, even then the effects they've given to Earth Tackle and Wind Tackle are just... not useful at all. Wind Tackle is a second gap closer, however it costs us damage to use by forcing us to switch to Fists of Wind, and sprint no longer uses TP so we still have pretty good mobility after the initial shoulder tackle.

Earth Tackle however is one of the most intuitively designed actions in the game. Monk has an effective attack range of 3 yalms. Earth Tackle knocks the enemy back 10 yalms. Some have said that it will have uses in 4-mans, but it won't. If Monk were say, a Machinist or White Mage using their knockback in a dungeon, then this would be fine, it removes pressure from you and you're still able to heal/DPS, it can even be used to knock a ranged mob into the pack the Tank has created. For Monk it doesn't do that, it just prevents you from doing your job. Monk isn't even going to be in a position to knock an enemy into the Tank's pack since Monk has to ride the Tank's heels in a dungeon so we can refresh our stacks. For raids, there's never a time where a Knockback is actually needed, and if it would be needed a Monk would be a terrible option to do it because, again, it creates downtime. It's a skill fine for PVP, but they were seperating the PVP actions out into PVP so there's no reason for it to be here. I've seen people say that it's kind of like the Cross Role actions, where some of the skills are situational, but the key thing is this isn't a cross role. This is tied to our kit, we can't select it off and take something useful in its stead, we're just stuck with it. I've also seen some people who don't actually play Monk say that it'll be hilarious to troll in dungeons alongside a Machinist and a White Mage but that's short lived amusement and still generally unhelpful to monk.

That just leaves Fire Tackle, the most useful since it actually improves how much damage we deal, but taking an entire Trait to functionally just add 20 potency is a huge waste of trait. They could have gotten the same effect by adding 20 potency to the action itself and giving us some other effect.

LONG STORY SHORT

With the exception of Brotherhood what we received in Stormblood was on some level bad. Riddle of Fire inflicts the most tangible penalty of losing Greased Lightning on a regular basis. Deep Meditation makes normal Meditation lose some of it's actual use during downtime. Riddle of Earth will require fights to specifically cater to its existence to be used, and Tackle Mastery has terrible bonuses and it's tied to a system that basically only wants you to be in Fists of Fire, so it basically amounts to a trait that gives us 20 potency. While some actions like Riddle of Fire's anti-haste or Deep meditation can be fixed, Riddle of Earth is fundamentally flawed enough that it would have to be completely reworked to be fixed and even then it's still a redundant button to Perfect Balance, and Tackle Mastery is so terrible that I can't think of any way to fix it beyond scrapping it and replacing it with something else.

I'm really not feeling the Monk love here SE.

I agree what's being said here. The changes just seem weird. It's like they added stuff that looks interesting in videos but has no real use in raids or dungeons. They need to do a re-think.

They try to add on monk a 3rd arms, but this 3rd arm have no hand !
Not well design, not stable, with a lot of contradiction !
Monk lost his identity and is not able to find an over.
We are the fastest job of the game, and we even don't have a skill like "The Arrow".

English isn't my native tongue, so it's gard for me to tell all I want to say, but the thing is here ; Monk have a problem of design !

I'm OK with SpeckledBurd, and if we want the dev to listen, we have to support and make this kind of post ! I did one in the French side of the forum.

I'm 50/50 about what I see for Monk.
I don't like the potency nerfs to the main combo skills (I can understand the forbidden chakra nerf.) Really makes me think "why?" Especially after seeing the SAM potencies.

Also I would have liked to see an additional damaging ability.
Change the Riddle skills into a single skill that changes effect depending on which fist stance you're in (and add a Riddle of Wind?) and give Monk a badass looking damaging skill.
I was really looking forward to a skill like that. xD

Riddle of Wind could give MNK an attack speed boost (to the point where it at least outdamages being in Fists of Fire.) In addition to a movement speed bonus.

In the end I think Monk didn't get it as bad as some other classes but i'm not a huge fan of it either.

I think that tornado kick shouldn't be something that is never used. I suggest removing the greased lightning requirement entirely. Instead every time you refresh Greased Lightning III you gain a new stack of a different buff. when you stack that up to 3 you can tornado kick and spend that and maybe make a second ability that uses the same stack of 3 to refresh greased lightning.

That way when we were fighting we could tornado kick every 3rd time thru our rotation and when the boss leaves we'd have a way to extend the duration on greased lightning.

All i know is I don't care about how much damage monks do or what their raid utility is. I'm sure all of that will be balanced in the end. I'm just tired of seeing all the other jobs gain new and interesting ways to interact with their skills while we are still doing the same thing we did in 2.0

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Originally Posted by Bhearil

Bootshine is used every 12 seconds currently with a ~2 second global under GL3. That means you get 5 free crits every minute. At a 30% proc chance, that's worth 1.6 chakra a minute.
You use 5 non-guaranteed weaponskills in a 12 second period. With a 50% crit chance, you'll average 2.5 crits. That's an additional 12.5 crits per minute, or 3.75 chakra.
Adding it up, our base chakra generation through Deep Meditation is 5.15 chakra/minute, or 1.03 TFC a minute. With 30 weaponskills used during a minute, that makes Deep Meditation worth roughly 8.5 potency per weaponskill.

And thats with a such high unrealistic 50% critical chance, this is our new mechanic for what we were nerfed almost everywhere, aside for a 15 seconds 5% party buff...

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you are missing 1 important thing here that you asume the crits you get will aply to your weaponskills and not your AUTO ATTACKS what makes our chakra generation silly since we got tripple rng in it nr 1 crit nr2 crit a weapon skill not a auto nr30% chance for it to proc

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Originally Posted by KingFrost

What was the point of slowly buffing Monk over the past 2 years if it's just going to be nerfed damage wise? And for what?



Someone better at potency math than I should see, post buffs, how much more Potency a Sam has than the Monk. I feel like if it's 10% or higher, Monk... has no real value over Sam, since it's damage becomes so stupid it actually will make up for it's lack of utility. Not that I might I mind that. I'd just rather Monk be the same. Two sides of the huge DPS coin.

I'll cool my head tho. I, like everyone​ else, is getting more upset the more I think about how funky these change are. Let's all reserve final judgement for when the lvl 70 numbers and damage profiles come out. Who knows. We may yet still be Badass.

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another thing that people seem to mis is that one of the sam weaponskill combos GRANTS him a gl2 speed buff... so he got potencys out of this world and gl2 speed+ gl3 dmg buff -_-

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Originally Posted by Waliel

Fire 2, Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 were all reduced by 20 base potency (36 at Astral 3 for F2 and F4). Flare AoE scaling changed, which is a nerf, unless you hit six or more mobs.

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so what you are saying you got nerf on 1 aoe skill and 2 of your main skills sooo if my math isnt wrong your fire 4 got nerfed by +- 7% ok great now monk EVERY SINGLE ROTATIONAL SKILL got nerfed by +-6-8% now look what blm gained and what monk gained from the new skills and new goodies ..... and tell me again that you have it soooo much worse of then monks do this upcoming expansion.

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Originally Posted by Gleipni

Monk extension my A**

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this so much first video that was ever realeased for SB we saw 2 monks fighting on top of a hand and i was like YES finnaly drg had there expansion now it is time for monk... man i dont remember a bigger diaspointment then what we accully got everyone got new nice tools and stuff we got gimped down tools removed and all we can realy do is A slow ourself to do a bit more dmg with wont yield much anyway and it isnt the reason i play monk if i would want slow big hits i would play BLM and second is hey now we got a raid utility... 5% small range only weaponskills.... oh wait nin trick atack is actully better and his dmg will now be better as welll screw monk but we are devs we like balance so hey lets give monk something nice
lets reduce one of his cooldowns hmmm that tornadokick monk highest potency move has to big of a CD lets reduce that one....

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Originally Posted by Raionx

All i know is I don't care about how much damage monks do or what their raid utility is. I'm sure all of that will be balanced in the end. I'm just tired of seeing all the other jobs gain new and interesting ways to interact with their skills while we are still doing the same thing we did in 2.0

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actully we do les with removal of fracture and ToD.... but hey its clear where they are going first we gave drg and smn a great stance/trance now in SB lets give them another one .... on monk lets make them slower ...

I had to set up my forum account just to voice my opinion here, because like many I feel that MNK was not treated well with this expansion. I'm not even concerned about whether or not MNK will be "meta" or competitive at the highest level of play. I mean, I am, but that's something we don't know and even if it is, my biggest gripe is that we got more useless skills and we still have useless (or heavily underused) skills.

For one, who looks at MNK and sees Shoulder Tackle as a defining trait of the job? Why did they choose to highlight this particular ability as an elemental variant? More so, why would they give us three tackle variations, of which only one will actually be used? What's more, this seems to be how they decided to address the fact that we are in fire stance 99% of the time. It's not a bad idea, giving attacks that are only usable in the other stances. The problem? We will still be in fire stance 99% of the time! Why? Because the wind and earth tackle variants are not going to be used. I don't need to double tackle, especially if it requires me to swap out of damage stance. And I definitely don't need a gap closer with less range that... also knocks back the enemy? ...what? What am I going to do with this? Even if there were one situation where this is useful, I don't want skills that I'm only going to use once or in one fight and never again.

So we get two new useless shoulder tackle variants, and we still have two useless stances.

Then Tornado Kick has its cooldown reduced. No other changes.

....really?

So this criminally underused ability is just going to stay the same? I mean, yeah I get that they want us to have a way to dump our stacks, but fact is 99% of the time we do our utmost to ensure we don't lose those stacks at all. We're also getting a GL duration buff and a new skill that is going to make Tornado Kick even less used than it is now.

I find it especially upsetting because TK is one of our flashy, cool-looking abilities but we very, very rarely get to use it. I just would have liked for TK to become something we can use regularly. Maybe this should have been our elemental variant instead, and using it with no stance dumped GL stacks for a high potency attack.

Oh, I also think the low range on Brotherhood and the fact that we only get chakra from weaponskills is super petty. Especially since it's only a chance during the short period of this 90s CD buff. The least they could have done was allow us to gain chakra from spellcasts as well. They threw us a bone, but it's brittle and weak. NIN still has a better utility on a shorter cooldown. It's more powerful and convenient.

Last, I don't care for the across-the-board potency nerfs in exchange for RNG. I do at least see some potential there and think numbers tweaks can happen if MNK turns out underwhelming dps-wise. My biggest fear is that MNK becomes super comp dependent relying on, say, DRG and SCH for litany+stratagem to be a desirable pick.

Whatever the case, we got screwed.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

Fire 2, Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 were all reduced by 20 base potency (36 at Astral 3 for F2 and F4). Flare AoE scaling changed, which is a nerf, unless you hit six or more mobs.

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Didn't Flare go from -10/20/30/40/50... to -15/30....? That's a buff on any more than 4 mobs...

Atop the Flare AoE buff you later add a 650 potency AoE and 30-pt AoE DoT. Your AoE has only been reduced over a particular level range. It's a lot like Dragoon, whose base AoE was decreased from 160 to 130, only to later average 150 via Seismic Thrust and adding massive amounts via Geirskogul, DFD, and Nodstrand or h/e it's spelled. Monk, my comparison, hasn't lost AoE potency on their base skills because theirs was already only available per 3 GCDs (or crippling inefficient in the case of AotD) but only gain 10 pps atop this via Elixir Field all the way between level 30 and 70. Bard, further, lost Flaming Arrow with absolutely no alternate AoE to show for it, and Rain of Death refreshes now being locked to one song.

Numbers can always be tweaked the issue is weird decisions being made that doesn't add much like different shoulder tackles and making tornado kick shorter CD and lower potency.

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Originally Posted by Orbiaus

Numbers can always be tweaked the issue is weird decisions being made that doesn't add much like different shoulder tackles and making tornado kick shorter CD and lower potency.

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Pretty much true, Fire Riddle can be reworked to not break our GCD and potencies can be buffed back up to where they were before and the requirements for proccing Chakras can be adjusted, but things like Riddle of Earth and Tackle mastery are so broken on a fundamental level that they really should be scrapped.

I don't think I'll be as eloquent as SpeckledBurd was but I'd like to add my rational to why these Monk changes give me such a headache. I'm nowhere near the best, I'm a mediocre Monk at best and I've not been concerned with high-level raiding in this game ever. This won't start with SB, I'm a casual raider at best. For me, Monk has been the only class I've enjoyed playing in a skill based setting. It is a class I'm very familar with in tabletops like DnD and Pathfinder and in most MMOs I usually play speed based classes. For me I've always been a speed vs power player. It's rare for me to pick up the hard hitter instead the consistently fast. That being said, I can not understand any decisions being made to Monk in this xpac. I mean none of them. As far as raid utility is concerned you can defend Brotherhood to a degree but it's mainly still going to lose to the overall utility DRG and NIN bring and the strict setting of Brotherhood I don't believe will compare to SAM's dps. And outside of that, Brotherhood is a very hard sell. In a dungeon for example if the other dps isn't a physical dps you're boned.

I've always thought the only problem with Monk in 2.0 was losing GL since it's the entire point of the class, but you also have keeping up the abundance of buffs and debuffs and finding a way to keep all of it up and maximizing damage. All the while doing that consistently keeping up with the timers of not only all of your moves and GL but the form you're in as well. 3.0 HW, brought so much to the table to try up the damage a monk does overall but not fix the general issues that the monk suffers from. That being said it didn't hurt the class either. Form Shift was a great addition fixing the issue of getting to GL3 faster or keeping it up between fights or phases. Chakra as a system worked well with off time but the downside being it was a pain to build in combat since it's a GCD and a dps loss to repeatedly use it. Purification as a utility was fine but the downside was it took a FC to use. Exilir Field pushed MNK AoE damage theortically as high as a BRD. And Tornado Kick while coming with the worst downside was a all risk, high reward attack that while costing GL3 gave you a high potency move if you were losing it. All of this works to raising damage and we didn't suffer nerfs as a result. Could these have been implemented better maybe but I think HW was done a good job. The problem was no fights were made with consistency in mind and played to Monk weaknesses. One long phase change or jail or down would drop the MNK from highest dps which was the only real utility to nothing and making it not worth it. This is why SAM's potencies are so high, to ensure that doesn't happen again.

Stormblood repeats the same overall mistakes Heavensward did but instead of raising the potential of the monk with sheer damage they built on an already flawed system with an even more flawed design:

Deep Meditation:
The Chakra system's overall issue was usage. If meditation couldn't be built without that dps loss you can only use it on damage downtimes. My initial answer was to take it off GCD but I eventually figured why do that? Because then it's just pushing a button repeatedly and that could function as a build mechanic. Instead my suggestion was to make it so every reapplication of GL3 gives you one chakra. This way the more you do damage the correct way to the more FC or Pur you can use. FC is no longer a rare big hit, it's now Fell Cleave for monks. No need for nerf or buff as the overall damage of the system doesn't change since there are some like myself who build chakra every other GL set if ToD and Fracture haven't dropped. Deep Meditation is flawed in it's design becuase it you're in the extremely lucky crowd, it's overpowered and deserves the nerf but if you are unlucky in either RNG avenue (crit or applicaton) it's completely useless and doesn't give anything. This becomes a luck based dps as there's no way to raise the application only the chance the application can work in any way.

Riddle of Earth:
Riddle of Earth is SE's way of dealing with the GL timer issue of Monk. In my opinion, this is the worst way possible to ever fix this problem. It encourages stupidity. Sure BLMs sometimes stand in aoes to keep doing damage but I get that. This is a MNK running into an aoe to take damage to keep GL up. That's bad game design. I mean, animation locking is too but this is worse than that. This is forcing bad decision making. Riddle of Earth is at it core antithetical to being a dps. You shouldn't want to be hit yet here's a defensive cooldown that warrants you being hit. And on top of that, it's reactionary. So you have to make the conscious decision to do less damage and take damage to the face before you even get the refresh. You may be wondering why I'm not bringing up the 10% damage reduction? Because to keep that you MUST stay in Fist of Earth and that means you do 5% less damage. Again, conscious decision to do less damage. This is at it's core not a dps move. Unless the idea of offtanking has been removed from the game this makes no sense. Again, the PvP move Axe Kick is everything this move is but fundamentally better and somehow that has been in the game since I've started and this doesn't make sense and it's not even released yet.

Riddle of Fire:
I hate everything about this cooldown. I mean I really do. I hate it far more than Riddle of Earth. Where Riddle of Earth is antithetical to being a dps, Riddle of Fire is antithetical to being a monk. This class loses about 30% of it's overall damage because of the pot loss of ToD, Fracture, all of the nerfed weaponskills, FC, and the 3 secs of Demolish. In return we get a damage cooldown for 30% but in order to use it you must give up 15% of your GCD recast. Now, few a few days I've been fuming but I don't think the move is horrible. I just hate the aspect of the GCD increase. This makes stuff like PB harder to optimize and it is just dumb overall. I'd literally take B4B over this with the original 25% damage rebound. It changes the monk in it's damage cooldown to a overall burst damage DRG. Why am I playing a monk, if for 15 secs I have to function like a dragoon. And it really just feels like this move is here to add a reason for Riddle of Earth to exist. The downsides don't fit the upsides. And even then, again. If this is why my potencies were nerfed across the board. Drop this and give me raised potencies. Making Monk burst damage is stupid when you already have that.

Tackle Mastery:
Useless. Just Useless. Building on Fist stances is all well and good until you realize you drop 5% overall damage to use it. For example everyone keeps saying how Fire Tackle is equal to two Wind Tackles. Well it is if you don't count the 5% increase in damage. So it's ~140 to the two 65s. If the Fist stances worked better between them this wouldn't be an issue but overall it is.

Brotherhood:
I'm not opposed to Brotherhood. It's just bad in regards to it's limits and again how it puts you on an RNG mechanic. This is another luck based skill that doesn't need it. DRG's Dragon Sight is a nerfed version of this since it only affects one person but unlike Brotherhood it's not luck based and it is guaranteed 10% increase in damage for the DRG and 5% for the other person. Brotherhood is just a 5% increase to you and hopefully the people around you when you use it aren't casters and the boss isn't big enough for you to miss the tank. But again, I'm not against this move, I'm just sure I could design it better. And overall the unlucky just got shafted in these move additions.


Another particular issue I've had with MNK for a long time was how forms had timers. This is probably just specific to me but I noticed it when we started worrying about openers starting in Coeurl form. I've yet to understand why the forms have timers. Just like how MCH had the timer removed for ammunition MNK should have it removed for forms. And again, I don't understand why MNK was nerfed to this degree. If balance was a concern, SAM wouldn't be nearly as OP as it is and DRG and NIN wouldn't have been buffed. This is a hard nerf and it really makes me believe the development team wants less people to play MNK.

i dont really post here much and ive been reading the updates to mnk and been a plenty of negative feed back. im not happy for the changes since i main mnk and raid midcore (but i always try to push for at the top tier that the class can perform at). Riddle of Fire seems to be everyones salt which i see opportunity only if Skill speed increases drastically for us. hoping they revamp SS because they took 2 dots from us. We took a big jump from 2.x to 3.x in secondary stats. building up enough SS i dont see RoF hurting us that bad. I know ppl want to stack crit/direct hit. I got my recast down to 1.35 with SCH and AST help(2nd tier of alex i had around 988SS i think). if we can get down low enough to stay around 2 sec recast or lower im not going to cry it's a challenge to figure out.

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Originally Posted by FrostVecca

i dont really post here much and ive been reading the updates to mnk and been a plenty of negative feed back. im not happy for the changes since i main mnk and raid midcore (but i always try to push for at the top tier that the class can perform at). Riddle of Fire seems to be everyones salt which i see opportunity only if Skill speed increases drastically for us. hoping they revamp SS because they took 2 dots from us. We took a big jump from 2.x to 3.x in secondary stats. building up enough SS i dont see RoF hurting us that bad. I know ppl want to stack crit/direct hit. I got my recast down to 1.35 with SCH and AST help(2nd tier of alex i had around 988SS i think). if we can get down low enough to stay around 2 sec recast or lower im not going to cry it's a challenge to figure out.

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The problem with RoF being offset by a stat allocation of Sks. Is that the other side of the MNK's new abilities and overall damage is heavily balanced towards Crit. And then you have Det and DirHit (Acc replacement) that increases overall damage on it's own. Damage calculation is being increased across the board and MNK is being forced into being dependent on 2 of the 4 overall. Seems very counterproductive to me but that's theorycrafting that I can't even speculate on without actively playing the class.

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Originally Posted by Blacktestament7

The problem with RoF being offset by a stat allocation of Sks. Is that the other side of the MNK's new abilities and overall damage is heavily balanced towards Crit. And then you have Det and DirHit (Acc replacement) that increases overall damage on it's own. Damage calculation is being increased across the board and MNK is being forced into being dependent on 2 of the 4 overall. Seems very counterproductive to me but that's theorycrafting that I can't even speculate on without actively playing the class.

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Skill Speed will always be inferior at its current percentage-per-point unless damage is based almost solely in weaponskill outputs and a specific plateau makes a tremendous difference. By removing stanceless skills, there is now only one such plateau available, down from about 3 prior to a 1.70 GCD, and by adding Deep Med damage has become even more oGCD dependent.

With the changes, secondary stat choice will just further become "Crit or gtfo". While SkS can also produce more crits over time, it cannot influence the damage potential they cause.