Soooo... Shadowbringers Monk

So this is my first post. I am not max level but I have a brain and have an idea I’d like to share with the community about how to fix monk in a way that doesn’t require a huge overhaul.

Suggestion 1) Make TK give a buff that makes your next 6SS give 3-4 stacks of GL. (Depending on fist stance.) And keep 6SS as it is. This, I think will create a window where you can use your oGCDs for big DPS, use all of our abilities and the rotation feels natural.

2) allow TK to be used anytime, but it does increased damage based on the number of GL stacks you have. If the dev team insists on making TK eat all your stacks, increase the damage on TK to make it worth using.

3) Make TK generate chakra based on number of GL stacks consumed. To me as a new monk player, Chakra doesn’t feel intuitive to generate. Even with the trait that generates chakra on crit feels odd. Shouldn’t chakra be generated naturally in our rotation?

As you can see by my post, all of the suggestions revolve around making TK worth using. It feels strange to me that such a skill isn’t worth using. If the dev team wants to keep the skill, it needs to be worth pushing, otherwise it’s just there. That’s not good design, imho.

4) I like anatman in theory, but feel it should generate GL faster than PB. Idk if it generates GL from 0. Some say it does, others say it does only in combat? Idk, either way. I feel for the button to be worth pushing, it needs to generate GL very quickly. I like the idea that it has a cast time, but I think the current rate is 1 stack for 3 seconds? That’s 6-9 seconds of just standing around or 9-12 seconds. (Depending on stance and if it can generate from 0 stacks or not.)

Just increase the generation to 1 stack per second to make it a viable GL recovery option.

These are just my thoughts. Idk if they would actually work, but there you go.

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Originally Posted by Diarslade

These are just my thoughts. Idk if they would actually work, but there you go.

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Please note my ideas and potency can be adjusted if it was in the game.

Honestly That would be pretty bad in the first place it just adds to the current problem, Greased Lighting isn't a hard uptime for most people. We don't need more random tools for its upkeep just tools that work in battle and ones that work during downtime. If anything I'd turn Tornado Kick in ocd that only functions when under the effects of greased lighting 3. Make Six sided star an upgrade for Tornado kick that can only be used under Greased lighting 4. Boom Skill is now not useless, also without some annoying gimmick where we may never use it.

I'd personally also them just remove the fists of anything it could just be a passive its really unneeded and every job lost random passive damage passives but monk. We don't need them just bake the damage into the other skills if needed or give a passive trait that gives us them.(I will miss the effects of fire and wind but its useless bloat at this point.)

Riddle of Fire kill the slow and lower the damage honestly double weaving isn't something I enjoy and it kills the fantasy of Monk which is overwhelming the enemy with a flurry of attacks. Personally why we so many things killing our gcd which is where we shine anyway.

PB Can now be reduced since Tornado Kick is Ocd rewarding us for having our stacks like a good monk in the first place.

Mediation and deep mediation this set of skills it should be rewarding us for keeping our damage and stacks so we could technically go multiple ways with it. One idea gives it chakra from every two weapon skills for level one so every ten gcds we'd have another aoe or single target burst.

The other idea the longer we keep our stacks up the the faster we regenerate chakra stacks. So it'd a passive buff that grants a chakra every 5 seconds in greased lighting.

I'd also make deep mediation increase the amount of charka we can hold to 14 since its lore we have all 14 open it'll also let you waste them as you get or save them for the burst window if need be.

I got the perfect, simple idea.

Weaponskills move you through forms, so why can't Tornado Kick and SSS move you through fists?

Tornado Kick- Moves you to Fists of Wind and retains your GL stacks while dealing damage.
SSS- Moves you to Fists of Fire and retains your GL stacks while dealing damage.

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Originally Posted by Nominous

I got the perfect, simple idea.

Weaponskills move you through forms, so why can't Tornado Kick and SSS move you through fists?

Tornado Kick- Moves you to Fists of Wind and retains your GL stacks while dealing damage.
SSS- Moves you to Fists of Fire and retains your GL stacks while dealing damage.

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Why would you want to lock your mobility tool or dps stance, and potentially attack rate or GL4 as of ShB, behind a burst oGCD you should be using on CD or syncing to buffs?

Tying together things isn't always for the best. Like your shoes, to each other. That's effectively what you're doing here.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Why would you want to lock your mobility tool or dps stance, and potentially attack rate or GL4 as of ShB, behind a burst oGCD you should be using on CD or syncing to buffs?

Tying together things isn't always for the best. Like your shoes, to each other. That's effectively what you're doing here.

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Well there's a lot of different ways to remedy that. But I would figure making them a shared cooldown, while giving them a different use for each form. Then, it looks more like...

- Tornado Kick, when used during Fists of Fire, will switch your stance to Fists of Wind while dealing damage. While used under Fists of Wind, doesn't switch stance, only does damage.
-Six Sided Star, when used during Fists of Wind, will switch your stance to Fists of Fire, while dealing damage. While used under Fists of Fire, doesn't switch stance, only does damage.

Since it'd share a cooldown, you'd only do which made the most sense for your situation. You'd still need to keep the manual stance buttons (mainly for out of combat), so that would still be an option in the rotation. But... it even thematically makes sense. Tornado Kick for wind, SSS for fire.

I don’t think any fix to Monk that keeps the Fist Stances is a fix at all unless the Fist Stances are fundamentally changed. As they are now they’re one of the biggest issues with Monk’s kit in terms of being something you set and forget.


Also the job guide just dropped and Riddle of Fire still has its slow and Brotherhood still makes Monk physical dependent in terms of comp. Really not feeling like the devs took our feedback right now.

Honestly a good start would be to change Tornado Kick. It would be much, much better if they just made it work as a 60s or higher if need be cd, that only works if you're at max stacks, but it doesn't remove your GL stacks. As it stands right now TK is effectively dead unless the boss is about to disappear and you have no chance of keeping your stacks or the fight is about to end. I'm still going to level monk first and hopefully continue to raid on it but I'm quite disappointed right now with how it's turned out and I'm very confused about what sort of direction SE is taking Monk.

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Originally Posted by Irisdina_Wiloh

Honestly a good start would be to change Tornado Kick. It would be much, much better if they just made it work as a 60s or higher if need be cd, that only works if you're at max stacks, but it doesn't remove your GL stacks. As it stands right now TK is effectively dead unless the boss is about to disappear and you have no chance of keeping your stacks or the fight is about to end. I'm still going to level monk first and hopefully continue to raid on it but I'm quite disappointed right now with how it's turned out and I'm very confused about what sort of direction SE is taking Monk.

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TK’s effect is also the reason they reversed one of the changes Monk needed since 2.X with them kneecapping Monks GL recovery again. If they don’t want us using TK so much, they should change how it works instead of removing the most important quality of life change we’ve ever received.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

TK’s effect is also the reason they reversed one of the changes Monk needed since 2.X with them kneecapping Monks GL recovery again. If they don’t want us using TK so much, they should change how it works instead of removing the most important quality of life change we’ve ever received.

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I'm really saddened to see PB return to 120s cd. Obviously they've done this as they didn't intend for the 4.2 TK shenanigans but at the same time, trying to recover stacks is going to be painful and lower level content is now going to be even more painful with how we've lost a few ogcds. I don't understand why they haven't changed TK, I'd like to think the Monk community has been vocal enough about TK that surely they must know it needs to change and yet here we are. I don't wish to be so negative about Monk right now but it's hard to see how the positives outweigh the negatives.

I won't lie monk feels weak compare to some job.

As long as they keep giving me fighting moves based off of Streetfighter abilities, i'll be happy with just about anything they do; i can easily adapt, and since this is the only Combat role i even play- i doubt anything drastic would phase my enjoyment of playing the Monk.

I've been thinking about 6SS for just about a month at this point trying to find any instance it would be really worth using. Yes there is a 1 GCD window as a boss is about to jump where you could use 6SS and/or TK, but those still occur (in the content I typically play) infrequently. Timing the windows that do exist is another whole pain, because not all of them have an obvious wind-up or warning, and for those, missing by a single GCD with even our old potencies would make 6SS a dps loss, even more so now. Further, it really isn't that useful given:

• We have form shift to get to couerl form if we're expecting to recover quickly after a break
• We have meditate to "charge" damage for several seconds in downtime
• The addition of Anatman means we can keep GL for a very long time in static breaks (without pushes, zone changes, necessary movement)
• Worst case scenario in most of 4.0 was a few GCDs with PB for getting GL back up (with PB being only a 60s cooldown).

So I've also been thinking of things that I think would be more interesting to replace it.

• A DoT, like Touch of Death
• A longer cooldown weaponskill, like others introduced in this expansion and Empyreal Arrow previously
• An ability that grants all the fist stance effects for a period of time
• A weaponskill that allows a following skill to be of any form, and then proceed from that form as per usual

I haven't seen how the other DPS jobs changed relative to Monk, but it seems like 5.0 Monk got buffed in a way that no one is pointing out since the 5.0 patch notes are out. Bootshine got a massive buff from 150 -> 300 potency with Leaden First. On top of this, Leaden Fist lasts 30 seconds so you can get 4 Bootcrits on while it's active and you don't have to worry about dropping it briefly because Leaden Fist only matters for the Bootshine buff. This weaponskill buff becomes the undisputed strongest, direct damage weaponskill for Monk even if the others (True Strike and Snap Punch) also crit. I don't count critical Demolish because you wouldn't spam it even if you could. To me, it seems that Monks now want to spam Bootshine with full buffs during perfect balance and exit with Six-Sided star to keep GL3/4. This may explains why Perfect Balance was bumped up to a 120s cooldown. If it was 60 seconds, then every other Leaden Fist buff you could use PB just to spam Bootshine. At level 80 Anatman can be used effectively to maintain GL3/4 during any fight and Perfect Balance is soley used for DPS burst.

I think the other reason I'll enjoy Shadowbringers Monk more is because they put more of the damage on the weaponskills rather than normal attacks and oGCDs (removal of Howling Fist). Monk sort of lost 10% potency across the board without blunt resistance from the Dragon Kick change, but this was more than put back into substantial weaponskill potency increases. We will be regularly seeing skill damage numbers that aren't too far behind other single target heavy hitters I think, but ours will happen more often.

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Originally Posted by EbonySeraphim

I haven't seen how the other DPS jobs changed relative to Monk, but it seems like 5.0 Monk got buffed in a way that no one is pointing out since the 5.0 patch notes are out. Bootshine got a massive buff from 150 -> 300 potency with Leaden First. On top of this, Leaden Fist lasts 30 seconds so you can get 4 Bootcrits on while it's active and you don't have to worry about dropping it briefly because Leaden Fist only matters for the Bootshine buff. -snip-

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I'll find out in a few minutes, but I was under the impression Leaden Fist was removed after doing Bootshine. Also, it seems like a lot of jobs had a lot of potency boosts. Looking at DRG for example, True Thrust (lv1) went from 160 to 290 potency and Vorpal Thrust (lv2) went from a combo potency of 250 to 350. So I don't feel like monk is really getting a buff from this. And then everyone loses some abilities, buffs, oGCDs so it's kinda a toss-up unless you dig down into it

It is removed after Bootshine, you're correct.

As for potency boosts, remember that they said in the live letter that the entire underlying math of the game is different now, so they warned not to freak out over the appearance of potency changes because the numbers have no frame of reference to pre-5.x potency numbers. The real reasons you're seeing people clear Alliance Raids so quickly is because more of the really good players who know their rotations are flooding back into the game trying to power-level in roulettes, so you're seeing what pre-5.x roulettes would be like if you had more players who knew their rotations, were doing their positionals properly, etc. At first I thought it was just potency buff stuff until I started noticing how on-top of things all my party members were, and how snappy they were to react to everything, including healers who were actually adjusting like total bosses. [insert "hell has finally frozen over" joke here] XD Best Labyrinth run ever btw, wish I could have commended all my party members for how awesome a job they did.

Unfortunately, the potency buffs can make MNK as strong as they want for 5.x content, but don't make up for all the things MNK lost. It doesn't quite feel fun to play anymore, and just feels clunky and clumsy. Of course, I'll reserve some judgment until I get to 80 but I'm getting the feeling that a lot of MNK mains will abandon the job for Dancer for this reason, and all the former ARR/HW MNK mains who have this fantasy of MNK being a faster sustained DPS like the pre-SB incarnation of the job will find they're not quite getting what they want, either. IMHO it really needs an extra oGCD that gives a stack of GL, and that would fix 95% of the issues right there. Could still use yet another oGCD on top of that so the rotation can feel more fun, smooth and rhythmic like it was before, but if I could only get one, I'd vote the one that grants a GL stack.

The most fun it is... I guess you can say it feels nicer to deal with trash mobs with the new AoE skills, but that doesn't make up for its performance issues with single-target combat. It's strong, sure, and that's all fine and said... but it's just not fun to use anymore, which is the problem. Half of it is they removed more than they replaced, so it feels clumsy to use. The other half of it is... well... it's just boring to play now. It doesn't feel as actively engaging as SB MNK.

We'll see how it does at level 80 but right now I'm not super optimistic, considering it's only one more single-target skill and a measly 5% speed increase from GL4.

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Originally Posted by ValStormbreaker

It is removed after Bootshine, you're correct.

As for potency boosts, remember that they said in the live letter that the entire underlying math of the game is different now, so they warned not to freak out over the appearance of potency changes because the numbers have no frame of reference to pre-5.x potency numbers. The real reasons you're seeing people clear Alliance Raids so quickly is because more of the really good players who know their rotations are flooding back into the game trying to power-level in roulettes, so you're seeing what pre-5.x roulettes would be like if you had more players who knew their rotations, were doing their positionals properly, etc. At first I thought it was just potency buff stuff until I started noticing how on-top of things all my party members were, and how snappy they were to react to everything, including healers who were actually adjusting like total bosses. [insert "hell has finally frozen over" joke here] XD Best Labyrinth run ever btw, wish I could have commended all my party members for how awesome a job they did.

Unfortunately, the potency buffs can make MNK as strong as they want for 5.x content, but don't make up for all the things MNK lost. It doesn't quite feel fun to play anymore, and just feels clunky and clumsy. Of course, I'll reserve some judgment until I get to 80 but I'm getting the feeling that a lot of MNK mains will abandon the job for Dancer for this reason, and all the former ARR/HW MNK mains who have this fantasy of MNK being a faster sustained DPS like the pre-SB incarnation of the job will find they're not quite getting what they want, either. IMHO it really needs an extra oGCD that gives a stack of GL, and that would fix 95% of the issues right there. Could still use yet another oGCD on top of that so the rotation can feel more fun, smooth and rhythmic like it was before, but if I could only get one, I'd vote the one that grants a GL stack.

The most fun it is... I guess you can say it feels nicer to deal with trash mobs with the new AoE skills, but that doesn't make up for its performance issues with single-target combat. It's strong, sure, and that's all fine and said... but it's just not fun to use anymore, which is the problem. Half of it is they removed more than they replaced, so it feels clumsy to use. The other half of it is... well... it's just boring to play now. It doesn't feel as actively engaging as SB MNK.

We'll see how it does at level 80 but right now I'm not super optimistic, considering it's only one more single-target skill and a measly 5% speed increase from GL4.

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it definitely feels off and not as entertaining at 70, maybe at 80 it will be fun again. But at the same time it has nothing super exciting that's new, so its just a question of whether it will get back to its former thrills

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Originally Posted by Physic

it definitely feels off and not as entertaining at 70, maybe at 80 it will be fun again. But at the same time it has nothing super exciting that's new, so its just a question of whether it will get back to its former thrills

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Yeah that's a big part of the problem. It's nice that Four Point Fury replaces One Ilm Punch, so the AoE rotation is much better. Other than that... the only thing we get for single-target weaponskills is Six-Sided Star, which can't even be unlocked until after the MSQ is done. Kind of makes going through the story on your main a pain in the rear, and I kind of feel that it defeats the purpose of maxing out your main if it's not fun to use. Since one of the new skills is just a replacement for something they took out and not an additional toy to play with, and the one truly new one is a line AoE you'd never use in single-target situations, it basically means

Even if they gave Perfect Balance a second charge, that wouldn't fix the issue. I really feel like MNK had too much taken away, resulting in it being slow. People kind of oversold the 4 GL stacks because it's just a measly 5% which isn't much. The result of removing the oGCDs is that it feels slower and more boring. It also makes using it to go back to Level 70 content (especially for those of us who didn't quite get to finish the Alphascape raids and still want to unlock UCoB and can't yet do those unsynced) practically unplayable with MNK because of how it is right now.

The perfect solution would be two new oGCD weaponskills, one of which gives a stack of GL and doesn't need to be powerful, and the other can be whatever. I know that there's a cost factor involved with the development of new animations and whatnot, so it's unlikely we'd get brand-new ones, BUT... if they could recycle old, deprecated skills that looked cool enough (because let's face it, Howling Fist and Steel Peak didn't exactly have the coolest animations to behold), and just tweak the tooltip, that's be fine enough for me. My personal votes are Somersault and Axe Kick, two skills from PvP which looked great, have icons and animations already made and tool tips that (with some obvious tweaking to their tooltip descriptions for a translation into PvE) would pretty much make SHB MNK perfect without changing anything. Also it never hurts to have more kick moves. :P

I do feel though that it is certainly two oGCDs too few for single-target purposes. SSS's situational usage doesn't make up for the loss of two other things, but maybe Somersault and Axe Kick would alleviate some of the strain on what made SB MNK fun to play.

Otherwise it feels like one step forward, two giant leaps back IMHO.

Here's one for you, why was "To improve player usability, the time frame within which players must execute actions to continue or complete combos has been extended." not a change applied to monk?
Why were the timers on our forms not increased to 15 seconds to match the changes every other Job received?

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Here's one for you, why was "To improve player usability, the time frame within which players must execute actions to continue or complete combos has been extended." not a change applied to monk?
Why were the timers on our forms not increased to 15 seconds to match the changes every other Job received?

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That's yet another good question, thanks for bringing that up! I have not yet tried out other jobs at 70 with these sorts of timers, but yeah without being able to get another GL stack right away, not having the timers increased is another punishing thing.

Personally, though, I wouldn't mind the GL timer staying as is if we just got those two oGCDs I previously mentioned. MNK is supposed to play fast, and in a game with a GCD longer than WoW's, that sense of speed is supposed to come from weaving oGCDs. Increase the potencies and timer durations all you want, it still won't make up for that. Even if they sped up the GCD by a substantial margin, then the issue is it's still more boring to play. So this is why I say, keep everything as-is, let the speed come from more oGCDs, make one of them give a stack of GL so we can get back into the fight if we're forced to drop our stacks or just have no up-time, and let us have free-flowing melee combat again.

I think lots of people are over-selling Anatman's usage as well. You can only use it while standing still and the GL stack gain is slower than if we just had weaponskills. Honestly I'd be content without it if we got other combat oGCDs instead. Sounds cool on paper, looks cool in game, but as for practical usage... ehhhhhhhhh... not really feeling it. There are alternative, better ways to maintain stacks without having to pause combat, even going into or coming out of a phase change.

I'd honestly be willing to totally give up Anatman if we could get Somersault and Axe Kick in its stead. They don't have to be strong potency-wise, and they can have 90 or 120-second cooldown timers for all I care... they just need to be there for the flow of the weaving, and at least one of them needs to give a stack of GL.

Got my MNK to 80 and here are my thoughts.

People have oversold GL4. The speed increase is in hundredths of a second which is marginal. With AF4 gear, the Skill Speed is so low you need to get up to GL4 to have a GCD as fast as the end-game BiS gear for Stormblood, meaning you're not actually going faster, and you need to do an extra step to get to the same speed, meaning it takes longer to wind up. Combine this with the removal of damage-dealing oGCDs and that means you have less to do while going just as fast, making it feel slower to play. Potencies may have been changed to adjust for this damage-wise, but the result is that it's far more boring to play. It's still a problem if you have more than 2k SkS on your gear. The lack of oGCDs just makes it still feel like there's nothing to do in specific windows with forced slowdowns. This makes MNK boring to play and is not what players had in mind when GL4 was revealed. Their desire was to go FASTER, not to take longer to get to the same speed with less to do.

It feels like the job was largely tuned for dungeon encounters with a better AoE rotation, but single-target gameplay suffers. Anatman is a worthless skill. It only maxes your GL duration if you go up a stack of GL, which can only happen while you're already in combat, meaning you'd either have to lose DPS up-time to use it or save it for a phase change. There is not a single phase change in the game outside of o10s that is so long that Six-Sided Star and/or Riddle of Earth couldn't just be used instead for these purposes. O10s having an obnoxiously long phase change which doesn't deal damage quickly enough for you to use RoE is an encounter design issue and a rare one at that, not something MNK needs a tool to deal with. It doesn't generate GL stacks or maxes your duration when you're not in combat, and requires at least one GL stack to do anything, so it can't be used for pre-pulling. If you're already at GL4 it won't max your duration, so if you use it for a phase change and you have only a few seconds left on your GL timer, it just freezes the timer.

I'd much rather have abilities which allow me to regain a GL stack while maintaining DPS uptime than being forced to use this. It feels only useful for pausing at a dummy, but otherwise impractical and there are other, better skills which do the same things for GL stacks and don't take you out of the fight, which makes it redundant and not as helpful/useful.

I'll post my proposed solutions right after this because of the character limitations per pose :P

Proposed solution: without changing anything else, just put Somersault and Axe Kick into PvE. Let Somersault give a Chakra stack and Axe Kick a GL stack. Make the recast timers 120 seconds. They don't have to be strong, they just need to be there, and need to be available at level 70 for any level-synced content for MNK to be usable. There's no development cost for these moves since they already have animations and effects working in-engine. They need only be migrated into PvE.

It needs the chakra stack one as well in addition to the GL one because the new meditative brotherhood trait upgrade still doesn't generate chakra stacks fast enough in a lot of cases to make Enlightenment feel worthwhile over The Forbidden Chakra. There's more to say about various high risks of wasting all 5 chakra on Enlightenment when dealing with trash mobs but that's another subject. I would say that Enlightenment's chakra cost should be reduced so it doesn't require a full set of chakra stacks, or its damage output is relative to how many chakra stacks you can spend, to allow for some more interesting meter management gameplay, but that's more of a wish-list thing. As for just single-target content, in a caster comp Meditative Brotherhood still isn't enough from the two tanks alone for tFC to be up reliably as an oGCD substitute, so having one of the oGCDs give a chakra would be useful.

I would argue that MNK lost more than was put back, looking at my hotbars, so I wouldn't think the removal of anything would be necessary, but it really needs both oGCDs as one doesn't feel enough. In the event something does need to be removed, I'd say scrap Anatman since it's too slow and interrupts gameplay. Give them a high recast so they aren't abused and then just call it a day.

If only one of these moves can be added, then allow for SSS to instantly max out GL stacks instead of just duration, provided that there's at least one stack, and this would justify the recast penalty more and make its usage more viable. But it really does need two more oGCDs IMHO and they need to provide some sort of recovery utility for both meters.

Overall MNK got a 4th GL stack but winds up feeling slower anyway and has too many forced slowdowns without enough to do in those windows. One step forward, two giant leaps back, and it became more boring to play.

TK is basically worthless for a few reasons. Without RoW, PB being on a 120 sec. CD timer, Anatman will only ever be used on downtime or in situations you are forced to not move and lastly, TK only being 330 potency still, it is just not worth using for the fact that the rewards are not worth the losses by using the skill in most cases. Design choices for Mnk have been extremely poor imo. What is most upsetting is the fact that it feels like the creators don't even play test these jobs in real combat situations in the game (EX Primals/Raids) prior to their release. Also Why is Anatman on a 60 sec CD timer and PB is 120? It should be the other way around from a logical standpoint. Normally I never complain regarding any job and I always try to work with what they give us but this time I whole heartedly agree and believe that Mnk is just @#$%ed up right now with half of its abilities being useless and the core identity of the job is slowly disappearing.