Proposed fixes to Monk

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Originally Posted by ZyrinMisharuji

Chakra having 7 stacks would be a blessing and they could give us a new oGCD that uses 2 stacks or 1 stack or something so we have some extra weaving capability like WAR, but at the same time, why use your 1 stack ability when the 5 stack is way stronger? It'd be a weird balance they'd have to achieve with it to make it worthwhile to spam the oGCD (if added) over using TFC. Cause other than that I don't see what difference 2 extra stacks would make if the only thing Chakra is used for is TFC. Sure, it'd give leeway if you want to hold it for a few GCDs while you wait for a buff to come off of CD and you don't want to overcap on Chakra, but idk. What are you guys' thoughts?

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I'll be honest I'm super casual and don't like DoTs but I know lots of people still miss Touch of Death, so maybe they could re introduced ToD as that 2 stacks skill, with 7 they could also change TK to use all 7 on a cooldown like Hissatsu: Gurren.

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Originally Posted by KanameYuuki

I'll be honest I'm super casual and don't like DoTs but I know lots of people still miss Touch of Death, so maybe they could re introduced ToD as that 2 stacks skill, with 7 they could also change TK to use all 7 on a cooldown like Hissatsu: Gurren.

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I miss ToD a lot (that audio was A1), but even then, why spend 2 Chakra to add a DoT when you can hit the boss for 15-40K? I guess if they made ToD like a 60 second duration it'd balance out :thinking: Actually, yeah, that'd work imo. Would also fit into this less bursty, more constant damage thing (I know we've always dealt constant damage, but with all the oGCDs we lost we ended up losing a lot of burst). Also, Gurren/Senei only use 50 gauge when used, not the entire bar? Unless I missed something, but regardless if they added increased potency to TFC for every Chakra above 5 we'd be back at the all or nothing. So I think leaving TFC alone and adding a 60 second DoT that costs 2 Chakra would be decent.

I cry every day for touch of death, that is another skill I wish we hadn't lost.

Keep up the great work everyone, keep proposing constructive ideas!

Honestly I'd be insanely happy to see Touch of Death and Fracture come back to Monk, especially now that we don't have any TP to worry about. It was insanely satisfying to juggle three dots at the end of Heavensward.

Make six sided star increase the GL timer to 25 or even 30 seconds, otherwise leave as is.

Make tornado kick keep current GL stacks if the GL timer is 20 seconds or above.

This should alleviate runs between mobs in dungeons, as long as you hit SSS towards the end of a fight. Will also give a good disengage combo when mobs run away when you combine with TK. You could even make the gcd timer longer on SSS if you don't want TK it to be used in a normal rotation.

Make fist of earth a 10s group 5% dmg reduction buff. 90s recast.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Honestly I'd be insanely happy to see Touch of Death and Fracture come back to Monk, especially now that we don't have any TP to worry about. It was insanely satisfying to juggle three dots at the end of Heavensward.

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Yes! I agree wholeheartedly!

Those are all good points as well Etch, I especially like the one about Riddle of Earth. Thank you for your contributions!

It looks like major changes where made to our job, quality of life features that I did not expect but it does seem our voices where heard.

Thank you one and all for your level headed and helpful contributions! Here's hoping this bandaid can at least sooth some of our woes until more can be done to resolve the underlying issues with having so few actual abilities at our disposal.

I'll repost what I did in the other thread.

So... Monk is stupid good now. These changes are amazing. The only "issue" is now there is no reason to ever use TK unless you're certain it can end the fight. Since you can keep GL up basically indefinitely, the offset of losing the stacks is never worth it unless you know 100% you'll lose them anyways. Love the changes just would like to see this ability changed. I'd say potency buffed, but Mnk is already a literal monster lol.

yeah MNK is really good now, although with the added effect of form shift being able to refill our GL timer, i cant help but....

anatman: amijoketoyou.jpeg

iam afraid you are a joke now anatman

at least SSS still have a function albeit very rarely to do so, but the other skill.... yeah lol

Honestly a quality of life patch like this has been a long time coming for Monk and I’m glad we finally got it. Hopefully these changes can be a foundation for the job to improve from here on.

Yes I wholeheartedly agree, thanks again everyone for voicing your opinions in a constructive manner here!

I think Mnk will get some reworked abilities eventually because like you said Anataman is basically useless now except for server tic exploit when building stacks which I can't think is intentional. Also Riddle of Earth is crazy good ability now. 30 second True North ever 30 seconds (provided you get hit... >.>)

these changes... its good for maintaining gl, but overall, well the class design is still basic.
just infinitely do your old basic combo. mix in a couple gcds.

eh well, I guess mnk is the simple repetitive dps now.

^i mean... thats basically every dps class in this game anyway

I can't believe we made it, it only took every single one of us talking on every forum + other player communities and 4 years, but the beginning is finally here:

Meditation: I dd not expect this QoL.
Riddle of Earth: Huge not only for raiding and 30 sec true north, but a godsend for solo play.
Riddle of Fire slow: you will never be missed.

Now that we have basic foundation of easy GL management with Form Shift from lv 52 the class should finally be able to evolve and stop having stupid situational skills. TK / Anatman / Six-sided Star get your butts reworked or gtfo.

"Yay we're OP now, lets laugh at people saying they didn't get good buffs"

Right?

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Originally Posted by KanameYuuki

TK / Anatman / Six-sided Star can get the butts reworked or gtfo.

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Yeah, whats the point of six sided star now?

SSS has a use when you have to move away from the boss and can't hit them again within 5 seconds, it's basically free damage. However only then. TK however, has no use unless you KNOW you are going to lose stacks. (aka end of boss or before move where you're immobilized 15+ seconds). Even in dungeons against midbosses since you can just form shift and keep stacks it's never a gain to use TK. The only way I see TK being useful in it's current iteration is 700 potency. It's enough to warrant eating stacks if you need a large damage surge, but not enough to warrant buildstacks/spam it.

I kind of want to see the destruction a 4 Mnk party can use now lol.

Well TK and anatman is now only used for phase transitions with large downtime. Its still a dps increase to use before rather than using form shift. Its a waste honestly

The main issue I had was the lack of oGCDs. People who say all jobs are ez mode combo with weapon skill, and oGCDs.

We use to have to manage buff timings cuz Internal Release had a different cool down timer. So more thinking was involved. We use to have to upkeep a dot, manage TP, had a tornado kick rotation(which required planning with making sure riddle of wind was ready.

While yes I like the help to maintain GL. And removal of slowdown. But it’s still gonna feel slow. With our like 2 buff oGCDs and 3 damage ones (shoulder tackle, elixir field, forbidden chakra(or enlightenment).

DNC will still feel faster and more managing than Mnk and that’s sad to me.

I’m glad you’re all happy. Wish I was.

I mean it's not like everything is now perfect, I, for one, am happy that this could be the dawn of a new era, it feels like they finally listened to us, and there was no way 5.05 would have brought a rework, they probs want at the very least to wait for savage, and if anything I'm actually looking forward to 5.1 - 5.2, etc.

There is a reason to keep the discussion going unlike before.

Though I greatly welcome the QoC in meditation out of combat and the form duration, as well as eliminating the RoF slow - I'm not super happy with how they handled Form Shift and kept SSS on the GCD.

Can we not just get a new ability called Rolling Thunder or something, basically our own version of Umbral Soul - something along the lines of a 2 charge button with a ~45 second cooldown that simply refreshes GL timer. I'm super sick and tired of already spamming Form Shift endlessly in dungeons and trials, now I have to spam form shift more with this change.

Would having Form Shift an OGCD and grant 1.5s of Perfect Balance not be better than endlessly spamming and cycling through forms.

Lastly, SSS being on the GCD is still clunky as heck given the often narrow window of time we're given to "get out of the fire"

This feels more like a tourniquet. They fixed they immediate issue with a quick and easy fix. Later when there is more time they will do the serious changes needed.

Did a dungeon today. Never dropped GL after the first pack.

Didn't have to wait for the slow tank to pull bosses to maintain my stacks.

Pinch me I'm dreaming.

Seeing these changes made me decide to lvl my MNK. lol

Sure some abilities seem a bit pointless now but I hope SE will rework them sometime down the line.

To summarize my reaction in a sentence it'd be: "These are pretty obviously hasty bandaid fixes, but I'll take it!"

Monk is finally fun again. All else aside, it's finally no longer frustrating to play. No slowdown on RoF feels so much better it makes you weep for the 2 years it was left in. Riddle of Earth is finally useful and relieves so much of the burden of positionals without making them totally trivial. We can finally keep our Greased Lightning stacks between dungeon pulls. Longer forms, instant 5 chakra out of combat, and double radius Mantra are just icing on the cake. Whenever I played Monk before all I could feel was resentment for all the feedback that went ignored, but now I feel like I can finally enjoy the job again and from the bottom of my heart I am grateful.

So I don't want to complain too much, but I do still want to talk about a few things.

These changes really do feel like a quick patch-up job, a hasty attempt to plug the leaks without a strong consideration for the job's overall design. In particular, I feel the change to Form Shift allowing you to refresh Greased Lightning is especially dangerous. With this change the devs have essentially admitted defeat on making Greased Lightning a fun or compelling mechanic. They are giving up and saying "we don't know how to make this work" and so are just offering virtually infinite Greased Lightning. Monks should never lose Greased Lightning now unless they are stunned by mechanics or cinematic boss transitions. While I'm sure most people are rejoicing at this change, it does mean that the devs can never again attempt to make Greased Lightning maintenance a core part of the job's challenge, because now that Monks have tasted this convenience they'll never be willing to give it up. Removing this feature would be considered unacceptable and result only in intense backlash. For the job to evolve from this point on, Greased Lightning maintenance can no longer be used as a core gameplay mechanic.

Similarly with Riddle of Fire, removing the slowdown is essentially the devs admitting that their design was a failure and giving up on it, rather than going back to the drawing board. It would have been a mistake to keep the slowdown no matter what, but I do think it is a bit boring to just have a +Damage cooldown with no other effect, especially since it always lines up with Brotherhood and you always want to use it together with Brotherhood. It's not so bad I guess since several jobs have similar effects, but there was opportunity for flavour and identity with this skill, but the devs simply couldn't make it work, which is a bit disappointing. Still, I don't want to complain about this change since even the plain +Damage effect is so much better with no slowdown that it's unbelievable.

Besides these things, there are still a number of outstanding issues with Monk, but I'm currently content to leave these for future updates as the job is finally at least fun to play again. Namely the issues are:
- Tornado Kick is still borderline useless. I'm glad its tooltip finally got fixed to reflect its true potency, but its use cases are still extremely rare and difficult to pull off. I would very much like to see the greased lightning cost removed and the skill incorporated properly into the Monk rotation somewhere, especially since we lost so many other oGCDs with 5.0, the job is feeling a bit barebones right now.
- Anatman's intended purpose has been basically annihilated by the Form Shift change. Its only uses are now in the blatantly unintentional Anatman opener (which I'm still hoping gets fixed), or if you use Tornado Kick before long transition phases as a way to rebuild GL, but this only serves to make Anatman as useless as Tornado Kick currently is.
- Fists stances are still more or less pointless, even moreso now that Greased Lightning can be maintained almost indefinitely. Fists of Fire is only useful for about 20 seconds in the opener, and then you never touch it again. Fists of Earth is never useful. These abilities either need to be redesigned, or replaced.
- Still a bit too easy to overcap chakra unintentionally due to only being able to hold 5.
- Still a bit overreliant on crits for chakra generation.
- Still very underdeveloped when synced to lower levels. It could really use low level versions of Riddle of Fire and Elixir Field that then upgrade to those skills later, similar to how Hot Shot upgrades to Air Anchor or Inner Beast upgrades to Fell Cleave.

Hopefully these things will be addressed in future patches, and perhaps in a future expansion greased lightning can finally get something both interesting and fun to make it a core part of the job again, but if not I am at least basically satisfied with the state the job is in now.

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Originally Posted by silverdragontyr

This feels more like a tourniquet. They fixed they immediate issue with a quick and easy fix. Later when there is more time they will do the serious changes needed.

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My thoughts exactly, I think some of these changes may even be rolled back

I feel sorry for SAM now.they can’t keep up with us anymore.

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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Originally Posted by Carstien

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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Not that we don't appreciate the fixes we've been dying for since forever but to be fair, these issues were of SE's own making. It's kind of like saying thank you to them for fixing your window after they themselves broke it; Yes, you appreciate that they acknowledged and corrected their mistakes, until you realize they left glass shards all over the floor and are mildly peeved by it.

Is MNK's main mechanic (window) fixed? For the most part, I want to say yes.
Are there still highly niche/near meaningless skills (i.e. broken glass)? Tornado Kick, SSS and Anatman say yes.

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Originally Posted by Carstien

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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some people wanted this, so some are happy. I personally was always more interested in monk being interesting to play. All this does is seal monk in as being a highly effective, but simple and depthless job. I will say its probably really smooth now. Keep gl forever

you get gl4, and do it forever, with the one simple rotation forever. press buffs off cool down.

then when they eventually nerf it, it will just be a less effective boring job. So yeah, I basically just accepted monk is not going to be for me this expansion, or the foreseeable future, since they will probably stay on this path.

I'm actually enjoying the changes. TK is still useless though outside of an execute / killing the final add in Eden. No slowdown is nice, RoE is amazing in savage and form shift is a nice QoL in dungeons and lastly, meditating to 5 instantly is so much better before a pull now.

Anatman in the opener sucks however, the move itself is okay and is just a lazy man's form shift if you just want to stay in a certain form while keeping GL which I don't mind. I think I would prefer if it generated 1 GL instantly and then every 3s, not tied to the server. Definitely a step in the right direction imo though, i'm enjoying mnk again

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Originally Posted by Carstien

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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Uh, not really?
Tbh these were some really no-brainer and small fixes that shouldn't have been necessary to begin with ( should've already been a thing ).
My main issues with MNK still remains, new abilities feel useless and doesn't really change up our rotation at all.

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Originally Posted by PangTong

Similarly with Riddle of Fire, removing the slowdown is essentially the devs admitting that their design was a failure and giving up on it

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actually yoshida agreed what riddle of fire slowdown was bad on a interview he did on the media tour some time before the launch of the expansion, so this was meant to happen, probably they didnt removed it because they forgot about it, that or the noise we made was enought to them and decided for once do it already

anyway, i agree what this changes feels more like band aid fixes to issues what the job suffers from clashing whit a oposite way of content is done, riddle of earth current effect is proof of that, basically by making them give a 30 seconds long "true north" effect added to earth reply is them saying future content will have plenty of movement, so you guys might be unable to do your positionals for long periods so we are giving you all this to aleviate that!
as for form shift refreshing gl stacks, they can keep it only if you are outside of combat to help whit dungeons downtime, that way anatman can be still usefull if they decide to change the way is handled the skill from stand still to refresh gl timer to freeze gl timer until next action, literally, if they do that, form shift in combat refreshing gl stacks won't be needed at all

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Originally Posted by Carstien

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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oh i am gratefull for what they did, now the job is fun to play somewhat, but a broken job will be still broken, since their solutions are just basically band aid fixes to a bigger issue, the bigger issue being they do not know on what direction take monk, since hw monk had always clashing concepts what did not mesh well, made worse on sb whit literal no changes until 4.2(changes what created a unitended rotation), besides that, on hw they created the whole chakra to be used, yet neither on sb or shb they did really tried to exploit that to evolve the job, we still use chakras on the same way than was used on hw, get 5 chakras to blow them all on one single attack(at least now we have the option to use it on either a single target attack or a aoe one, but thats very shallow), they need to exploit more this gauge by giving more skills what uses it in diferent manners, diferent mnaners as in, skills what requires less chakras to be used, as well diferent effects, orl add some skills what give us chakras by just using them(instead of this janky RNG we have)

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Originally Posted by Carstien

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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Oh no, I'm completely satisfied... With BLM, DRG, MCH, WHM.... pretty much every class that I've leveled but SMN and MNK. And I do appreciate the changes that the devs finally made to monk.

But I'm insulted. Too little, too late is what I say. If these changes were implemented and taken into consideration with ShB MNK we could have gotten two entirely different skills that aren't Anatman or SSS. Skills that these changes completely invalidate their existence in this game. MNK is still at it's core 2.0 MNK without any job evolution past getting chakras. It's effectively the most braindead job in the game at this point because you hit your same six skills on GCD in order and the only thing you get to do beyond that is use a chakra once in a while. The class still has skill bloat that every other job has had removed (looking at you fist stances), it still has almost completely useless abilities (tornado kick and SSS) and it is now the only job that relies on RNG on RNG to perform (looking at you deep meditation). And to add the cherry on top it went through needless skill prunings that the dwindling playerbase the job had before it became meta in ShB lauded as the best changes monk ever got (Wind tackle).

So no, I'm not satisfied with monk. And while I appreciate the changes that they made with 5.05 that were the bare minimum to make monk playable, I'm not going to give them a pat on the back for fixing something that should have never been broken.

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Originally Posted by Carstien

Some people are never satisfied. Can we not all just say thanks devs, we appreciate it?

Thanks devs, I appreciate it.

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It's not about not being satisfied. It's about these changes showing that:


1.- MNKs base design has always been so solid, very few things they have added have flowed well with the base design
2.- Most of these QoL changes made very obvious some of the issues and problems that MNK has been carrying for years.


The problem is that these QoL changes did about the same thing as every QoL change for MNK does: Makes the basic skills so good, the new ones are useless. And as you can see by the various replies, its pretty clear. (I know, Crafters say hi)

MNK was gutted and gutted hard and while now with no slowdowns we don't "need" oGCDs to fill in some down time. MNK is still the job who has various skills that are predominantly situational.

Since I read the patch notes I asked myself:


- What is GL even at this point? Clearly not a carrot anymore since its beyond easy to gain.
- What is Chakra even at this point? Still very RNG and easy to "overflow"
- What are Positionals at this point? You have 3 skills that can effectively cancel them 90% of the time.
- What are Fists even at this point? 2/3 have always been situational with one of them always ruling over all.
- 10~/25 skills for MNK relate to GL in some form vs 3~/25 relating to Chakras
- What is even leaden fist and why on bootshine only? Why not leave it as a trait?
- What is Enlightenment even? We had Howling Fist serving the same purpose.


I can go on, (I really can) because I have always played MNK since I started this game 5 years ago and played it every expansion and its always down to basic MNK 2.0, and the only things that have come to the job that have added something new to the job imo have been: Four Point Fury, Elixir Field, Chakras(mixed feelings since its just a charged blow) and RoW:GL4 Kai is all we've "really" gotten since 2.0.

Letting formshift refresh GL was more than I would have asked for, but I'm glad we got something that isn't yet another situational ability to keep it up. Riddle of earth? Have to get hit. Six sided star? If I'm able to punch the boss form shift was enough honestly. The new level 78 thing? Can't move while using it.

I didn't necessarily want this, where you should never ever have it fall off outside of niche situations like E1 cutscene, but I did want just one consistent way to keep it going. LIke say, a 60s cooldown ability that refreshes GL duration to help keep it going between pulls/during downtime but not having 100% up time with just it alone. Kind of like how dragoons can get a free refresh on BOTD during downtime but they can't keep it up indefinitely without being able to do their rotation.

I appreciate what they did but didn't neccisarily want it 'THIS' easy.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

- What is GL even at this point? Clearly not a carrot anymore since its beyond easy to gain.
- What is Chakra even at this point? Still very RNG and easy to "overflow"
- What are Positionals at this point? You have 3 skills that can effectively cancel them 90% of the time.
- What are Fists even at this point? 2/3 have always been situational with one of them always ruling over all.
- 10~/25 skills for MNK relate to GL in some form vs 3~/25 relating to Chakras
- What is even leaden fist and why on bootshine only? Why not leave it as a trait?
- What is Enlightenment even? We had Howling Fist serving the same purpose.

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Leaden Fist is there to give dragon kick a purpose and still have two single target abilities to cycle through on that form in our rotation. With blut resistance (and all weapon resistances) gone they did this to make sure both skills serve a purpose.

Enlightenment is just an aoe chakra spender.

Both of these serve a clear purpose.

Greased Lightning is there to build up to maximum dps. Sure the ease at which form shift can now keep it up removes some of the depth in terms of using abilities to keep it going or reapplying it quickly, but that's the main purpose. Similar to say huton for ninjas, it's a buff to work towards rather than having max dps right at the start.

Other than true north what is cancelling the need for positionals?

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

1. What is GL even at this point? Clearly not a carrot anymore since its beyond easy to gain.
2. What is Chakra even at this point? Still very RNG and easy to "overflow"
3. What are Positionals at this point? You have 3 skills that can effectively cancel them 90% of the time.
4. What are Fists even at this point? 2/3 have always been situational with one of them always ruling over all.
5. 10~/25 skills for MNK relate to GL in some form vs 3~/25 relating to Chakras
6. What is even leaden fist and why on bootshine only? Why not leave it as a trait?
7. What is Enlightenment even? We had Howling Fist serving the same purpose.

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1. An annoying wind-up mechanic made to oblige the use of a 2-minute CD (previously both integral, rewarding, and on half the timer), which would otherwise provide fairly little potency value if not for the absurd strength of Leaden Fist, once and only once per instance.
2. A system of 7 which would perform far better if consuming fewer than the maximum value, but for which we lost count at 5 and refuse to do any arithmetic to allow for a remainder or excess of Chakra that would otherwise provide QoL improvements.
3. A thing you lose up to 13% potency on in a given GCD if you really, really suck?
4. A desperate attempt to enforce button-bloat to appear as if skills are useful or well-designed (just because they must be used, however meagerly)? If not for GL4, all but FoF would be something to take off your bar, since there's not a single mechanic you can uniquely escape or survive by use of either, and FoF itself something you macro into your MNK gear swap.
5. Because HW killed Impulse Drive weave for Demo-management, SB killed stanceless weaves for macrorotational and Demo management, and there wasn't really much left to kill after taking out oGCDs than Monk's core mechanic itself. Next: Casters would be so much better if only they could cast on the move! Casting no longer requires you to be stationary. A six-year fundamental issue resolved at last!
6. Previously we noticed that several rotational styles allowed for a 2:1 ratio of BS to DK, which added "unnecessary depth and engagement" to the job that most people would rather pretend just alternates between two skills per form and spins through its cycles really quick-like to the exclusion of all other forms of complexity. We've killed this area of complexity so that others won't have their view of the job upset by the reality of play available at higher levels. Bootshine and Dragon Kick will again properly only ever be alternated in a 1:1 ratio!
7. Take what was given at lower levels and give it back later while splitting what used to be natural AoE strength into binary choices (YOU get an ST/AoE split, YOU get an ST/AoE split, and YOU get an ST/AoE split!) and we can feign the addition of new and complex skills!

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Originally Posted by PeppermintBrown

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

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I wasn't asking an actual question in any of those (and I think Shur got the idea after a few.) But thanks?