Monk Changes

Ive made a QoL adjustment to my Op. For those of you that dont wish to skim through my ramblings.

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

Okay so it's not perfect, but that doesn't mean it needs anything, really. Monk has gotten enough attention and at this point the devs should not spare it a single second of thought. Other classes have problems, too. Heck, my favorite class got literally nothing from levels 70 - 80 except a couple situational skills

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You mean the same thing Monk has gotten. EVERY. SINGLE. EXPANSION?

Monk is arguably in need of a rework more than any other job. The core rotation is strong. Everything else is poorly thought out. When a change to 1 skill (Formshift, which was changed to work how people thought it was going to back in HW) negates 3 expansions worth of skills the Job needs a rethink.

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

You mean the same thing Monk has gotten. EVERY. SINGLE. EXPANSION?

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Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

I miss the Tornado kick from later Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

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Your comment is literally dripping with sarcasm. Glad to see others share my viewpoint.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

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Gotta love this comment honestly, nice sarcasm, and you're totally right !

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

Okay so it's not perfect, but that doesn't mean it needs anything, really. Monk has gotten enough attention and at this point the devs should not spare it a single second of thought. Other classes have problems, too. Heck, my favorite class got literally nothing from levels 70 - 80 except a couple situational skills (one of which you'd actually prefer not to use at all unless necessary, and the other of questionable value when the RDM is skilled). It's not until lvl80 that we got an actual useful skill and that's just something they tacked onto the end of verflare/holy. We even lost impact which is a big deal and makes us slaves to RNG.

The point is that no job is perfect except maybe black mage, almost every job has flaws or issues with their rotations, and Monk should be right down at the bottom of the priority list while square goes about the business of correcting this game's terrible job balance.

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Saying that one job should be at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of having its problems addressed is unnecessarily spiteful and depending on how wide you set the window for "attention" Monk has basically seen the least, and by your other criteria Monk would be one of the jobs most in need of quality of life.

Monk may have seen a bit of attention in 5.05, but player complaints on how its skills worked and played were largely ignored since Heavensward in favor of complaints people had for Summoner/Ninja/other jobs. This was when Monk was the absolute worst job in the game mind you, with comparable damage to Ninja and less than Dragoon at the beginning of the expansion that only became marginally better than Dragoon by the end, on top of being the only job without any aggro control, the strictest job mechanic to work around for Mechanics, the worst TP burn (a problem Ninja had fixed immediately mind), and no means of buffing the party at all. Stormblood's complaints were similarly, acknowledged on streams at the beginning of the expansion, and then ignored. When they actually did change Monk at all, the devs accidentally created a new rotation that was divisive among the community and absolutely not what they intended to. And they went about fixing it in Shadowbringers by undoing the best quality of life the job had ever seen (PB at 60 seconds) instead of changing Tornado Kick to be something other than overly situational. If you set the window for "attention" wide enough, it becomes obvious that the condition Monk is in now, both in how its overperforming and the state of its kit is a direct result of developer inattention more than anything.

Situational skills? You're talking to the job that is the undisputed champ of them and has been since Heavensward. Forbidden Chakra was a situational disengage skill and because the design of it wasn't changed when it became a Gauge system, it's currently the only gauge that has absolutely no overhead between being useable and capping your resource. Our capstone skill in Heavensward Tornado Kick, was only ever useful in a rotation because of developer oversight. Riddle of Earth was so situational that making Form Shift work the way it always should have required it to gain an entirely new effect (and it's activation requirement is still stupid and gets blocked by shields). Anatman's janky secondary purpose is now it's only purpose, and Six Sided Star, another ultimate ability, while not quite as useless as Tornado Kick, is still something who's use we want to minimize during a fight.

And as for skills Monk has lost the job is a veritable graveyard of skills that we once used rotationally that we don't have anymore. Touch of Death, Howling Fist, Fracture, Internal Release, and Steel Peak are all gone and Monk hasn't seen anything to replace them because we've gotten nothing but situational nonsense.

What's "unique" about Monk's problems and flaws is that many of them have existed for multiple expansions, and they've never been addressed because the "attention" you say Monk has been lavished with is something that literally never happens with the job. Instead they've been allowed to fester and created a paradoxical interplay where the Jobs' currently managing to perform very highly despite having the single worst put together kit in the game, and funnily enough, because of its kit being so poorly put together, if the devs nerf it in the wrong manner then it'll be possible to pull off some other Jank to partially make up the damage elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Saying that one job should be at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of having its problems addressed is unnecessarily spiteful and but depending on how wide you set the window for "attention" Monk has basically seen the least, and by your other criteria Monk would be one of the jobs most in need of quality of life.

Monk may have seen a bit of attention in 5.05, but player complaints on how its skills worked and played were largely ignored since Heavensward in favor of complaints people had for Summoner/Ninja/other jobs. This was when Monk was the absolute worst job in the game mind you, with comparable damage to Ninja and less than Dragoon at the beginning of the expansion that only became marginally better than Dragoon by the end, on top of being the only job without any aggro control, the strictest job mechanic to work around for Mechanics, the worst TP burn (a problem Ninja had fixed immediately mind), and no means of buffing the party at all. Stormblood's complaints were similarly, acknowledged on streams at the beginning of the expansion, and then ignored. When they actually did change Monk at all, the devs accidentally created a new rotation that was divisive among the community and absolutely not what they intended to. And they went about fixing it in Shadowbringers by undoing the best quality of life the job had ever seen (PB at 60 seconds) instead of changing Tornado Kick to be something other than overly situational. If you set the window for "attention" wide enough, it becomes obvious that the condition Monk is in now, both in how its overperforming and the state of its kit is a direct result of developer inattention more than anything.

Situational skills? You're talking to the job that is the undisputed champ of them and has been since Heavensward. Forbidden Chakra was a situational disengage skill and because the design of it wasn't changed when it became a Gauge system, it's currently the only gauge that has absolutely no overhead between being useable and capping your resource. Our capstone skill in Heavensward Tornado Kick, was only ever useful in a rotation because of developer oversight. Riddle of Earth was so situational that making Form Shift work the way it always should have required it to gain an entirely new effect (and it's activation requirement is still stupid and gets blocked by shields). Anatman's janky secondary purpose is now it's only purpose, and Six Sided Star, another ultimate ability, while not quite as useless as Tornado Kick, is still something who's use we want to minimize during a fight.

And as for skills Monk has lost the job is a veritable graveyard of skills that we once used rotationally that we don't have anymore. Touch of Death, Howling Fist, Fracture, Internal Release, and Steel Peak are all gone and Monk hasn't seen anything to replace them because we've gotten nothing but situational nonsense.

What's "unique" about Monk's problems and flaws is that many of them have existed for multiple expansions, and they've never been addressed because the "attention" you say Monk has been lavished with is something that literally never happens with the job. Instead they've been allowed to fester and created a paradoxical interplay where the Jobs' currently managing to perform very highly despite having the single worst put together kit in the game, and funnily enough, because of its kit being so poorly put together, if the devs nerf it in the wrong manner then it'll be possible to pull off some other Jank to partially make up the damage elsewhere.

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I appriciate the details, and i agree, though i would add that not only did they remove howling fist, but they the reskined the skill, made it situationally tied to our chakra, and now have it compete with final chakra.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

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Perhaps this can be said of a lot of jobs in ShB, So as a MNK main since early ARR and the first class I chose welcome our new brothers of the "taken but given back reskinned" order.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

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This bit stood out for me, due to the fact that Dragoon kept Dragonfire Dive AND gained Stardiver, exactly the same AoE except higher potency. Stardiver can only be used under its resource (LoTD), same as Enlightenment. So, why was Howling Fist removed? Because we got Elixir Field? By that logic Stardiver should have replaced DFD if they were trying to streamline jobs equally. Just seems like they wanted to cuck monk some more.

Monk is one of the top damage dealers at the moment, and as has been said in this very thread, is currently seeing a LOT of play right now. It may not be perfect, but it's pretty damn good at the moment.

When I think of jobs that need some TLC, Monk doesn't even crack the top 3. Ninja and Summoner both need rework, and the complexity of the jobs do not match the damage output. The entire role of physical ranged dps is in major trouble right now as many people are looking for reasons to even bring them into high end content (similar to where casters were at the end of heavensward and stormblood). RDM doesn't feel as rewarding as it used to, got two skills that are entirely circumstantial, AND is the 2nd from the bottom DPS. SAM needs some potency buffs and is getting it's shoha reworked (which it needed).

This is before we address the current complaints for Tanks and Healers (which are admittedly both in a decent spot atm).

Doing heavy rework on monk would take away from the resources needed to adjust other jobs that need a LOT more work than Monk currently does.

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Originally Posted by Xelphus

Doing heavy rework on monk would take away from the resources needed to adjust other jobs that need a LOT more work than Monk currently does.

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Not to disqualify your previous points but when you go back to this. Its obvious that the devs need more staff and we can go down that rabbit hole, but lets face it: Most jobs don't want to be HW's PLD or SB's MCH. And this is not what MNK players are discussing now, nor have discussed before. This all has a past.

MNK players have not been asking for "OP buffs" (sans the random person who screams for them but I digress) MNKs keep asking for a kit that has better consistency and not feel like a poorly layered cake of exotic flavors. MNK works, and works better than the rest of the jobs, no denying it there. But its a job that gets 1/5 useful skills every expansion for the last 3 and has lost more than it has gained.

And it "feels" worse for most MNKs who've played the job for a while. And with how predictable SE is. I already expect 6.0 to be another expansion where MNK gets 1 useful skill out of 5, and the other 4 being so situational or repeats of what it already has that it'll just be "the usual."

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Not to disqualify your previous points but when you go back to this. Its obvious that the devs need more staff and we can go down that rabbit hole, but lets face it: Most jobs don't want to be HW's PLD or SB's MCH. And this is not what MNK players are discussing now, nor have discussed before. This all has a past.

MNK players have not been asking for "OP buffs" (sans the random person who screams for them but I digress) MNKs keep asking for a kit that has better consistency and not feel like a poorly layered cake of exotic flavors. MNK works, and works better than the rest of the jobs, no denying it there. But its a job that gets 1/5 useful skills every expansion for the last 3 and has lost more than it has gained.

And it "feels" worse for most MNKs who've played the job for a while. And with how predictable SE is. I already expect 6.0 to be another expansion where MNK gets 1 useful skill out of 5, and the other 4 being so situational or repeats of what it already has that it'll just be "the usual."

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Yep.

If you want to know why Monk players still are complaining (And indeed, still have plenty of reason to complain) then you just need to look at basically every thread about Monk that was made between May and 5.05 (and in a lot of cases the beginning of Stormblood and beyond). You can even look at the comments from around 5.05, most of which were along the lines of “well it’s a start but there’s still a ton of problems”. Most of those complaints are still valid complaints about the job and have gone unaddressed for a considerable length of time.

Monk's OP, well great but that doesn't do anything about the problems the job has had on a design level since like A Realm Reborn that have gone unfixed for years.

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Originally Posted by Sora_Oathkeeper

This bit stood out for me, due to the fact that Dragoon kept Dragonfire Dive AND gained Stardiver, exactly the same AoE except higher potency. Stardiver can only be used under its resource (LoTD), same as Enlightenment. So, why was Howling Fist removed? Because we got Elixir Field? By that logic Stardiver should have replaced DFD if they were trying to streamline jobs equally. Just seems like they wanted to cuck monk some more.

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My guess is it's because of their stated fear that Monk would be too hard to play with GL4 (which it isn't) led them to trim it out along with everything else they took. That's probably true of everything they removed barring One-Ilm Punch.

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Originally Posted by Xelphus

Monk is one of the top damage dealers at the moment, and as has been said in this very thread, is currently seeing a LOT of play right now. It may not be perfect, but it's pretty damn good at the moment.

When I think of jobs that need some TLC, Monk doesn't even crack the top 3. Ninja and Summoner both need rework, and the complexity of the jobs do not match the damage output. The entire role of physical ranged dps is in major trouble right now as many people are looking for reasons to even bring them into high end content (similar to where casters were at the end of heavensward and stormblood). RDM doesn't feel as rewarding as it used to, got two skills that are entirely circumstantial, AND is the 2nd from the bottom DPS. SAM needs some potency buffs and is getting it's shoha reworked (which it needed).

This is before we address the current complaints for Tanks and Healers (which are admittedly both in a decent spot atm).

Doing heavy rework on monk would take away from the resources needed to adjust other jobs that need a LOT more work than Monk currently does.

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Except they don't? Everything you listed has a cohesive kit and other than ninja and maaaaaybe summoner need nothing but potency buffs.

Ninja got potency buffs recently, but still needs a rework. The buffs are seen as nothing but a bandaid. Are we deciding that since Monk started with bandaids it's no longer in need of a rework?

Also bringing up circumstancial skills other classes have...Have you not seen the skills monks have?

Monk is also the only job that has historically lost skills that were actually used rotationally with nothing to replace them, except the same skill of a different flavor.

Once Monk gets brought back in line it's play numbers will plummet because despite 3 expansions it has never seen any sort of evolution and is still the exact same job it was in ARR.

Monk has never gotten the attention it's needed when it's needed it.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

My guess is it's because of their stated fear that Monk would be too hard to play with GL4 (which it isn't) led them to trim it out along with everything else they took. That's probably true of everything they removed barring One-Ilm Punch.

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While it's not really used in such a manner, Dragonfire Dive is still an engagement tool. In other words it can serve a purpose outside dealing damage.

Howling fist doesn't.

That said, Howling Fist is a clear example of a skill that should have upgraded instead of being removed - Where Howling Fist with 5 chakra morphs into Enlightenment, and then Enlightenment's potency could have been significantly higher to add in some measure of constraint with Chakra instead of "Forbidden the moment you're full"

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

While it's not really used in such a manner, Dragonfire Dive is still an engagement tool. In other words it can serve a purpose outside dealing damage.

Howling fist doesn't.

That said, Howling Fist is a clear example of a skill that should have upgraded instead of being removed - Where Howling Fist with 5 chakra morphs into Enlightenment, and then Enlightenment's potency could have been significantly higher to add in some measure of constraint with Chakra instead of "Forbidden the moment you're full"

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Technically Howling fist was our only low level skill that could hit a mob outside of Melee range.

While that works for Samurai's Hissatsu:Senei/Guren, it wouldn't work on Monk. A Samurai knows how much Kenki they'll need when Hissatsu:Senei/Guren is coming up and they build Kenki consistently with every GCD, so they can pause in their Shinten use and just build gauge, and if they're slightly off they won't overflow because there's overhead built into the gauge. Monk's flow of Chakra can do neither of those things. Its inconsistent being behind two layers of RNG and you either have 5 Chakra or you don't when it comes to using a skill. So when approaching the Enlightenment/Howling Fist cooldown a Monk could just be unable to use it because of RNG deciding it doesn't want to cooperate, or they would have to sit on 5 Chakra and miss out on Chakras proccing and miss out on damage.

In theory they could mitigate it by making Enlightenment/Howling Fist always align with Brotherhood, but Brotherhood is party comp dependent (and also RNG) so if it's a Monk and 3 Casters, you may not see the 5 Chakras you need. You could also just get insanely unlucky and not get the Chakras in a physical composition either.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Technically Howling fist was our only low level skill that could hit a mob outside of Melee range.

While that works for Samurai's Hissatsu:Senei/Guren, it wouldn't work on Monk. A Samurai knows how much Kenki they'll need when Hissatsu:Senei/Guren is coming up and they build Kenki consistently with every GCD, so they can pause in their Shinten use and just build gauge, and if they're slightly off they won't overflow because there's overhead built into the gauge. Monk's flow of Chakra can do neither of those things. Its inconsistent being behind two layers of RNG and you either have 5 Chakra or you don't when it comes to using a skill. So when approaching the Enlightenment/Howling Fist cooldown a Monk could just be unable to use it because of RNG deciding it doesn't want to cooperate, or they would have to sit on 5 Chakra and miss out on Chakras proccing and miss out on damage.

In theory they could mitigate it by making Enlightenment/Howling Fist always align with Brotherhood, but Brotherhood is party comp dependent (and also RNG) so if it's a Monk and 3 Casters, you may not see the 5 Chakras you need. You could also just get insanely unlucky and not get the Chakras in a physical composition either.

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Kinda goes back to Chakra not being as fleshed out as other resources, and all of their skill advancements being Greased Lightning based.

having Six Sided Star instead auto-generating a Chakra would give them more manipulation in this regard (And in this example would be a clear and present gain for the situation at hand - "I need Chakra to use Enlightenment so I don't have to delay the Cooldown")

In this theoretical setup you could have something like

Six Sided Star - Generates Chakra Guaranteed.
Howling Fist - Becomes Enlightenment at 5 Chakra
Anantman - Consumes 5 Chakra to grant Max GL

Deep Meditation II - Chakra now holds up to 7.

If we assign something like a 45 second Anantman cooldown, we also potentially bring back a situational Tornado Kick gain. The Monk then moves through three basic, competing priorities of Enlighten Howling Fist, Anantman -> Tornado Kick, or default Forbidden Chakra.

On a more opinionated note, I kind of think Riddles should be short duration buffs attached to the Fists, and increase the fist cooldown some. Removes some buttons and encourages more fist dancing.

Riddle of X: When changing into Fist of Earth, Fist of Fire, or Fist of Wind, the bonus from this Fist is doubled for 9 seconds.

Which leads into a pretty natural upgrade for it later

Greater Riddle: When Changing into Fist of Earth, Wind, or Fire, the bonus from the previous fist is kept for 9 seconds.

With a few baseline changes to the Fists themselves and separating GL 4 from Riddle of Wind.

Fist of Earth: 10% Damage reduction, gain 50% of the positional bonus when missing a positional.
Fist of Fire: 5% bonus damage
Fist of Wind: 5% bonus movement speed

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Except they don't? Everything you listed has a cohesive kit and other than ninja and maaaaaybe summoner need nothing but potency buffs.

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I'm confused as to how a couple of skills Monk having that are circumstantial prevent it from having a cohesive kit. If that's the case then Black Mage needs to be reworked as well with Scathe, Fire II and Blizzard II basically being completely useless now. Monk's kit as a whole works, and it does a ton of damage. The only 2 DPS that are better off right now are Black Mage and maybe Dragoon.

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Ninja got potency buffs recently, but still needs a rework. The buffs are seen as nothing but a bandaid. Are we deciding that since Monk started with bandaids it's no longer in need of a rework?

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I don't think I ever said that with the bandaids Ninja was good enough. It still needs lots of work.

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Also bringing up circumstancial skills other classes have...Have you not seen the skills monks have?

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Most of the DPS have circumstancial skills. Monk still needs less attention that any other Ranged DPS job aside from BLM. I brought up RDM because like MNK it has circumstantial skills but doesn't do remotely close to the same damage.

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Monk is also the only job that has historically lost skills that were actually used rotationally with nothing to replace them, except the same skill of a different flavor.

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Contagion. Aetherflow (on SMN). Most of Sch's DPS kit. Fire II and Blizz II aren't gone but are now completely obsolete. Deliverance. Unchained. Scourge. Dark Arts. Shield Swipe. The vast majority of MCH's old kit.

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Once Monk gets brought back in line it's play numbers will plummet because despite 3 expansions it has never seen any sort of evolution and is still the exact same job it was in ARR.

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If Monk does good damage, people will play it. Simple as that. It is one of the most played jobs in the game, and unless SE just completely tanks the job overnight that isn't likely to change soon. There is literally an entire role within the game that some people are considering not bringing anymore.

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Originally Posted by Ramura_Sono

Monk has never gotten the attention it's needed when it's needed it.

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Except that it has. Monk got a solid amount of attention near the end of Stormblood which a ton of people were happy about and saw a ton of play in the final raid tier. A couple odd skills here or there maybe feel weird, but it pales in comparison to some of the job changes of the past (4.0 Warrior for instance).

Monk may need some work. Other jobs need it more.

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Originally Posted by Xelphus

I'm confused as to how a couple of skills Monk having that are circumstantial prevent it from having a cohesive kit. If that's the case then Black Mage needs to be reworked as well with Scathe, Fire II and Blizzard II basically being completely useless now. Monk's kit as a whole works, and it does a ton of damage. The only 2 DPS that are better off right now are Black Mage and maybe Dragoon.

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Monk right now and has always had the most overly circumstantial skills in the game by an order of magnitude. Monk is also the only job where the devs consistently tie traits to those skills that are fundamentally useless. Fists of Fire, Wind, and Earth and by extension the two traits Enhanced Fists of Fire and Riddle of Wind, Tornado Kick, Anatman, and Six Sided Star. Are all extremely niche to the point of never being used or outright useless for their intended purpose.

1-2 Circumstantial skills is no where near the problem that Monk has where a 1/3 of its kit is useless and 2/3's of what they get when an expansion drops also being garbage.

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Contagion. Aetherflow (on SMN). Most of Sch's DPS kit. Fire II and Blizz II aren't gone but are now completely obsolete. Deliverance. Unchained. Scourge. Dark Arts. Shield Swipe. The vast majority of MCH's old kit.

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You know what those jobs also regularly get? New skills that are effective and that they get to use during their rotations or in the course of mitigating/healing a fight, whereas Monk has not seen a truly new rotational skill since Elixir Field and a new GCD we get to use on a regular basis is something we've never gotten before.

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Except that it has. Monk got a solid amount of attention near the end of Stormblood which a ton of people were happy about and saw a ton of play in the final raid tier. A couple odd skills here or there maybe feel weird, but it pales in comparison to some of the job changes of the past (4.0 Warrior for instance).

Monk may need some work. Other jobs need it more.

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Attention that was so poorly thought out that it produced an entirely new rotation that the devs didn't want us doing. And they undid all of the positive changes at the beginning of Shadowbringers, making Monk grueling to level and play instead of changing the lynchpin of that rotation.

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Monk may need some work. Other jobs need it more.

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Monk has had these problems for years while other jobs passed it by. I think Monk deserves as much attention as they do.

There has always been downtime in fights, and Monk had trouble maintaining or using stacks of GL during the downtime back in 2.0. A LOT of the skills you listed were for those instances. I agree that Anantman has more or less been replaced by the updates to form shift, but it absolutely had uses on release. Fists of Earth isn't great (but neither is any other defensive "stance" on a dps class) but Fists of Fire and Wind are both pretty damn important to you dps, considering FoF gives you a constant 10% damage bonus and Fists of Wind gives a 4th GL stack, both of which are dependent on their respective traits. Six Sided Star is certainly niche, but there are dozens of times where a melee has to peel off a boss to avoid a mechanic and lose a GCD (which is shorter for monk because of GL) and is great for maintaining GL 3 or 4 without having to resort to 3 form shifts or standing still for Anatman.

BLM hasn't gotten a regular GCD skill since FIV. Dragoon didn't get a new GCD this expac either. Bard got Apex Arrow but is hardly exciting atm. RDM got a new "finisher" but nothing else dramatically added to its rotation. SAM had no new GCDs added this expac either. Personally I have always really liked MNK, I just hated the feeling when you lose GL and lo and behold this expac that let me keep GL and move through the course of the fight without disrupting my rhythm.

Monk's main problem in HW was it's lack of utility, so they gave MNK Brotherhood. Since then they have increased the damage of MNK substantially, tweaked it's kit to make it flow very well even if you don't use certain skills regularly (which nearly every DPS has circumstantial skills, even BLM), and now on top of making it super easy to maintain GL, MNK is competing with BLM, a zero utility job, for top dps spot in pretty much every fight. That sounds pretty fantastic to me personally. They have given MNK a ton of attention, attention that has improved the job on an order of magnitude, especially when you consider that MNK had no place in the meta 2 expacs ago, and a rough spot at the beginning of the previous expac. Now groups are pracitcally requiring MNK in their groups because of how much damage it outputs.

So I will say it again: other jobs need more attention than MNK. SAM and NIN mostly, since they occupy the same role and there should be at least some justification to bring them over MNK (which there isn't right now), and then literally every ranged dps not named BLM (which despite having 3 circumstantial skills and 4 completely useless skills, I think is pretty much a perfect class atm). Fix the glaring issues with the jobs that barely anyone wants to play, and then patch up the #1 most played job in the game that does either the most or second most damage in every fight.

Fists of Fire and Fists of Wind are only important to DPS because you need to have them up, not because they're good skills. Fundamentally you only want to be in Fists of Wind for 99.9% of the fight and sub to fire for the first 3 GCDs and the last SSS>TK. Which functionally makes it about as useful as Tornado Kick as it's ever been. There is no choice between the Fist Stances, they're an illusion of choice that shouldn't be in the game and that's what they've always been, but for some reason there's two traits tied to it.

You're absolutely wrong on Black Mage, it has gotten a new Single Target GCD Skill every expansion that see use every rotation cycle (Foul and Xenoglossy). It also got Despair this expansion. Dragoon on a technicality got one as well in the form of Raiden Thrust, but even if you don't count that it has consistently gotten new attacks to use every expansion such as Nastrond, Miragde Dive and Stardiver. Monk has gotten two "New" skills that we actually get to use on a regular basis, Elixir Field at 54 and Brotherhood at 70. Everything else has either been a top end replacement for something they removed from the kit at the bottom end or an overly situational piece of junk.

They haven't tweaked Monks flow at all, they've actually introduced GL4 which is something that should have required some changes to its timers and literally didn't change any of it's timers so the highest DPS rotation involves dropping a buff for its reapplication.

They haven't given Monk a lot of attention, they've neglected it and ignored player complaints consistently from expansion to expansion, introducing new actions that were completely redundant with old actions that could have just been improved , and let those problems fester. It was so bad that Yoshi-P apologized about Stormblood Monk during the lead up to Shadowbringers, but surprise surprise on launch very little of what people hated about Stormblood launch had actually changed. That's not attention at all. Even if Monk is performing highly now, that doesn't change that it's kit is and has been a junk heap for an expansion.

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Originally Posted by Xelphus

BLM hasn't gotten a regular GCD skill since FIV. Dragoon didn't get a new GCD this expac either. Bard got Apex Arrow but is hardly exciting atm. RDM got a new "finisher" but nothing else dramatically added to its rotation. SAM had no new GCDs added this expac either. Personally I have always really liked MNK, I just hated the feeling when you lose GL and lo and behold this expac that let me keep GL and move through the course of the fight without disrupting my rhythm.

So I will say it again: other jobs need more attention than MNK. SAM and NIN mostly, since they occupy the same role and there should be at least some justification to bring them over MNK (which there isn't right now), and then literally every ranged dps not named BLM (which despite having 3 circumstantial skills and 4 completely useless skills, I think is pretty much a perfect class atm). Fix the glaring issues with the jobs that barely anyone wants to play, and then patch up the #1 most played job in the game that does either the most or second most damage in every fight.

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Prioritizing the jobs you mention and giving better thought of and planned QoL to other jobs should not be mutually exclusive. Jobs like MNK and BLM have such broken but working systems because they haven't the foggiest what to do to enable better options, so all they do to those jobs is add things to them that just make their basics seem more obvious in how "basic" they are. We can't just fall on this wheel of "what the flavor of the patch" job doting because it just makes things worse for the jobs that have to wait longer than others, I am aware that there can be jobs that don't need any or much tweaking, but that doesn't mean other jobs have to wait in line for problems to be fixed.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Prioritizing the jobs you mention and giving better thought of and planned QoL to other jobs should not be mutually exclusive. Jobs like MNK and BLM have such broken but working systems because they haven't the foggiest what to do to enable better options, so all they do to those jobs is add things to them that just make their basics seem more obvious in how "basic" they are. We can't just fall on this wheel of "what the flavor of the patch" job doting because it just makes things worse for the jobs that have to wait longer than others, I am aware that there can be jobs that don't need any or much tweaking, but that doesn't mean other jobs have to wait in line for problems to be fixed.

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I don't think there's anything "broken" about BLM. The past two expansions have been like a wet dream for people who want to play Black Mage. The job has simultaneously gotten easier to play and more powerful at every step along the way. Hell, square even intentionally broke the meta and gutted support classes just to justify black mage's existence and now we have a situation where powerful jobs are doing so much personal DPS that you can't even justify bringing any support classes because the rDPS they provide does not even come close to making up for the difference. They even created a new support class (Dancer) built around the idea of buffing a single powerful job to allow them to do insane amounts of damage.. And they reworked Astrologian in a way that means its entire purpose is to primarily buff single players at a time, they don't even have the option of spreading cards anymore. Literally everything about Shadowbringers has been built from the ground up in a way that appears to be tailor-made specifically to make Black Mage the most powerful and desirable job in the game. That's insane.

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

I don't think there's anything "broken" about BLM. The past two expansions have been like a wet dream for people who want to play Black Mage. The job has simultaneously gotten easier to play and more powerful at every step along the way. Hell, square even intentionally broke the meta and gutted support classes just to justify black mage's existence and now we have a situation where powerful jobs are doing so much personal DPS that you can't even justify bringing any support classes because the rDPS they provide does not even come close to making up for the difference. They even created a new support class (Dancer) built around the idea of buffing a single powerful job to allow them to do insane amounts of damage.. And they reworked Astrologian in a way that means its entire purpose is to primarily buff single players at a time, they don't even have the option of spreading cards anymore. Literally everything about Shadowbringers has been built from the ground up in a way that appears to be tailor-made specifically to make Black Mage the most powerful and desirable job in the game. That's insane.

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Black Mage is a dev favorite and it shows. Even when it isn't "meta" it often gets problems addressed with changes to its existing kit before they add new actions case in point, they just tied enochian to AF/UI in Stormblood which let you refresh it with Transpose instead of giving it something stupid like Riddle of Earth, and in Shadowbringers they made the Freeze changes retroactive rather than something earned in the leveling process. If they do have to make a fix with a new skill, the skill is always unbelievably good like Triple Cast for movement or 2x Xenoglossy for movement or burst.

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Originally Posted by Sonya_Nillefrant

But i do see the general theme of everyones arguement:
No one cares about something majority of you dont play. If its dps is high, whi cares if its skills dont work. It needs nerfs it needs nerfs it needs nerfs. That seems to cover all of your opinions. Thank you for not giving a single real thought. And no this isnt a troll, this is a player whos been playing sense og 14 through rrb remake and until now. With deep concerns for my current favorite class. But noone cares about a class few seem to understand.

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I don't think you're alone with how you feel about monk. I personally agree. I also get that SE has a horribly difficult time balancing all the classes while keeping them the way we all like it.

I got monk to lvl 80 been trying to work with it, giving it a chance. I likely will not play it again till next expansion. and its simple as that, I don't like what they did with it personally, so I won't play it, but I have other classes I like. I'm sry that you are unhappy with your class that has been your favorite for some time now.

The chosen one is back....

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Originally Posted by moxzie

I find it really hard to believe someone who misspells so much is anything but a troll. Especially since the forums spellcheck for you. Also, that formatting is so horrible that I doubt you'll find many people masochistic enough to read it all.

Assuming you're actually serious, I agree that the class does feel clunky to play. I like all the positional attacks but keeping up leaden fists, demolish and twin-snakes on top of dealing with greased lightning just doesn't flow right with me. It's very possible that this isn't a fault of the class so much as I just personally don't like how it plays.

There are also abilities that don't seem to have a well designed purpose or get used in ways that I doubt were intended (Anatman fishing.)

Ultimately, even if everyone agreed that the skills don't flow as well as they could and that some skills are practically worthless, your massive redesign isn't going to happen. Minor tweaks, maybe a skill dropped or added, and potency changes are about all you can reasonably expect.

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Huh? The forums doesn't spellcheck for me... not on my phone or PS4. So what kindof settings are you seeing that does this spellcheck? Cause I never seen it.