5.0 MNK Problems

Not just that, whats the point of gating meditation until lv 62, the very least they should do is make chakra useful form the very beginning, you can basically ignore that skill for 8 levels.

They decided bard no longer needing crit, Ninjas mentioned they don't like resources from auto attacks, both get improved, MNK as always gets nothing.

I really curious what the developer's intent was with 5.0 Monk. The Anatman opener feels unintentional. I like the idea of an ability which freezes GL stacks (which is what we have wanted Riddle of Earth to be since 4.0 launch), and on some fights it feels great to use it that way. But using it in the opener and relying on server ticks feels awful.

The lack of SkS feels bad, but seeing as we're only a week into the game's life, this is a problem that will be solved with the addition of more gear.

But what really makes me sad is the new looping rotation. cramming 2 True Strikes between every Twin Snakes buff deletes the flow that this job has had for the past half decade. you're moving from flank to rear to flank literally almost every gcd. Even doing it right, with the right amount of SkS, the Twin Snakes buff falls off right before you reapply it. Meaning in any fight where you disengage, even if it's only for half a second, you can throw off the whole rotation. It doesn't feel satisfying to do right either. It's just clock-watching. It feels BAD, imo.

Here's a few things I think would go towards fixing these problems:
-Removing positionals from Twin Snakes and True Strikes. I feel like with the addition of everything post-2.0, Monk's identity doesn't need to be "The one with all the positionals". This would make the rotation feel less frantic.
-Increasing the duration of the Twin Snakes buff to 18s to match the duration of Demolish. This would change the rotation to allow 2 True Strikes/Twin Snakes, but still maintain a sense of flow. Also not having the buff fall off if you have to move for a second.
-Anatman generates it's first stack upon execution, instead of relying on server ticks.
-Perfect Balance cooldown back to either 60s or 90s

There's are what I personally want, and it's fine if you don't. If this new opener and rotation really was what the developers intended with 5.0 Monk, then I think these changes would make it actually feel good to use.

Incoming wall of text.

I've had some more time now to play Monk and run through the expert dungeons a few times as well as doing content at varying levels. I apologise for the long wall of text but I want to cover everything that matters to me as a Monk player and try to make it clear what the problems are.
I cannot stress how hard it is now to maintain GL in dungeons and to an extent, 24 man content. I'm lucky if I can SSS the final mob of a trash pack and make it to the next without losing GL or being forced to ST in ahead of the tank to hit the mob and refresh GL. I'm becoming more impatient and I’m constantly looking at my GL timer through dungeons because having to change back to FoF, build back up to GL3 and then change back to FoW before getting GL4 is not fun. I put up with it because I don't want to be the rude DPS player running off constantly pulling more but it I have to say, some of these dungeons feel like SE managed to spread the trash out just enough that you cannot maintain GL to the next pack even if you SSS'd the final mob, sprinted and ST'd in to the next pack with your snap punch, demolish or rockbreaker primed.

Content lower than 78 feels ok, but only ok. Whereas before if I lost GL midfight in a 24 man raid because of a boss mechanic making them untargetable, I didn't mind, I could just use PB/Wind tackle to get it all back quickly and carry on. Now, without Anatman all I can do is stand there in total misery watching as my GL timer runs out and I can do nothing about it, knowing I have next to no recovery. PB is still on CD because of my opener, or from the last time I had to recover my stacks. When you lose access to RoF and Brotherhood, you have no burst, except I suppose PB. I like the leaden fist buff as it keeps me more active than how DK worked previously, but it also feels even worse when the bosses start spinning around or mechanics cause it to be impossible to hit positionals. These mechanics also seem to be fairly frequent in SHB content meaning you burn through your True North cooldowns constantly and even then there's times where you are still stuck with losing many positionals. The change to Riddle of Earth is better, however, having to get hit on purpose to keep our stacks running is a terrible mechanic. I would be happy if either Anatman got moved to be a lower level skill or we returned to PB being 60s.

Anatman is a good skill and I’ve grown to like it quickly. However, I think it needs to be changed to be an instant tick, not waiting on a server tick. It also needs to work the same outside of combat as it does inside combat, in that it refreshes your timer and generates stacks (although I wouldn't mind if it didn't generate stacks). If you were able to use Anatman between pulls for a guaranteed instant tick, I think it would go a long way to alleviating that feeling of trying to rush to the next pack, or the boss. There is no way SE could have implemented this skill and foreseen the Anatman rotation. I’ve not gotten around to trying it but it seems completely against how you’re meant to play a game.

Six Sided Star is cool, I like the idea behind it and when you're actually able to use it, it feels pretty satisfying to watch and hear. But, it needs to be changed. It needs to be an OGCD, because with it being a GCD, it can be next to impossible to time it correctly, at least with it being OGCD you'd stand a greater chance of getting the timing right and being able to use it more easily with TK. Obviously this will affect the way the GCD cooldown effect will work but as it stands, this skills is hard to use as unless you're 100% sure that you will not lose any GCDs from using it, it's a gamble at best and only really used when moving between trash packs to try and keep GL running, with maybe the odd usage during a fight when you have to disengage and would risk losing GL on returning.

Riddle of fire - In SB, I liked this skill a lot and actually didn't mind the slowdown as it felt like it let me weave more easily. Now with SHB, you feel the slowdown of RoF more than ever before when at GL4. It's almost unbearable at times seeing your 1.9s~ GCD shoot back up to 2.37s~. Not only does it feel slow, it actually impacts me personally with the flow. I find myself pressing GCDs too early and then wondering why demolish hasn't reapplied, why my leaden fist buff is still active etc, because the GCD is just sat there waiting to be pressed because the slowdown caused me to press it early. I am not sure how you would rebalance RoF to remove the slowdown effect as it would probably cause Monk dps to be too strong if you didn’t get the slowdown, but as it stands right now, it feels very detrimental to your rotation with GL4.

Perfect Balance being on a 2 minute CD now makes losing GL stacks the most punishing I’ve felt it been since I started playing Monk in SB. With no fast and efficient way to regain stacks due to this change and the removal of Wind tackle granting GL, most every bit of content excluding the majority of SHB content is extremely cruel to play as a Monk. When bosses jump away and you have absolutely no way to keep your stacks and PB is on cooldown, you have to start from nothing. It happens far too often and really drives home the feeling that Monk should not be played at anything lower than 78 where you have Anatman and a slightly improved Riddle of Earth to give you a chance of saving your stacks.

Monk is still fun, I will still play it, I will still raid on it and I still enjoy the challenge of Monk, especially now I can use Anatman during downtime to keep my stacks but also well timed uses midfight to refresh it when I have to disengage. With that said, I am slightly hurt that Yoshi P said he had the most fun reworking Monk for SHB and that they listen to what the Monk players want. Whilst I do not lament the loss of the TK rotation, I cannot understand where Monk is heading anymore. All these tools to keep GL, except they are clunky, way too situational or just level locked too high that lower content is a nightmare. TK is dead in the water and unless it's changed to be a 60s ogcd button that only works at max stacks but does not remove stacks, it will remain that way.

I can only hope we get some adjustments when Savage is released because as much as I love Monk, I almost want to just level up Samurai or Dragoon because they seem far happier with their changes and at least have a job identity, something Monk seems to have lost despite the inclusion of GL4.


TL;DR - Monk has regressed and is now painful to play in most content pre 80 and even then dungeons and some fights are not much fun due to changes to skills, clunkyness of new skills and overall fight design causing unavoidable downtime causing you to start from zero GL unless you have specific skills for keeping your stacks. The interaction of new skills with the Monk rotation are not interesting or fun and leave Monk feeling like an after thought that no one in SE knows how to play or balance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Irisdina_Wiloh

I can only hope we get some adjustments when Savage is released because as much as I love Monk, I almost want to just level up Samurai or Dragoon because they seem far happier with their changes and at least have a job identity, something Monk seems to have lost despite the inclusion of GL4.


TL;DR - Monk has regressed and is now painful to play in most content pre 80 and even then dungeons and some fights are not much fun due to changes to skills, clunkyness of new skills and overall fight design causing unavoidable downtime causing you to start from zero GL unless you have specific skills for keeping your stacks. The interaction of new skills with the Monk rotation are not interesting or fun and leave Monk feeling like an after thought that no one in SE knows how to play or balance.

---

Agreed. My biggest annoyances are being punished for things I can't control(downtime because boss jumps, boss randomly turning causing missed positionals, etc). I still have fun with it, but no other class is punished as much as MNK for the boss going invincible. I started leveling up SAM yesterday, going to see how that feels and maybe make the switch.

MNK main also, bumping for visibility

This sucks

Everyone here feels it. It just doesn't feel good to play MNK now especially under 80. Takes too long to spin up Greased lightning and might just as well Perfect Balance at the start of any fight. With the timer extended, there's no way to maintain stacks and no way to recover. Tornado kick is even MORE worthless as such. Enlightenment is just a nerfed version of Howling Fist. Six-Sided Star does what Anatman should already do an sorta slaps us for using it given lack of GL recovery and few oGCD skills.

What the heck happened??? Its just too clunky to play. Feels bad man.

mnk main too, shb monk sucks hard, it does not feel as fun, its flow had been broken by the removal of most of their ogcd skills, i wonder why the devs still stick to the whole slowdown concept to monk when even yoshida agreed what the slowdown feels bad(was said on a interview)
me biggest hurdle is how unfun is the whole stance change midbatle, i forget about it most of the time and i tend to either starting the battle on fist of wind(andso less dmg done while building me stacks) or i forgot to change to fist of wind(and so less speed), this has to be changed
other thing i hate is how SLOW the job feels now by the lack of skill speed, and gl4 does not compensate that at all, i just wish what the devs stoped saying what "its too overwelming!" if it feels like it is for you, then level them up instead of try them on a vacuum at 80!

Been ccomplaining about Monks direction since Stormblood. It's mind boggling that the devs can simultaneously acknowledge the problems with a skill like Riddle of Fire and then flat out not do anything to fix it, as if that would be okay on any job other than Monk. The last thing we needed was two additional skills to upkeep Greased Lightning and more Fist Stance garbage. What Monk needed was for it to basically get all of the quality of life that Black Mage has received over the years, like Form Shifting from Coeurl to Opo-opo refreshing Greased Lightning ala transpose keeping up Enochian and for a bunch of stuff in its kit to get reworked. Instead, literally nothing of note changed, we lost skills, and we lost some of the best quality of life the job has ever seen because people were Tornado Kicking too much and the devs decided the solution to that was to kill Monks ability to generate stacks instead of changing how the skill worked.

There's a reason Monk is at the bottom of the DPS in terms of how satisfied we are with the job.

I've been maining monk since late in Heavensward when I leveled it to get mantra for ninja and realized I enjoyed this job a lot more than I had expected I would... and I have to say that this expansion was overall pretty good for monk changes/additions. But like the original poster, I do have my own concerns too, mostly regarding the opener.

I love four point fury. This is what monk has needed for quite a while to make our AOE feel complete. I love the added speed from greased lightning 4, and and currently hopeful that the issue with low skill speed on available gear will be fixed as the expansion goes on. Enlightenment, again, is something we've been asking for since Heavensward, and we finally got some of our more useless skills like One Ilm Punch and Purification removed.

My main issues now are that while Anatman and and Six Sided Star are good for helping with greased lightning, the loss of wind tackle really make the opener slower, and the increased cool down on perfect balance from 60 seconds to 120 means that we've punished a lot more severely if for any reason we do lose greased lighting (whereas before we could rely on that or on wind tackle to get things going again) and now with four stacks of greased lighting, the punishment feels that much more severe.

Problem feels like they keep slapping solutions on us for greased lightning when really the way that buff acts is the problem, so while other jobs get flashy new moves or can stack their strongest skills to use again or get skills that repeat their strongest moves (I'm thinking of samurai and black mage) we get more skills to maintain our job buff. The simplest solutions are to copy what works for other jobs. Dragoon just has to hit a button to refresh blood of the dragon and the buff lasts longer than greased lighting when added, and can immediately be extended to nearly twice our duration. Black mage last expansion has been able to keep up their buffs by simply hitting transpose every few seconds, yet we can't maintain our by using form shift. Fix the way greased lighting is gained and maintained, and the job becomes that much easier to build on.

This Anatman opener is absolutely unintended. The last time us Monks used an unintended rotation we got PB put on a 2 min CD, lost riddle of wind and got all our oGCDs taken away so we feel like snails.

What are they possibly going to do to us for using Anatman unintentionally? Have it share a CD with Perfect Balance? Oh God that's a possibility isn't it...

MNK main here. its at a 8/10 for efficiency and 5/10 for fun.

It is without a doubt a bit of a chore to play MNK now. That doesn't mean that is is not effective, its just as the others stated, theres a lot of QoL problems with it, basically SSDD. when you go through 50, 60, 70, 80. it really doesnt feel much has changed. now with aoe rotation, buffs and party tricks.

TK and SSS, feel like they are only there now for show, or for the odd moments where "i guess ill change it up lol at the end of the trial/dungeon". Wasnt the biggest fan of TK rotation but it did feel pretty cool to see TK actually being used. if anything TK should at least disengage and maybe freeze/refresh GL at a cost of 1 Stack . if they gonna make SSS a GCD have it do other things cause that slowdown is unbearably bad w/o other oGCDs. It could refresh or extend all the current buffs at the cost of the slowdown? i mean you got leaden fist, twin snakes, mantra, riddle of earth, Riddle of Fire and brotherhood. Thats 6 buffs, and its 6 sided star, right? Alternatively can just give us 600 pot cause SSS at 400 doesnt feel good it doesnt even sound good. That would need balancing yea but as is now, doesnt really have a use besides brownie points from impressionable people.

IR and RoF. Imo they missed an opportunity to just have internal release turn into riddle of fire, remove that slow down and reduce the flat dmg increase and give back crit rate. If they are hell bent on making everything rely on crit then can we get internal release back? i mean sure having the DNC and AST there to help your crit is okay, but does that make mnk only good when buffed?

Form Shift is alright... but yes can we get form shift to actually refresh gl? not add a stack, just bring the timer back to 16.

Brotherhood & Chakra: its wonky, some days its an overflow and some days its a drought. Can we get charges for the overflow, considering they want us to spam on that 1 sec cooldown? you know for a class about precision and position you'd think it'd be a bit more rewarding.... alternatively could tie it positions/combos and not crit.

Cooldown line up: why is pb 120 seconds and everything else is 60 - 90.

Riddle of Earth to Anatman: if you get hit it gives you GL, Anatman works as normal together with that.

So at the end of it MNK is the crossroads dps? its not like i wanted to get chakra or anything? i know you lost protect i hope this mantra will be enough? I hope it gets a revisit.