Monk Needs a Complete Rework

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OrderZero

I hope a dev looks at this post.

---

Let me go ahead and summarise the last 6 years of community Monk feedback for you.


https://66.media.tumblr.com/7545aeb3...wio8o1_500.gif

Let's face it the devs don't care about monk, because they look at damage charts and think oh he is good let's just ignore it and over buff summoner. Yes that sounds great! When we are the only job that has a server tic skill, the only job that has the most useless skill in the game which is tornado kick and six sided start should hit way harder. Dragoon is fun and has a very good fun rotation while buffing others and doing more dps then monk, ninja is also cooler then monk with a wide gap of skills that buffs the whole party and that does almost the same dps as monk and finally we have sam who has a shield, a gap closer and a skill to disengage alongside a nice rotation. We DESPERATELY need some love but you know something, I bet we are gonna get 0 nothing and for me a monk main its fucking depressing how the devs ignore our feedback.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noctisnine

the only job that has the most useless skill in the game which is tornado kick

---

Do you remember when we got the big speech pre Stormblood about culling useless skills then they left in One Ilm Punch.

That's the metric of how much they look at Monk.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

Do you remember when we got the big speech pre Stormblood about culling useless skills then they left in One Ilm Punch.

---

You know what else prunes situational utility you find useless without demanding that no one else have access to it?

Taking it off your bar.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You know what else prunes situational utility you find useless without demanding that no one else have access to it?

Taking it off your bar.

---

That snark doesn't hold water for a ton of reasons.

As Tigerlilley said, the stated design goal of Stormblood was to cull useless actions. As far as gameplay changes went, it was the single biggest talking point they had during the Fan Fests leading up to Stormblood. And the devs knew that One Ilm Punch was a terrible skill because there were multiple NPCs in the game with dialogue lines lampshading how bad of a skill was, indeed one of them was even in the Monk Questlines themselves.

It's not even worth giving them credit for changing the effect of it to a stun, because you could only use it a third of the time due to it being locked to Raptor Form, on the GCD at a massive TP and sizeable damage loss compared to just using Leg Sweep.

Let's not give the devs any credit with regard to Monk where they don't deserve it, and indeed, where they actively failed. The action rework they hyped up so much for Stormblood was an abysmal failure for Monk, they took as many or more skills from us that we use than those we didn't use and we got bupkiss back.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

As Tigerlilley said, the stated design goal of Stormblood was to cull useless actions.

---

There's a difference between actions that aren't satisfying to use but are nonetheless obligatory and therefore cannot be taken off bars, such as Diversion and Invigorate, and ones that can be safely ignored except where they see use. We don't have a skill or total action allotment.

Jobs vary significantly in terms of total actions available to them; removing a skill does not guarantee another, nor, clearly, anything more useful or satisfying.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Let's not give the devs any credit with regard to Monk where they don't deserve it, and indeed, where they actively failed.

---

Let's not conflate being a bit peeved over the gradual removal of any and all utility that doesn't equal directly to rDPS as giving the devs credit in regards to anything, let alone Monk?

I wonder if the Japanese players are also very unhappy with monk just as we are, it would be nice to get noticed by SE. I guess I will be changing into a dragoon or a samurai >.<

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

There's a difference between actions that aren't satisfying to use but are nonetheless obligatory and therefore cannot be taken off bars, such as Diversion and Invigorate, and ones that can be safely ignored except where they see use. We don't have a skill or total action allotment.

Jobs vary significantly in terms of total actions available to them; removing a skill does not guarantee another, nor, clearly, anything more useful or satisfying.


Let's not conflate being a bit peeved over the gradual removal of any and all utility that doesn't equal directly to rDPS as giving the devs credit in regards to anything, let alone Monk?

---

And there's a difference between skills like those and skills that don't see use at all because their design rendered it non-functional in all situations.

If you're peeved about the removal of One Ilm Punch I don't know what to tell you dude. There have been Niche actions in the game on all jobs that may as well have been useless, but One Ilm Punch wasn't utility. It was a button that did nothing but punish you for hitting it without actually giving you any effect because it was so bad. Its the only truly useless skill the game has ever seen and you're trying to argue that it's loss is a problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noctisnine

I wonder if the Japanese players are also very unhappy with monk just as we are, it would be nice to get noticed by SE. I guess I will be changing into a dragoon or a samurai >.<

---

While I can't read Japanese, through the power of google translate I can say that it at least seems like the JP playerbase have definitely been pretty vocal in their dissatisfaction with Shadowbringers Monk.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

And there's a difference between skills like those and skills that don't see use at all because their design rendered it non-functional in all situations.

If you're peeved about the removal of One Ilm Punch I don't know what to tell you dude. There have been Niche actions in the game on all jobs that may as well have been useless, but One Ilm Punch wasn't utility. It was a button that did nothing but punish you for hitting it without actually giving you any effect because it was so bad.

---

Fun strawman. Fun hyperbole.

I said that I'd prefer that situational skills (Defensives beyond merely Second Wind for DPS, Bloodbath for Tanks, etc., etc.) not be killed on sight over a mistaken belief that they will be replaced with something better. When something replaces them at all, they tend to be more obligatory actions, sure, but rarely any more satisfying, often trading non-obligatory "bloat" for obligatory "bloat".

OIP traded 50 potency for a stun. That is quite literally an effect. It's mostly crap, but it is an effect, whereby if that stun let, say, your SAM manage a single extra positional and you save a fifth of a GCD of uptime by not having to run out and back, it was already an rDPS gain. That's far from as useful as it could or should have been, but unless the existence of every single weaponskill besides the most optimal in a given GCD is likewise "punishing you" just for being a choice that you didn't take off your hotbar, it's just a niche skill, not a poison.

I never argued its loss was a problem. I argued that removing things the use of which wasn't obligatory in the first place, usually to be replaced by something obligatory but no more satisfying -- or by nothing at all, is at best a lateral move.

Something unenjoyable that you don't have to deal with (e.g. OIP) is generally going to be a fair sight better than something unenjoyable that you are obliged to deal with (e.g. Anatman openers). Insisting that every skill that sees situational use be removed without any idea of what to replace it with does us no favors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

OIP traded 50 potency for a stun. That is quite literally an effect. It's mostly crap, but it is an effect, whereby if that stun let, say, your SAM manage a single extra positional and you save a fifth of a GCD of uptime by not having to run out and back, it was already an rDPS gain. That's far from as useful as it could or should have been, but unless the existence of every single weaponskill besides the most optimal in a given GCD is likewise "punishing you" just for being a choice that you didn't take off your hotbar, it's just a niche skill, not a poison.

---

If you are looking into optimising fights that much, ignoring the communication hurdle, the boss will be immune to stuns anyway, making it complete non issue. For dungeon runs, it really doesn't matter as again, bosses are mostly immune to stun and trash goes down to mass AoE, again, not useful (if you want to inturrupt AoEs you use Leg Sweep and keep the massive damage gain of Four-point Fury over One Ilm Punch).

Even on the case where you want to stun something for an extended period of time, eg. Dread Knights in Twintania (assuming synced), you are better off with leg sweep from both monk and the OT, that's 6 seconds of stun time, which is more than enough time to kill it.

It is literally a useless skill, even the function it was meant to serve is non existent as nothing will be immune to stun in the time it takes for the stun resist to wear off, unless people are using it haphazardly, in which case, it's the players causing the problem, not the content. As a slight, but relevant tangent, I don't have Shield Bash on my PLD bars. There are no situations where I would want to stun anything that quickly and Leg Sweep has always been available for when I do need it. Chain stuns just are not needed at all and again, things lose their stun resist before you need to use it again for the 4th time, so being able to stun through the resist was a completely useless feature that Monk had.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

snip.

---

To add on to this; if one ilm punched was needed for certain content where a chain stun or stun resisted enemy existed and forced One Ilm Punch into being needed then it would force a MNK spot for that fight. Which is poor design. I've noticed that Shurrikhan likes to play devil's advocate a lot on these forums even when there's really no grounds to stand on like this One Ilm Punch arguement for example. The skill was bad, it was always bad. The only time it wasn't bad was in PvP because it could remove aetherflow from SMN and SCH and shut them down then it got nerf. Then it was reworked during the pruning era, which is ironic into something still completely useless in 99.99% of encounters, even in the 00.01% of encounters where it 'could' be useful, it still felt bad to use as you either drop twin or lose a true strike. The better option would always be to use leg sweep. There really isn't an arguement to be had here. OIP is and has always been useless in PvE content because it filled a niche role which cannot be made viable as it would then become mandatory, and even then it would still feel like crap to use for the reasons I mentioned.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Fun strawman. Fun hyperbole.

---

It may be hyperbolic but it's not a Strawman, you're just trying to shift goalposts from your original position which was:

Quote:

---

You know what else prunes situational utility you find useless without demanding that no one else have access to it?

Taking it off your bar.

---

With regard to One Ilm Punch and it not being removed in Stormblood. Your argument was not that we should keep situational skills in favor of things that might or might not be an improvement, you actually just argued that One Ilm Punch was Situational Utility and should have remained in the game when it never was that.

My point was that One Ilm Punch could never be considered situational utility, it was always useless. As a Dispel there were no worthwhile enemies to use it on that also had effects that the Dispel would remove, presumably because if it did Monk would be essential in every party. So yes, keeping it was an absolute failure on the devs part when their philosophies for job design were removing and reassessing useless actions and giving every job a Gauge UI element. They failed in removing it, and they failed in reassessing and reworking it because it's new effect was equally worthless compared to its Heavensward effect. As a stun you couldn't reliably use it because it was both on the GCD and locked to Raptor form, and the undiminishing effect never came into play presumably because it would also make Monk essential for any party doing that content.

Today I learned that One Ilm Punch supposedly had situational utility and we should have kept it.

JUST LIKE TORNADO KICK AND ANATMAN, RIGHT.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

...

---

Stoneskin and Damage stacks in Wanderer's Palace; King's Might, Lightning Shield, Stoneskin in Amdapor Keep; certain bot buffs in T2; Stoneskin in T4; snake damage stacks in T5... As with any and all CC, OiP had plenty of things it could have been used on when launched, and yet only the T4 Stoneskin skip would have in any way made Monk obligatory; the rest were merely compensation for Monk's long wind-up (albeit far less punishing back then, as it started at only a 5% damage bonus per stack, not its later 7% or 10%) alongside its host of other situationals.

But, also like CC, it left two options: (1) continue to make things the mechanic could interact with and then not make enemies arbitrarily immune to it, (2) render the utility defunct and then remove it by not bothering with any of those mechanics or going out of the way to kill the ability.

Since HW launched, or arguably even since AK was nerfed (since it removed the ability to apply no-direct-potency DoTs to incapacitated targets without breaking the incapacitation, removed the accidental safety period in which incapacitation couldn't be broken, and nerfed CC across the board), the game has only gone in the second direction.

OiP was killed. --> CC was killed. --> All but two defensives on each non-tank job were killed. --> Tanking having to actually face enemy targets to block, parry, and auto-attack? Better remove that dross. --> Wait, there's still more than one defensive on non-tanks? Trim it! --> So on and so forth.

And why? Because something was specifically reduced to being situational enough to be called "useless", and rather than fixing the problem behind that uselessness (surrounding designs either inadvertently or specifically rendering it unusable), players insisted that we just amputate it entirely.

The question then becomes... what's next?

Stances are presently useless, so let's remove them rather than fixing them. GL's basically a non-mechanic, so let's remove it rather than making it interesting. We don't need so many DoTs, right, so let's trim Monk's ability to manage its GL timing through stanceless skills them. Positionals are basically irrelevant, so let's remove them while purposely ignoring how they were rendered far less manipulable by the last three things we removed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

It may be hyperbolic but it's not a Strawman, you're just trying to shift goalposts from your original position which was:

---

If I call it X and thereby argue Y on the first post, call it X and thereby argue Y in the second, and call it X and thereby argue Y in the third post, how am I shifting the goal here?

Yes, I've called OiP a situational utility. Because it was. It was undertuned and all forms of generally shat upon through the consequences of poor design decisions elsewhere, but it was a situational utility.

Anything situational has varying relative cost and benefit. Anything with benefit and zero cost that you nonetheless don't bother to use -- such as Mantra, Diversion, Shadewalker, and the like -- are not situational. They're non-essential, to a varying degree, but there is no real excuse for not using them. Not using them is not a matter of "the payoff wasn't enough to make it optimal", it's just you being lazy. The closest we've seen to OiP in terms of situational use have been Merciful Eyes or Purification when they provided massive enmity drops, to use or avoid based on how much tank rDPS could be gained for not having to keep up with you, or caster Raise or Manashift, although all but Purification more often came near to obligatory due to their low relative costs, while Purification was undertuned for any Monk in an already more or less ideal comp (as they would already have access to Tactician).

Now, is OiP the "hill I want to die on"? Not remotely. Its removal is just another symptom of people requesting ambutation over correction even when the thing they wish to remove has zero obligatory or negative impact on them (i.e. unlike Fire II in leveling roulettes, you could just remove it from your hotbar and never look back). It should be clear by now which I'm more peeved about.

So, for the last time, since you've so far accused me of giving undue praise to the devs in reply to quotes where I have only shown criticism and mourning the loss of OiP in particular where I've only used it as an example of, just as I've voiced several times prior in this thread, actually fixing things instead of just scrapping them and throwing in new BS in a haphazard hope to fill the void:

I do not care about OiP in particular. I care about not ignoring growing design issues that render unusable skills that should be useful. I care about fixing, rather than nonchalantly removing, core job components that still have significant potential, wherever possible.

The only "situational utility" OiP had was occasionally letting me see a pretty neat animation.

Basically nobody asked to lose the buttons we lost between Stormblood and Shadowbringers. Maybe the mythical "on the fence maybe I'll try monk some time" player that doesn't actually exist but somehow is always around to say Monk has always been too hard to play, maybe they asked for it. Maybe THAT is why the job has been consistently underplayed even when it's been at it's best, maybe that's why SE has consistently failed to make Tornado Kick worth the space in our character sheet, maybe that's why stances are essentially worthless.

The job has been dealing with mechanical issues surrounding the same set of buttons for years. SE clearly doesn't know what the heck it's doing with Monk, beyond keeping some buttons in there because of sheer intertia at this point, and overcompensating for other issues to the severe detriment to the rest of our kit. I would rather they rebuild the job from scratch or just delete it from the game at this point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Malmstrom

Today I learned that One Ilm Punch supposedly had situational utility and we should have kept it.

JUST LIKE TORNADO KICK AND ANATMAN, RIGHT.

---

God. When Anatman was first theorized about by the Monk community as being the potential crapstorm it turned out to 100% be, I was thinking, surely not. Let's trust this one time maybe that SE have not done that thing we all worried about.

I swear, who ever developed Monk in the first place left the building and -never- came back.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

I swear, who ever developed Monk in the first place left the building and -never- came back.

---

If such is the case, many here seem not to have even seen their work before their departure.

Not sure if this needs its own thread or not, but I'll just post it here to begin with.

Has the idea of getting rid of the timer tied with GL stacks ever been considered? Several jobs have resources that don’t expire: MCH’s Heat and Battery; SAM’s Kenki, Sen, and Meditation Stacks; Ninja’s Ninki and Mudra; DRK’s Blackblood and proc from breaking TBN; GNB’s Cartridges; WAR’s Beast Gauge; etc. Admittedly, the latter mentions are tanks, but I have a point that I’ll get to shortly.

In the case of SAM, I think it’d be hard to argue that buff expiration is an issue for them, seeing how once you apply Jinpu and Shifu in an engagement, they will likely be refreshed without any worry (that’s a little subjective, but what’s *ob*jective about it is that both of those buffs are 40 seconds… more than double the duration of GL). Best case scenario you can get both of these buffs up in 2 GCDs (via an inefficient use of Meikyo); worst case, you have to go through 6.

If you Form Shift (we’ll come back to this in a second) to Coeurl form before an engagement, best case scenario: you use PB and can hit GL4 in 4 GCDs; in the absolute worst case… (and this is considering you didn’t pre Form Shift or use PB) 12 GCDs to GL4. Also, reverting PB’s CD back to 120s was a mistake (at the very least make it 90 to line up with RoF and BH).

On the topic of Form Shift, it’s only useful now because of how incoherent MNK’s design is. If we got rid of the timer on GL, there’d be no need to constantly be stomping to refresh the timer; yes, we’d lose the ability to enter Coeurl form pre-pull, but I think replacing Form Shift with some other weapon skill or oGCD would be worth the trade. Form Shift is also only ever useful during downtime or pre-pull. You wouldn’t ever use FS when you could instead use a damaging weapon skill. So many other jobs (like the ones mentioned above) have skills to instantly generate resource at the press of a button with the only caveat that they be in combat (this is where I wanted to reference the tanks, esp GNB and WAR with Bloodfest and Infuriate respectively). Instead MNKs have a way to expend our most precious resource. Tornado Kick is an awesome skill and I love how often I get to use it! (:

Out of the classes I’ve played, I think DRG shares the most pain points with MNK in that they have no way to rapidly get into Life of the Dragon and are strictly gated by the cool down of High Jump. I don’t know how SE handles how they approach each job’s design, but you would think that for DoW/M jobs, they’d keep the combat experience first and foremost in their minds. Maybe they’re balancing around Dungeon/raid content, in which case keeping up buffs is a little easier because you’re in combat; but for overworld stuff, it’s almost painful to attempt anything as MNK or DRG.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 3ureka

-Snip characters-

---

The problem with that is that all of the jobs you mention, who have longer duration buffs that basically don't fall off due to their duration, have other systems in place that give them engaging gameplay rather than just upkeeping a buff or two. The Sen/Iaijutsu and Kenki on Samurai are the primary parts that inform Samurai's gameplay, while Shifu and Jinpu contribute toward the Sens in particular (and also provide speed and round out the flow of its skills). Ninja is the same way, it has Huton as a buff to maintain, but its actual gameplay is informed by it's Mudras, Ninki, and the rest of its oGCDs.

Dragoon is a decent comparison to Monk in terms of gameplay but I don't think they share a lot of pains, rather I'd say that Dragoon is an example of how a buff similar to Greased Lightning was built upon in an intelligent and satisfying manner. It's Blood of the Dragon, not Life of the Dragon that's the equivalent to Greased Lightning, while Life of the Dragon is something that Monk lacks that it could sorely use. Both Blood of the Dragon and Greased Lightning are similar in that they're buffs you are incentivized to keep up at all times to do decent damage, Monk through buffing all actions, Dragoon through extended Combos and buffed Jumps. Life of the Dragon however is a reward for proper upkeep of that buff (it's most direct equivalent is actually Foul/Xenoglossy to that end), but that's something Monk just doesn't have at all. So while it is a slower build, it's a slower build for a good reason and it neatly punctuates it's buff and ties into the jobs identity (Spear Knights that Jump on things).

Monk has neither of these things. Other than Greased Lightning, it has forms which only allows its combos to flow differently which after you learn it isn't much more engaging than the standard combo progression of others jobs. It doesn't have an adjacent system you have to work Greased Lightning around in the way that Ninja and Samurai have on top of their own buffs. Nor does it have some reward for upkeeping its buff, in Monks case the buff is the end rather than a means to a greater end like Enochian and BoTD have evolved into. And on top of that they've trimmed so much out of the job from expansion to expansion with the vast majority of additions being either Greased Lightning upkeep (that was bad and we no longer need now that we have a skill that just works) or worse replacements to what we lost, that there's nothing satisfying to us at the moment.

A while ago there was a suggestion I saw to the effect of giving Monk something similar to Sabin's Blitz's from FFVI which would be cool, but probably wouldn't happen outside of an expansion dropping so it's unlikely to happen any time soon when there's need for change right now. At the moment however the job is pretty much primed for the latter, when have Six Sided Star and Tornado Kick both of which are woefully underutilized in our kit (seeing 1 use total in a fight pretty frequently, which is the exact reason they changed Shoha on Samurai). It doesn't solve the problem of Anatman existing when it literally never should have to begin with, or the Fist stances never having the problem they've had since 2.0 fixed while they continue to soak up trait slots making them utterly worthless at the same time, but like the 5.05 changes it would be a step towards something better.

But without Greased Lightning, Monk loses it's identity in this game. That is what defines Monk for better or worse, and I think without it Monk would be even more boring than it is now.

Live letter soon maybe they will talk about monk even if briefly, fingers crossed <3

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noctisnine

Live letter soon maybe they will talk about monk even if briefly, fingers crossed <3

---

Don't get your hopes up. This is monk we're talking about. They can talk themselves blue in the face but unless we see actual changes they'll just be empty words like every other time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noctisnine

Live letter soon maybe they will talk about monk even if briefly, fingers crossed <3

---

For instance...

Quote:

---

Many of you complained of difficulty with Monk's Dragon Fist -> Leaden Fist mechanic during Perfect Balance, so we've made it so Perfect Balance can only be used when at fewer than 3 stacks. To ensure this doesn't lead to another oppressive "TK meta", we've also reduced the power of Tornado Kick by a further 30 potency.

We also found there there were still some rare instances where SSS might be needed in combat outside of merely extending or refreshing Greased Lightning, so its potency has likewise been reduced by 20 potency to reduce skill-gap and improve quality of life during play.

---

(The above is a joke. Please, no one ask for a link to source.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noctisnine

Live letter soon maybe they will talk about monk even if briefly, fingers crossed <3

---

https://i.imgur.com/EbRxP2I.png

Edit: Wow we got PVP changes great LL, exactly as expected.

And as expected nothing on MNK. *Sigh* maybe in 5.3 boys...

I can’t be disappointed if I had no expectations anyway.

At this point the devs ignoring the job is just what they do, why think they’d ever do differently?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

I can’t be disappointed if I had no expectations anyway.

At this point the devs ignoring the job is just what they do, why think they’d ever do differently?

---

True. Played the job for 6 years, can confirm MNK is the forgotten stepchild when it comes to getting acknowledged by the devs.

Well, glad I switched to maining RDM last patch and didn't expect much from this patch for MNK fixes. Still feels bad after maining MNK from 2.0 to 5.0, though.

Well...time to move to sam or dragoon, sad day for monk as usual.

When I bother to log in this week, I'll just take the monk button off my bars and call it good. It's been real, punch wizard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

The problem with that is…

---

Ahh. In that case, Monks should be further rewarded to keep up their GL stacks outside of the bonuses from each stack, right? Or to borrow your words, they need a system of engagement in place? Maybe to take a page out of SAM’s book, we could grant buffs similar to Leaden Fist from executing other weapon skills. To really lean into the forms, they could have a “continuation” of Leaden Fist so that if you land it with the correct positional, you get increased potency (or some other effect) for doing the next positional correctly and so on; e.g. upon a successful Leaden Fist, you get Leaden Kick which would buff your next Raptor weapon skill like extend the duration of Twin Snakes (in prep for a PB usage) or a potency boost to True Strike (incentive to hit Twin > True > True within RoF & BH).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Dragoon is a decent comparison to Monk in terms of gameplay but I don't think they share a lot of pains...

---

Yeah, you’re right about both GL being more analogous to Blood of the Dragon and how it’s more of an end than a means. While the proposal above doesn’t necessarily eliminate how GL is more of a means, I think locking certain skills behind max stacks of GL might help alleviate that issue. On the topic of BLM’s Enochian(?), someone on The Balance proposed giving a free cast of TK if you can keep max stacks of GL for 30 seconds (or so). I think that’s a great idea and seems like an easy solution to just tack on to the current iteration of TK.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Monk has neither of these things…

---

Ahh. Had to look up the Sabin reference. While I think that’d be really cool (was a big fan of pad games, so combo inputs is right up my alley), I fear that the implementation would be too a bit difficult; one way I could see it working is if they attached a “combo input” to a weapon skill based on the positional (would definitely throw off all the muscle memory, though). SSS is certainly underwhelming, although I’ve lately been a little more appreciative of its niche use cases; still, the infrequency of use is painful, and I’d rather see it be incorporated into our regular rotation (same can be said about Anatman). As for TK… it was a mistake haha. Unless they can give us a free cast of it somehow, I don’t see how we’ll ever use this skill outside of a long disconnect or kill.

I think this may have been lightly touched on or buried earlier in the thread, but what if they turned each Fist stance into an amalgamation of Lance Charge and Kaiten? That is, each becomes an oGCD that buffs the next weapon skill with a different effect; e.g. FoF makes the next weapon skill hit 10% harder, FoW grants 1 (or 2?) stack of chakra, FoE grants ??? This plus make GL4 a trait. I’m not particularly attached to the Fist Stances, but I imagine reusing assets to focus on a more cohesive kit seems like a better use of the developers’ time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

I can’t be disappointed if I had no expectations anyway.

At this point the devs ignoring the job is just what they do, why think they’d ever do differently?

---

" The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised."

Guess we're waiting till 6.0 for absolutely nothing to change again.

What if they changed Monk to something akin to SAM mixed with Zell's Limit System from FF8.

Remove GL or make it a always on trait. If removed make all MNK's GCDs 1 or 1.5s unaffected by skillspeed.
Remove Fist of Fire, Earth, and Wind.
Change Meditation completely to be like that of Iaijutsu but instead of making sens you perform combos with your GCDs to do heavy hitting moves. For Example one combo could be Bootshine > Bootshine > True Strike = Dolphin Blow. Kind of more like the Mudra system I guess but have it so that one Heavy Hitting move would empower the other or, make it so that one heavy hitting move starts the combo of another move similar to Legaia 2. For Example if Bootshine > Bootshine > True Strike = Dolphin Blow and Bootshine > True Strike > Snap Punch = Meteo Rain then you could do Bootshine > Bootshine > True Strike > Dolphin Bow > True Strike > Snap Punch > Meteo Rain.

Seems like you'd need some variable internal CDs on the weaponskills to prevent spamming whatever does the most potency.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

Seems like you'd need some variable internal CDs on the weaponskills to prevent spamming whatever does the most potency.

---

I think the goal would be to make longer combos shorter. Like the hardest hitting combo would take 6 regular GCDs to activate it but if you do a couple of combos before hand it could only take 3 or 2 GCDs to pull off, making you do more damage over the whole combo. Maybe. But it's just an idea lol.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burningskull

I think the goal would be to make longer combos shorter. Like the hardest hitting combo would take 6 regular GCDs to activate it but if you do a couple of combos before hand it could only take 3 or 2 GCDs to pull off, making you do more damage over the whole combo. Maybe. But it's just an idea lol.

---

Legend of Legaia used a similar battle system for its game, where directional inputs lead to special attacks, and the special attack itself counted as an input for another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJfQl0Qr3hg

High Low High = Somersault. The Somersault triggers on the last 'High' and that still counted as input for another skill.

High Low High Low Low= High Kick, Low Kick, Somersault, Low Kick, Some other skill I forgot the name of (IIRC, the special attacks had to be different to chain this way)

Legend of Legaia utilized a system similar to old fashioned TP where it's built and spent, where as 2.0+ TP functioned more like standard MMO "Energy" systems, as well as maximum number of inputs per turn.

Current FF14 has no TP system and no 'maximum input', other than building a limitation into Monk itself.

Building it into the Chakra system would serve as a suitable limiter. Basic weaponskills build Chakra + inputs for the special ability, special ability spends chakra. Weaponskills falling into a category with a gauge representing your last 3 inputs / skill type.

https://i.imgur.com/5Uwdilc.png

So every special attack could have a 3 input string, while varying chakra costs.

So you have things like Dots, Buffs, Debuffs being lower cost chakra with big finishers being higher chakra costs. The goal is to minimize your Input strings to get the right special finisher with the appropriate chakra to use it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

Legend of Legaia used a similar battle system for its game, where directional inputs lead to special attacks, and the special attack itself counted as an input for another. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJfQl0Qr3hg

High Low High = Somersault. The Somersault triggers on the last 'High' and that still counted as input for another skill.

High Low High Low Low= High Kick, Low Kick, Somersault, Low Kick, Some other skill I forgot the name of (IIRC, the special attacks had to be different to chain this way)

Legend of Legaia utilized a system similar to old fashioned TP where it's built and spent, where as 2.0+ TP functioned more like standard MMO "Energy" systems, as well as maximum number of inputs per turn.

Current FF14 has no TP system and no 'maximum input', other than building a limitation into Monk itself.

Building it into the Chakra system would serve as a suitable limiter. Basic weaponskills build Chakra + inputs for the special ability, special ability spends chakra. Weaponskills falling into a category with a gauge representing your last 3 inputs / skill type.

https://i.imgur.com/5Uwdilc.png

So every special attack could have a 3 input string, while varying chakra costs.

So you have things like Dots, Buffs, Debuffs being lower cost chakra with big finishers being higher chakra costs. The goal is to minimize your Input strings to get the right special finisher with the appropriate chakra to use it.

---

I think this is similar to the Blitz concepts that I mentioned on the last page and someone proposed on the forum a while ago and in general I like it. I'd probably make it so you spend a certain amount of Chakra to enter the Blitz/Input Phase and then whatever action you trigger from that input is on a seperate cooldown (IE, Enter Blitz mode, input string, use Six Sided Star, it goes on cooldown for 90 seconds). There'd be one or two skills on a cooldown for both Single Target and AOE use (Six Sided Star/Suplex for single Target, Chi-Blast and Rising Phoenix) and then one that could get used for filler if you happen to cap on gauge without either of them.

Also, if we're bringing up Legaia. It had a "spirit" command that would allow you for the next "turn" to do a "longer" string. This is also similar to a game SE made around the same time called Xenogears. And the combo system was also on the same "combo strings" like Legaia.


https://youtu.be/brg5ca01fbU?t=63


Xenogears also had that you could "store" unused combo points to unleash a devastating string later.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

I think this is similar to the Blitz concepts that I mentioned on the last page and someone proposed on the forum a while ago and in general I like it. I'd probably make it so you spend a certain amount of Chakra to enter the Blitz/Input Phase and then whatever action you trigger from that input is on a seperate cooldown (IE, Enter Blitz mode, input string, use Six Sided Star, it goes on cooldown for 90 seconds). There'd be one or two skills on a cooldown for both Single Target and AOE use (Six Sided Star/Suplex for single Target, Chi-Blast and Rising Phoenix) and then one that could get used for filler if you happen to cap on gauge without either of them.

---

Hrm. That seems like it'd be similar to Dance and Ninjutsu.

So it'd look like

[Ability - "Blitz"] Consumes Chakra.
Weaponskills morph into their Input equivalents.

[Weaponskill] Input 1
[Weaponskill] Input 2
[Weaponskill] Input 3

[Special Move - GCD or OGCD?]

Thinking further on what was said above, if 'Blitz' has an upfront Chakra cost to enter the toggle, then each weaponskill consumes Chakra, that allows the Special Attacks to be OGCDs.

In my mind, that means Monks would have two different phases when planning Chakra expenditure - Set ups and potency dumps. We can also have a central theme as the Monk levels now. Chakra expands from 5, to 7, to 14 (based on the story quests surrounding Chakra).

Blitz (Spend x) -> Input x 3 (consume 3) -> OGCD Special Ability (First 2 inputs gone, last input stays) -> repeat until 0 chakra. Prioritize any buffing abilities in short chakra bursts, then prioritize as many chakra dumps as possible during burst windows.

Obviously we'd have to change Chakra generation a bit but I've got nothing in mind for that at the moment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kabooa

Hrm. That seems like it'd be similar to Dance and Ninjutsu.

---

Kind of but I was thinking of it more as a hybrid of Sen and Dance/Ninjutsu, so you'd execute Blitz and enter what amounts to the Perfect Balance state, and you'd still be executing the weaponskills would which would give a Raptor/Opo Opo/Coeurl Sigil on a hypothetical gauge (for simplicity and to allow buff/Demolish upkeep during the Blitz Phase), and then you'd follow it up with a Special Move with it's own internal cooldown. I'd honestly prefer it to be a GCD because I think that has a degree of impact on its own, and being on the GCD would theoretically allow it to have a higher potency for greater impact, but it being an oGCD would be fine as well as long as the pay off is satisfying.

Conceptually the idea ss a combination of something that Monk already does (actual free form combos) and Fighting Game super moves which due to the limitations of how MMOs are built makes it similar to NIN/DNC's gimmicks because they already do the button input. In a fighting game you build meter to execute a super move then perform a button input to perform it, here you'd build chakra and input a short GCD string to do the same.

You guys must have forgotten about the devs and how they've been handling monk the past 3 expansions if you think they're going to change anything at this point then you're delusional , just to make a small list of the issues this job suffers from :
-the two layers of rng surrounding chakra procs
-the additional layer of rng that's added to that same chakra system by brotherhood making monk burst windows have three layers of rng
-the issues with chakra overcapping and not having any way to buffer chakra like every other job and their gauge mechanics
-the stances being downright useless as you'll stick to wind 99% of the time
-the level 72 trait existing solely to buff one of the said useless stances
-the overly niche abilities such as tornado kick seeing very little use
-Anatman being on the server tick
-Anatman being a gcd
-Anatman competing with meditation for short downtimes like maelstrom in e3s
-Six sided star despite being very useful for short disconnects competes with meditation as they're both on the gcd and cannot be used together
-Six sided star being an underwhelming capstone ability
-Perfect balance leaving monks stanceless after use
-Brotherhood only applying to physical jobs meaning that monks need to avoid double caster comps.
-The gutting of ogcds leaving monk rotation very hollow outside of the 90s and 120s windows with riddle of fire/perfect balance
-The lack of tools for manipulating monk gcd
-The lack of job identity, monk is supposed to be about speed and positionals yet in practice monks can ignore most of their positionals by using riddle of earth and true north and as for speed monk is barely faster than ninja/samurai and is also discouraged from building towards skill speed
-The Unrewarding execution and optimization as the excessive RNG makes a much bigger difference than any other factor when it comes to monk damage
-the excessive focus on giving monk tools for maintaining stacks (tools that do not work during situations like cutscenes or forced stuns) and the lack of tools for building stacks from a cold start
-the lack of reward for correct execution of the rotation as there are no non rng systems to build towards

The entire job is a mess and I hope the dev in charge of it is ashamed of their work because I would be in their spot.