My god, Square *head in hands* - RE: monk

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Originally Posted by YojimboM

Anatman was only used for the opener. I have no idea what you mean about SSS, since SSS only has two uses: Final GCD before downtime of more than ~8 seconds exclusively if you are not on a Leaden GCD, and final GCD of the fight if you're not on Leaden again.

The Anatman change is completely non-sensical from any gameplay perspective, beyond SE heavy-handedly attempting to crack down on players using certain TPS for ticks and macros for DK. Their intended design of the skill is clearly only for downtime gauge management and since it's being "abused" (in their eyes) for an opener, then they need to break that up without hurting its intended purpose (give it a GCD like SSS). This reeks of "you play the game how we want you to".

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Prior to the patch, there were five ways to use SSS:
-You could use Anatman during the CD so that you were guaranteed a GL stack.
-For small disconnects from the boss over 3 secs long.
-As a combo GCD with TK for long disconnects from the boss or at the end of a specific GCD rotation during RoF (the TK Burst as I like to call it).
-As a stall tool to keep RoF in line with your rotation if there are 6 secs left on it's CD after you use DK/Boot
-As a way to slightly lower the personal dps loss when using LB3 compared to other melee (and other dps in general)

Obviously after the patch you can't use Anatman during SSS's CD, but there are still plenty of ways to use it. Same with Anatman even after this patch. Just takes a bit of experimenting is all.

Has anyone checked out the changes to PVP Monk? Whilst I would never expect the way the skills work in PVP to translate to PVE (A lot of skills give a stack of GL or open a chakra) it's pretty disheartening to see unique skills like Axe Kick and Somersault (rip) only available in PVP. I've been thinking about jumping ship to a different melee dps since we found out about the NIN rework and the changes to SAM. I don't want to leave Monk, it's the one melee job I feel most comfortable on in any situation, however I feel that once again SE just doesn't know what they're doing. I played about with this Anatman change last night and whilst I don't care all that much about getting a fast or slow GL tick from it, it feels pretty damn awful having to stand there waiting for my GCD to cycle after hitting the initial Snap to then press Anatman.

The change to mantra I understand - It's never something I've been asked to use so I just use it when I feel best but others have told me it's far too strong so fine, nerf it but at least they didn't just flat out take it away. This change to Anatman? No idea, no one asked for it, literally no one. I know people didn't like the Anatman opener but the stupid thing is that even with this change it's still better than doing the old PB opener and the one suggested in the guidebook. Why does SE continue to change (or not change) things about Monk with a total lack of disregard for the playerbase. We got one good change with Rockbreaker at least, which I'm fairly happy with.

Monk is only popular right now because of the sheer damage it does with a fairly easy rotation that mostly lines itself up and whilst I don't think this one change to Anatman is necessarily going to kill the job for people, the rework of NIN, the buff to SAM and the frankly unnecessary buff to DRG are probably going to cause people to leave it, putting it back at the bottom of the list of liked and played jobs.

Tornado Kick continues to be a contentious thorn in the side of Monk. It exists, it has uses but they're so few and far between. Why do we have 2 capstone abilities that are so situational? We already had buttons pruned with the launch of SHB and it feels like we're getting backed into a corner, with fewer usable buttons being available as time goes on. I don't think i'd really want a full rework of Monk but I do wish SE would listen to feedback from us. Make TK something that can be used at max stacks of GL without removing your GL. Or keep the GL removal and give us a quick way to rebuild our GL stacks.

Sorry to Rant but after feeling like we finally got some acknowledgement and QoL changes with 5.05, I feel like with 5.1 it's beginning to return to the norm of Monk getting pushed aside and being toyed with in ways people don't want.

After using it in most of the new content yesterday, I've got to say that the new Anatman basically just feels worse in every conceivable way. Going from Six Sided Star into Tornado Kick between the phases on Hades Extreme just felt awful because of the extra long tail on Six Sided Star. It hasn't stopped us from using it in the opener, it's basically just guaranteed that it always feels awful instead of something you can at least get lucky on if you aren't using something to time the server ticks or manually feeling them out with a HoT and theory crafters are potentially working on stuff that feels worse with slide cast openers.

Anatman was a mistake to add to the game and it needs to be replaced with something else, full stop. Even if they keep the animation the skill as it exists is dreadful and it needs change, presumably as part of a bigger reworking of its kit.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

After using it in most of the new content yesterday, I've got to say that the new Anatman basically just feels worse in every conceivable way. Going from Six Sided Star into Tornado Kick between the phases on Hades Extreme just felt awful because of the extra long tail on Six Sided Star. It hasn't stopped us from using it in the opener, it's basically just guaranteed that it always feels awful instead of something you can at least get lucky on if you aren't using something to time the server ticks or manually feeling them out with a HoT and theory crafters are potentially working on stuff that feels worse with slide cast openers.

Anatman was a mistake to add to the game and it needs to be replaced with something else, full stop. Even if they keep the animation the skill as it exists is dreadful and it needs change, presumably as part of a bigger reworking of its kit.

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See, I won't say it was a mistake to add into the game because it was designed as a way to recover GL stacks, and therefore make TK more usable, but we saw ways to optimize it. Then they gave Form Shift QoL and then it took away like half of what Anatman does (preserve GL stacks). And then we get to now... Just, it feels awful but it's still better than PB (In terms of DPS, not in terms of comfy).

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Originally Posted by ZyrinMisharuji

See, I won't say it was a mistake to add into the game because it was designed as a way to recover GL stacks, and therefore make TK more usable, but we saw ways to optimize it. Then they gave Form Shift QoL and then it took away like half of what Anatman does (preserve GL stacks). And then we get to now... Just, it feels awful but it's still better than PB (In terms of DPS, not in terms of comfy).

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On the contrary, I'd argue it wasn't implemented to make TK more useable because of all the other design decisions around Monk in Shadowbringers . The devs actively hamstrung Monks Greased Lightning recovery in Shadowbringers to stop us from using it by doubling PB's recast time and removing Tackle Stacks. I'd posit that stack upkeep during down phases was the goal, and presumably the GL building aspect of it was to let Monk still have some means of recovering its stacks after they kneecapped our ability to do so. Rotationally its no more possible than it was in Heavensward or early Stormblood because Anatman builds your stacks so slowly you're guaranteed to be missing GCDs.

Monk's game play has suffered from years of stagnation, with almost nothing but situational skills being added to their kit with each expansion. It is clear that Square Enix have become far too complacent with getting Monk's formula right in ARR. It is particularly baffling to see interviews repeatedly stating that they have listened to the feedback of Monk players, while actual changes to the job seem to say otherwise. In fact, you could actually argue that Monk is the only job in the game to have actively regressed in many ways, given that it is still a target of routine pruning of oGCDs and GCD DoTs. This is acceptable for other jobs because it makes way for additional changes and evolution to their game play in the form of new skills; however, this does not happen for Monk.

While I have not mained the job since Heavensward, it is depressing to see it reach this state after years of neglect. Why, for example, is it the case that when Samurai gains a niche skill in the form of Shoha, it gets reworked to be a core part of their rotation in a matter of mere months? Monk players have complained about the niche nature of Tornado Kick since 3.0 (which came out over 4 years ago), only to have their complaints fall on deaf ears. To date, Monk has received situational skills in the form of: Tornado Kick, Riddle of Earth, Anatman, Six-Sided Star and fist stances. Meditation and Form Shift are also exclusively used for downtime purposes, and while this is not a problem, it does exacerbate the overall issue. This makes up a significant portion of this job's kit, almost rivalling the amount of buttons that they actually use in their core ST rotation. Many of these skills should either be redesigned, or removed in favour of new, meaningful abilities.

While other jobs have been allowed to truly evolve over the game's lifespan, Monk has not. It is my hope that the change to Shoha for Samurai can one day inspire similar changes to Monk's rotation, with only Meditation and Form Shift remaining as situational skills for Monk. Monk should be allowed to be more than the same 6 GCDs we have been pressing since A Realm Reborn.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

After using it in most of the new content yesterday, I've got to say that the new Anatman basically just feels worse in every conceivable way. Going from Six Sided Star into Tornado Kick between the phases on Hades Extreme just felt awful because of the extra long tail on Six Sided Star. It hasn't stopped us from using it in the opener, it's basically just guaranteed that it always feels awful instead of something you can at least get lucky on if you aren't using something to time the server ticks or manually feeling them out with a HoT and theory crafters are potentially working on stuff that feels worse with slide cast openers.

Anatman was a mistake to add to the game and it needs to be replaced with something else, full stop. Even if they keep the animation the skill as it exists is dreadful and it needs change, presumably as part of a bigger reworking of its kit.

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Yeah, it's pretty bad. I'd imagine that SE wanted to stop people from using third party systems for Anatman timings, but not only did it make the class more clunky, it still didn't fix the problem as MNKs are more hard pressed to not clip Anatman in the Anatman opener, leading to more people using third party programs.

I honestly don't mind Anatman being on the GCD, but at least make it give a GL stack immediately or before the next GCD. Back to the drawing board, SE. :p

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

On the contrary, I'd argue it wasn't implemented to make TK more useable because of all the other design decisions around Monk in Shadowbringers . The devs actively hamstrung Monks Greased Lightning recovery in Shadowbringers to stop us from using it by doubling PB's recast time and removing Tackle Stacks. I'd posit that stack upkeep during down phases was the goal, and presumably the GL building aspect of it was to let Monk still have some means of recovering its stacks after they kneecapped our ability to do so. Rotationally its no more possible than it was in Heavensward or early Stormblood because Anatman builds your stacks so slowly you're guaranteed to be missing GCDs.

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I wouldn't say it was implemented specifically to make TK more usable, but it was implemented as a way to regenerate stacks during downtime and if you're doing as much DPS as you can, TK comes before that downtime, so it just made TK more usable in a way. Also the increase to PB's CD was more so them being terrified of us doing trying to do 2 TKs every minute like we were doing in Stormblood. But before the Form Shift change the only way to maintain GL stacks/build them during downtime was Anatman, so if the downtime was long enough you just TK > SSS > Anatman and then have GL4 when the boss reappears. If Anatman never built stacks we'd only use TK once in every fight no matter what, but they gave Anatman a dual use of freezing stacks + building them so TK could get a little more use than once a fight.

I won't argue that it's a poorly implemented skill, because it is (and made worse by the QoL changes in 5.05), but the thought for them to give us a skill to regen stacks during downtime was a good thought, but Anatman was not the way to do it.

I mained monk since the beginning of ARR and its until now that I had given up and switch to a different job. It sucks seeing your favorite class just go down to being frustrating. I think the best version of monk that I enjoyed so much as near the end of Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Navatar

I mained monk since the beginning of ARR and its until now that I had given up and switch to a different job. It sucks seeing your favorite class just go down to being frustrating. I think the best version of monk that I enjoyed so much as near the end of Stormblood.

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I think most MNKs preferred TK rotation era because it made use of pretty much all of our skills. We weren't only sitting in 1 stance, never using TK, etc, etc. We were involved with our entire kit which felt amazing and rewarding, but SE doesn't want MNK to play in such a way I guess. They want us to click our 6 main buttons, only ever use 1 stance, and be happy with just that.