Monk's Skill Set in 4.0

Monk is not necessarily a highly popular class when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV; it does have a very large, passionate player-base that appeals to its niche style of combat comprised of ramped up damage over time and speed at the cost of lowered base potencies. With this being stated, a large portion (and I dare say majority) of that following are not happy with the "evolution" of Monk's kit. A grand portion of the complaints with Monk can be observed in my previous thread at the beginning of Stormblood, which is still largely relevant due to the state of Monk staying stagnant (of which you can read the admittedly unintended essay here, or as the first comment suggests, not to read: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nk#post4212498 )

First and foremost, what I am attempting to make the main theme of this post is something that most of the onlookers commonly speculate from the outcry of the Monk community is: losing our first place DPS spot, or complaining about Monk DPS in general. This is simply not the case. Monk still has incredible damage when compared to all other Melee DPS, being slightly less or on par with Samurai, the current Melee DPS champion. The intended purpose of this post is to state that Monk does not have an inherit DPS problem, but a problem within the conflict of the kit itself. I cannot speak for other Monks, but I would surely welcome a DPS loss if it meant changes to how certain Weaponskills and Abilities affected Monk.

Putting aside abilities that are rendered "useless" in general by the Monk community or the community in general, let us speculate what conflict could be in Monk's kit without dissecting each little piece (as I am sure some will do or correct me for in the comments). Monk's gimmick is to build Greased Lightning and maintain it as it is our only way of dealing desirable damage. Tornado Kick expends those stacks for when the boss is in a long transition phase. Riddle of Earth, upon taking any damage, resets the timer for those stacks being dropped in a long transition phase. Riddle of Fire nullifies the haste from Greased Lightning and beefs your damage to an equivalent of another three stacks of Greased Lightning. Purification regenerates 300 TP at the cost of five Chakras, whereas Invigorate regenerates 400 TP. Perfect Balance is used for the opener and has a three minute cooldown. I am more than happy to hear your inputs on how everyone views Monk's kit in the comments.

Now you may be thinking: "OP, this all seems pretty useful under the right situations." I concur, you are exactly right. However, the right situations are few and far. With the development team's decision in an attempt to cull the range in skill gap between players by reducing the amount of buttons necessary to press, has developed a whole new array of problems within skill kits across the board, such as Machinist, Summoner, Warrior, and Scholar. But the problems will be dealt with in time with balance patches, as most believe. However, I do not hold faith in that statement.

The position that the Development Team has responded to the criticism and comments of the Monk community is abhorable. I start by saying this since I feel the Dev Team does not actually CARE about what is being done, or lack thereof, to Monk and its current kit. The two largest issues with the new additions made in Stormblood are Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood. As I am sure you know, there has been controversy over these two skills, with Riddle of Fire going against the lore of Pugilists/Monk by sacrificing speed for damage and Brotherhood being the raid utility added to monk to increase physical damage for all affected while providing randomly generated chakras to the caster. As I do not have extensive experience with hardcore raiding, I will refrain from commenting on Brotherhood outside of the observation that the efficacy of the Ability as a Raid buff is incredibly diminished depending on the amount of Melee in the party composition and acts more as a Self buff as it does not affect the party as a whole.

In Letter from the Producer 37, the issue of Riddle of Fire is addressed on stream.

"Q: The new monk skill “Riddle of Fire” is a very powerful buff, but because the effect increases the GCD, it is very stressful to play. Monk had a feeling of speedy combat, so if adjustments are possible, please implement them."

This question was met with them stating they had considered GL4 to accompany RoF but had ultimately decided against it. Instead of answering the question, they continue in response that "players will see the effect of this from prolonged battles, such as those from Omega: Deltascape (Savage)." So while they acknowledge the frustration the community feels with the Ability, they are reluctant to change it stating that they "believe it’s somewhat complete" and they are reluctant to change how RoF performs, unless "we (the developers) do receive more requests, then we’ll consider it." I do not agree with their reasoning for keeping RoF the way it is considering how Monk is best played is stated by the Developers themselves, very early into the Pugilist storyline.

"A pugilist is an expert in hand-to-hand combat. Through rigorous training, he forges devastating weapons of his limbs. Having said that, fists and feet don't deal near as much damage as a blade. But what does that matter when you can land several blows for each swing of the sword? Aye, what a pugilist lacks in destructive force, he makes up for in speed and cunning. Rather than trying to deal great damage with a single blow, he pummels his foe with lightning-fast combinations. If you become as good as yours truly, your combinations will be so swift and seamless, folk won't be able to tell when one technique ends and another begins! Hah hah hah!" - Hamon, Pugilist Guildmaster.

As for my finishing statement, I will say that because the Monk community is comparatively small to other communities, I do not believe the Dev Team will hear the prolonged frustration or acknowledge that they have created a contradictory class; I do not have faith in a development team that does not hold a conversation with its consumer. The best case scenario I can see is continued discontent and praying for a change before the next expansion.

Link to "Letter from the Producer 37": http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...289-27-2017%29

Shout-out to SpeckledBurd.

I think every avaliable resource they had for melee development went straight into SAM. Dragoon also has some massively questionable 4.0 changes, seemingly made by those who have never played the class. Ninja fared better, but Ten Chi Jin throw the job back down to low ping only players which seems contradictionary to the issued they've addressed with ninja in the past. Also duality lines up with nothing wtf do I do with that skill omg.


Monk got literally after thoughts. It got a weak utility and a weak "GL saver" which is, in my opinion, usable only in Savage. You cannot save your stacks in casual content with playing like a huge ahole to your tank and team, running ahead to pull mobs, standing in aoe to save stacks. I think we all thought Tackle Mastery was going to be something like bards songs, or at least have some sort of useful purpose but again, it's like they just threw something together last minute that ended up being nothing.

I think they're being so overally cautious that monk doesn't surpass their flagship SAM class that their only option is to pretend it doesn't exist.

Please excuse grammar and formatting, these forums aren't phone friendly.