Vocality of past monk problems

Hello,

I have been browsing these forums for quite some time. I have played ffxiv off and on for the past few years but very casually, never completing the msq or reaching max level. This is the first expansion where I am actively trying to complete the msq and reach end game.

My main is a monk, and I am enjoying it so far, though I do have several of the common gripes that others list on this forum(gl management and chakra stacks being my biggest concern). When I browse this forum I feel like every other comment is complaints about monk.

I am not denying the validity of these statements. I agree with most points others bring up. My question though is this, how vocal were these forums specifically in the past about the state of monk. It seems like from 2.0 to 5.0 monk has changed very little when compared to the other classes. So I am just curious if monk changes are more likely because of the vocality of these forums, or if this forum has always been vocal and the devs just have not made the suggested changes.

Thank you for lending an ear.

I think that it's the fact that little has changed which is the main issue.

most of the MNK player complain come from the GL mechanic. dps wise we are actually doing pretty good compare to say... DNC or NIN

I understand what and why the complaints. But i’m curious if the community has always been so vocal about monk as it is now?

Monks had a small but vocal group advocating for changes for years. Some quick history:

During Heavensward, Monk was pushed to the side because their rivals, Ninja and Dragoon, were pretty much always just objectively better. Monk lost little transitioning to HW, and gained some new tools, it was just that some mechanics (like Chakra) felt a bit incomplete, and Monks had major TP issues and had no DPS raid synergy at a time when the DPS meta was really booming (rightfully so, the first tier of HW required obscene amounts of raid DPS, and Trick Attack, Disembowel, and Battle Litany were too good to pass up.) Monks were vocal, but almost entirely drowned out by the issues other classes faced (Machinst and Bard were a mess at launch, AST was garbage that became OP, etc.) Overall, monk complaint threads were usually pretty quiet, and many people pointed out that Chakra was, indeed, useful on one fight and therefore Monk needed no changes.

When Stormblood came out and Monks were promised some big changes and that it would be the Monk expansion similar to how HW was the Dragoon expansion, people were excited. Then Monk got a bunch of stuff removed and got nothing in return. To add insult to injury, Monk was always pegged as the strong, selfish melee DPS, but Yoshida claimed that such a role was impossible to do correctly and thus they added Brotherhood... and then like 2 weeks later announced Samurai, a purely selfish melee DPS. People were not happy, and complained rather loudly. Riddle of Fire was clunky and felt weird, Riddle of Wind was worthless, Riddle of Earth was super inconvenient to use, and Tackle Mastery was widely viewed as one of the worst traits or skills any job got going into SB (minus WHM lilies at launch.) Monk eventually got what seemed like really minor and insignificant changes, like Riddle of Wind giving a GL stack, and people grumbled about how it wasn't enough (admittedly, I was among these people.) Turns out a little change like that and reducing the cooldown on Perfect Balance created a whole new rotation for monk, one which was very fast-paced, technical, and incredibly satisfying to pull off correctly. Once the Tornado Kick rotation became standard, most monk complaints fell by the wayside, save for those who thought the TK rotation was unfair with higher ping due to the crazy amount of doubleweaving involved.

Then along comes Shadowbringers, and with it the promise of a major job rework in the same vein as Machinist and Dark Knight. In truth, all monks got was the removal of the stuff that made the TK rotation possible. Almost everything else Monks got was essentially trading what they already had for something worse. You got an oGCD line AoE chakra spender! Buuut they removed the *free* oGCD line AoE attack we had since 2.0 (or 1.0, though it was called Seismic Shock back then.) So really a net loss for the single target rotation. A new skill to generate chakra? Neat, except they removed another skill that generated chakra but didn't require relying on server ticks. So in the end, Monk came into ShB with less stuff than they went into it with, and the TK rotation, being the only actual evolution of the monk rotation since 2.0, was dead. Monks are back to roughly where they were at the start of SB, so now the community is more riled up than ever.

Will they fix monk? Probably, but not until around the second raid tier (so ~3-6 months from now.) It took them about that long to fix monk in SB. Numerically, Monk is doing fine. It puts out decent enough numbers and have enough tools to get through a fight, it's just that it's such a static job that took such a big step back. For comparison to the other rework jobs, DRK plays quite a bit differently than in SB, and generally people approve of it. Machinist is an amazing job, almost entirely different from its previous incarnation and widely-loved. Monk... not so much.

tl;dr This is the loudest the monk community has ever been, especially on the JP side. Even still, I wouldn't expect any major Monk changes to come for several months.

They've said there will be further job adjustments in patch 5.05 (when Savage drops), so we're like all crossing our fingers. As Powercow said, a lot of the current issues with MNK stem from the fact that we didn't move forward from SB to ShB like most jobs did; instead we moved backwards to what we were in HW. For me personally, I would be content if they changed these 5 (technically 6 or 7, but bear with me).

1) Make TK function like BLM's Foul. They gave us all sorts of tools to maintain GL this expansion, but we still have no reward for maintaining GL aside from the passive damage and haste buff from it and the fact that we can only use our most potent attack(s) in specific situations just feels bad, so by doing this we'll get a reward for maintaining GL and it'd start at level 60 when we don't have anything to help maintain GL, then we get RoE to help maintain, then we get Anatman, then finally 6SS. Additionally, make Six-sided Star an oGCD that triggers the GCD when used so it's easier to weave in before downtime.

2) Give us another oGCD to weave with our rotation. For me personally, I want One Ilm Punch to come back and be a 60 second CD with like 300 potency or something. Just a nice powerful hit to line up with buffs. Losing oGCDs made the job feel slow even though we have GL4, at least in my opinion. I'm not clicking as many buttons which isn't fun to me when I'm playing the "speedster job", I don't hit hard but I hit VERY frequently. I miss that feel.

3) This would probably require lots of potency adjustments but, give us Internal Release back or do something to make Chakra procs a little more consistent. I feel like Square slapped MNKs across the face with the whole "We want to reduce job synergy so every job can excel in any comp" then makes MNK the only job that needs crit for a big part of its damage and removes their personal crit buff so now MNKs are forced to meld like nothing but crit and rely on having a DNC, DRG, and SCH in our parties. It just feels like a big slap across the face, but tbh, if they changed some of the other things I'm listing I'd be fine without it.

4) Anatman needs to have an instant tick. Relying on server ticks feels really bad and just slows the job down immensely in the opener when you want to be going fast. And yes, give SAMs an insta tick on their Meditation, idc. Just please give it an instant tick.

5) RoF needs the slowdown removed. How can we be the "speed" dps and then have a SAM do more GCDs than us in a fight because every 90 seconds we slow down and SAMs never do??? My suggestion is to make RoF a 60 second CD and make it a 10-20% damage buff instead of the 30% it is now then to balance out Brotherhood so it still aligns: Make Brotherhood a 120 second CD and up the chakra chance rate from 30% to 50%. Maybe this is a bit overtuned? But something to this degree so that RoF isn't too broken and Brotherhood doesn't get nerfed.

3)

Monk got some decent buffs in 2.1 because it was just terrible in 2.0. it made little sense to dragon kick for 0 potency to get the blunt/magic debuff instead of just using bootshine. That said, after those changes Mnk was always the high risk high reward class. (GL3 ans short timers were hard and fights required you to be creative keeping them, keeping an add alive in t13 for example to retain stacks through terraflare transition).

Monk still plays like it should be high risk, high reward but what we put out for the amount of crap we have to manage for GL is mediocre. Meanwhile I can hop on sam, get 40s buffs and chillout during downtime lol. MNK has become busy work and the kit has been fighting itself badly since SB. It has been least vocal because a lot of MNKs swapped to SAM. But now we have another expansion where we haven't progressed compared to everyone else, a lot of MNKs on the forums at least are getting p*ssed off because the devs don't seem to care about us while giving other jobs new shiny stuff, all the while making them more fluid to play. I can see monk getting changes, as to what extent, I don't know. We don't cry as loud as WAR or SCH so it's hard to know how fundamentally different the changes will be.

It was also a kick in the face for many when YoshiP says in interviews that MNK was what he was most proud of whilst developing it for ShB and also tooting the he understood SB was not good for MNK and they understood we didn't like certain aspects of MNK throuhh SB. Yet here we are, fist stances still in tact, RNG upon RNG in the form of crit chakras and brotherhood, still in tact, slowdown still in tact. Still unable to use TK more than once or twice a fight. Stacks are ridiculously slow to build outside of PB or standing there like a lemon using Anatman. SSS is clunky on the GCD and you need exact knowledge of when the boss will jump, which isn't always a cast, not only that, but meditating and SSS compete against one another in short downtime.

Can I also just mention how many times i've queued into a trial, charged my chakras, started to form shift and the tank has pulled within the first 10s. Too many times! Why the hell is this even a thing? Make meditate give 5 stacks out of battle and form shift give one buff called formless which can enable any weaponskill so I don't have to pray that tanks will wait because monk is still the only non-streamlined job /shrug. I just find it hard to comprehend that the problems we were having years ago are still the same :S

Monk needed an extensive rework in Stormblood and they didn't give it one. Instead it got a kit of skills and traits that were ineffective, unpopular or both while keeping many of the skills it had that people considered useless or so overly niche as to be useless. It deserved a more extensive rework in Shadowbringers and didn't get it. But what’s got people so riled up now is that the devs acknowledged that people hated Stormblood Monk and then didn’t change anything about it. Fundamentally, Shadowbringers Monk is the same as Stormblood (4.0) Monk, with all of the problems still there or exacerbated. The devs said they were taking feedback, but it feels like the only feedback they heard was "We want GL4" and not to fix any of the manyfold problems that the jobs kit has.

For comparison, It’s like if they acknowledged that people hated Bowmage during Heavensward, said they had received feedback from Bards and talked about why Bards didn't like having cast times... and then kept it.

Add to that that Monks kit is a mess and that all of its new additions are lackluster or late to the game. Enlightenment for example is a great addition, but it should have been included in Monks kit in Stormblood so there was an AOE use for its gauge. The devs continue to add things to the Fist Stances even though there has never had a need for more than one of the Fist Stances at any given time. Monk continues to have an obscene number of niche or useless actions and skills even though Stormblood was the expansion where they were supposed to rectify that problem. And still it lacks basic quality of life. It has 5 skills designed around Greased Lightning upkeep to every other jobs 1-2 for keeping up their signature buff despite still being worse at keeping up. It still doesn't have a ranged poke, a back step, or a DPS neutral gap closer. We're still the only job that has only lost GCDs since the ARR rotation and gained none to our rotation.

The job has gotten shafted time and time again, this time was just the breaking point for the majority of people. I sincerely hope we don’t have to wait another 2 years until 6.0 for an overhaul when we’ve already been waiting for 2 after Stormblood.