Monk Rework just brought us back to 2.0 MNK but with no GL.

Title. Tried new version of Monk....its literally 2.0 monk without stacks...
Tornado Kick is Steel Peak but learned later. (higher potency sure)
Elixir Field is Howling Fist but learned later. (higher potency sure)
Riddle of Fire is Blood for Blood but is learned later and doesn't require cross class...
the only new damage skills we got SINCE 2.0 in any meaningful way is just Forbidden chakra (3.0) Brotherhood (4.0) and the aoe getting combo moves (5.0).
Six Sided Star is just a last poke before disengage so its meh, and all the other skills are just ways to hit pos or skip movesets.

While I agree Greased lightning wasn't hard to keep up and for whatever reason the dev/balance team just wanted to keep adding ways to keep it up instead of actually adding anything really new... I don't think GL should have been remade into a trait the job feels very bland now as if I was a SAM but forgot all the fun skills lol.

TDLR: I want GL back, and something ACTUALLY NEW to add to the job that isn't just a QOL thing...

While I agree with... basically everything you've said, that MNK in it's current state is a disastrously boring job - but I heavily disagree with bringing GL back. Not because it was a bad mechanic per se (it wasn't), but because SE themselves cannot be trusted with developing upon it anymore. Every single attempt at "expanding" upon it has led to MNK being gutted by a loss of focus in every expansion. It's better to leave GL in the dust for something hopefully new rather than risking another 2 years of nothing but more useless GL upkeep tools. (Blitz, please)

I just hope that the current state in which Monk is, is just a temporary one since it looks to me like a new piece of paper that's about to be written on, with no actual flavour or anything interesting.

Monk should be getting in my opinion, something like a berserk state (no square enix, not another inner release or aetherflow), that makes Monk, if certain circumstances and requirements have been made, like, not having been hit at all for 30 seconds or so (or having been the main focus of a enemy for that long) faster in both movement and attack speed, granted increased evasion aganist melee attacks (like a 25-35% chance or so during its duration)as well as oGCD being reduced, every following 30 seconds until being hit.

But what more likely is going to happen, is that they keep him that way and remove any remaining traces of mechanics until it just becomes a auto attack machine that needs sometimes some buttons to be pressed, i guess having original Jobs is way overrated in 2020+1

It's a band aid. I'm 99% sure that Monk is going to get an overhaul for 6.0. Sorta like how in Stormblood the eventually unlocked role actions so you could have all of them equipped if you wanted instead of like 4. That was never meant to be a permanent solution, just a temporary one.

All Monk needed to "fix" GL in 5.3 was to actually have a decent GL recovery skill and for Tornado Kick to do literally anything other than being a stacks dump. Monk had PB and Anatman for GL recovery but they were both bad at it for various reasons. PB on top of being more valuable as a DPS cooldown due to Leaden Bootshine was slow to build stacks and had three times the CD of equivalent skills like Blood of the Dragon or Enochian. Anatman, while on a lower cooldown, was so slow to build and had so many restrictions on its use cases that it was worthless for pretty much everything they designed it for in most cases.

Now that TK does something else, yes they could bring back GL as long as there was an ability added to refresh it on a fast cooldown. But that wouldn't fix the problem with Monk still feeling like a 2.0 job for the same reason removing it didn't fix the vast majority of the problems with the job.

What Monk actually needs is for Chakra as a system get completely rebuilt to remove the RNG and to add more depth to it. It also needs an actual Central Mechanic for Chakra to support in the way that Ninki and Kenki support Ninjutsu and Iaijutsu respectively. Monk can't just stay as it is in 6.0 or the devs are going to be dealing with another Monk meltdown.

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

It's a band aid. I'm 99% sure that Monk is going to get an overhaul for 6.0. Sorta like how in Stormblood the eventually unlocked role actions so you could have all of them equipped if you wanted instead of like 4. That was never meant to be a permanent solution, just a temporary one.

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While I'd like to agree I've got to point out that historically we've been 99% sure that Monk is going to get an overhaul in the next expansion twice now. After people had major issues with the job in Stormblood people were sure 4.0 was going to be when Monk got fixes and it didn't. In fact, Stormblood was where the devs massively missed the mark on what people wanted to the point where they apologized for it on stream. Then after that apology and months of saying they were taking feedback over Monk going into Shadowbringers what they released in 5.0 was them repeating basically every aspect that people hated in Stormblood all over again and hoping that GL4 would get people to stop nagging Yoshi-P about it in interviews.

The recent patch is evidence that they actually gave Monk more than 5 minutes of thought during their lunchbreak, which is what it seems like they did for the last five years. However their track record on Monk is so bad that I'm not willing to give them any benefit of the doubt until I actually see concrete results.

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

It's a band aid. I'm 99% sure that Monk is going to get an overhaul for 6.0. Sorta like how in Stormblood the eventually unlocked role actions so you could have all of them equipped if you wanted instead of like 4. That was never meant to be a permanent solution, just a temporary one.

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I can't even agree with it being a "band aid." A band aid implies some form of a fix. This isn't a fix, it's an admission of defeat. They finally gave up, after years of leaving the mechanic in place as is and giving us more and more means to try and preserve it and quickly build, while ignoring oftentimes unified feedback from people who actually play the job consistently, they finally just said "Eh, whatever." And by giving up, they basically announced that the entirety of 5.x has been the third expansion straight where they've bungled the job. To echo SpeckledBurd, it's hard to feel hopeful, much less excited, if this is supposed to be a prelude to anything at all.

So much of the new additions to Monk ShB were for the preservation of a self-buff that they have struggled to integrate with the rest of the kit for so long. The removal of GL, and subsequent half-baked changes to the new buttons really highlights the level of neglect that has been on display here.

Since vanilla, the developers have shown basically no real understanding of how they wanted GL to interact with every other aspect of the job. Every thing they built onto the job after ARR failed to acknowledge problems with GL that have always been present, either exacerbating existing issues or making new ones to stack on the old. This same attitude has been reflected on the underused, double-rng layered Chakra system. It is reflected yet again with the continued existence of elemental fists, even after TWO button culls that removed "useless" abilities (and in one case I can recall off the top of my head, later replaced with a new animation and name.)

Monk used to be one of the most selfish DPS in the game, offering next to nothing for any party beyond it's ability to do damage. But in SB and ShB, SE decided that it needed some form of raid utility to shore up it's historically low playerbase. It didn't work. What we're left with now is a job whose defining traits are "it fast", "more positionals than u *punches faster more aesthetically*", "why cant i hold all these chakras ; ;", and "look guys our raid buff finally justifies more than just a very, very specific comp please dont kick me i have been in party finder for hours"

Think you should expect the actual rework in 6.0, when they'll add actual new mechanics to the job instead of just simplifying what they had.

While I don't miss GL at all, I think they need to come up with something interesting to put in its place come 6.0.

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Originally Posted by Stepjam

It's a band aid..

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How can you call it a band aid, when monk was fine before?

Transitions were a bad thing for GL, but you normally was able to start your opener again to get your GL stacks back pretty fast. Everything else was fine and some stuff like RoE or fist of winds even better. I´m pretty sure that the new monk doesn´t attract more players. It was always in a special spot due to the positionals.
For me it has become worse. It´s button spam. E.g. E11s is a pretty good fight for melees. But there are times where you´ve to press like 6 buttons at once if you don´t want to lose damage or off gcd timers. It´s horrible and the reason lies in more off gcd´s and RoE spam.

It´s playable yes, but it brought nothing positive to the class next to the brotherhood buff and that you don´t have to care about transitions. But the 2nd one could´ve been negated if SE would´ve freezed the stacks with anatman right before such boss phases. SSS is a joke too. Still the same one time use, but hey you got a movement speed buff, which is nothing in comparison to FoW and in the most cases pretty useless since the boss will mostly vanish after using it.

A band aid would be something if a class is unplayabale or maybe even broken af. But nothing of both was a thing with the SHB monk so far.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

What Monk actually needs is for Chakra as a system get completely rebuilt to remove the RNG and to add more depth to it. It also needs an actual Central Mechanic for Chakra to support in the way that Ninki and Kenki support Ninjutsu and Iaijutsu respectively. Monk can't just stay as it is in 6.0 or the devs are going to be dealing with another Monk meltdown.

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Chakra is fine for me. It isn´t that much RNG based as ppl claim thx to bootshine. The buff from brotherhood did a lot to it too. The actual worst case scenario is, when the 5th procc comes up lik 0,1s before you use bootshine with its 100% crit. But seen all over the fight, you might lose 1 full chakra activation. It´s nothing to care about unless you want to grind some logs.

I don´t want to see just another ressource with 2 or 3 buttons on the monk like you´ve on tanks or is similar to kenki. Classes should be special and they should have a soul.
GL probably won´t come back, so SE should focus on the fist-stances, because they´re still a special part of the monk but pretty much useless. 2 of them are not even viable. Combine them or let us activate all 2-3 under after finishing special conditions infight to activate a powerful elemental attack and to gain a damage + movement + defense buff for 30s or so. The buff or elemental attack could even change based on the activation based on the order you use the fists. e.g. fire -> wind -> earth = dot attack... wind -> earth -> fire = a range attack. (A mix of midare activation and ninjutsu, but you can´t just activate it like you want. You´ve to collect X amount of elements in any form similar to white / black mana of redmage.)

Just something you have to care about and which brings any use to the class. Not just some other random named off gcd buttons next to the 123-456 rotation which gains a ressource to activate them.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

While I agree with... basically everything you've said, that MNK in it's current state is a disastrously boring job - but I heavily disagree with bringing GL back. Not because it was a bad mechanic per se (it wasn't), but because SE themselves cannot be trusted with developing upon it anymore. Every single attempt at "expanding" upon it has led to MNK being gutted by a loss of focus in every expansion. It's better to leave GL in the dust for something hopefully new rather than risking another 2 years of nothing but more useless GL upkeep tools. (Blitz, please)

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Id rather they kept GL but gut the fist stances. Those are begging to be removed but are still here for some reason.