Monk lvl synch appreciation.
I just wanted to make a post telling the devs how much I appreciate the new rework of Monk specifically below cap. They have designed the job so tight as to lose so little of what makes it feel active at low levels that I feel it’s how every job should feel below 70/80.
I was doing a couple of alliance raid roulettes randomly and decided to go monk on a whim and got Dun Scaith and Syrcus respectively and it really showed me just what makes this feel active.
In Syrcus you still have Perfect Balance. You don’t have masterful blitz but that’s nothing too important at that level, the only thing I find annoying is that I got so used to hitting Masterful Blitz and getting the formless fist buff after that it feels weird now when I don’t.
You also now keep the chakra system meaning that you now have an active mechanic to make up for the loss of abilities like Shoulder Tackle, which actually makes it more active because this version of Steel Peak technically comes up more often. Plus this mechanic gives you something to do during downtime between fights no matter how minor.
All of these make it feel rewarding when you do great damage even at that level rather than jobs like Dancer where you hit 2 buttons and your Standard Step and do good damage with little to no effort.
Dun Scaith however is where my appreciation really kicked in. Outside of a few off globals, level 60 monk has very little difference from a casual gameplay perspective to 70. And 70+ all are almost all the same job with different skill names. And while on the surface this might seem like bad design because the job doesn’t change much and it can get repetitive, from a leveling and level syncing perspective this is brilliant. It allows players to really get comfortable with the blitz system through leveling, it also means the job will change so little that when you hop into a duty like Dun Scaith your rotation is still very close to the same. To the point where the Dragon Kick exploit rotation still somewhat works. And that’s how I think many jobs should work.
Any expansion that adds new mechanics should retroactively do so and not proactively to make sure the job is engaging to new players and old alike so that new ones get the hang of it by the time they’re max level and old players don’t feel punished for getting a duty below their level. And Monk is a perfect example of how this design is implemented and executed to a fairly good result and I think the dev team should hear this!