Monk raid utility. Not popular class

Good day. I want to tell about the problem, which exists in my opinion. The problem of the raid utility, raid group setup popularity. Im talking about Monk first of all.
(this thread is not about me as a monk player. This thread- is my opinion about the in-game situation)
Lets see. In FF we have 3 melee DPS. Dragoon is a must, because any raid setup has Bard or Mech and Dragoon raises their dps, also Dragoon has the Battle Litany- it is DPS too. Monk or Ninja then as a second melee DPS.
Right now very hard to find a good static by Monk (I mean a good static, not something casual). Why? Because FF community thinks only about one thing- TOTAL DPS. That is why raiding community prefer Ninja over Monk. Yes, very often Monk has a top dps, but self dps and TOTAL DPS of the group- it is two different things. Monk cant raise total DPS, Ninja can. And this additional DPS because of the Trick attack gives much more DPS, than this little handicap of the Monk's DPS above other classes.
Yes, I know, that Monk is good with Mantra in some battles, but FF raiding community prefer DPS.
Dear SE, please, make some adjustments, make Monk more attractable for raiding community
In the end a want to show some statistic from FFLOGS- the message of a user from Reddit. This statistic shows everything:
---------------------''If we use the per-class "Parses" entry from the Statistics page on FFLogs as a rough indication of how often each class is being used (which isn't a perfect assumption, but is likely the best data we have), we can establish a sort of baseline for how often we think classes "should" be getting used:
The number of Warriors recorded for each Midas fight is very close to 1:1 with the number of Scholars recorded (expected, as parties that don't use one of each are quite uncommon).
The combined total of White Mages and Astrologians, or Paladins and Dark Knights, or Black Mages and Summoners, Machinists and Bards, is also very close to the number of Warriors or Scholars recorded (expected, as standard party composition includes one non-WAR main tank, one non-SCH main healer, one physical ranged DPS, and one caster DPS).
The combined total of Dragoons, Ninjas, and Monks is very close to twice the number of Warriors or Scholars (indicating that a two-melee composition is standard, as we might expect).
Further to this, the number of Ninjas specifically is very close (within about +/- 5%) to 2/3 the number of Warriors or Scholars, which is the "ideal" case in a situation where every class in a given role (counting main-tank/main-healer as separate roles from off-tank/off-healer, of course) is chosen equally often. This is reasonable evidence that Monk is largely in competition with Dragoon, rather than Ninja.
With all of that in mind, Dragoon is being used 39% more than Monk in A5S, 39% more than Monk in A6S, 41% more than Monk in A7S, and 62% more than Monk in A8S.
That's a pretty considerable advantage, but it isn't necessarily the most striking: In A8S, Black Mage is being used 55% more than Summoner (35%/26%/36% in A5/A6/A7), Machinist is being used 60% more than Bard (-23%/-5%/10%), Dark Knight is being used ~228% (that's not missing a decimal place) more than Paladin (-25%/-32%/-13%), and White Mage is being used a whopping 588% more than Astrologian (230%/289%/402%).
Now, as a final point of comparison, if we look at these same class pairings in the Gordias statistics (and for the sake of brevity I'm just looking at the "All Bosses" page rather than individual fights), we get: DRG used 43% more than MNK, BLM used 37% more than SMN, BRD used 344% more than MCH, DRK used 153% more than PLD, and WHM used 316% more than AST.
If we assume that all of these numbers are reflective of actual party compositions (bearing in mind that there are numerous sources of distortion when we try to use FFLogs numbers this way, and they may not be as reflective as we'd like), I don't know if it's a big enough discrepancy to say that Monk needs intervention-by-balance-changes. They're certainly at a disadvantage, and the disadvantage is consistent, but they don't seem to be in any more of a crisis than SMN is compared to BLM, and they're certainly not on life support the way that AST is, or PLD and MCH were in Gordias.
My gut feeling is that the biggest reason for the discrepancy is the obstinacy and pointlessness with which SE has elected to continue making DRG, MNK, and NIN gear unique and incompatible with the other classes that share the melee role. Once you choose a melee class, you are locked in to that specific class, and can't easily swap into the others without spending twice the tomestones or convincing your group to give you twice as much Savage loot as everybody else. There's no good reason for there to be three separate melee sets (aesthetics is not one, and even if it were, putting STR onto Scouting gear and allowing MNK to wear both Maiming and Scouting would solve the problem), and it actively harms compositional flexibility in a way that isn't present in other cases where multiple jobs compete for a role.''

There is actually a very good reason for the three different melee sets if you think about it. Allow me to explain.

Ninja cannot share with the other two, different main stat and SE don't like adding main stats that aren't used, they have only done it when patching dex on to monk gear so they didn't have to create new sets of pre 2.3 gear. That's one melee removed.

Monk and dragoon cannot share the same gear because Dragoons are a heavier armoured job made to wear gear with a higher physical armour rating. This is evident by the statistics of every piece of dragoon gear compared to the other melee job pieces. This separates monk from dragoon.


You may not like these reasons, I personally can't see why str and dex on one piece would hurt the game, but they are valid reasons. Hope this helps.

Question is, is the reason for the amount of MNKs versus DRGs due to the class being balanced or due to DRGs being a lot more popular? MNK/NIN was the comp for world first so it was the meta for progression and therefore it isn't unbalanced in any way other than people preffering to play DRG or increasing their epeen. In comparison to A1-4S were PLD was barely viable and the DPS increase of the DRG a lot more important than the mantra of MNK. Midas has a lot more balanced set up where MNK/PLD is as viable as DRK/DRG. There's really not any way of making the class more lucerative for players to play and there is no reason to do so either because as long as people aren't being denied to join a static simply due to them playing the class there's no need to balance it.

Dragoon contributes far too much to MCH/BRD DPS and Ninja is the actual one true mandatory. Nerf disembowel and these threads go away.

With the grow in FFlogs popularity and MCH's rise as both a viable and strong job to bring to groups MNK popularity decreased since its a job that won't boost any other DPS's damage ever unless you run double MNK. The reason his popularity decreased is because people want to see big numbers but this doesn't mean their Raid Utility is low. MNKs can bring constant intelligence reduction to a party that has a PLD instead of DRK. Even if you have a DRK you can free them from constant Delirium aspplication leaving them to DA their Soul Eater with higher constancy. Outside than that their Traited Mantra is awsomely strong for healers specially when paired with other healing increasing abilities like Divine Seal, Synastry and Fey Illumination. Not only that, if your healers enjoy Stance Dancing, Mantra can ease that and by the end raising healer damage, wich raises raid damage too.

Remember that Elysium prefered MNK over NIN for A8S race because of its defensive utility just so they could heal easier the damage even holding Vit V melds. Note that all DPS jobs have raid utility. Be it offensive like Trick Attack or defensive like Apocatastasis. MNK is already a attractive class for those who enjoy its playstyle and for groupd that want to progress without a DRK. Also for groups that want to do the Three Melee + MCH composition wich had grew in popularity since the Chinese had beaten A4S and healers proved they could do Caster Jails on A7S.

On a Side note about SMN and BLM. People just prefer playing BLM because they claim SMN to be plain boring for many players even though it is an easier Job to manage. (Same argument a lot of people use about MNK and PLD actually.)

MNK is godly in A7S and A8S style fights, especially in early prog. If any class is utility disadvantaged, I'd say its DRG since they can pretty much only help you beat a DPS check but not much else.

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Originally Posted by CookieMonsta

MNK is godly in A7S and A8S style fights, especially in early prog. If any class is utility disadvantaged, I'd say its DRG since they can pretty much only help you beat a DPS check but not much else.

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Considering Gordias was a giant DPS check that was invaluable. Even now "more DPS" is not a bad thing. MNK is just in a better place since it got buffed so it's a viable alternative to DRG.

If only there was another blunt damage dealer or tank :p

To be honest the true reason (in my opinion at least) why MNK in the current state is not popular (and will never be, if they don't revamp the class completely so that they have lower personal DPS but bring some sort of raid-DPS increasing ability to the table) is that most raiders care a lot about their personal DPS (even more so in hardcore groups).

Way too many times have I seen groups, even on the casual or midcore end of the spectrum, recruiting exclusively DRGs or NINs for their groups, without even considering MNK as a solution, just because the majority of the people in the group want that "DRG NIN" composition to boost their personal DPS and be slightly higher on the FFLogs DPS list. Even if that means refusing a godlike MNK in their group that would make them have higher raid DPS, or having the MNK switch to DRG or NIN even if they play those classes very poorly compared to their main.

In the end people just want their own selfish "number" to be higher.

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Originally Posted by jack891

If only there was another blunt damage dealer or tank :p

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Lets Auto Attack with our Canes and Books.

I feel like monk isn't inherently inferior to Ninja in the raiding scenario, I've always kinda thought of it from their utility standpoint. Both WAR and NIN provide the slashing debuff, so if you have a WAR, run a MNK, if you dont have a WAR, run a NIN

Actually it´s like:

If you have DRK/WAR Team, run NIN, if you have PLD/WAR, run MNK, if you have PLD/DRK, run NIN.

But I think most people want NIN cause of Trick Attack rather than Slashing.

Didn't MNK crap all over DRG in 2.x to the point where nobody bothered with DRG because they had no raid utility? Now MNK is crying because DRK has Delirium and DRG has Battle Litany? Funny how the tables turn. On the other hand, MNK has higher single target DPS than DRG, so that should balance it out, no?

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Didn't MNK crap all over DRG in 2.x to the point where nobody bothered with DRG because they had no raid utility? Now MNK is crying because DRK has Delirium and DRG has Battle Litany? Funny how the tables turn. On the other hand, MNK has higher single target DPS than DRG, so that should balance it out, no?

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MNK were preferred over DRG in 2.x because DRG could not survive mechanics in Final Coil and were more adversely affected by missed positional attacks than Monk. NIN was also super OP so the DPS increase of disembowel for BRD was not considered. DRG was buffed and NIN was nerfed in a subsequent patch.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Didn't MNK crap all over DRG in 2.x to the point where nobody bothered with DRG because they had no raid utility? Now MNK is crying because DRK has Delirium and DRG has Battle Litany? Funny how the tables turn. On the other hand, MNK has higher single target DPS than DRG, so that should balance it out, no?

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No, NINs did (at 2.4 launch) for a few factors that players could both abuse and cry over SE's design mistakes for that patch. While MNK Dragon Kick was extremely important for progression making them almost mandatory the other slot was a choice between NIN and DRG, DRGs couldn't survive some free damage aoes having the same gear as the other jobs had and NINs were just too strong when they released having poison affect their Jutsus' magical damage while buffed by Foes and having almost if not actual infinite TP.

On the Delirium topic: while DRK has this utility, its his only utility aside from a RNG-based Storm's Path-like ability, so you can't rely on Reprisal. Well, they have nice damage I guess thats considered as utility for a tank job. And if you bring a MNK and DRK together, you let the DRK freer to Soul Eater and gain a powerfull mantra (and their second wind is quite usefull too, just a a tad more situational) wich are MNK's other utilities. So you can't just say Delirium fades MNKs. I'm bringing you a vision from a player that Mained heals from Second Coil to Midas about how powerful and handy MNK defensive utility is.

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Originally Posted by Wegente

To be honest the true reason (in my opinion at least) why MNK in the current state is not popular (and will never be, if they don't revamp the class completely so that they have lower personal DPS but bring some sort of raid-DPS increasing ability to the table) is that most raiders care a lot about their personal DPS (even more so in hardcore groups).

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I think you place too much faith in fflogs. While I agree there are quite a few selfish raiders out there, the distinction between hardcore raiders and midcore is that for hardcore, clearing the fight comes first and foremost (even above fflogs rankings). With this goal in mind, you do everything necessary to reach it, which can mean taking either a MNK or DRG depending on the fight. But most decent raiders would not sacrifice the ease of a clear for personal numbers if given the choice.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

With the grow in FFlogs popularity and MCH's rise as both a viable and strong job to bring to groups MNK popularity decreased

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But the MCH physical damage boost benefits monks more than any other job. So you would think that less bards and more machinists would mean more monks. Also, if we go that route, you would also think that there would be more mnk/drg setups because both classes have no magic damage and have a higher physical damage output than ninja. So I feel like groups are preferring ninja because their utility is vastly superior to that of drg or mnk. And then making a decision to bring more offensive utility as opposed to defensive utility (and also to focus less on boosting melee dps and focusing on ranged or party dps).

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Originally Posted by SwarleyMcSwarls

But the MCH physical damage boost benefits monks more than any other job.

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But the DRG NIN MCH combo have a synergy that makes people want to play them together for big numbers. I'm wasn't talking abot what is pratical in that sentence, but what is popular.
So no that would not mean more MNKs because MCHs would ask for DRG while DRGs like MCHs too, they're like best buddies! And NIN then says his surprise hi that makes both happy while healers cries for mantra and DRK says "don't worry I'm bad designed but I have Delirium" and spams Soul Sater anyways and the Butcher can never find his lost Path friend. Let me joke a little.

is this the new cool thing atm? acting like mnk needs a buff? I've seen it in other places as well

How has the tide turned...

If they really wanted to give MNK more Raid utility, all they'd have to do in the next expansion is add a trait that extends Purification's TP restoration to allies nearby as well at the same range Mantra does. But that may be TOO strong of a raid utility really, giving a party-wide 300TP restoration.

High personal DPS doesn't trump party DPS. MNK do amazing damage on their own, but I guarantee it will never beat out the contribution that DRG and NIN bring to their party. They basically bring multipliers to a bunch of people that already have multipliers running, further boosting DPS even more.

In terms of utility, Mantra is really useful but never more than just that, useful. Healing in this game is rarely a classic MMO spam heals to get the sickest throughput kind of playstyle, every single healer already has the tools to deal with everything the game has to throw at them, Mantra just makes it a bit easier.

Whereas more DPS is almost always a good thing, it helps immensely during progression and it helps immensely for farms. The only time it isn't is when you have to hold back due to mechanic timing, which is solved by...people holding back. You never have to change your group's comp to do LESS DAMAGE.

Bring a MNK if you have to take a PLD, and only early on during progression when the magic damage is actually too high to survive otherwise. I think it's pretty shit, and I wish they were more closely balanced so that any melee, ranged, caster, healer and tank comp could be taken without gimping a group but that's just how it is now.

MNK has tradeoffs, DRG/NIN don't.