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Hello, all. I\\'ve been a Monk main since I started playing almost three years ago, and despite our rocky place in trying to find places in raid groups for 3.0, I\\'ve continued to love playing it and do so regardless. It\\'s really exciting to play a class so fluid and I\\'ve always loved the "High DPS, Low Utility" and "Hit really fast, but relatively light" aspects of the job.
Now we have Stormblood and I have to say I\\'m pretty disappointed so far, and here\\'s why:
-Losing Fracture hurt, because it was a wonderful tool for getting in a bit of extra damage here and there while avoiding clipping Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes every couple rotations.
-Losing Touch of Death hurt because it was pne of our highest potency skills.
-Losing 10 Potency on all our GCDs in the name of letting us shave 10 TP off of all our skills hurt a lot, as without Touch of Death and Fracture, running out of TP without spamming AoE skills is actually a challenge.
-Losing the stun from Steel Peak and having it added to One-Ilm Punch as a stun with no diminishing returns hurt. It may be usable regardless of how many stuns have beeb used, but due to it being on a GCD and locked behind Raptor Stance, it's extremely unreliable now as a source of stun. We'll only have a 1/3 chance of having it when we need it as opposed to 100% chance via holding off on using Steel Peak.
-Losing 70 Potency on Forbidden Chakra kinda hurt, but this I will accept due to us getting at least one more Forbidden Chakra per fight, each extra Forbidden Chakra we get being a net 180 potency extra for first and 250 extra for each after that.
Now what did we gain in exchange for these concessions?
-Level 62 we get Deep Meditation. I will say, this sounds kinda cool on paper, getting a free Chakra stack 50% of the time we land a GCD that crits, but from experience at 70 in i310 gear, it feels kinda underwhelming, and due to the lack of predictability/consistency on it, it kinda feels like it detracts from the fluid feel of the job. This one I feel like positive arguments can be made for, though.
-Level 64 we get Riddle of Earth. This one, I was actually pretty excited for. A move that gives us a bit of damage reduction, but more importantly lets us hold our GL stacks while the boss is untargetable?! Sign me up!
...Then I realised through extended use that in every fight I've tried, either 16 seconds pass between the boss going offscreen and their ultimate attack landing, or 16 seconds pass between their ultimate and them returning to the field. I've thus far found only one part of one extreme Primal where you're able to keep you stacks through using this, and that's only after an earlier part of the fight where you're forced to lose your stacks due to the way timings line up.
-Level 66 we get Tackle Mastery. I was really excited for this one as well. We get different kinds of Shoulder Tackles now?! Well... kinda. In effect, the Earth Tackle is kinda useless as you have half the range, less damage than the other tackles, and it pushes the enemy away from you. Your *Gap Closer* pushes your enemy away from you. Wind Tackle sounds awesome, but between the low time you have to use your second tackle, and the lack of real practicality to either stun two separate targets within 5 seconds of each other (While every meler can cross-role a stun skill, including Monk), or the practicality of chain-tackling through two mobs to get to the other side of a small enclosed space, it just feels hard to see how this will ever be useful. Fire Tackle seems to be the only one you\\'ll want to use, basically just being the old Shoulder Tackle, but bumped up to 130 Potency.
-Level 68 we get Riddle of Fire. Sweet, this is why we lost Blood for Blood, we get a +30% damage buff! ...at the cost of our speed buff from Greased Lightning. This one, I can see arguments for, it is a buff overall, and I think if the rates of Chakra influx from Deep Meditation and Brotherhood (more on that skill in a moment) were increased, coupled with a removal of Forbidden Chakra's cooldown, this could actually be a fun thing. You pop this, pop Brotherhood, and machine-gun Chakra blasts and your other off-GCD skills at the boss while slowly executing your other skills. But this isn't how it plays out currently, instead it just feels slow and uncomfortable. It also just seems a little backwards as a major part of our identity is hitting fast, hitting light. Doesn't stripping us of our speed to make us hit harder run directly counter to that?
-Lastly we have our level 70 skill, Brotherhood. This one had so much potential, and had me so excited at first. I get to buff my allies and have them feed me a deluge of Chakra to rain down upon my foes?! Well... not quite. This skill grants +5% Physical Damage to all allies within a 15-yalm radius for 15 seconds, and during the duration there is a 30% chance that each weaponskill used by an ally benefitting from Brotherhood will grant the Monk a Chakra stack. (Splitting this one in two parts)
(Continuation of Brotherhood explanation) Breaking this down shows three pretty awkward things. First of all, it's only physical damage, which means at best you're hitting four people with this in a raid setting: both tanks, the other melee, and your Bard/Machinist. Secondly, it's only "Weaponskills" which trigger the potential chakra, so it's only GCDs used by half the party. Thirdly (kind of a combination of two things), it's only half the increase of a Trick Attack/Spread Balance, and it doesn't actually hit the Monk (presumably because they figure the Monk will be doing a lot more damage from the influx of Chakra, which isn't false, but still feels odd.) In effect you will get on average, maybe two extra Forbidden Chakra uses from my experience, maybe one and a half, but it is very RNG-dependant. All while affecting half your allies with half a spread Balance, and half of those players are Tanks, which had their damage nerfed.
-Oh, and Tornado Kick had its cooldown dropped to 10 seconds. I've never recovered my Chakra after using Tornado Kick in less than 10 seconds before, because I would have to go far out of my way to do so, but... neat?
All in all I wanted to really enjoy Stormblood Monk, and I feel like there were some neat concepts, but that they just really weren't fleshed out well. The skill changes aren't the only problem that warrants mention, though, as there is one thing that hits harder than everything listed above:
Samurai. I love the idea of this job, I am 100% down for it being the flip side of the coin/alternate flavor to us in being a job about "Pushing out crazy damage, not bringing utility." We could be the ones hitting fast and light, them hitting slow and hard as a contrast. This is not how things panned out, however. As things currently stand, Samurai puts out damage far and above what a Monk can, which looking at what our purpose was in the entirety of the game until now: "Bring the damage, but little utility", if Samurai are able to beat us at that by so much, what place does the Monk actually have in raids now? Why bring us over either a Samurai, for the raw damage, or a Dragoon/Ninja for the weightier utility? And coupled with the fact that we share gear with Samurai, the option of us fighting alongside each other isn't really an option either (not that I'd expect this to be desirable in a raid comp, even setting aside the gearing aspect.)
In summary, it feels like we've had a lot of our offensive power stripped from us, our ability to stun reliably moved out of reach, and had our job role stripped of us to give to the shinier new job (in the expansion where Monk is intended as the job in the spotlight.) In compensation we received one utility skill (again, going against our job's role that we've had for the past four years) which falls short of feeling impactful, both as a party buff, and as a buff to the Monk himself.
I hope this allows insight as to why Monks are disappointed with the current state of things, and SE, if you're reading this, please fix this. I've loved this job for three years, and I never want to stop loving it, but you're making it really difficult right now.
In the meantime, I guess I'm gonna go level Red Mage...
Hi, just to say that everyone who wasn't really designed as a class with dots saw their dots removed (even the Machinist who had a dot of 490 potency :/ )
All the classes lost a lot of potency everywhere and also a lot of CD skill, really see it as a simplification of the gameplay, and of course, new monsters have been designed to have HP according to the new power of those class. I mean, if the devs halve our power, but they also reduce the enemies' HP 4times, then it's like our power have been doubled actually. I know I'm exagerating, but it's kind of the idea. It's kinda underwhelming to don't really feel a power increase, but yea, we all have to think the HP of monster all have been designed to be ok with our new power.
One more thing, you can make it all a single text. --> just edit it to bypass the 1000 symbols limit
Edit : And sorry, just in case, I wrote my message when you only wrote the 2 firsts of you ^^"
Btw, I know devs are disappointed to know how people only think about solo character doing everything to feel praised, but SE actually feel like we should only see it as a whole, to what we bring to the others. To succeed things in team, not like "look at how powerful I am". I don't say this to you, don't worry. I just mean that too many people feel the other class are better than others without looking really at what others have/brings, and what it implies, where some lose dmg and some doesnt (when a ranged character can hit while a melee can't for exemple). Too many people look at when they are in pure optimum situation (I mean against a target that doesn't move and doesn't attack).
To give a better way to illustrate my idea, it just need to look at the (amazing) trailer for FFXIV Stormblood where you can see friends accomplishing something together : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI06jFY6CLc
To make it short, we all feel weaker, we all need more the others to succeed.
Those +5% dmg to everyone are brought by several ones, and I believe it to be like other CD we had to boost ourselves, they are stacking multiplicately. So now imagine you have 4 characters able to boost their team for a burst moment, it means the whole team get a +21.55% dmg bonus if 4 people use like a 5% bonus dmg skill to help everyone (which also stacks multiplicatively to others bonuses). It is a lot when we all need to play together to burst together.
Thank you for the reply and the heads-up about bypassing the limit. Sadly, I'm on mobile and can't find an option to edit, but I'll try to on a PC when I can. ^^;
In response to the rest of your message, I do understand and accept that most jobs lost DoTs, the thing about losing Fracture in particular is that it was a big piece of letting Monks avoid clipping their buff and debuff early on enemies, which now leaves those skills feeling a bit sloppy.
I do also agree that there is much comparing of apples and oranges when weighing jobs against each other, but comparing melee against each other, particularly Monk vs. Samurai as they are both jobs that have been advertised as playing the same part in a group ought to be fair game.
In reply to the last part you added about our 5% buff, it does only affect Physical damage, so it will only benefit a maximum of half the raid, and only for half the potency of Trick Attack or spread Balance which are already established means of boosting party damage, which also affect the whole party rather than just half.
Ah, yes I am aware for the boost of Brotherhood, I was kinda actually replying to everyone complaining about those 5% skills overall (and it can affect up to 75% of the team (2 tanks/4dps)).
But I agree comparing Samurai and Monk are still a good idea. I do believe SAM are too powerful compared to others, but maybe MNK are better in a way (I dont know which one). What do they bring that samurai doesn't? Maybe better in burst aoe for shorter fights? (it's just a shot in the dark, I know SAM are also very powerful AoE-wise).
What I'm afraid of, is that we realize having 4 samurai in a team is way enough to clear content really quickly and efficiently. Or maybe 2 samurai, 1 Ninja, 1 Dragoon (ninja and dragoon for buffs they provide at dps check phase, which are even more worth on samurais being the most powerful ones).
Will we really need the utility brd and mch bring? I doubt so, unfortunately, SE always said we should be able to be purely with random people and that any team of 2tanks/2healer/4dps should be able to clear the content (even with 4 bards? x) haha).
Anyway, someone good at his not meta job is always way better than someone with meta job who's not good. And it seems it will be even more the case with Samurai designed to be not the easiest to play (even if the game is made to be easy overall). But yea, MNK are not supposed to be easy to play to in an optimize way (and I guess it's still the case now).
To OP : To by pass the 1000 limits character you can edit your messages
Edit : My apology
To DatPotato : it already has been said and he already replied he will when he will be on pc, but for now can't as it seems he can't edit on his phone.