Shadowbringers Monk is grueling and torturous in Dungeons - A regression to 2.0 monk

The removal of FoW GL recovery and increased 2minute Perfect Balance cooldown is actually horrendous. Once again we're back to sprinting ahead of the tank to each mob in a desperate attempt to keep stacks, that, despite the fastest tank, still drop between pulls.

Once again, the loss of Greased Lightning means a grueling 9 GCD slow recovery, where you cannot use any off globals because of their lost potency.

The other thing is that other classes combos got an extra 5 seconds added on....it seems that didn't apply to monk stances :/ That missed Snap is back to plod plod plod no Greased Lightning again.

I highly, highly, regret leveling this first through the MSQ.

There's no use saying "wait til 80" because there are no other skills that grant GL aside from Anatman, which you can't use while moving.

Savage content might be bearable but man I am missing those GL recoveries from Stormblood in casual content.

Edit: To be honest, I feel like we're all tired of fighting the good fight for a good Monk rotation. I certainly am. Maybe after 6 years it's actually time to just move on and main something else.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

Edit: To be honest, I feel like we're all tired of fighting the good fight for a good Monk rotation. I certainly am. Maybe after 6 years it's actually time to just move on and main something else.

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Funny you should mention this. Drak of NEST fame finally threw in the towel after the Media Tour regarding Monk. He said he just didn't like the direction they seemed to be going with it, and didn't want to wait and see if things improved.

I stopped at lvl 72, it doesn't feel right. Trying to find something else to lvl.

Same, I'll not level it, it just looks boring, and that's a shame cause I really loved MNK

Yeah monk is horrible in dungeons right now. Wish I picked something else to level first. I already knew monk was going to be bad in dungeons in shadowbringers but its even worse then I expected it to be. No way I'm ever going to touch monk at 80 in dungeons (unless its a premade with a tank that chain pulls quickly), gonna be queuing as a different job for sure.

Not to mention that monk has barely any OCGDs to press now which makes it even more boring, especially in dungeons. I press riddle of fire, my GCD slows down and... There aren't OCGDs to press and it feels horrible.

Barely anyone plays monk anymore so I doubt there will be enough complaining to change it, unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

The removal of FoW GL recovery and increased 2minute Perfect Balance cooldown is actually horrendous. Once again we're back to sprinting ahead of the tank to each mob in a desperate attempt to keep stacks, that, despite the fastest tank, still drop between pulls.

Once again, the loss of Greased Lightning means a grueling 9 GCD slow recovery, where you cannot use any off globals because of their lost potency.

The other thing is that other classes combos got an extra 5 seconds added on....it seems that didn't apply to monk stances :/ That missed Snap is back to plod plod plod no Greased Lightning again.

I highly, highly, regret leveling this first through the MSQ.

There's no use saying "wait til 80" because there are no other skills that grant GL aside from Anatman, which you can't use while moving.

Savage content might be bearable but man I am missing those GL recoveries from Stormblood in casual content.

Edit: To be honest, I feel like we're all tired of fighting the good fight for a good Monk rotation. I certainly am. Maybe after 6 years it's actually time to just move on and main something else.

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It's really off at 70, but it probably gets better once you get anatman. Even though I say better, I feel it will mostly feel equal or be slightly worse than how it felt before.

the 120 cool down sucks, the loss of increased crit rate and crit rate nerfs makes chakra a lot slower to fill, less ogcds for riddle (as you said).

basically, seems like a rebalance, but you have to earn back the skills you lost, and hope that the rebalance feels good after.

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Originally Posted by Physic

It's really off at 70, but it probably gets better once you get anatman. Even though I say better, I feel it will mostly feel equal or be slightly worse than how it felt before.

the 120 cool down sucks, the loss of increased crit rate and crit rate nerfs makes chakra a lot slower to fill, less ogcds for riddle (as you said).

basically, seems like a rebalance, but you have to earn back the skills you lost, and hope that the rebalance feels good after.

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anatman works until u move ....or did i read the description wrong?

It’s really disappointing to read this. I leveled up a monk in the last weeks of Stormblood because I liked the direction I thought it was going. Then I started thinking about everything we lost and the reasons for it and it’s just sad.

We lost howling fist for an AoE Chakra spender.
We lost internal release but gained +20% chance to proc Chakras.
We lost riddle of wind for Anatman.
We lost oGCDs, but got an extra stack of GL (which is just going to hurt more when lost in a dungeon.)

It seems like we lost a lot of good things to make room for new, subpar things.

It’s insane, the devs undid what was the single nicest quality of life change Monk ever got for dungeons by removing Shoulder Tackle granting stacks and setting Perfect Balance to 60 seconds. But the actual things that they acknowledged that we hate about the job, like Riddle of Fire’s slow, don’t get changed.

I’m really feeling all the Feedback they received on Monk.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

It’s insane, the devs undid what was the single nicest quality of life change Monk ever got for dungeons by removing Shoulder Tackle granting stacks and setting Perfect Balance to 60 seconds. But the actual things that they acknowledged that we hate about the job, like Riddle of Fire’s slow, don’t get changed.

I’m really feeling all the Feedback they received on Monk.

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I don't understand it. We finally got our armor crush, / 20 second huton refresh, enochian button, blood of the dragon refresh. Then they took it away and left in the part everyone universally hated. I understand they didn't want Tornado kick rotation to be a thing so why not fix tornado kick into a skill that doesn't directly contrast with the rest of Monk's Greased Lightning based kit.

Unfortunately your criticism will be... how to phrase it...

SE has a tenancy to hear the complaint, and COMPLETELY take it the wrong way.
So, I guess "Mistranslated" is the word?

Anyways, Yoshi was afraid ppl wouldnt be happy with grease lightning 4, and if you guys say "the current style is bad" no amount of further explanation will get through.
The only thing that will make it to Devs/Yoshi is "They didnt like it" and they will remove GL4, and make MNK slower.

By the time enough people complain, and enough failures, they will just make a new job, like MCH and DRK, and call it a day.

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Originally Posted by MaraD_

Unfortunately your criticism will be... how to phrase it...

SE has a tenancy to hear the complaint, and COMPLETELY take it the wrong way.
So, I guess "Mistranslated" is the word?

Anyways, Yoshi was afraid ppl wouldnt be happy with grease lightning 4, and if you guys say "the current style is bad" no amount of further explanation will get through.
The only thing that will make it to Devs/Yoshi is "They didnt like it" and they will remove GL4, and make MNK slower.

By the time enough people complain, and enough failures, they will just make a new job, like MCH and DRK, and call it a day.

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Err... no one in this thread, including me, is complaining about GL4. GL4 is fine, it's great. The only complaint I'd have is the lack of new animation aura to symbolise it.

It's the playability of managing stacks in casual content that they added a quality of life fix for in Stormblood, then removed.

I wrote it in the title :/

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Originally Posted by Rockette

I don't understand it. We finally got our armor crush, / 20 second huton refresh, enochian button, blood of the dragon refresh. Then they took it away and left in the part everyone universally hated. I understand they didn't want Tornado kick rotation to be a thing so why not fix tornado kick into a skill that doesn't directly contrast with the rest of Monk's Greased Lightning based kit.

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tornado kick was fun, building stacks back quickly was fun, sometimes fitting in two tornadoes was fun. High crit rates and more chakra was fun using riddle then going ogc happy was fun. Where are the synergies now? How often do you get to do some cool combos? well, level 80 I suppose maybe it all comes together somehow, I just don't see it tho.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

Err... no one in this thread, including me, is complaining about GL4. GL4 is fine, it's great. The only complaint I'd have is the lack of new animation aura to symbolise it.

It's the playability of managing stacks in casual content that they added a quality of life fix for in Stormblood, then removed.

I wrote it in the title :/

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He knows that. He is saying the devs will misinterpret any negative monk feedback now as "GL4 is bad" instead of actually listening to us about all the things wrong with monk (and its not GL4).

Like, they literally said SB monk wasn't fun to play and that the slowdown on riddle of fire was jarring... But guess what still exists? The slowdown on riddle of fire. Despite the devs agreeing it feels bad. That's how steep of an uphill climb we have right now with monk. Even when they recognize what a major problem with monk is they don't do anything to fix it.

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Originally Posted by echo78

He knows that. He is saying the devs will misinterpret any negative monk feedback now as "GL4 is bad" instead of actually listening to us about all the things wrong with monk (and its not GL4).

Like, they literally said SB monk wasn't fun to play and that the slowdown on riddle of fire was jarring... But guess what still exists? The slowdown on riddle of fire. Despite the devs agreeing it feels bad. That's how steep of an uphill climb we have right now with monk. Even when they recognize what a major problem with monk is they don't do anything to fix it.

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SB monk was more fun to play than this. slowdown on riddle was worth the dmg, and using ogcds to fill the space allowed for nice damage combos. Not a perfect feeling after no ogcds, but now, it's more noticeable with less off globals.

Anyhow, this is basically the ARR monk style, so if that's your thing, you will probably enjoy this version later.

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Originally Posted by echo78

He knows that. He is saying the devs will misinterpret any negative monk feedback now as "GL4 is bad" instead of actually listening to us about all the things wrong with monk (and its not GL4).

Like, they literally said SB monk wasn't fun to play and that the slowdown on riddle of fire was jarring... But guess what still exists? The slowdown on riddle of fire. Despite the devs agreeing it feels bad. That's how steep of an uphill climb we have right now with monk. Even when they recognize what a major problem with monk is they don't do anything to fix it.

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I am utterly confused on how feedback that has not mentioned GL4, until his post, will get misinterpreted as feedback for GL4.

That's like complaining about Huton and assuming Dev's will think we're talking about shikuchi. I think it's a bit of a stretch to presume how Dev's interpret feedback. This game has, for the most part, had the Dev's show a lot of consideration of player feedback across the board.

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Originally Posted by Physic

SB monk was more fun to play than this. slowdown on riddle was worth the dmg, and using ogcds to fill the space allowed for nice damage combos. Not a perfect feeling after no ogcds, but now, it's more noticeable with less off globals.

Anyhow, this is basically the ARR monk style, so if that's your thing, you will probably enjoy this version later.

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Nah, the slowdown has always been horrible. Also, shadowbringers monk feels significantly worse to play then ARR monk was right now. They aren't similar at all. Just because the loltkrotation is dead doesn't magically make SH monk like ARR monk.

HW monk was the peak for monk imo. It had speed, dots, OCGDs, no RNG, no slowdown, no reliance on a physical party comp. Its a shame what monk turned into after HW.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

I think it's a bit of a stretch to presume how Dev's interpret feedback. This game has, for the most part, had the Dev's show a lot of consideration of player feedback across the board.

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Well they said they got feedback that riddle of fire sucks and did absolutely nothing to change it. So yeah, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

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Originally Posted by echo78

Well they said they got feedback that riddle of fire sucks and did absolutely nothing to change it. So yeah, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

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And there are many more examples, non monk related also, where they have. These forums are feedback, not orders. Although, after the mass uproar about Bow Mage from HW, and its eventual do-over in Stormblood, I was certain they'd remove the slow from RoF. Especially since they removed the OGCDs they said were the reason for it.

I also enjoyed dot management monk. Even now, there's that slight clip with demolish I always wish we could offset again with Fracture, ToD, but I'm not sure if I miss it, I preferred the TK rotation. I've nearly hit 80 and the class has improved, I think it will be okay in Savage content. But it is just awful in dungeons, especially with a "hurdy durr lets appreciate the scenery" tank while you're watching GL tick and screaming internally.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

Err... no one in this thread, including me, is complaining about GL4. GL4 is fine, it's great. The only complaint I'd have is the lack of new animation aura to symbolise it.

It's the playability of managing stacks in casual content that they added a quality of life fix for in Stormblood, then removed.

I wrote it in the title :/

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I know, that is my point.
Notice how in every interview devs/yoshida dont seem to understand the issue? If it cant be summed up propperly in 3-5 words, it WILL be misunderstood.
Interviewer says "X is a problem", and yoshida proceeds to answer why Y isnt a problem, or patches Y or Z next patch "There, i fixed Y or Z for you"
US: "We wanted X fixed..."

Even if he stayed on track, and was like, "oh, riddle of fire? too slow? you want to go faster? ok we'll add GL4, and keep riddle of fire, that should fix what u wanted"
its almost like hes TRYING to be a monkeys paw.

For the sake of giving people the benefit of the doubt, I can only assume its a translation issue, which is why it only fails on complex matters, and not on direct issues which can be explained in 3-5 words.

While I am enjoying the potency buffs and the power surge you get from Bootshine/Leaden fist, pretty much any fight pre 80 now is torture. You can't keep GL up if the boss does ANYTHING that makes them unhittable, with little way to rebuild it with PB 2mins.

I am only 74 so awaiting to see how new abilities changes the feel. We'll see. I ended up just removing TK from my bar. 330 potency that eats my stacks, vs BS 300 potency that autocrits and doesn't. It's not worth it and is now a useless ability with such a niche use time it's not worth the space.

They should either make GL either run down 1 stack at a time as time goes down, or just change it entirely to have something like 10+ stacks max with increasingly shorter time to maintain. Go all in. As long as you keep hitting you keep getting faster. Don't stop the train.

Reporting back from level 80. The inclusion of Six-sided Star does very, very little to mitigate the battle to keep your stacks. Formshift is also given an extra long CD so you cannot prep a couerl action very quickly on the way to your next pull. Anatman needs a much shorter cool down, especially during fights where a target disappears multiple times in a row.

I forsee that much like the beginning of UCOB before the 4.55 RoW recovery was given, Monk is once again a complete nightmare in sequences such as the trios where a target is lost for more than 16 seconds, (can't Six sided star) and you need to move for mechanics (can't Anatman).

I had hope but this is major, major regression in the general playability of Monk. It's no steps forward, 5 patches backwards.

Edit: It's pretty upsetting. Shadowbringers so far has been an incredible triumph in story, music, characters, everything else. Just realising I no longer have the energy to keep hoping monk will get better is... well it's putting a dampener on things that's for sure.

Best use of Anatman so far: using it pre-pull when you're in Coeurl form because the goddamn tank won't do a timer. No more endless form shifting!

Doesn't work unless you already have a stack of GL so as nice as that would be, that would be something useful for Mnk and can't be included. I can not fathom why Anatnam is 78. It's an ability that is critical to maintaining stacks and from their own mouth based around how raids are developed will continue to... And it can't be used in 90% of content.

It's depressing just how weak Mnk is in synced content now.

Come and join the league of Dragoons! We have cookies down here on the floor! :3

The MNK design team really takes the line"You are your own worst enemy" way too serious. Since ARR it feels like MNK is constantly fighting against his own kit. And instead of fixing/rework something that's broken, they throw plasters on it.

I wonder how they can design jobs, that feel perfectly "round" and "fluid" (like PLD, DRG, SAM, RDM) on the one hand, and stuff that's basically a mess (MNK, MCH, SMN) on the other?

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Originally Posted by Kreyd

Come and join the league of Dragoons! We have cookies down here on the floor! :3

The MNK design team really takes the line"You are your own worst enemy" way too serious. Since ARR it feels like MNK is constantly fighting against his own kit. And instead of fixing/rework something that's broken, they throw plasters on it.

I wonder how they can design jobs, that feel perfectly "round" and "fluid" (like PLD, DRG, SAM, RDM) on the one hand, and stuff that's basically a mess (MNK, MCH, SMN) on the other?

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Their combat design team is 4 people.

4 people for 17 jobs right now.

It's not pretty.

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Originally Posted by silverdragontyr

Doesn't work unless you already have a stack of GL so as nice as that would be, that would be something useful for Mnk and can't be included. I can not fathom why Anatnam is 78. It's an ability that is critical to maintaining stacks and from their own mouth based around how raids are developed will continue to... And it can't be used in 90% of content.

It's depressing just how weak Mnk is in synced content now.

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yeah, the plan of focusing class design on level 80 skills, then randomly taking out skills to be given in the new 10 levels is pretty bad for sub max level play. It's worse in this expansion because there isn't much that's actually new, so you basically just become inferior to before when the expansion comes out.

It works for maintaining your form when OOC. It was a semi joke but also semi useful. I've used it pre boss pull to keep in Coeurl form and also during transition phases. The trick is to try to Tornado Kick, snap punch and Anatman during jump phase. But when I finally hit 80 i guess just SSS since it has higher potency. WTF is the point of TK these days

Anatman does indeed build stacks from 0. U can tk straight into anatman and rebuild all stacks during a phase transition if it's long enough. Tested and proven.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Their combat design team is 4 people.

4 people for 17 jobs right now.

It's not pretty.

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Source?
10 char

Dungeons are absolutely miserable at the start of this expansion with all the scared single pulling tanks who afk before each pull to ensure I lose GL every single time. I was really hopeful for anatman to soothe some of this issue but it doesn't. All it needed to do was reset the timer on you GL outside of combat and it would be okay, but what point is it when I manage to save my stacks at one second left and they will disappear the second I try to hit something? Hoping for at least that small change in an upcoming balance patch, if not more.

I feel Monk has been in need of a major overhaul since it feels like half the dev teams thinks monk is a slow class that goes fast and the other thinks it's a fast class that goes slow so we just get a jumbled mess that doesn't feel great. At this point I don't even care which one it is. Just please give a direction for my favorite class. It hurts that I don't want to play it anymore

It can't even be we're misunderstanding the class. In many, MANY fights the enemy will have moves that remove them from the battlefield for 5+ seconds. For any other class this is a non issue. However for Mnk, unless you JUST got off your Coeurl ws, there's a good chance you're losing your stacks.

Now, they have stated they wanted to make encourage Mnk to use skills like TK and SSS when you see these attacks come, but they have done nothing to show it. TK has a 330 potency and eats your stacks. 30 more than buffed bootshine now, which auto crits. SSS is 400, and maxes GL timer nice but often makes little difference as the enemy has to leave targetting and be back to targetable all within a window of about 12 seconds to compensate for server delay or you lose your stacks.

Now, being this high risk, there should be high reward right? A Mnk maintaining stacks should easily be one of the more powerful DPS. I can't say for recently but before while strong still managed to be right there around other DPS. While this is good, it means no one DPS is omg meta best must have, it also means any Mnk not having max stats is gimped. Further there is now no quick way to get stacks back until 80, except PB which again has a harsh 2 minute cooldown. If you use PB for DK > BS loop than you don't have it as a safety net. If you're encouraging an ability to be saved mainly for when you lose your power in an event that's dictated by the fight and something you can barely control then that's not a great design. So Mnk has two of their big skills, got at 50 and 60 respectively, that have little to no use.

I don't think they understand what they want to do with Mnk, much less what it's players want. I agree with others as it feels like a job with no focus. If you want it to be Crit boss then focus abilities around crit boosting and do things like make FC max GL timer, so it encourages you to spam FC. If you want it to be all about moving faster than anyone, then have abilities that focus on reducing gc even further instead of increasing it. Or even all cooldowns even ogcd ones. Make Mnk feel like a speed demon if this is your path. This middle of the road crap though? It leaves Mnk incomplete and unable to keep up.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

Source?
10 char

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ealer-designer.

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Originally Posted by Physic

tornado kick was fun, building stacks back quickly was fun, sometimes fitting in two tornadoes was fun. High crit rates and more chakra was fun using riddle then going ogc happy was fun. Where are the synergies now? How often do you get to do some cool combos? well, level 80 I suppose maybe it all comes together somehow, I just don't see it tho.

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I 100% agree with this. The way you could optimize with tornado kick and rebuilding gl stacks was so fun and such a welcome change/addition to the job. And they seem to have thrown that entire playstyle out the window. I was hoping this would finally be the expansion they'd give monk a worthwhile update because of how well they did with the mid Stormblood changes. But it really doesn't look like it right now to me.

i think you simply have hard time to adapt *shrugs*
yes monk did loose a lot of stuff, don't means we have get nothing from it... the thing is yes loose GL hurt like shit.... but when you have all your gl you are a monster, let's be honest we are freaking fast, soo much fast that it's gonna be extremely interesting at higher level.

the trouble is at the start of ShB we did migrate from a monk based on TK (what was a nonsense) the goal of the monk first... is to reach max gl and become a force to reckon... in SB our goal was to use our GL and get them back fast because they had given us a lot of tool for get it back fast....

in ShB we don't play on TK, this skill is used when you are sure you will not be able to get back your GL before the next fight. (what was the goal of the skill at the base before the player base did find a way to make it part of our Cycle, what was clever)
in this expansion, we don't have tons of way to get back our GL fast, we have tool for keep it. but i will see at 80 before complain at how it is feel weird or bad, because seriously, if you complain about this monk.... you have seen nothing.... monk was a horrible in V1, ARR, did bring new tool and create a more interesting monk, HW was mixed and SB was simply bad... from what i stand, ShB is trying to fix the mess they have done in the two last expansion.

find more use for the chakra added with HW, and trying to give us a reason to use the buff added with SB. but who know.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

i think you simply have hard time to adapt *shrugs*

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I think you are over-selling things a bit here. At level 80 with the AF4 gear, MNK is actually slower. It requires all 4 GL stacks to match the GCD speed of Stormblood end-game MNK, which takes longer to wind up due to the lack of an instant GL stack granting move. And even then, the removal of oGCD skills means there's not much to do in windows of forced slowdown even once you get to the 4th GL stack. The lack of that GL granting move even inhibits a recovery rotation for when Perfect Balance is on cooldown, whether or not the dropping of stacks has anything to do with a Tornado Kick use. Anatman is a new toy to use, sure, but it's incredibly redundant and impractical compared to better options, and its drawbacks are too significant to be as viable as people believe it to be based on how it sounds on-paper.

So no, this isn't an issue of needing to adapt or having trouble doing so. I can adapt just fine. The job itself became slower, and more boring with fewer things to do. It's been simplified into the ground, and that makes it less fun to use and less of a spectacle to behold. It's not a "can I find a way to do my rotation optimally" thing, it's an "is this job still enjoyable to use" thing. It's not a viability concern, it's a concern over MNK being BORING. Either way it still loses plenty of uptime opportunities it had in SB which is an overall net loss regardless of how you feel about the changes, and that's an unavoidable fact. I'd argue that even at +2k skill speed, SHB MNK is just boring to play without much to do in a single-target rotation due to the lack of oGCDs. You can buff potencies all you want, but that doesn't change the "fun" factor.

As for making comparisons to pre-SB incarnations of MNK... just because those MNKs were bad doesn't mean that complaints about SHB MNK aren't valid. And, we're at level 80 now. It should feel like a level 80 job, not like we're playing a level-synced HW MNK in post-SB content. If it feels lacking, it feels lacking. Adapting doesn't make it any less not as fun to use.

My proposed solution is just to add in two oGCDs which would give more to do during forced slowdown periods. One of those should give a GL stack back. To cut down on development costs I'd say just use some of the PvP skills that were deprecated from the game since their icons and animations are already done (i.e. Somersault and Axe Kick). Do that and watch all of MNK's problems go away.

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Originally Posted by Physic

It's really off at 70, but it probably gets better once you get anatman. Even though I say better, I feel it will mostly feel equal or be slightly worse than how it felt before.

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At level 80 with the AF4 gear, you need all 4 GL stacks to match the GCD speed of level 70 SB MNK in BiS gear, though you now have more windows of forced slowdown and the culling of oGCDs gives you less to do during that time, making it more boring to play. At its best, MNK feels better to use when the Skill Speed is north of 2000, but as a result of the lack of oGCDs to use, it will still feel only faster by hundredths of a second, and as such it will ultimately still feel slower and more boring to play than SB MNK.

Anatman feels pointless/redundant. It looks cool and seems neat on paper, but I can tell you that there's no reason to ever really touch it with SSS, RoE and/or a well-timed Rockbreaker/Snap Punch/Demolish. If you're at 4 GL stacks it doesn't max out your duration, only if you go up a GL stack as per usual. It can only give you GL stacks if you're in the middle of combat, not in-between where it just freezes your stacks. It can only give you stacks if you have one to begin with, and the GL stack generation is slower than just attacking normally.

It would be preferable to replace it with a skill that gives an actual GL stack while doing damage. Right now its only real use is if you're at a dummy and want to hold your stacks a bit while waiting for something to come off cooldown. It has zero actual practical application outside of something like the obnoxiously long o10s phase change where boss takes his sweet time to attack you, by which point your stacks have dropped before RoE can do its thing.


I wouldn't mind the 120 second PB cooldown if SSS maxed out our GL stacks to 4 instead of just the duration timer, so it could be used after a TK>Snap Punch for a recovery, barring any other sort of recovery options. However it would still feel like the job is lacking oGCDs to use in slowdown windows.

My preference is, without changing anything else, just to put Somersault and Axe Kick (two former PvP-exclusive moves) into the game with 120-second cooldown timers and adjusted potencies, and let both otherwise keep their tooltip descriptions (one gives a chakra stack, the other GL stacks). Doing this without changing anything else would instantly fix all of MNK's problems IMHO, and it's the most viable way for us to get added oGCDs because of the development cost of making new animations, effects and icons. These were already made and as a plus happen to look cooler than Steel Peak/Howling Fist.

The 120 second cooldowns would line up with PB's current recast time, and allow for a repeatable rotation every two minutes. Considering other changes which would open up other options if more oGCDs were available to push, this actually reduces the sting of the increased PB recast, and something like a more streamlined SB MNK.

Just a couple of suggestions.

1) Make Riddle of Earth into a group wide defense buff of 5%.
2) Lower (or remove the slow effect entirely) on Riddle of Fire and make it also offer a small crit buff to make up for the loss of Internal Release. Something like, Grant 5% extra damage and crit chance but reduce speed by 5%.
3) Make Form Shift refresh GL (but not grant) GL upon shifting from Courel to Opo Opo.
4) Make Tornado Kick only take up 1 GL stack so that its actually useful.
5) Have Anatman instead be a move that exchanges Chakra for GL stacks.

Just my thoughts.

They just need to fix SSS and it wouldnt be so bad:
1) Make it oGCD, 30s cooldown
2) Keep the effect that resets your GCD cooldown to 5s
3) Lower potency drastically to offset fact that its oGCD
4) Instead of maximizing timer on GL, it should just add 10-15s to current timer