Monk - GL and Chakra

So I haven't played as much monk as i have some other classes (only got the class to 75 this expansion), so it's possible that my impressions of how monk plays may be that I've just straight up missed or misunderstood something, but what struck me in stormblood and what seems to still be the case is how little their two stacking features interact or synergize with one another.

With the 5 chakra I find that I'm either at 5 or not at 5, and the whole point of getting to 5 is to hit a button and reset it. Greased lightning stacks may impact the speed at which I get back to 5, but that's kinda it - Chakra 1-4 don't seem to serve a purpose and the whole system seems to further discourage using Tornado Kick.

Personally I wonder if some of the problems with Greased Lightning falling off, the MNK kit wavering between wanting you to keep stacks or use them, etc. could be alleviated by making Chakra more interesting - given that we can build chakra when not actively attacking, more skills that use chakra (potentially during downtime) could be what the class is missing. This could also help with downlevelled content where the entire MNK kit vanishes, since the class quests that deal with opening the chakra is in the 30-50 range anyway - and during that whole sequence of quests, much like the use of chakra in combat, I didn't really feel like the class became something different than Pugilist for chakra 1-4, since nothing really changed for how I was playing.

Yeah that's always bothered me. Chakra has no leeway on it, wheras Ninki and Kenki and Oath Gauge and Beast Gauge and... well just about everything else does. I'd love it if like, Touch of Death was brought back and cost 2 Chakra or something, just to mix things up.

Also, form a lore perspective, they made a huge deal out of the 7 Chakras (well 14, 7 light and 7 dark) we needed to open in our job quests, then... we have 5 chakras? Why?

Since we lost Riddle of Wind and getting stacks back is much harder (minus Perfect Balance but that's more for DPS optimization). However with Anantman at 78 we can place a hold on our stacks timer /form and if it's at GL3 going into GL4 increase it naturally through it. So we shouldn't have an issue losing our stacks due to phase transitions if we're standing still do to Anantman but like Meditate for SAMs if we move out of it, it's wasted. Granted Anantman is bad when you only have a couple seconds left on your timer as it doesn't reset it (unless you're not at max stacks), only holds it in place.

Brotherhood, GL4, and our aoe combos are great for getting Enlightment BUT still require dumb rng chances instead of assured chakra. That's one of MNK's biggest problems where the other jobs have control of their gauges a MNK has issues with both GL and Chakra. GL through the new skills is becoming less of an issue but RNG elements are still king, and knowing that we don't even have a 100% assured chance of getting Chakra off Bootshine (only 70%) doesn't help us. It feels amazing when we shoot off enlightments but I'd like to have some control for making that an assured deal past the prepull where I know I can have a full set of chakra.

A problem I still see in this thread is Tornado Kick. I have no idea what they were thinking removing Riddle of Wind but keeping TK as it was as the two were meant for each other. I don't have Six Sided Star but my judgement makes me think they wanted to make it the new TK with it's potency and refreshing of GL stacks, but it's a GCD that resets every other GCD to it's own longer timer. With TK eating our stacks it looks like it's still going to be delegated for the final cashout, but I'm not sure.

Chakra really needs a better thought out process. Either make Chakra a charge bar like every other DPS, or make having Chakra numbers matter. Have abilities based off Chakra used and have Chakra be a resource management. Remove Riddle's and make Chakra Mnk's primary high level tool.

• Chakra Refresh - Maxes out GL timer and increase current Stack by 1. Charkra Requirement - 1

• Chakra Attack - Inreases damage 20% for 20s. Chakra Requirement - 2

• Chakra Defense - Reduces damage taken by nearby party member by 10%. Chakra Requirement - 2

• Chakra Speed - Reduces Weaponskill recast by 10% Chakra Requirement - 3

Maybe increase Forbidden Chakra potency a bit to justify spending 5 Chakra on one ability. This would allow Mnk to have to think during battle. How to spend their Chakra and what is needed at any given moment.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

Granted Anantman is bad when you only have a couple seconds left on your timer as it doesn't reset it (unless you're not at max stacks), only holds it in place.

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Not true. It resets the timer even at full stacks. The problem with using it with only a few seconds left is it waits for a server tick. There's a chance GL wears off before the tick that resets the timer.

The problem is with Chakra is that it was designed as a single target downtime mitigation tool and that design has made everything else added to it feel varying degrees of terrible. Purification was useless in Heavensward when Monk needed TP because we needed downtime to use it, during which we naturally regenerate TP. It didn’t have overflow in Heavensward because you were only supposed to use it upon reengaging the boss, Deep Meditation and Brotherhood making it a half baked Gauge skill meant it was the only all or nothing gauge and guaranteed overflow to be lost because of Forbidden chakras cooldown.

Greased Lightning as a concept is fine. Blood of The Dragon/Enochion/Huton were all implemented as their respective jobs equivalent to it and they’ve evolved elegantly. The problem with GL is that while contemporary buffs can be kept up with the press of a button(l (or in Huton’s Case last so long it’s not even a problem). Meanwhile GL has 5 or 6 buttons that all compete for the same role in various niche circumstances instead of 1 god button that just saves it. If Form Shift for example worked like Transpose and refreshed Greased Lightning, Anatman, Riddle of Earth, and Tornado Kick would all need new functions or need to be removed. Worse because we have all these upkeep skills, we don’t get new things rotationally like other jobs.

with so many problems (or disappointments for a better word) I never noticed that every other job has a gauge with plenty of leeway for them to decide when to spend resources, most of them need only 20-50 / 100, and worst case is Ninja with 80/100, meanwhile with Monk it is all or nothing, god knows how many chakras we have wasted out of overflow when luck is on our side on brotherhood, at least they should make it so we have a pool of 7 chakras (although it should be 14) and who knows, add an skill on a high cooldown that needs all 7, like TK reworked or something.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Yeah that's always bothered me. Chakra has no leeway on it, wheras Ninki and Kenki and Oath Gauge and Beast Gauge and... well just about everything else does. I'd love it if like, Touch of Death was brought back and cost 2 Chakra or something, just to mix things up.

Also, form a lore perspective, they made a huge deal out of the 7 Chakras (well 14, 7 light and 7 dark) we needed to open in our job quests, then... we have 5 chakras? Why?

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Thats a really good idea. In my other post I suggested some reworks including possibly opening a chakra each rotation, so being able to spend chakras on more GCD's would work really well. Spend them early, then save them up while the off-GCD's that use chakra are all on cooldown. Why is it that it only takes a few seconds of pondering to come up with ideas that seem infinitely more fun lol

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Yeah that's always bothered me. Chakra has no leeway on it, wheras Ninki and Kenki and Oath Gauge and Beast Gauge and... well just about everything else does. I'd love it if like, Touch of Death was brought back and cost 2 Chakra or something, just to mix things up.

Also, form a lore perspective, they made a huge deal out of the 7 Chakras (well 14, 7 light and 7 dark) we needed to open in our job quests, then... we have 5 chakras? Why?

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This isn’t entirely accurate. For ninja, you’re either at 80 ninki and spend it, or you’re not and it’s useless until you are. To me the best comparison is to look at jobs like ninja and dancer. With both jobs you have a similar job resource to chakras that you either have enough and burn it off or you don’t and are waiting till you do. The difference between monk and those jobs is monk has to be at 100% and and resources gained after that point are wasted, while ninja spends at 80% and dancer at 50%. This is a bigger problem for monks when you add brotherhood into the mix, making it more likely monk will waste some of this resource.

Only having two ways of spending this resource seems fine to me. Dancer only has one. But the problem is that we can’t stack more than five. Ideally we should be able to keep 10 of them, but I can see where the devs might thing that could make monk openers too powerful, so I’d settle for 7.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

This isn’t entirely accurate. For ninja, you’re either at 80 ninki and spend it, or you’re not and it’s useless until you are. To me the best comparison is to look at jobs like ninja and dancer. With both jobs you have a similar job resource to chakras that you either have enough and burn it off or you don’t and are waiting till you do. The difference between monk and those jobs is monk has to be at 100% and and resources gained after that point are wasted, while ninja spends at 80% and dancer at 50%. This is a bigger problem for monks when you add brotherhood into the mix, making it more likely monk will waste some of this resource.

Only having two ways of spending this resource seems fine to me. Dancer only has one. But the problem is that we can’t stack more than five. Ideally we should be able to keep 10 of them, but I can see where the devs might thing that could make monk openers too powerful, so I’d settle for 7.

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Especially when we earn our chakra through RNG aspects of crit chances and party weaponskills. I feel like every single mob pull I get because I don't dump my chakra the moment it fills since I may be in mid aoe combo that I miss out on 2-3 chakras. Then when i'm ready to use it and for RNG to bless me I get squat. Maybe enough for an enlightenment, but usually will cap me at 4 which then out of brotherhood's buff I get another.

I really just hate that about MNK. When NIN and DRG have assured ways of getting their gauge MNK is praying to god it can actually even get their gauge outside it's own GCD charging.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

This isn’t entirely accurate. For ninja, you’re either at 80 ninki and spend it, or you’re not and it’s useless until you are. To me the best comparison is to look at jobs like ninja and dancer. With both jobs you have a similar job resource to chakras that you either have enough and burn it off or you don’t and are waiting till you do. The difference between monk and those jobs is monk has to be at 100% and and resources gained after that point are wasted, while ninja spends at 80% and dancer at 50%. This is a bigger problem for monks when you add brotherhood into the mix, making it more likely monk will waste some of this resource.

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Well yeah, that's my problem. Monk has no leeway for use -- you hit it or you lose it. Everyone else has some flexibility to hold onto it for a moment or two except Monk.

Also, if their concern is monk openers being too strong, just allow manual Chakra charging to stop at 5 (keeping it functionally the exact same as now.) 6 and 7 can only be from Deep Meditation or Brohood. Tada, Monk flows a bit better, has a meaningful decision, and isn't made necessarily more powerful because of it. It's not the only problem Monk has, but it would go a ways towards alleviating it.

And again, lore reasons. Come on, we did a bunch of stuff to unlock 7, it'd be like if Ninja went through a bunch of trouble to learn 4 Mudras and "lol let's just not mention the 4th one ever again." =/