MNK feels dismal to play and it's not anything that can be fixed with a simple patch.

To preface and give a disclaimer about my experience with the class, I've played monk since ARR, as my secondary until Stormblood, when I made it my main after I was dissatisfied with the state of Samurai, where I cleared all savage fights on monk with an average 82nd percentile and made it halfway on Weapon's Refrain until my group disbanded. Monk's iteration in Shadowbringers however, made me drop the class entirely.

I've put a lot of time into explaining my dissatisfaction with the class to my friends, but I've always known nothing will change unless I make this post in desperation that the developers will see my distaste for the direction they're taking my favorite class in the game. With all my complaints for the class, I've taken note of four glaring issues I have with the current state of Monk.

1. The skill design is antithetical.

The design of Six-sided Star and Tornado Kick perfectly emphasize this. One keeps your stacks at the cost of a slow down, and the other dumps your stacks entirely. While I understand that these have two similar uses in different circumstances, they are similar skills that directly contradict each other.

Greased Lightning IV and Riddle of Fire. Do you want us to go fast or do you want us to slow down? The slow on RoF while necessary in Stormblood's iteration of Monk to ensure double weaving in a burst window has been completely invalidated by the removal of all the skills that we used during that window.

2. The class has not evolved since its inception except for one happy little accident.

It's really obvious with the Monk changes in Shadowbringers that SE either thinks Monk is perfect of they have no idea what to do with the class. I happen to think it's the latter because Monk is far from perfect and all the skills we have gotten since Heavensward, save Form Shift, Forbidden Chakra, and Brotherhood have not added much at all to the class. Monk's only true evolution where the game was shaken up was with a happy little accident in 4.2 where they added the ability to gain a stack from Wind Tackle, resulting in an unintended complete overhaul of how the class was optimally played. For many, this was too much at one time, for others it was the most fun they've ever had with Monk. But with Shadowbringers Monk has devolved back into the 2.0 rotation, with even less buttons to push.

3. It is the victim of needless skill pruning.

Monk was hit HARD with the skill prunes this patch, for seemingly no reason. Wind Tackle? Gone. Internal Release? Gone. Steel Peak? Gone. Howling Fist? Gone. Perfect Balance? Not gone, but nerfed to two minutes. For what reason? Is it too much to allow a class revolving around Greased Lightning a way to generate it quickly? Was it too hard to press one button on cooldown?

4. The class feels archaic.

This is the biggest problem I perceive Monk to have. The entire class is built around Greased Lightning. A buff that shows its age. Other simliar maintenance buffs such as Blood of the Dragon, Enochian, and Huton have gotten better with age.QoL changes have effectively made them into one button that you hit once, maybe twice a fight. Greased Lightning however takes even longer to generate and has gotten even more punishing to lose, It's so much of a problem that it's had FOUR whole skills dedicated to maintaining it. With Shadowbringers it's gotten glaringly obvious that it's time for Greased Lightning to change.

With changes to other previous crit-proc based jobs in 5.0 Monk remains the only class to maintain crit buffs. It even lost Internal Release making this feel even more like a kick in the face.

The fist stances serve no purpose and have only ever seen stance dancing for a brief moment with the changes to the class in 4.2. Poisons were removed from Ninja with Heavensward for comparison.

Proposal:

Ideally Monk needs a total overhaul akin to Machinist. Greased Lightning as it is feels dismal compared to all the other maintenance buffs in the game and actions that preserve/extend greased lightning eat up a ton of action slots we could get for actual job evolution. Rework Greased Lightning to be a one and done button, giving it traits at the levels it gets a new stack at to maintain the feeling of a full stack.

Alternatively if Greased Lightning is to remain in the game as a stacking buff. The payout for maintaining this buff needs to be more impactful, and the reramp significantly reduced. Change Tornado Kick to be more like WHM's Secret of the Lily, every predetermined interval you're at max Greased Lightning grants a Tornado Kick.

Add a reasonable amount of damage dealing OGCDs and cement monk as the melee with more OGCDs to press than the others. This would justify the 30% slow that remains on Riddle of Fire as well as giving Monk a proper identity.

Rework the Deep Meditation trait so that it's not crit dependent bootshine guarantees a stack. All other weaponskills have a flat 50% chance to proc a stack.

I have a really hard time believing that the developers know what they're doing with Monk, much less believe that they play the class outside of playtesting it at all. In an interview at the media tour Yoshida told an influencer that he had the most fun designing Monk. It's disheartening to believe such a statement, when every other job I've leveled to 80, (SAM, NIN, BLM, MCH, DRK, and DRG) build on top of their kit and evolve with the time feeling even better to play than they did before. While Monk is left behind in the dust, improving nothing from its time in ARR. It's my hope that 6.0 will give me a Monk I can love again, because I certainly can't love this one.

The class doesn't even have a full basic set of tools, where is our disengage and ranged skill (granted barely anyone uses it but still they have them, even just for basic fates luring a single monster instead of the whole instance).

Some may argue and be happy that we finally got our Raptor AoE and Chakra AoE, well yeah, that's literally the bare minimum, every single class got a full AoE rotation and a Single target / AoE resource spender.

Let's take a look at MNK state.

-Stances, SE went all the way to remove these, on Ninja? Gone. Cleric Stance? you will never be missed. Tank stances? just make it an on and off switch that has nothing to do with damage / defense or healing.

-SE decided to remove jobs synergy, while not at the same point, you really want to have a Dancer / Scholar / Dragoon with you so you can use of chakra more often.

-SE decided to remove RNG from AST and reduce crit requirements on Bard, yet they decided to keep Chakra tied to RNG on RNG, and they even doubled down on deep meditation II, why not at least make it 100% on every single crit.

-You unlock your gauges on jobs alongside their respective spender, yet Deep Meditation is until lv 62, you can just ignore Forbidden Chakra for 8 whole levels and a full expansion if you have only bought HW.

-Lore wise Chakra should be 7 then 14, but they only gave us 5, this means that either you have your skill and use it right away or you will be missing on a possible overflow, no leeway unlike the rest on a 100 limit, with 7 we could keep spending 5 at a time making sure to some space for reserves.

-RoF slow debuff... why... at least there was a reason for SB, you removed pacification from Warrior, why can't you remove this debuff from us.

-The biggest, long running joke and insult must be TK specially with that 10s CD, seriously SE? I think we are all at least somewhat pleased with 6SS when it works, why didn't they just rework TK to be 6SS instead, and on that note, why on earth that skill is tied to GCD on cast? I can't even.


And now let's look BLM, the one big boss mains, since Monk was supposed to be its melee counterpart, until Samurai introduction that is, it must be just as neglected right?

-An unmovable turret, lets give them a rush to a teammate every 10s, and you know what, lets give them 3 no cast spells every 60s

-Ley Lines use lost due to repositioning, lets give them between the line on a 3 seconds CD.

-Keeping and maintaining ice / fire stacks and Enochian is too much work, several CD decreases on transpose and Enochian.

-Lets go one step further on an expansion where several resources are now tied to combat only (AST seals, AF Scholar and Summoner, etc.) now they don't even need to open with a Blizzard 3 + 4, just press that Umbral soul to your heart content, its even instant cast.

Hardcore players aren't pleased, Casual players like me aren't pleased, JP and western players aren't pleased, how anyone approved this is beyond me.

Yes, I completely with everything you have explained. I've been playing monk since 2.0 no other class gives me the same satisfaction of playing aside from samurai which still doesn't compare for me but its the only thing I have interest playing currently. I've bared with monk through everything but now I literally cannot play monk anymore it is FLIPPING terrible and it hurts because I love monk so much. I literally cannot fathom what the hell the devs were thinking when they made these changes to the monk. Monk is a complete slug now. Like who approved these changes as if they are deliberately trying to change what the monk was originally intended for.

as someone that is gonna level up everything to max, you bet i'm not gonna bother with monk until last... the more i read about it the more i'm disgusted by what it's become, and i was a monk main heavensward...

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Originally Posted by Brownondorf

as someone that is gonna level up everything to max, you bet i'm not gonna bother with monk until last... the more i read about it the more i'm disgusted by what it's become, and i was a monk main heavensward...

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well, it's not that monk is garbage, it's just kind of boring and archaic now, compared to other classes, or compared to its SB version (imo)

After clearing the normal mode raids and seeing just how much uptime these encounters have i feel the 5.0 changes werent even created for the raid content aswell...almost all of monks 5.0 kit is useless on high uptime dummy like encounters. Basically get to use GL4 and new meditation trait, boring.

It's not just lack of skills making it feel boring. The GL management requirement is worse than ever. Especially noticeable in Eden raids and Innocence Ex. The timer is incredibly short in the grand scheme of things, takes 5-6 seconds to get to refresh if not in the right stance, and the tools you do have to refresh the timer require you to be either close to the boss, or not move at all in fights that it is simply not practical.

Monk unfortunately needs a full rework at this point.

Anatman having a cooldown at all is a mystery to me.
And Six-sided star and Tornado Kick feels completely useless 99% of the time.
Six-sided star could give you a buy that allows you to use Tornado Kick without losing your GL stacks, maybe then it'd be useful.

Or they could make it something that you build up to by keeping up your GL stacks and an ogcd.
Sorta like Xenoglossy for BLM but an ogcd since they pruned the others...
I just don't understand why they're so insistent on slowing MNK down all of the time <_<...

Only got into Monk in ShB so I can't really say a lot, I like the class but there are definitely things that are really irritating, im still learning but I agree that having Greased Lightning be such a major facet of the job makes the decision to have Riddle of Fire slow you down a peculiar one.


The absolute biggest peeve I have is with Greased Lightning. It's pretty much impossible to maintain in dungeons unless you want to risk dying every pull while the tank dawdles around waiting to do something until after you lose your stacks

Disclaimer, what im about to say, isnt me saying Monks are fine.

i think this alittle over-exaggerative, Monks current condition isnt THAT bad, i did expect More, but it isnt horrific, i still can Enjoy monk, even with its current Qwerks, i do actually like the New Six Star and the Anataman, i think their awesome abilities in theory, alittle wonky to play around with, but cool nonetheless.

the only fix i really want is to TK.

In all honesty, i'd like to see TK Changed while i can think of ideas and have presented them, they'd change Monk on a Fundamental level, so for the posts sake of (you dont want a Rework) I'd say a Easy fix would realistically lie in directly changing TK.

My solution would likely be, Change TK onto a Standard Ability but one with 3 Charges, Each Charge on a 1 minute CD, Then allow Successful Combos and Positionals to reduce the CD of TK by 10Seconds. this would Not alter the way the monk currently plays in the Slightest only add to it by rewarding the Monk by being able to continously be able to pull off Combos correctly.

My final fix would be Remove Riddle Fist of Fire and Fist of Wind, Past idly using a passive buff to damage % while under 3 GL and Above 3GL requiring Fist of Wind this doesnt do anything for gameplay. It actually just doesnt fit no longer, with ALOT less OGCDs we just dont have the tools to maximise a Slower GCD anymore. so just remove them from the game.

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Originally Posted by Drayos

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It certainly isn't a SB MCH situation by any means, that one wasn't fun nor had good numbers, and a newcomer would probably find that everything is fine, the problem is when you have basically the same class from what will be 7+ years now, except with less skills, while every other job has some shining new skills this one is just there along for the ride, the job really needs a good prune(is that the right word?), rework of a lot of its skill and just a basic direction of what they actually want it to be, is it a fast hitter? is it only sometimes? it is more RNG that AST ever was? is it supposed to dance between stances frequently?

But yeah at this point if they add a disengage and remove RoF slow I'll take it and reluctantly shut up forever.

I believe we need the skill like Umbra Soul that can be used without targeting enemy.
Its fine to not increase our GL stack but let it reset timer to fullest is more than enough.
It will be useful more than 6SS,I guaranteed.

It's not like Monk is unplayable. It's not like it's putting out crap damage. They're also not topping any charts however. Monk takes an astounding amount of effort to maintain or middle of the road-mid high damage, as well as always needing to be close withing danger range. If the enemy moves for any reason where you can't hit them for more than 10+ seconds, more often than not you lose your damage and need an investment of another 10+ seconds to regain full damage. A damage again, that isn't outstanding by any means compared to other classes.

No other class is punished this hard by mechanics they often can't control. Monk shines best when an enemy stands there, doesn't move and lets you hit them. This never happens on anything that matters. Monk has fundamental problems when facing battles that are designed the way they want t design them.

In my opinion MNK doesn't need a complete rework. Little changes over the course of the expansion would be fine. In patch 5.05 the big 2(3) I wanna see are:

1) Make Tornado Kick function like Foul. Maintain GL for x amount of seconds and you proc TK. This makes it rewarding to maintain GL which they are HEAVILY emphasizing in this expansion and allows us to use our most potent ability (since, ya'know, we're literally the ONLY job in the game whose most powerful move is situational and not just part of the rotation). Additionally, make 6SS an oGCD that when used triggers the GCD. Honestly, I'm fine with it being the downtime skill if TK gets reworked. Especially if it's an oGCD, it'll be simple to weave it in before re-positioning.

2) Give Anatman an instant tick. That's all it needs, and yeah give SAMs an instant tick on Meditation as well, idc. Having to wait for that Anatman tick in the opener is so annoying and just makes the job feel incredibly slow.

BONUS: 3) I would be fine with or without this change in 5.05, but if they gave us another oGCD to use I'd be very happy. Personally, I want One Ilm Punch to come back as an oGCD on a 60 second CD with a potency of 300 or something. A nice hard-hitting oGCD to weave every minute and would align with every raid buff (just not always RoF and BH unless they rework those to be RoF - 60 second CD, 10-15% damage buff, no slowdown. BH - 120 second CD, 50% chance to proc chakra instead of 30%).

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Originally Posted by KanameYuuki

It certainly isn't a SB MCH situation by any means, that one wasn't fun nor had good numbers, and a newcomer would probably find that everything is fine, the problem is when you have basically the same class from what will be 7+ years now, except with less skills, while every other job has some shining new skills this one is just there along for the ride, the job really needs a good prune(is that the right word?), rework of a lot of its skill and just a basic direction of what they actually want it to be, is it a fast hitter? is it only sometimes? it is more RNG that AST ever was? is it supposed to dance between stances frequently?

But yeah at this point if they add a disengage and remove RoF slow I'll take it and reluctantly shut up forever.

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im not sure about being pruned, the job hasnt got many buttons as it is, pretty much equal to every other job currently. its only got a 6 button rotation, 3 button AoE, 2 GL Replenishers 5 Buffs 23 buttons Isnt really needing a buff, MCH is on 21 and i think dragoons on even higher. Just feels like its fighting its own theme at times haha

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Originally Posted by MasyMasy

This is the biggest problem I perceive Monk to have. The entire class is built around Greased Lightning. A buff that shows its age. Other simliar maintenance buffs such as Blood of the Dragon, Enochian, and Huton have gotten better with age.QoL changes have effectively made them into one button that you hit once, maybe twice a fight. Greased Lightning however takes even longer to generate and has gotten even more punishing to lose, It's so much of a problem that it's had FOUR whole skills dedicated to maintaining it. With Shadowbringers it's gotten glaringly obvious that it's time for Greased Lightning to change.

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they don't need to change gl at all, they just need to reduce the amount of gl maint skills, i mean, you can tell what 2 of them are not needed and they can be all mixed on 2 skills
perfect balance at 60s recast is one, and a reworked anatman is other
me solution for anatman is what instead of forcing you to stand still to keep your stacks(and form) frozen, it should just frozen them when used until your next action, and if you stand still, it generates chakras, one of the big issues of monk atm is what they are too spammy on downtime(meditation + form shift), and it gets tiring, and reworking anatman this way it could fix this issue as a whole
as for what to do whit riddle of earth and SSS?
riddle of earth could just a cd what gives you chakra when used, because other of the issues this job sufers is what we do not get enought chakras on boss battles
and dunno what to do whit SSS, i rarely use it at all, is really a very niche skill since the 99% of the time you can refresh gl by using a gcd skill or in the worst case anatman does it
imo their solution to avoid the tornado kick rotation is bad, if they wanted people to not use tornado kick on the rotation, either by making its recast timer longer, remove it altogether or make it into a ogcd to be used as part of your rotation free of gl cost, but instead they chosed the worst one, making perfect balance recast longer, making losing your gl stacks more punishing for no reason more than they do not want to change how tornado kick works

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Originally Posted by Drayos

im not sure about being pruned, the job hasnt got many buttons as it is, pretty much equal to every other job currently. its only got a 6 button rotation, 3 button AoE, 2 GL Replenishers 5 Buffs 23 buttons Isnt really needing a buff, MCH is on 21 and i think dragoons on even higher. Just feels like its fighting its own theme at times haha

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Lets see 5 buffs? RoF, BH ...and what else? we literally only have 3 offensive oGCD (lvl 50 we have 1, level 60 we have 3, level 7 we have 3, level 80 we have 3). 2 Gl replenishers? lies, RoE, PB, Anatman, SSS. right but we have 2 Gl replenishers...

However we did lose, IR, HF, SP and gained nothing to replace them in anyway, form or shape.

Also did MNK really needed an AOE rotation? Just because other class has its? Thing is its just a 3 button rotation, its even more boring and empty than before, the lack of oGCD make sit even more obvious.

My wishlist is (1) no slowdown on Riddle of Fire and maybe just combine RoF and Brotherhood into one button, (2) trait some of the old pugilist combo actions into more powerful flashier versions, (3) remove the three Fists of X stance buttons and just change those into temporary buffs like how PLD gets Sword Oath status from using a certain attack, (4) add some kind of massive flying kick attack like Yang uses in FF IV, (5) have some kind of condition that resets the recast on Elixir Field because that would be fun to blast more often, (6) chakra automatically refills over time when out of battle so you don't need to press meditate 5 times between encounters.

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Originally Posted by Drayos

im not sure about being pruned, the job hasnt got many buttons as it is, pretty much equal to every other job currently. its only got a 6 button rotation, 3 button AoE, 2 GL Replenishers 5 Buffs 23 buttons Isnt really needing a buff, MCH is on 21 and i think dragoons on even higher. Just feels like its fighting its own theme at times haha

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Oh god no, I don't mean even less offensive skills, I mean that if we get an actual fix to GL maintenance like Form Shift granting time refresh or a skill akin to Umbral Soul, then there is no need for RoE, Anatman, TK / 6SS or those could just be reworked, and the fist stances should just be either completely gone or gained as a trait.



From Proposed fixes to Monk thread.

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Originally Posted by Xau

anatman rework sugestion of mine:
make what when you use it it frozen your form and gl timers until your next action, and if you stand still it generates chakra stacks, seriusly, monk is too spammy on downtime

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That is such a great idea, would love it if freezes and or refreshes twin snakes too.




And I've been thinking about this recently, we should really make a general Monk discussion just like JP players do on their forum, too many great ideas get lost with everyone making their own thread, even if a dev decides to check player feedback they have no way to read it all so spread out.

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Originally Posted by reyre

Lets see 5 buffs? RoF, BH ...and what else? we literally only have 3 offensive oGCD (lvl 50 we have 1, level 60 we have 3, level 7 we have 3, level 80 we have 3). 2 Gl replenishers? lies, RoE, PB, Anatman, SSS. right but we have 2 Gl replenishers...

However we did lose, IR, HF, SP and gained nothing to replace them in anyway, form or shape.

Also did MNK really needed an AOE rotation? Just because other class has its? Thing is its just a 3 button rotation, its even more boring and empty than before, the lack of oGCD make sit even more obvious.

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I ment monk doesn’t need further pruning overall. We do prolly need some more OGCDs or atleast more functionality to the ones we have.

TK is a OGCD. And could work out if it had a charge system and we actually had a reason to use it,

If it was on a 3 charge system, and each successful combo knocked time off its Cooldown and it wasn’t attached to GL I think it could work as our OGCD

Fist of fire, fist of wind, riddle of fire, riddle of earth reworked and leave us on 4 GL flatline.

Remove form shift. To stop this prepull crap, it’s a good idea but it’s just frustrating.

Let anatman immediately gain first stack of GL.

Put six star on OGCD to make it easier to precisely time it when we need it

I think monk would become a lot more fluid, be a lot faster and overall be more enjoyable and less frustrating.

I don’t think monks horrific, I think it’s just short of a few changes it needed. It’s had a alteration of play but they seem to have forgotten to remove or change a few mechanics that just don’t work in its new playstyle.

I think the solution is rather obvious. It doesn't need skills reworked, it just needs some dank memes. Ninjas got their shadowclone jutsu, dark knights got to be so edgy that their edge can manifest into an entity... so we give monks a 「Stand」 to punch things more. ezpz

https://i.imgur.com/1wb4XCj.gif
Here's some advanced mspaint technology to simulate what such a thing could look like
https://i.imgur.com/MlugpBX.png

What if tackle gave a GL?

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

What if tackle gave a GL?

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Honestly I wouldn't want to see tackle go back to what it was. I'd rather Anatman just immediately give a stack of GL when used. Tackle should also be like 150 potency instead of 100, but that's just me.

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Originally Posted by ZyrinMisharuji

Honestly I wouldn't want to see tackle go back to what it was. I'd rather Anatman just immediately give a stack of GL when used. Tackle should also be like 150 potency instead of 100, but that's just me.

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I'd take anything that makes it easier to keep and build GL, double tackle + Anatman would bring us to 3 right away.
GL's being so slow and having such a short duration feels so outdated.
BLM has a timer but keeping it is easy, and even if people want to make the argument that Monk should be harder to play it's still just unfair because of how much bosses decides to go away or disappear and how you lose them inbetween pulls.

That's the problem. People keep saying "I wish GL was easier to maintain" ignoring the core problem that GL in it's current form, with the way fights are designed does not work well together. They clash very hard, and the ways to restore it also clash with how the fights are designed.

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Originally Posted by silverdragontyr

That's the problem. People keep saying "I wish GL was easier to maintain" ignoring the core problem that GL in it's current form, with the way fights are designed does not work well together. They clash very hard, and the ways to restore it also clash with how the fights are designed.

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How? How do you people have problem maintaining GL? I just dont get it, its extremely simple, the way fights are designed?

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Originally Posted by Zerathor

I think the solution is rather obvious. It doesn't need skills reworked, it just needs some dank memes. Ninjas got their shadowclone jutsu, dark knights got to be so edgy that their edge can manifest into an entity... so we give monks a 「Stand」 to punch things more. ezpz

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That would be awesome, imagine having this dude behind you when you have RoF or a new offensive buff, visual feedback is also important for players and MNK is also lacking on that front.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/09skSeAoPKQ/hqdefault.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/pN88B49.png

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Originally Posted by reyre

How? How do you people have problem maintaining GL? I just dont get it, its extremely simple, the way fights are designed?

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they likely have no concept of uptime, i mean, just look at drg nin and blm, they have a far easier time to keep up their timers, drg and blm whit a press of a skill they refresh them, while nin their timer last 70 seconds long(and if its going to drop they can just recast huton again), while for monk the best way to refresh gl timer is by maximizing your uptime on hitting the enemy while using the gl main skills when needed, so people who are used to those other jobs do not try to max their uptime
so if the player who plays monk panics(due mechanics or whatever other stuff) they end up droping the gl stacks completely, literally monk requires a cold, analizing and flexible mind at all times to play propely(just like jojo characters basically)

While I'm a total JJBA mark and I'd happily let out a girlish squee of joy at getting a stand on Monk as our own form of Thousand Fists, it still wouldn't solve the problem of Monk's design being archaic by comparison to the rest of the jobs in the game without there being a broader overhaul of the jobs kit.

The only real issue with Monk right now in this expansion is that it did not gain any interesting abilities and in comparison to late Stormblood it took a step backwards in no longer having a highly engaging rotation. Yes, Tornado Kick could use a rework and SSS could maybe be an offglobal with the same effect for a quality of life boost.

However it is currently a very strong and viable job and maintaining grease seriously could not be any easier than it already is right now.

For me, monk could be fixed if they took away all the situational buttons that can refresh gl, and just like, gave us a button that just refreshes the duration on current GL stacks, 30s cooldown, to help keep it going between trash packs or during downtime on bosses. GL falling off and having a bunch of situational means to refresh it instead of something simple is what drives me away from the job.

Six sided star? If I'm able to hit things GL usually isn't falling off, form shift is usually enough if I have a short bit of downtime.
Anatman? It's nice, if I'm able to hold still during downtime but often you have to dodge aoes.
Riddle of earth? Good if there's unavoidable damage, but having to choose between standing in something or losing GL isn't fun when the damage is avoidable.

Dragoon for example can more easily keep its blood of the dragon going by just pressing a button during downtime.

I like a lot of other things about monk. I like the way it shifts through stances instead of having linear combos. I like the aesthetic and flavor of the job. I like greased lightning on paper, it's just annoying in practice. But maybe I'm just bad at monk.

I’ve mained Monk since 2.X and every expansion I quit the job to go to MCH just to come running back to Monk like an ex girlfriend. I just keep coming back to this job I started the game with. I’ve seen other people talk about this so they’re not all my ideas but Six Sided star NEEDS to be an OGCD. I’ll use Titania EX as an example but when she does her point blank AoE if you’re in the middle of an attack you have to decide to cut it close and use SSS when you can or use it right when you see you see the cast then move out potentially missing a GCD it just feels like there’s no way to win when you use it.

The biggest problem with Monk is definitely Tornado Kick. If they made TK function like BLMs polyglot it would be amazing. Have TK hold 2 charges and you get a charge after holding GL4 for 30 seconds.

Lastly I still hate that Brotherhood only buffs physical and not all damage but that is no where near as problematic as SSS and TK.

Monk would be so easy to evolve, but they seem to just want to slap more bandaids on the Greased Lightning problem.... and the ironic part is they could easily fix it and allow the job to evolve rather than give us now two expansions of skills meant to maintain this job buff. I think the original post did a good job of comparing the maintenance on enochian to greased lightning.

So easy solution: increase the duration of greased lighting. Huton is 70 seconds.... greased lightning is 16. Think about which job is more punished when a jump phase happens or when you have to disengage from a boss for more than 2-3 GCDs. This has forced the team to create Riddle of Earth (the single most frustrating skill out there since 99% of the time my greased lightning wears off 1 second before the party-wide damage goes off) Tornado Kick, Six Sided Star, and Anatman. That's four skills that could have been eliminated if they fixed greased lighting, and maybe brought down to two.

Another solution, allow form shift to at least refresh your GL timer when used in combat, even if it doesn't give more stacks. Considering black mages just had to hit transpose every few seconds last expansion and now they even GAIN benefit from umbral soul this expansion, I don't think we're asking too much to just say that we want to be able to keep our buff up with form shift, and gain stacks with anatman in jump phases.

If they do this, then they could change tornado kick into a skill with lower potency, still stays an off global cool down move, and maybe gives a GL stack rather than eats them all up. And riddle of earth could potentially provide some other form of raid utility, my though would be to apply a 10% damage reduction to the party for 10 seconds, basically a spread fists of earth.

Basically, for as long as the devs think greased lighting is fine, then we're just going to keep getting more and more situationally useful skills, and the job will continue to not evolve.

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

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Originally Posted by Kazer

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

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NO, i agree with this as well. While RoE is kind of an annoying skill i have found its use in some fights (yeah sure it is niche but there it is), other than that ROF slow down always bugged me and still does. BH is way too party dependant so making it trigger chackra procs on any skill rather than just physical abilities would be nice, Gl is extramely easy to maintain, in fact is kind of over kill with PB, RoE, Anat and SSS.

To be fair without GL MNK would be am even more dull (if such thing is posible) version of DRG. I do think we need IR back and a least one more oGCD the Slow of RoF crashes too much from the lack of oGCD.

Finally bring back ToD.

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Originally Posted by Kazer

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

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Greased lightning as a general idea, I like. I love the speed boosts since I prefer fast-paced jobs, and the extra damage it gives monk auto attacks is something really unique in this game. The problems come with how the buff needs to be maintained and it's incredibly short duration. Additionally since it falls off all four stacks at once if you mess things up, and the build up is 12 GCDs if you don't have perfect balance available, the punishment for losing it is much harsher than for any other job. Enochian has a fairly short cool down and is just a single button press if a black mage messes up. Same for dragoon. Samurai gets back its buffs in four GCDs (five if they finish the three move combo) and ninja can get back huton in, at most, 20 seconds from the goof plus 3 GCDs. This makes maintaining greased lightning a much higher priority for monks than any other job. As such the developers have wasted the last three expansions putting bandaid moves onto this buff rather than rethinking how it works.

One example of how it could be changed is simply having perfect balance grant all your stacks of greased lightning and reduce its cool down. Then you can eliminate all the other skills that exist only to augment the job mechanic and add in more off global cool down abilities.

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Originally Posted by Kazer

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

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Huton has a duration of 70 seconds, so a ninja would maintain its buff for the entirety of that jump window if it's planned for. Additionally, unless you're also locked from taking any action, black mages can use umbral soul to maintain enochian and three stacks of umbral ice and gain three umbral hearts, meaning they come back from that length of a jump phase ready to get right back into a full phase of astral fire attacks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kazer

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

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Greased Lightning is not a problem in and of itself if you look at it in a vacuum of design, it only becomes a problem in the context of the wider game. It's design is simple, Monks base potencies are inherently low, all being at or around the potencies of the first step of most other jobs combos are, so to counterbalance this Monk must upkeep a buff that allows it to strike at a faster pace while boosting those potencies to around what a second step combo would be for other jobs. Simple enough, however since Heavensward other jobs have acquired buffs that are equivalent to it. Dragoon has Blood of the Dragon, Black Mage has Enochian, and Ninja has Huton. All fulfill the same role, upkeep this buff to boost damage, Dragoon gets extended combos to raise its average combo potency, Black Mage unlocks Fire IV and gets Polyglot skills, Ninja needs Huton to attack faster and build Ninki to use other weaponskills.

These jobs have all received flat out better quality of life for upkeeping those buffs than Monk has and they've gotten it in 1-2 skills each. Dragoon can instantly extend Blood of the Dragon to 30 seconds now with no need to channel anything, perfect for longer movement heavy transitions. In Stormblood Black Mage could just spam Transpose to refresh Enochian, now they just use Umbral Soul to refresh it and build Umbral Hearts to enter a new phase roaring and ready to go. Ninja's Huton buff is so long that if you refresh it before a transition it'll still be up when the boss is back most of the time, and if it's an extremely long transition you can refresh it with a Ninjutsu and have Ninjutsu back up because of the short duration. Monk by comparison has a skill that requires us to... take a hit to refresh our stacks, which ws extremely clunky in Stormblood content, often requiring us to run into AOEs we were supposed to dodge during transitions (Rofocale, Shinryu Ex, some others) and occasionally lose our stacks anyway because we have no timer control or because shields block it from working for some stupid reason. Six Sided Star lets us extend our buff, but it sets our GCD to be twice what it normally is which means the only time we want to use it is on disengages. Since not all disengages have a cast bar (Twintania EX going into adds for Example occurs roughly 5-6 seconds after her final Phantom rune of the first phase, but you have to manually count it out). Anatman is extremely lackluster compared to what Umbral Soul and Blood of the Dragon can do to refresh stacks, but it's useage in the optimal opener is as janky or jankier than Overheating Wildfires on Stormblood Machinist, and it being a channeled skill makes it worse than Black Mage/Dragoon's abilities to just hit one button and not care.

Tornado Kick itself just sits completely at odds with Monks entire design currently, we're supposed to keep up our stacks at all costs and never dump them, so we have a skill that lets us dump our stacks for a damage loss in basically every situation except for extremely long add phases or boss executions (and note they removed Boss executions as a concept).

Should Greased Lightning be 30-40 seconds? No, I don't think so, but I also don't think Monk should have 5 skills that are all for very niche situations of GL upkeep instead of ever getting a new GCD we can use in our rotation. It should have at most two, same as the other jobs, and those two should be as powerful as Transpose and Umbral Soul are on Black Mage since its timer for upkeeping its buff is about the same as Greased Lightning. The rest of the stuff should be reworked to, say, reward Monk for upkeeping Greased Lightning with a big potency satisfying hits or a flurry of 100 ten potency hits over the course of a GCD that basically equals one big satisfying hit.

There's some really good suggestions in this thread! I have to say, Wereotter, Whiteout and Kazer really nailed some of my feelings about how Monk plays currently and what changes could be made to resolve the current problems.

I think the suggestion of reworking RoE into a raid damage down is a nice idea and compliments our healing buff we can also supply. Form shift refreshing GL has been suggested many times and at this point I think it would be a nice inclusion and also compliments Anatman. Both can exist and this allows Anatman to maintain it's ability to rebuild stacks and not simply be button bloat. Kazer is right that Anatman does solve many of our issues and so far other than dropping GL from being bad, all the fights I've done have allowed me to keep my stacks or lose them with enough time for it to not be a big deal since everyone else lost their buffs too. TK working like Polygot sounds perfect to me and 100% resolves the problem of it being dead in the water. All that's left is making SSS OGCD.

Much like Whiteout I cannot simply leave Monk alone, lol. I complained a lot when we found out how our new skills would work but honestly, playing Monk in current content, it still fees really damn good and I'm still having a blast. However, I still believe deeply that the above changes will resolve the issues the playerbase is currently facing and will make it feel like we didn't just get changes that were superfluous.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Should Greased Lightning be 30-40 seconds? No, I don't think so, but I also don't think Monk should have 5 skills that are all for very niche situations of GL upkeep instead of ever getting a new GCD we can use in our rotation. It should have at most two, same as the other jobs, and those two as powerful as Transpose and Umbral Soul are on Black Mage since its timer for upkeeping its buff is about the same as Greased Lightning, and the rest of the stuff should be reworked to, say, reward Monk for upkeeping Greased Lightning with big satisfying hits or a flurry of 100 ten potency hits over the course of a GCD that basically equals one big satisfying hit.

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I can agree with you here. I don't know that we need a massive duration on the timer for greased lightning, and I do agree that we don't want to have this many situationally useful skills just to maintain our job buff. I do think that just some simple changes to the skills we have that help maintain it would be all we need. Personally I prefer the idea that we just get all our stacks by using perfect balance, but I could go for form shift maintains and anatman builds stacks too would be good enough.

I will say that if we are going that second route, though, that I would like to see a slight increase to the amount of time our buff has, I can't tell you how many times last expansion having a 20 second timer on the buff rather than 16 seconds would have saved my stacks (especially when you look at riddle of earth and raid-wide damage) but I agree we don't need a 30-40 second timer on it. However I will say that even if we went up that high or even up to the ninja 70 second buff that it would change nothing for our rotation, and would just make maintaining the buff easier when you have to disengage. So once we start increasing the duration, that also could solve a lot of these other issues of skills needed to maintain the buff since there would be fewer instances in which you risk loosing them, and therefore you could make the punishment for losing it even harsher. Like GL has a 3-4 minute cooldown, but the GL duration lasts for 40 seconds so you're less likely to lose it <shrug>

Lots of ways this COULD be fixed, but it's just a matter of if it WILL be fixed....

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Originally Posted by Kazer

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

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the problem is, monk has no control of the urgency, and the build up time is currently too long. They reduced our ability to quickly get it back, in favor of methods to maintain it in uninteresting ways. The other problem is SE wants to have a minimal amount of actions available, so essentially these maintence skills take up slots, which makes main combat pretty boring.

TK is cool when you can get back full gl in a few seconds, but lame when it takes 12 gcds, especially going to zero speed. So basically, it seems like gl is getting in the way of them evolving monk. in Stormblood, for me, it worked, because of wind tackle and 60 second no stance skill, with max gl at 3, but now its getting in the way, giving up gl is harsher, getting it back is harder, and maintaining it isn't that entertaining