Monk Needs a Complete Rework

And shouldn't have to wait 'til 6.0 or later to get it.

Can you go more in depth?

I don't know all of the details, since I definitely don't main Monk, but they are in a decent spot at the moment. The wierd Riddle system is gone, and they finally gave you abilities to maintain Greased Lighting. Especially with Form Shift, I've been suggesting for years it get the change it got, mostly so it wasn't another wasted ability. My thoughts were heard, lol.

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Originally Posted by meTYE

Can you go more in depth?

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Not the OP but sure.

In spite of being the best performing melee before everything else was brought up to par, Monk is basically the worst designed job in the game at this point by a huge margin. There's multiple redundant, overly niche or useless skills in the kit, there are many of the problems that the players have had with it dating back to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward that have gone unaddressed despite there being numerous complaints about them, and when the devs said that they were listening to our feedback moving forward into Shadowbringers they flat out lied to us and fixed none of the problems they introduced in Stormblood while also doubling down on either them or some of the previously mentioned problems in the jobs design. It's kit also, in spite of its many problems, is lacking in a number of ways compared to other melee jobs or even jobs as a whole. It lacks any sort of Damage neutral movement skill like Hissatsu: Gyoten, Shikuchi, and Elusive jump or a true ranged poke. It's Gauge isn't fleshed out in the slightest and indeed, is actually just a conversion of a downtime loss mitigation skill from Heavensward that was lazily given a gauge with little thought to how it impacted the effectiveness of the original skill or how the original design would impact it as a gauge rather than fully converting it into a true system.

If you want some more granular examples of this here's a few.

The Fist Stances: The big problem with them is that there's only ever been one stance you'd want to use as a DPS. In ARR through Stormblood that was fire because it boosted your damage the most. In Shadowbringers its Wind because it gives you access to GL4 which also just boosts your damage the most. In Stormblood they made an appeal to making them useful with Tackle Mastery which was so poorly thought out that it was a meme (lol Earth Tackle), and it only gained any use in 4.2 with Tackle Stacks which resulted in a rotation that the devs didn't want us using so much they nerfed Perfect Balance in Shadowbringers. In Shadowbringers they tried it again with Enhanced Fists of Fire and new Riddle of Wind, the two stances are incredibly close in damage to the point where Fire can occasionally be slipped into in a few edge cases the most common of which is the first 3 GCDs of a fight and the final GCD, but 99% of the time you want to be in Wind. Its an entire system they could remove and basically nothing about the job would change. This is something they flat out fixed on Ninja by removing Kiss of the Wasp/Viper as skills and just folding that damage into a trait, but on Monk it's persisted for two expansions.

Another problem that has gone unfixed is Stormblood RNG and how it makes Monk extremely comp dependent in terms of performance. Monk is still Crit RNG Dependent/Physical Comp Dependent which was maligned in Stormblood. Without a Dragoon and a Scholar providing Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem, Monk can't perform at its best. Unlucky RNG over the course of the fight also produces exponentially less damage than if you'd have good crit RNG. Similarly Brotherhood is a major contributor of potency in Monks burst phase, but its RNG only procs off of physical weaponskills. If there's more than one caster in the party, or you're even just in a 4-Man, Monk gets less procs and does less damage over the course of a fight, and because the procs are still RNG you'll occasionally get extremely unsatisfying Riddle of Fire burst phases where you barely get one Forbidden Chakra or don't get one at all. As with Ninja and Kiss of the Wasp/Viper, this was something the devs fixed on other jobs. Bard moved away from Crit RNG and comp dependence in Shadowbringers to its benefit. Monks design however is left behind.

As for useless or overly Niche actions, Monk has Tornado Kick and its most recent capstone skill Six Sided Star which fit in the exact same niche of "Thing I want to do when disengaging". The worse of these is Tornado Kick, which in costing Monk all of its stacks makes its use case so high it gets used all of twice in the Eden series outside of as a boss Execute making it about as useful as Shoha originally was. However like most other problems with Monk that have parallels in other jobs, the other job gets the fix and Monk has the skill sitting around for so long unchanged that the devs are willing to Break the jobs ability to function rather than fix the problem. When the ability to regain stacks let Monk use TK rotationally at the end of Stormblood, the devs undid the best quality of life they'd ever given it by doubling PBs cast time and removing tackle stacks which made Monk abysmal to level or even play in a dungeon in Shadowbringers until the Form Shift change. Six Sided Star is marginally better, being good for Short disengages, but its inherently at odds with the existing skill Meditate that existed for the exact same reason.

And in spite of all of these useless actions or outright bloat, Monk is still the least mobile of the Melee because our only movement skill has damage tied up in it. It's a mess of accumulated bad design and unfixed problems that are clearly solvable because other jobs have received fixes for similar or identical problems in the past. The devs know there's problems with it considering they admitted that Stormblood Monk's design was a failure in the lead up to Shadowbringers, but either they completely misread what the playerbase wanted, they're too married to their own concept of what the job is, or they're so self-sure that ARR Monk is the gold standard of a job despite how the game design has shifted since 2.0 that they're unwilling to fix things that needed fixing. Whatever the case is, what we have now isn't satisfying for the majority of players and the 5.05 changes were only a stopgap towards placating us that was immediately undone by them making Anatman worse. Supposedly the Japanese playerbase is being fairly vocal about this as well, so maybe we'll see change but who knows.

In terms of a rework on the level of something like Machinist I don't think that's necessary. The foundation of the class, Greased Lightning, its basic GCD loop, and Form-Based Combos, aren't broken in the way that Heat was in Stormblood for Machinist. But it hasn't gotten anything that's actually satisfying to use as a skill since Elixir Field, it's largely just unsatisfying replacements for stuff they strip from us at low levels or terrible utility skills. I'd say pretty much every skill it has past level 54 needs some serious examination and quite a few ARR skills as well.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

In spite of being the best performing melee before everything else was brought up to par, Monk is basically the worst designed job in the game at this point by a huge margin. There's multiple redundant, overly niche or useless skills in the kit, there are many of the problems that the players have had with it dating back to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward that have gone unaddressed despite there being numerous complaints about them, and when the devs said that they were listening to our feedback moving forward into Shadowbringers

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Healers: "First time?"

Everything Speckled said was true, but I want to focus on one little detail plaguing Monk job design: we have nothing new.

Let's look at Monk's main mechanic: Greased Lightning. Monk is all about GL, keeping it up and wailing away at the enemy. Monk also used to be all about positionals but that's been nerfed into being barely noticeable for the most part. Monk has not one, not two, not three, not four, but *FIVE* damned abilities all tied to the expenditure or maintenance of GL outside of a normal combo, which combined with the longer GL duration means we have tons of leeway on that anyway. We have:

1 - Tornado Kick, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
2 - Six Sided Star, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
3 - Riddle of Earth, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
4 - Anatman, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
5 - Form Shift, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.

And these. Are all. Monk. Has gotten. Since. ARR. Outside of an oGCD with Elixir Field all the way back in HW and an AoE second step in our basic combo, everything monk has now was present in ARR, just under a different name.

1-The Forbidden Chakra, the single-target oGCD? You mean Steel Peak? Oh wait that was removed.
2-Enlightenment, the line-AoE oGCD? You mean Howling Fist? Oh wait that was removed. (Also since this shares Chakra with TFC it means it never sees use in single-target situations, so we actually lost an oGCD for most fights.)
3-Tornado Kick being used as an execute (instead of a Greased Lightning spending mechanic)? You mean Mercy Stroke? Oh wait, that was removed.
4-Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, the DPS-boosting cooldowns? You mean Blood for Blood and Internal Release? Oh wait, those were removed. At least Brotherhood buffs allies slightly, even if it is janky as all hell.
5-[SKILL NOT FOUND], you mean Touch of Death or Fracture? Oh wait we never even got something to replace those. I'm not even going to mention Invigorate or Impulse Drive being useful.

Monk hasn't evolved, if anything it's more basic than at launch.

I liked having to watch my TP on longer fights, knowing when I'd have a chance to rest and restore some, timing Invigorate so I didn't waste any. I liked being able to delay my combo slightly with Fracture and ToD so I could line up a Rockbreaker to come out right when the adds did.

The most clever I ever felt in FFXIV was back during T9, when Nael would jump away sometimes. If you timed a Coeurl stance move just before he jumped, you'd have *just* enough time to do another combo and keep all 3 stacks of GL. This meant that the optimal way to maximize DPS was to actually *not* hit your button for a couple of seconds to line this up. It felt great to do, like I was really drawing every drop I could from the class mechanics. Now if a boss jumps away I have all the options in the world, none of which really matter because Form Shifting 3 times is always the easiest and least costly thing you can possibly do.

I also miss positionals being absolutely painful if you missed them, you had to get super greedy and coordinate with the tanks to turn bosses slightly sometimes to help you out. Now? Well if somehow both charges of True North are on cooldown I also have Riddle of Earth, which *thank heavens* I don't have to think if I might need it to keep my GL stacks and I can just mash it whenever. And if all of those aren't available, oh well, positionals (with the exception of Bootshine, look forward to that being made brain-dead soon too!) aren't as big of a loss anyway these days. Back in ARR if you were going to miss a positional you'd want to use Fracture or even Rockbreaker on single target, assuming your TP could handle it... is the Bard likely to sing a TP song soon? How's the warrior doing, when's Invigorate coming back up, is the boss almost dead, am I going to have a lengthy break to restore TP? LOL NVM I CAN JUST HIT SNAP PUNCH WHO CARES LOL

Now you can argue these mechanics weren't great. They certainly weren't always handled well, like TP during Heavensward was kinda butts. But monk has had *nothing* to replace any of them. Everyone* else has something new. Sure they might have had stuff removed from time to time, and the new thing isn't always super exciting, but damn it it's *something.*

*Does not include Red Mages. I feel bad for them too but at least they only have one expansion cycle to stagnate.

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Originally Posted by Powercow

Everything Speckled said was true, but I want to focus on one little detail plaguing Monk job design: we have nothing new.

Let's look at Monk's main mechanic: Greased Lightning. Monk is all about GL, keeping it up and wailing away at the enemy. Monk also used to be all about positionals but that's been nerfed into being barely noticeable for the most part. Monk has not one, not two, not three, not four, but *FIVE* damned abilities all tied to the expenditure or maintenance of GL outside of a normal combo, which combined with the longer GL duration means we have tons of leeway on that anyway. We have:

1 - Tornado Kick, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
2 - Six Sided Star, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
3 - Riddle of Earth, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
4 - Anatman, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
5 - Form Shift, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.


And these. Are all. Monk. Has gotten. Since. ARR. Outside of an oGCD with Elixir Field all the way back in HW and an AoE second step in our basic combo, everything monk has now was present in ARR, just under a different name.

1-The Forbidden Chakra, the single-target oGCD? You mean Steel Peak? Oh wait that was removed.
2-Enlightenment, the line-AoE oGCD? You mean Howling Fist? Oh wait that was removed. (Also since this shares Chakra with TFC it means it never sees use in single-target situations, so we actually lost an oGCD for most fights.)
3-Tornado Kick being used as an execute (instead of a Greased Lightning spending mechanic)? You mean Mercy Stroke? Oh wait, that was removed.
4-Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, the DPS-boosting cooldowns? You mean Blood for Blood and Internal Release? Oh wait, those were removed. At least Brotherhood buffs allies slightly, even if it is janky as all hell.
5-[SKILL NOT FOUND], you mean Touch of Death or Fracture? Oh wait we never even got something to replace those. I'm not even going to mention Invigorate or Impulse Drive being useful.

Monk hasn't evolved, if anything it's more basic than at launch.

I liked having to watch my TP on longer fights, knowing when I'd have a chance to rest and restore some, timing Invigorate so I didn't waste any. I liked being able to delay my combo slightly with Fracture and ToD so I could line up a Rockbreaker to come out right when the adds did.

The most clever I ever felt in FFXIV was back during T9, when Nael would jump away sometimes. If you timed a Coeurl stance move just before he jumped, you'd have *just* enough time to do another combo and keep all 3 stacks of GL. This meant that the optimal way to maximize DPS was to actually *not* hit your button for a couple of seconds to line this up. It felt great to do, like I was really drawing every drop I could from the class mechanics. Now if a boss jumps away I have all the options in the world, none of which really matter because Form Shifting 3 times is always the easiest and least costly thing you can possibly do.

I also miss positionals being absolutely painful if you missed them, you had to get super greedy and coordinate with the tanks to turn bosses slightly sometimes to help you out. Now? Well if somehow both charges of True North are on cooldown I also have Riddle of Earth, which *thank heavens* I don't have to think if I might need it to keep my GL stacks and I can just mash it whenever. And if all of those aren't available, oh well, positionals (with the exception of Bootshine, look forward to that being made brain-dead soon too!) aren't as big of a loss anyway these days. Back in ARR if you were going to miss a positional you'd want to use Fracture or even Rockbreaker on single target, assuming your TP could handle it... is the Bard likely to sing a TP song soon? How's the warrior doing, when's Invigorate coming back up, is the boss almost dead, am I going to have a lengthy break to restore TP? LOL NVM I CAN JUST HIT SNAP PUNCH WHO CARES LOL

Now you can argue these mechanics weren't great. They certainly weren't always handled well, like TP during Heavensward was kinda butts. But monk has had *nothing* to replace any of them. Everyone* else has something new. Sure they might have had stuff removed from time to time, and the new thing isn't always super exciting, but damn it it's *something.*

*Does not include Red Mages. I feel bad for them too but at least they only have one expansion cycle to stagnate.

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I agree with your first points completely. Five skills that act as "Button to hit after the boss disengages to maintain stacks" is way too many, and the fact that Form Shift didn't gain the effect it got in 5.05 in Stormblood when Black Mage could upkeep Enochian with nothing but Transpose was absurd. The devs adding another one of those skills in Anatman (and arguably two since Six Sided Star has that effect also) was insulting when Black Mage got something as good as Umbral Soul. The trend of Monk losing low level skills and either getting nothing to replace them or only to have something otherwise identical added back to the top end is a problem as well. I was a big fan of Fracture buffering, especially with a high skill speed build.

TP though, I'm indifferent to its loss. There wasn't any additional thought that went into managing it other than "Hit Invigorate at 600 then eventually go dry" while BLM never ran out and Summoner was seemingly MP Neutral at least. Positionals being a pain in the ass is something of a double edged swords, it severely undercuts an aspect of Monks gameplay, but its an aspect of its gameplay that also severely penalized Monk if certain fight mechanics locked you into placed. I'd have preferred if they'd just kept the Damage penalty toned down, but then they made Bootshine's positional the single worst one to miss by an enormous margin.

I also wouldn't say that the other jobs got anything to replace those mechanics so much as they just had their existing mechanics iterated on. Dragoon has Jump as its defining characteristic, so it gets Blood of the Dragon to boost their power and give them a buff to keep in Heavensward, and in Stormblood using those jumps during BotD allows it to enter Life of the Dragon, incentivizing the good play through hitting Jumps on cooldown and promoting upkeep of BotD. Black Mage casts spells, so it gets Enochian to give them more powerful spells incentivizing Enochian upkeep in Heavensward, and in Stormblood Upkeep is further rewarded for doing so with Foul. Further, both jobs get useful, powerful tools to keep those buffs up such as Umbral Soul or enhanced BotD allowing a full refresh. That's good iterative design on existing mechanics, rewarding good play with satisfying skillls.

Monk has never had that good iterative design. It's had Greased Lightning, forms, and many positionals from the beginning which basically made Monk a more complete job than the other in ARR, but while other jobs changed and were iterated on Monk wasn't. We've never gotten further incentive to keep GL like a Foul or a Life of the Dragon. It's only gotten weak skills for GL upkeep that are at odds with each other that were practically designed to inevitably leave situations where upkeep is impossible (Until 5.05 happened and someone on the dev team actually played Monk once). We have satisfying looking skills in Tornado Kick and Six Sided Star, but their use cases basically make them Noob traps to lure people into trying to use them even though they're damage losses outside of narrow circumstances. Satisfying Design for skills like Tornado Kick and Six Sided Star would be gaining effects that let us use the former after upkeeping GL for 45 seconds and the later after hitting a certain number of positionals. The same philosophy should be applied to Deep Meditation, by refreshing Greased Lightning with a Coeurl Form skill it should open a Chakra, rewarding good play rather than leaving us with a bunch of skills that see no use 99% of the time.

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Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

Healers: "First time?"

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Cute, but Monk had to put up with this nonsense since before the beginning of Stormblood, where as I recall most of the healers were relatively happy except for White Mage and Lilies as they were initially designed. Save the snark until you've kept your problems for a full expansion, let alone nearly 3 years.

I can agree monk needs a rework, or atleast make a few skills more useful, for example TK... sucks such a cool ability removes almost all your dps and turns you into a turtle... The need to switch between fire and wind have only added more to think off while playing the job, lots of buffs and debuffs to keep an eye on. Its alot harder to play than DRG. Tornado Kick should be changed into a cooldown ability same as Elixir Field, would make it more useful while preventing us from losing all our dps.

I think you might want to give more specific examples of what you want instead of just a list of what you didn't like.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I think you might want to give more specific examples of what you want instead of just a list of what you didn't like.

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The developers have had a habit of keeping useless skills, doubling up on skills you only need one of, and eliminating skills we actually do use. This happened both this current expansion as well as the last one.

For example, Touch of Death was removed last expansion, but One Ilm Punch was retained.

Monk has too many skills that are only there to either burn off all your Greased Lightning stacks or to just maintain them. In reality monk really only needs one to maintain stacks and one to spend them, and the rest of the skills should be either reworked or cut out entirely. My personal take, leave Tornado Kick as-is, and then make Perfect Balance just give you max GL stacks. Then cut out Anatman, Six-Sided Star, and Riddle of Earth in their current forms, and maybe make them into something different.

Some examples could be Anatman is a downtime skill that gives you a stacking damage up boost so that when a boss returns, from a jump phase, you do additional damage for a short period of time. Bring back Steel Peak and then have Six Sided Star simply replace it at higher levels as a higher damage version of the same skill with a new animation. Riddle of Earth could maybe then be a party utility skill that provides a small defense up boost to the party, and maybe lock it behind being in fists of earth?

Additionally I do think the removal of Inner Release was a bad idea with the current iteration of the job. With it being layers upon layers of RNG to unlock your DPS potential, Inner Release was one skill that helped tilt those odds in your favor. I do think that the RNG aspect of monk should be more like bard where if you get a critical hit, you get a chakra stack. It may require a nerf to the potency if Forbidden Chakra, but if you're able to use the skill more often, and you're guaranteed that if nothing else, after five bootshines you get a forbidden chakra, the job will feel better to play.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Then cut out Anatman, Six-Sided Star, and Riddle of Earth in their current forms, and maybe make them into something different.

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Most of these suggestions don't actually alter current monk's gameplay. For example, Six Sided Star as just "Steel Peak but stronger" is just another bog standard "Use on cooldown, prioritize in burst window" OGCD. These get cut. It's not just Monk, this tends to happen across the board (I don't agree with it - I miss the shoulder ram animation - but thems the breaks)

On a personal level, I don't think the 50 and under Kit needs much work. Maybe a little number tuning (There's a pretty good analysis on Leaden Fist somewhere around here), but the FFF RRR weaponskills don't need much tweaking.

Moving forward, my own preference would be making Chakra and Greased Lightning play off each other more. An optional avenue would be having Fist/Riddles play into it somehow.

For example, lets take Anantman and Six Sided Star and create a very basic play between the two.

Six Sided Star
Weaponskill
2.5 Recast (standard)
Effect: Deals "X" potency (Slightly less than the average of the mainline combo). Grants 1 Chakra.

Anantman
Ability
45s recast
Cost: 5 Chakra
Effect: Grants Greased Lightning IV.

From these two changes we have a few implications.

Tornado Kick can be used now. Anantman allows one to TK at anytime it's up and maintain Greased Lightning - Provided the Boss isn't about to jump.
If a Monk needs to delay a GCD in the main combo, Six Sided Star allows this while also serving as some Chakra management.

To me these are good changes to the Monk's baseline kit. They start building a base of prioritization of Chakra and Greased Lightning, from which one could extrapolate more of the kit with that end-goal in mind, which does allow us to bring back bog standard OGCDs by building them around this concept.

Steel Peak, which becomes Forbidden Chakra with 5 Chakra.
Howling Fist, which becomes Enlightenment with 5 Chakra.

One of these have an independent CD from their Chakra variant.
One of these shares the CD with their Chakra variant, but gains significantly more strength.

With that, we have created a basic resource conflict with the Chakra skills, between the two chakra skills and Tornado kick (through Anantman).

MNK doesn't need a rework, but when 6.0 comes around hopefully they'll trim a lot of the bloat that is Greased Lightning and form maintenance skills. There's just so many of them. I feel like the "Fist of XXX" skills will probably be pruned by then, too, in favor of keeping the riddles and adding more interesting skills (can keep the fists skills as traits maybe).

I mean, they have 4 downtime maintenance skills in Tornado Kick, Anatman, Meditation, and Form Shift. They could easily retool Tornado Kick into an oGCD that's used more regularly, like removing the GL-burn and limiting it to only being usable during Riddle of Fire like how Nastrond works only during DRG Life of the Dragon.

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Originally Posted by Pyitoechito

MNK doesn't need a rework, but when 6.0 comes around hopefully they'll trim a lot of the bloat that is Greased Lightning and form maintenance skills. There's just so many of them. I feel like the "Fist of XXX" skills will probably be pruned by then, too, in favor of keeping the riddles and adding more interesting skills (can keep the fists skills as traits maybe).

I mean, they have 4 downtime maintenance skills in Tornado Kick, Anatman, Meditation, and Form Shift. They could easily retool Tornado Kick into an oGCD that's used more regularly, like removing the GL-burn and limiting it to only being usable during Riddle of Fire like how Nastrond works only during DRG Life of the Dragon.

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I don’t think Monk needs a full rework either, but waiting until 6.0 for any kinds of changes to Monks kit is literally making Monk wait two full expansions before there's a chance for the players to be satisfied with it. That's insane, especially when so many other jobs have gotten substantial changes in 5.1. Some might say that Monk has seen fixes already, but the 5.05 stuff only fixed a small handful of the problems with the job. They finally fixed the Riddle of Fire change which is undeniably a good change, but it can't be forgotten that they for whatever reason intended to leave that in for 5.X until the playerbase expressed its displeasure. But largely it was just done to make Monk playable in dungeons with the Formshift changes, because 5.0 Monk in dungeons was miserable. Meanwhile 5.1 stuff flat out made one of the few remaining use cases for Anatman feel awful every time and by and large just reversed any goodwill 5.05 gave Monk.

The fact of the matter is Stormblood Monk was so disliked that the devs admitted that it was a misstep that dissatisfied people in all of the Shadowbringers prerelease press discussion that brought it up, and everything they produced for Monk on Shadowbringers Launch was even worse to the point where it was the worst received DPS by a huge margin. They're basically two full expansions behind with the job at this point and if it isn't a priority for them to fix it ASAP then it should be.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I think you might want to give more specific examples of what you want instead of just a list of what you didn't like.

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Anatman: The next 2 Weapon Skills will grant an additional stack of Greased Lightning each.

Six-Sided-Star: For the next 12 seconds, all of your weapon skills have a range of 25 yalms. No longer has the double global cooldown, potency reduced drastically.

Touch of Death: Costs 2 Chakras. 50 potency immediately, 25 more per tick over 30 seconds.

The Forbidden Chakra: Reduced potency.

Deep Meditation II: Now 100% on crit, instead of 80%. Double RNG layers, especially when they're this high, feel bad. You don't feel like you got a bonus chakra on crits, you feel like you got screwed out of one on a crit and didn't get a chakra.

Brotherhood: Now applies to both physical and spell attacks. Bonus chakras also come from both spells and weapon skills. Effect reduced to compensate.

It's not perfect and it certainly won't fix everything but it's a start. Anatman giving a couple of stacks will still allow for TK to be used while changing up Monk's flow enough to return the feel of "ramping up" that Monk was known for in 2.0. SSS having something unique could be interesting on bosses, giving us a disengage-type skill that's different than the other melee. ToD's return will shake up the rotation, even if only slightly. The DM2 and Brohood changes will make Monk less RNG-reliant and less comp-reliant. Yes we're still going to rely heavily on Battle Litany and Chain Strategem but it won't be to the extreme extent it is now. TFC's nerf is to compensate for the additional TFC casts, which would also work to speed up monk in an organic way by adding more oGCDs.

Just spitballin' ideas.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Most of these suggestions don't actually alter current monk's gameplay. For example, Six Sided Star as just "Steel Peak but stronger" is just another bog standard "Use on cooldown, prioritize in burst window" OGCD. These get cut. It's not just Monk, this tends to happen across the board (I don't agree with it - I miss the shoulder ram animation - but thems the breaks)

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You're right, my suggestions aren't exactly ground breaking for how to improve the job, but then for me, I see monk's biggest problem as the fact that the job is and for many years has been, over bloated with useless skills, many of which survive the skill purges in Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

I am with you in that I would like to see the two resources of the job play into each other. I don't have a lot of ideas for this, but there could be something like a skill that turns all your chakra stacks into greased lighting, making skills that dump your greased lightning stack more viable to use.

They could also change up the monk numbers (this would be a nightmare to balance) in such a way that every stack of GL you get increases your speed but decreases your damage until you reach all four stacks and then burn them all for a big attack.

These might not be the best solutions, but I do think that most people agree that it would be nice for the job to gain something new to its core rotation which has been unchanged since ARR, and I think some adjustments to either how greased lightning or the chakra system works might be just the way to spice things up.

As one of the few monks that did savage and has been playing monk since stormblood I think monk really needs changes, but a rework? I don't know if a complete rework would do the trick, honestly what he needs is to get a proper rotation where he fully uses all of his skills, meaning we don't need situational skills like Tornado kick and six sided strike. Of all the melee jobs he is the least fun to play right now, anatman opener was nerfed pretty hard and we still relay on server ping, he lacks impactful skills, look at dragoon for example he gets his burst window unlocking this new cool skill while all we get is... forbidden chakra. That why I'm probably gonna change job when the next savage tier arrives, monk is just meh.

Monk doesn't need a rework. Monk has always performed well through and through. Just because you guys don't like the way it is now despite it still being very high on the boards doesn't mean it needs a rework. They could change some things yes but not a "Rework". The only other class that needs a rework is Ninja. Ninja has always been at the bottom and rarely anyone plays it. Even with the new changes recently it's still slow. They just need to rework it like they did Machinist.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Monk doesn't need a rework. Monk has always performed well through and through. Just because you guys don't like the way it is now despite it still being very high on the boards doesn't mean it needs a rework. They could change some things yes but not a "Rework". The only other class that needs a rework is Ninja. Ninja has always been at the bottom and rarely anyone plays it. Even with the new changes recently it's still slow. They just need to rework it like they did Machinist.

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why would nin or any class for that matter need a rework because its at the bottom of the dps charts ? asking for a rework because a class feels clunky or unintuitive makes sense on a general level, but because its not topping the charts ? thats just numbers, you could give nin 50 potency on every single skill and it would be top dps everywhere by a bigger margin than its currently lagging behind (which really isn't all that much), or you could rework it completly a lá mch and at the same time have it deal worse dps than it does now, numbers are the literally worst reason for a rework unless theres some fundamental flaw in the design that inflates or deflates these numbers.

In the same vein, monk performing well isn't a reason to say the class works, a class can be top dps and still feel shitty to play, or it can feel great to play yet be so bad no one wants to take it. The reason why people ask for a monk rework in the first place is that its basically the same class now that it was in ARR while every other class evolved, monk now does the same as it did during ARR, just that now monk has extra tools to keep greased lightning. At this point basically every second new skill monk gets during each expansion is redundant, monk has more than enough ways to keep gl , yet instead of changing things up they simply double down on that for 3 addons straight now

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Monk doesn't need a rework. Monk has always performed well through and through. Just because you guys don't like the way it is now despite it still being very high on the boards doesn't mean it needs a rework. They could change some things yes but not a "Rework". The only other class that needs a rework is Ninja. Ninja has always been at the bottom and rarely anyone plays it. Even with the new changes recently it's still slow. They just need to rework it like they did Machinist.

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Monk was bottom tier of the melee beneath Ninja until 5.0, hate to break it to you. Just because Monk did more personal damage didn't mean it outdid the contribution of Trick Attack/The Aggro tricks Ninja had, and even with the TK rotation Monk barely matched it. Ninja was always strong from its introduction in 2.4 until 5.0, and right now it's still better than Monk was historically such as in Heavensward. It also says a lot now that Monk isn't the flavor of the month...it's back to being one of the least played jobs in the game by a pretty huge margin.

Monk's kit is a mess and it's undeniable. We've continuously lost low level skills and had them re-implemented at the top end instead of getting anything new, the devs still haven't given it the Stormblood Useless Action rework for things like the Fist Stances, it's still missing certain basic utility skills like a DPS neutral movement skill, and they still haven't addressed many of the problems with the design people had with it in Stormblood either. It doesn't need to be rebuilt from the ground up, but it needs nearly a third of its kit gutted and changed.

The job suffer from "we don't know what to do on this expansion with this..." there a chance where this job might get adjustment in 5.2 or 5.3. Worse case it be at on next expansion like always.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Monk doesn't need a rework. Monk has always performed well through and through. Just because you guys don't like the way it is now despite it still being very high on the boards doesn't mean it needs a rework. They could change some things yes but not a "Rework". The only other class that needs a rework is Ninja. Ninja has always been at the bottom and rarely anyone plays it. Even with the new changes recently it's still slow. They just need to rework it like they did Machinist.

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Are you high? Ninja's been consistently part of the meta and a job that entire game's openers have been planned around, ever since it's introduction up until 5.0, when it got nerfed too much for the first time. Regardless, power level has nothing to do with whether the job should be reworked or not - that's what buffs/nerfs are for, reworks are for gameplay/enjoyment issues.

Also last thing NIN needs is getting butchered and watered down like MCH got - 5.1 took some good aspects of the job away, but it removed ping issues and is still pretty enjoyable at least, now they should at most do some small tweaks like giving us back old Shadowfang.
Btw, reworked MCH is still pretty weak, quite a lot weaker than NIN which you think "needs an MCH-style rework to become stronger".

As for MNK - I don't think rework in the sense SE seems to understand it as would be good. MNK(or any job for that matter imo) shouldn't get turned 180 from it's fundamental mechanics/identity like MCH/DRK got - SE should instead look at what worked before(like TK rotation) and what never freaking works(aka Fist stances, seriously) and make changes based on that instead of reinventing it into pretty much an entirely new job.

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Originally Posted by Zarkovitch

The job suffer from "we don't know what to do on this expansion with this..." there a chance where this job might get adjustment in 5.2 or 5.3. Worse case it be at on next expansion like always.

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At this point my position is that "Wait until Next expansion" isn't good enough after being told that for all of Stormblood. That's way too long to wait to be satisfied in a job.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

As for MNK - I don't think rework in the sense SE seems to understand it as would be good. MNK(or any job for that matter imo) shouldn't get turned 180 from it's fundamental mechanics/identity like MCH/DRK got - SE should instead look at what worked before(like TK rotation) and what never freaking works(aka Fist stances, seriously) and make changes based on that instead of reinventing it into pretty much an entirely new job.

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This is a reasonable concern. The reason Stormblood Monk was such a flop is that the devs didn't know what to do and so they just started making changes that people didn't like (they admitted this, but also they didn't fix any of the problems until 5.05 because of course not and even then some of the problems still exist such as RNG). Shadowbringers ended up being worse because while they did identify one thing we wanted in GL4, they pretty much missed the mark on the things we didn't want and kept adding those things such as greater RNG reliance and more upkeep stuff. By the same measure they missed out on what we didn't like or think worked on Monk and decided to keep the Fist Stances for a second expansion in a row other than.

As for the TK rotation, it's hard to say that it actually "worked" when it was extremely divisive at the time it existed in terms of how much people liked it. I certainly didn't like it, even if it was effective at doing a lot of damage, however that could change depending on how they decide to implement it. The problem is that Greased Lightning isn't designed as a resource to be spent, its something built to be maintained and we now have Formshift as a powerful tool to allow us to do so. If they altered Anatman as was suggested on the last page to just instantly grant full stacks of GL, TK could be used routinely and probably feel better than it did in Stormblood IMO but I don't know if thats the direction they'd go with it instead of making it build a charge like Foul/Xenoglossy.

Machinist is also rather odd to mention as an example of a rework that shouldn't be followed, as its largely been received very well even if there are still some quirks to it that need fixing in terms of its latency issues. That said, I also don't think its a good path to follow in this instance. Machinist in Stormblood was broken foundationally, Monk's foundations in Greased Lightning and Forms are fine and should remain intact. It's largely how they've built things around it that's the problem in the context of a changing game.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

As for the TK rotation, it's hard to say that it actually "worked" when it was extremely divisive at the time it existed in terms of how much people liked it. I certainly didn't like it, even if it was effective at doing a lot of damage, however that could change depending on how they decide to implement it. The problem is that Greased Lightning isn't designed as a resource to be spent, its something built to be maintained and we now have Formshift as a powerful tool to allow us to do so. If they altered Anatman as was suggested on the last page to just instantly grant full stacks of GL, TK could be used routinely and probably feel better than it did in Stormblood IMO but I don't know if thats the direction they'd go with it instead of making it build a charge like Foul/Xenoglossy.

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Whether you liked TK or not is a matter of taste I suppose. What I mean by saying that it worked, is that it's accomplished several things:
- Adding an interaction with MNK's core mechanic - GS - which capitalized on its unique quality of being a buff that has to be build up with stacks.
- Added more synergy between several skills in the job's kit(TK, PB, Coeurl gcds, Wind Tackle, IR and RoF).
- Made a pretty niche skill(TK) a regular part of MNK's rotation.
- Made up a significant portion of the job's dps.
- It also did not really affect the GS maintenance mechanic during downtime/disengagements, so it could work perfectly well alongside current Form Shift and SSS.

Basically, it was not just something they tacked on that turned out to just be some niche skill that sees use only a couple times per fight. Which is insanely ironic, as they didn't even add it on purpose.

As for GS not being designed as a resource to be spent - TK rotation was not SE's design either. The point is that just because something was not originally designed for a certain purpose, does not mean that it should never evolve for it if there's potential to make it work.

The one clear issue with TK was the need to weave 4 skills just to get a single GS stack from RoW, which was obviously a result of it being unintended and could be easily fixed by tying that GS stack to a dedicated ability instead of the fist mechanics SE so illogically clings to.

I don't like the idea of making TK another Xenoglossy for 2 reasons: one is obviously that it's kind of lame to just grab a mechanic from BLM and slap it on MNK, other is that it doesn't interact in any way with what makes GS unique - which is the stack building. Neither does adding a skill which instantly grants you full stacks, as then you just make GS a "single button application" buff like anything else.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Machinist is also rather odd to mention as an example of a rework that shouldn't be followed, as its largely been received very well

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MCH rework might've been well received, but it is a good example of one that's been so radical, that it might've as well been a new job honestly. Not a single mechanic from HW/SB MCH has been kept intact - heck, even aesthetics have mostly been changed - and I think that's a terrible direction to take with any job, unless there's really nothing enjoyable about it at all.

That and also I think it's been reduced to something utterly dull, but that part's obviously subjective given its popularity.

I honestly don't trust SE to not ruin Monk further in their next "attempt" to fix everything wrong with it. They consistently refuse to listen to community feedback from people who actually play the bloody job, and seemingly kowtowed to people who don't even like playing the job in the first place to make adjustments that nobody asked for, ever. We had people screeching for nerfs for months while refusing to try to understand the deficiencies with the way the job plays and has played from RR to HW to SB and ShB, and well, here we are.

At this point, I'll just be pleasantly surprised to log in and not find the job crystal deleted from my inventory from some hotfix. I don't think there's a single button in Monk's kit that the developers actually know what they really intend it to be, and how they want it to interact with any other button, because we've consistently seen them overreact with surprise whenever Monks who put forth a basic effort to play the job half decently and somehow end up doing something that "is not intended."

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

As for the TK rotation, it's hard to say that it actually "worked" when it was extremely divisive at the time it existed in terms of how much people liked it. I certainly didn't like it, even if it was effective at doing a lot of damage, however that could change depending on how they decide to implement it.

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That's kind of the point, though. Why didn't they just reduce its potency slightly as to be less obligatory and remove the need to triple-weave instead of removing Monk's quickened ramp-up skill just to get rid of something some Monks didn't like having the issues that came with it?

There was no for such a drastic gutting -- only to actually correctly tune, for once, what they already had: one rotational option against another. Instead, what replaced it left us with an incohesive mess of redundancies, some of which would have actually made sense if and almost only if TK was still permitted to be a part of play. And each band-aid to cover up that massive error has only deepened that issue further.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

Whether you liked TK or not is a matter of taste I suppose. What I mean by saying that it worked, is that it's accomplished several things:
- Adding an interaction with MNK's core mechanic - GS - which capitalized on its unique quality of being a buff that has to be build up with stacks.
- Added more synergy between several skills in the job's kit(TK, PB, Coeurl gcds, Wind Tackle, IR and RoF).
- Made a pretty niche skill(TK) a regular part of MNK's rotation.
- Made up a significant portion of the job's dps.
- It also did not really affect the GS maintenance mechanic during downtime/disengagements, so it could work perfectly well alongside current Form Shift and SSS.

Basically, it was not just something they tacked on that turned out to just be some niche skill that sees use only a couple times per fight. Which is insanely ironic, as they didn't even add it on purpose.

As for GS not being designed as a resource to be spent - TK rotation was not SE's design either. The point is that just because something was not originally designed for a certain purpose, does not mean that it should never evolve for it if there's potential to make it work.

The one clear issue with TK was the need to weave 4 skills just to get a single GS stack from RoW, which was obviously a result of it being unintended and could be easily fixed by tying that GS stack to a dedicated ability instead of the fist mechanics SE so illogically clings to.

I don't like the idea of making TK another Xenoglossy for 2 reasons: one is obviously that it's kind of lame to just grab a mechanic from BLM and slap it on MNK, other is that it doesn't interact in any way with what makes GS unique - which is the stack building. Neither does adding a skill which instantly grants you full stacks, as then you just make GS a "single button application" buff like anything else.

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Those are all fair points, and indeed they're reasons I at least appreciated the existence of the TK rotation in Stormblood even if I personally found it jarring to use.

However there was another issue with the TK rotation for people that you're forgetting, using TK drops Greased Lightning which has a very tangible feeling on your gameplay. That feeling of losing your stacks has been ingrained into Monk to be awful and tantamount to failure of playing the job correctly. I'd actually say it is the single most awful buff to lose in the game because of it, and it was arguably a biggerer big reason that the TK rotation didn't feel good to use for many than having to do four weaves for one oGCD. This is the primary reason why I and many others fundamentally disagree with the idea of Greased Lightning being a resource to spend rather than a buff to be maintained: losing Greased Lightning is a terrible feeling pretty much by design, and any use of Greased Lightning as a resource is going to cause that to occur regularly.

Further, Greased Lightning 4 being the principal addition to Shadowbringers' Monk exacerbates the feeling of losing your stacks, and therefor that particular unpleasant aspect of the TK rotation in two ways. First is that the haste you're losing is stronger than before ,so you end up feeling even slower relative to what you lost in Stormblood. Secondly is that the manner in which we build Greased Lightning is still slow, it will now always take additional time to build back towards our baseline. There's a couple of ways to avoid that problem but none of them are particularly good. Introduce a "Restore GL to full" button via Anatman/some revision to Perfect Balance does it but it has the problems you mentioned, or they completely decouple the haste from GL and have it just be persistent while Greased Lightning would just be a damage buff which I don't particularly see as a good solution either.

TK as Xenoglossy was just an off the cuff suggestion that struck me as simple to implement while avoiding the very real problem of "Using Greased Lightning and going to Zero feels bad", I'd certainly be open to other ideas for it, be it by gaining some resource from refreshing Greased Lightning or possibly by hitting positionals properly.

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MCH rework might've been well received, but it is a good example of one that's been so radical, that it might've as well been a new job honestly. Not a single mechanic from HW/SB MCH has been kept intact - heck, even aesthetics have mostly been changed - and I think that's a terrible direction to take with any job, unless there's really nothing enjoyable about it at all.

That and also I think it's been reduced to something utterly dull, but that part's obviously subjective given its popularity.

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To be quite honest, an argument could be made that that was the case with regard to Machinist at the end of Stormblood. However I think it would be off topic for this particular thread, and since I'd say we're both in agreement that a 5.0 Machinist style rework isn't what we'd want for Monk since the foundations of Monk as a job aren't as broken as Heat was, so we can drop this particular tangent.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

However there was another issue with the TK rotation for people that you're forgetting, using TK drops Greased Lightning which has a very tangible feeling on your gameplay. That feeling of losing your stacks has been ingrained into Monk to be awful and tantamount to failure of playing the job correctly. I'd actually say it is the single most awful buff to lose in the game because of it, and it was arguably a biggerer big reason that the TK rotation didn't feel good to use for many than having to do four weaves for one oGCD. This is the primary reason why I and many others fundamentally disagree with the idea of Greased Lightning being a resource to spend rather than a buff to be maintained: losing Greased Lightning is a terrible feeling pretty much by design, and any use of Greased Lightning as a resource is going to cause that to occur regularly.

Further, Greased Lightning 4 being the principal addition to Shadowbringers' Monk exacerbates the feeling of losing your stacks, and therefor that particular unpleasant aspect of the TK rotation in two ways.

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I think that's where the matter of taste part really comes into play. I do understand why some people could not like dropping GS, as it's kind of similar to the now removed slow-down on RoF, which was widely disliked(by me as well). I felt however that with PB and RoW, rebuilding GS was fast enough that it didn't feel bad and even thematically was kind of like the MNK taking a quick breather-break after their burst window, before going right back to GS3 speed. I don't really get the part where it felt like "doing something wrong", since you were intentionally dropping those stacks at points when you could regain them quickly.

You are absolutely right that GS4 would be a concern if TK rotation was to make a return of course. Either TK cost would need to be just 3 stacks rather than all of them(although that'd be kind of awkward I guess) or the regain mechanics would need to account for an extra stack - perhaps by making the new RoW replacement a double tap skill like it's predecessor, but with a stack on each hit this time.

However, I'm not really sure if GS4 was even a good addition in the first place tbf. I feel like a higher number of abilities in SB at a slightly higher gcd length, did a better job at making the job feel fast and active as ogcds always have lower input gaps between them than any gcd. Not to say that the speed buff isn't important - they both play parts in making jobs feel fast-paced - but at gcd below 2 seconds weaving becomes an issue, hence why SE pruned MNK's ogcds in SHB which ironically makes the job feel slower.

All that said, it's just pointless rambling at the end of the day. I highly doubt SE would go back on big job changes and "admit their mistake"(not referring to TK or GS4 specifically, just MNK design in general), we'll probably just get another bunch of completely new alterations in 6.0. I'm honestly just insanely jaded and fed up with the design direction in SHB at this point.

I quit over this. Lol.

I've been playing monk since beta. We got past wormhole in Alex ultimate and I just realised... I can't do this anymore. Running around hitting formshift in intermissions because PB won't be up for an opener while everyone else has the luxury of being able to focus completely on mechanics. Pressing the same damn 6 buttons in the same order we've done since ARR. TK removed again so nothing to break up the monotony.

I'm watching other monk veterans quit and sell their accounts off also. Have we got to the point where the game is no longer fun? I wonder if we'd feel differently if our class we stayed loyal to (which was stupid in hindsight, why did I expect change when we've never had any that was intentional?) wasn't so freaking awful.

I wish you guys well, I hope you get the change thats so long overdue.

Kill off anaman, TK and GL as it is as an idea and rework those to work completely different. Yes one of those things was GL. Anaman should just die, having to use it and count server ticks is stupid and never should be a thing. TK should be completely rework to be useable as a normal OGCD. and NOT take away GL stacks, and matter of fact... why can't it be like sam's resourse? Something we can just build to USE instead of having it tied to our speed. That right there is why SE can't do anything cool or ground breaking with monk is because the core of it's job is too hard to work around. And before you say it's not, since ARR monk has been the joke of the town, not being able to change into something great because GL is so massively broken or hard to work around. So here's what you do SE. Have us just be fast.. why not? Let GL literally be something like KI. Hell change it to KI, and when it's built up we'll have access to moves like the hadoken, or other ki based attacks. Let us literally be a ki based martial artist. You could make monk into a very fast paced fighter without having to worry about making moves like anaman and TK work or NOT work like you've been doing. It's just an idea.. but I really hate Anaman, the worthless six sided star and TK.

There are so many things wrong with the current version of monk its hard to know even where to start.
It really doesnt matter if the job is in a good place in dps.It feels like complete garbage to play.And im not talking from the view of anatman openers as thats a personal player choice to open that way.
The job is so boring now and has been dumbed down as much as possible to try and attract more players to the job.

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

Howling fist removed - Again WHY???.There was no justification for the removal of this skill.Button bloat?Yeah right.This skill would actually be used more than half off the situational meme skills that were later added on the job.Again feels like it was done to close player skill dps gap because people low skill players struggle to weave or double weave.

Internal release removed - Seriously? You make chakras crit dependant and then remove our crit buff.SO stupid...

Riddle of Earth change - 60 sec cd with 30 sec free positionals.Why even have monk as a positional based job if you're going to do that?
If people cant do positionals let them play samurai instead.

They really need to stop sucking all the fun out of jobs to accomodate bad play.I get the game is becomeing more popular but it doesnt justify punishing people who have stuck the job for years.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

There are so many things wrong with the current version of monk its hard to know even where to start.
It really doesnt matter if the job is in a good place in dps.It feels like complete garbage to play.And im not talking from the view of anatman openers as thats a personal player choice to open that way.
The job is so boring now and has been dumbed down as much as possible to try and attract more players to the job.

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

Howling fist removed - Again WHY???.There was no justification for the removal of this skill.Button bloat?Yeah right.This skill would actually be used more than half off the situational meme skills that were later added on the job.Again feels like it was done to close player skill dps gap because people low skill players struggle to weave or double weave.

Internal release removed - Seriously? You make chakras crit dependant and then remove our crit buff.SO stupid...

Riddle of Earth change - 60 sec cd with 30 sec free positionals.Why even have monk as a positional based job if you're going to do that?
If people cant do positionals let them play samurai instead.

They really need to stop sucking all the fun out of jobs to accomodate bad play.I get the game is becomeing more popular but it doesnt justify punishing people who have stuck the job for years.

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To be honest... there was a time where I'd disagree with everything you just said.. but right now. I'm in full agreement. Even more so with the skill removeals. Like gimmie me back what was lost, cause anaman, six faired sky, and spinning bird kick - spinning bird kick is fun- is just skills that replaced actual useful skills. So too many skills isn't the issue. Now we have skills we don't use or find useless when we had actual skills we were rewarded in using.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

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The blunt debuff has been changed most likely because "well, we're removing piercing and slashing, so leaving this would be weird", but yeah, that's a really dumb reason. Leaden Fist doesn't just make MNK's gcd rotation more static, it's also responsible for the whole Anatman opener issue, due to making Leaden Bootshine spam in PB optimal.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Howling fist removed - Again WHY???.There was no justification for the removal of this skill.Button bloat?Yeah right.This skill would actually be used more than half off the situational meme skills that were later added on the job.Again feels like it was done to close player skill dps gap because people low skill players struggle to weave or double weave.

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That's probably because of addition of GS4 making it near impossible to double weave. Increased chance to proc chakras was probably their "fix" for removing ogcds, but it really doesn't cut it and MNK feels slower as a result. I'd rather keep the gcd length above 2 seconds like NIN and have more stuff to weave.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Internal release removed - Seriously? You make chakras crit dependant and then remove our crit buff.SO stupid...

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That's probably just because they figured that having 2 different buff windows with cds that don't align with each other every time was "too complicated", but honestly those drifting cds made MNKs rotation more fun due to not being as static.
Looking at all job changes in SHB, devs seem hell bent on removing any drifting or flexible resource management aka, anything that's actually engaging.
It also feels hella weird not having any damage buff before 68 as a dps job.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

They really need to stop sucking all the fun out of jobs to accomodate bad play.I get the game is becomeing more popular but it doesnt justify punishing people who have stuck the job for years.

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This. I wouldn't mind if we had various levels of complexity depending on the job you pick so newbies and more casual players can also find something for themselves, but dumbing down the entire game alienates those who enjoy more complex playstyles.
If the reasoning is that they want to let everyone play any of the "aesthetics", then perhaps it is time to start branching jobs into specs with different difficulty, rather than just adding more jobs.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

However, I'm not really sure if GS4 was even a good addition in the first place tbf. I feel like a higher number of abilities in SB at a slightly higher gcd length, did a better job at making the job feel fast and active as ogcds always have lower input gaps between them than any gcd. Not to say that the speed buff isn't important - they both play parts in making jobs feel fast-paced - but at gcd below 2 seconds weaving becomes an issue, hence why SE pruned MNK's ogcds in SHB which ironically makes the job feel slower.

All that said, it's just pointless rambling at the end of the day. I highly doubt SE would go back on big job changes and "admit their mistake"(not referring to TK or GS4 specifically, just MNK design in general), we'll probably just get another bunch of completely new alterations in 6.0. I'm honestly just insanely jaded and fed up with the design direction in SHB at this point.

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Even though GL4 is really the only thing in Shadowbringers that its easy to have enthusiasm about (other than Monk actually having an AOE rotation but that’s a systematic change more than anything), I agree. It doesn't feel like it was a change they made because they had any vision for what it would be, it was a change they made because they felt like they had to after people railed against Stormblood Monk and GL4 kept getting mentioned in interviews. But it was made without any consideration for timers, because its now possible to squeeze in a second True Strikes in a Twin Snakes window with Twin Snakes falling off for its reapplication which I'm absolutely certain isn't intended. Even worse they made getting it feel like a wish was granted on a Monkey's paw because they trimmed all of our GCDs out of fear that it would be too fast. I'd also say that you could extend the criticism of GL4 not feeling like its part of any clear vision to all of SB/ShB Monk's changes, there's no vision of improvement just a desire to keep things the same that's at odds with needing to add things to it for a new expansion and the subtly changing encounter design.

I'd always been an advocate for GL4 to be something we'd enter temporarily in response to doing some Monk specific task like upkeeping GL for X amount of time/refreshing it a certain number of times. I also frankly wouldn't care if GL4 just didn't exist and for that level of speed to be emulated in some other way like a cooldown that doubles Auto-Attacks/Abilities and Weaponskills while reducing damage by 40% for a net gain of 20% overall. Regardless of what I would have done, the big thing is that there just doesn't feel to be any actual vision for what they want Monk to be going forward so much as a desire to keep it as it was in ARR. But in a game whose encounter and design has shifted drastically since then and which requires new stuff to be added every expansion, we've seen why that's a big problem. Even if it ended up being something I didn't entirely like such as spending GL routinely, I'd rather there be some clear idea on what they want Monk do be going forward rather than a confused mess that's a shadow of what it used to be like it is now.

As for admitting their mistakes, they did admit that Monk design in Stormblood was disappointing and a mistake in Live Letter 51 (I believe) leading up to Shadowbringers and they discussed it some in interviews during the media tour, but it just it turned out to be all talk and no action to actually address the problems they'd introduced with it. I'd already been pretty jaded with Monk at that point and it was the tipping point at which I just flat out didn't trust the developers any longer, because they'd abused that trust.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

The blunt debuff has been changed most likely because "well, we're removing piercing and slashing, so leaving this would be weird", but yeah, that's a really dumb reason. Leaden Fist doesn't just make MNK's gcd rotation more static, it's also responsible for the whole Anatman opener issue, due to making Leaden Bootshine spam in PB optimal.

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Its also weird that while each expansion has seen positional value decrease, DK-LF then offers us roughly some 200 potency over not using it at every opportunity. Using DK in place of BS is, in a sense, a positional. You previously could delay DK refresh (Flank) with an overextended rotation, at little potency cost (except where oGCDs are coming back up) at low SkS tiers or faint bonus at mid and a then-typical positional bonus at high SkS tiers. Having the choices of double-Boot (or "Demo-drop" where you let DK fade only for itself, Demolish's mere 70 potency, and at worst an auto-attack, at lower SkS) and full DK maintenance so close in potency for so many SkS tiers allowed for flexible positioning -- a (risky) 25-60 potency bonus to use, generally on par with a typical positional. Now, we're obliged to do the opposite, at some 3 to 8 times the potency at risk. Instead of allowing for the skills themselves to give us freedom of positioning, and the closest we had to freedom to align ourselves to our CDs, internal balance was replaced with "80+% of all your positioning impact is now in a single skill and a core mechanic is nullified half the time." That's horrible design.

And the sad thing is that Leaden Fist doesn't need to strip us of that positional freedom, but with so many already redundant tools, there's scarcely anything else Monks would have to look forward to in their blow-by-blow rotation. Our frequent damage CDs are mostly removed, PB's cooldown was doubled, we lost our earlier core CD and synergy with our Deep Meditation procs, and GL is no longer a resource to maintain, gamble, or work around (only to build once and then leave, essentially, a non-mechanic).

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Originally Posted by Satarn

Are you high? Ninja's been consistently part of the meta and a job that entire game's openers have been planned around, ever since it's introduction up until 5.0, when it got nerfed too much for the first time. Regardless, power level has nothing to do with whether the job should be reworked or not - that's what buffs/nerfs are for, reworks are for gameplay/enjoyment issues.

Also last thing NIN needs is getting butchered and watered down like MCH got - 5.1 took some good aspects of the job away, but it removed ping issues and is still pretty enjoyable at least, now they should at most do some small tweaks like giving us back old Shadowfang.
Btw, reworked MCH is still pretty weak, quite a lot weaker than NIN which you think "needs an MCH-style rework to become stronger".

As for MNK - I don't think rework in the sense SE seems to understand it as would be good. MNK(or any job for that matter imo) shouldn't get turned 180 from it's fundamental mechanics/identity like MCH/DRK got - SE should instead look at what worked before(like TK rotation) and what never freaking works(aka Fist stances, seriously) and make changes based on that instead of reinventing it into pretty much an entirely new job.

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No i'm not high but maybe you are or maybe both of us. So jokes aside you say "Part of the meta for openers up until 5.0". For me, that's a huge no. Iv'e been playing this game since 1.0 and once Ninja's were introduced and everybody was playing them THEN they fell off over time. In my raids,dungeons,etc., i barely see ANY ninja at all. Maybe for static raids yes but for overall, no. Throughout parsing logs ninja has always been at the bottom. Their DPS was not up to par like some others, their mudra was crap due to latency, etc. But in 5.0 with the changes they have become better but they still feel like their lacking which is why i propose an actual re-work like they did MCH. The re-work they did on MCH made the class WAY better than what it was. Yes, it does still need some tweaks but overall it is better. And re-worked MCH is not weak. IF you actually know the rotations and know how to play the job properly you can parse really high.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Iv'e been playing this game since 1.0 and once Ninja's were introduced and everybody was playing them THEN they fell off over time. In my raids,dungeons,etc., i barely see ANY ninja at all. Maybe for static raids yes but for overall, no.

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Your personal impressions, aka anecdotal evidence, are irrelevant and contradict actual hard data from FFlogs.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Throughout parsing logs ninja has always been at the bottom. Their DPS was not up to par like some others

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That's because up until 5.0 FFlogs was showing only personal dps, not raid dps. NIN's big thing has always been Trick Attack(massive raid dps contribution) and their aggro management tools(utility and more raid dps through tanks) - if they were doing same personal dps as less rdps/utility focused jobs, it would be completely broken.
When you look at alphascape statistics for example, three most staple meta jobs(NIN, DRG and BRD) are on the bottom of the pdps on every single fight, but also hold the three highest numbers of parses for each of them - aka are the most used dps jobs.

It doesn't matter what kind of pDPS job does or what buffs they bring - at the end of the day the real strength is measured by their total rDPS, regardless of how it is achieved.

The job "still feeling lacking" is also not a reason for a complete rework - it's a reason for tweaks. Reworks like the one MCH got, boot the entirety of the job out of the game and replace it with something else.

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

And re-worked MCH is not weak. IF you actually know the rotations and know how to play the job properly you can parse really high.

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MCH sits at third-worst rdps for each eden fight except for Eden Prime, where it's even worse at second-worst. Meanwhile NIN is a whole 1000 rdps ahead of them on 3/4 fights and around 800 on the remaining one.
That's 99th percentile btw, so pretty much the most skilled MCHs.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

There are so many things wrong with the current version of monk its hard to know even where to start.
It really doesnt matter if the job is in a good place in dps.It feels like complete garbage to play.And im not talking from the view of anatman openers as thats a personal player choice to open that way.
The job is so boring now and has been dumbed down as much as possible to try and attract more players to the job.

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

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"No one knows why they made this change that they literally said why they were doing it in a live letter" They removed all specific damage type vulnerability ups from all player classes. You should try paying more attention.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Riddle of Earth change - 60 sec cd with 30 sec free positionals.Why even have monk as a positional based job if you're going to do that?
If people cant do positionals let them play samurai instead.

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yes, because there aren't multiple fights where you're locked out of positionals due to mechanics (and not just in shadowbringers, this has been a problem for a while) for longer than the two stacks of True North will work for you.

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Originally Posted by SnowVix

"No one knows why they made this change that they literally said why they were doing it in a live letter" They removed all specific damage type vulnerability ups from all player classes.

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Piercing and Slashing have been removed due to forcing certain job compositions, because not having slashing meant both your tanks did way less damage and not having piercing(which only DRG provided) significantly nerfed your physical ranged dps. Both those debuffs were causing massive balance issues and frustration for tanks and ranged players.

Blunt debuff was both only used and provided by MNK, so it had none of those problems - it was functionally just another full uptime self-buff. Clearly the only reason for it's removal was "because of the other two", which is a garbo reason to do anything and itself has caused issues, due to replacing it with Leaden Fist.

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Originally Posted by SnowVix

yes, because there aren't multiple fights where you're locked out of positionals due to mechanics (and not just in shadowbringers, this has been a problem for a while) for longer than the two stacks of True North will work for you.

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Between 30 seconds per minute on Riddle of Earth and 10 seconds per 45 seconds from True North, MNK has more free-positional uptime than it has to actually do positionals. Those are no longer "windows of ignoring positionals", you get "windows of having to do positionals" instead. It's no wonder some people are thinking that devs could've as well just removed positionals entirely.

While it's true that MNK was way more positional-intense than any other melee and there are mechanics which make positionals a nightmare, extra 30 seconds per minute is an overkill. If MNK simply got 10 more seconds than the other melee it would've probably been fine too.

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Originally Posted by Satarn

Piercing and Slashing have been removed due to forcing certain job compositions, because not having slashing meant both your tanks did way less damage and not having piercing(which only DRG provided) significantly nerfed your physical ranged dps. Both those debuffs were causing massive balance issues and frustration for tanks and ranged players.

Blunt debuff was both only used and provided by MNK, so it had none of those problems - it was functionally just another full uptime self-buff. Clearly the only reason for it's removal was "because of the other two", which is a garbo reason to do anything and itself has caused issues, due to replacing it with Leaden Fist.

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It's also worth noting that not only was this change unnecessary because no other job used blunt damage (and indeed it could have been converted to a self buff should a job with something like a Hammer been implemented), but it's not the first time Monk has had skills removed from it that played differently with its kit because other jobs had that change made. It is just a fact that Form System makes Monk work just a little bit different from other melee Jobs because of the freedom it provides, even if with the freedom it ultimately results in a GCD loop similar to the other jobs.

Case in point Touch of Death and Fracture (Fracture technically being Marauder's but Monk almost had more use of it than Warrior in Heavensward) were uncombo'd dots, so they got removed in Stormblood along with Phlebotomize and Scourge. On other jobs they were just a part of your rotation that you'd use in a set order without any divergence. For all intents and purposes skills like Scourge and Phlebotomize may as well have been combo'd. However Touch of Death and Fracture were different because of the free flowing style of Form Based Combos, they gave Monk a certain fluidity and freedom to weave weaponskills in between its combos that other jobs lacked and in contributed to the feeling of playing a martial artist. In terms of gameplay they were also useful tools for manipulating your GCD to make sure you could end on a Coeurl form hit so you'd have max stacks for a jump as well. Though all things being unequal when it comes to Monk, Warrior, Dragoon and Ninja have also all gained new skills they actually get to use on a regular basis to replace their uncombo’d DOTs.

Edit: I used One Ilm Punch in place of Touch of Death RIP.

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Between 30 seconds per minute on Riddle of Earth and 10 seconds per 45 seconds from True North, MNK has more free-positional uptime than it has to actually do positionals. Those are no longer "windows of ignoring positionals", you get "windows of having to do positionals" instead. It's no wonder some people are thinking that devs could've as well just removed positionals entirely.

While it's true that MNK was way more positional-intense than any other melee and there are mechanics which make positionals a nightmare, extra 30 seconds per minute is an overkill. If MNK simply got 10 more seconds than the other melee it would've probably been fine too.

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While it's an extra 30 seconds per minute, it isn't on command like True North is because it requires you to take a hit (which requires you to take damage instead of proccing through shields like Third Eye because god forbid they fix one of the fundamental problems with it). Depending on how much AOE damage is occurring during a given fight/phase there's a limit to when you can actually trigger the effect (which can also get screwed by a spread Adlo, still) and therefore there's a limit to when it can be activated and actually be useful. While in theory there could be 50 seconds of positional free attacking, that's not always the case in practice. To its credit there's also some optimization that new Riddle of Earth creates in terms pre-emptively using it so you catch an AOE just barely and having it be back up in time for a future mechanic.

That said, I don't think it was well thought out at all as a change. In terms of duration it's actually a bit overblown, a longer duration is warranted because of the activation requirements but 20 seconds would probably be a bit more appropriate. It struck me as a panicked change to make a skill that would be invalidated by the Formshift 5.05 change still have a use. It wouldn't have been a problem if Monk's ability design in every expansion wasn't a contest to design new skills that are as nonfunctional as possible in many situations, but that's beside the point. It is also a skill that fixes a problem that Monk has had for a while in terms of solo play such as single player instances or any time it makes you face tank a mob for a quest. For whatever these encounters don't give enemies omnidirectional positionals and without RoE (or even I'd speculate with only 30 seconds of True North) that hits Monk the absolute hardest now that they've basically reimplimented all of the lost positional damage they took from Monk in Stormblood onto Leaden Fist. For people who are decent at the game it isn't a problem, but there's a sizeable portion of the playerbase that struggles on Monk because of it.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Case in point Touch of Death and Fracture (Fracture technically being Marauder's but Monk almost had more use of it than Warrior in Heavensward) were uncombo'd dots, so they got removed in Stormblood along with Phlebotomize and Scourge. On other jobs they were just a part of your rotation that you'd use in a set order without any divergence. For all intents and purposes skills like Scourge and Phlebotomize may as well have been combo'd. However Touch of Death and Fracture were different because of the free flowing style of Form Based Combos, they gave Monk a certain fluidity and freedom to weave weaponskills in between its combos that other jobs lacked and in contributed to the feeling of playing a martial artist. In terms of gameplay they were also useful tools for manipulating your GCD to make sure you could end on a Coeurl form hit so you'd have max stacks for a jump as well. Though all things being unequal when it comes to Monk, Warrior, Dragoon and Ninja have also all gained new skills they actually get to use on a regular basis to replace their uncombo’d DOTs.

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This. So much this. Fracture was effectively just a position-less skill you could use at disproportionate TP cost for its potency advantage because half its value was just in being position-less -- usable as often as every 18 seconds depending on the number of fillers per odd/even Demolish (similar to filler counts per TG on Samurai and odd/even minutes on Ninja). ToD was as small a potency bonus as it was largely so you could use it for flexibility. How the devs could fail to see how badly their removal (heck, we previously had Impulse Drive, too, if we really needed position-less filler) would affect Monk positional flexibility is baffling. Modular control and positions were the basis for our job back then.

The GL timer being as tight as it was back then made it so even the seemingly subtle tools could have tremendous impact, rather than tools needing to be obtusely significant to notice any impact. If you didn't know how to control your rotation during T9, you'd lose GL far more often than you ought. That interdependence and flexibility just made it all feel right; difficult, perhaps, but fitting -- especially in the fights that gave it the most challenge.

The HW model was close to perfection in terms of general rotation. Had Meditation just been a bit stronger so it could be used situationally to align your rotation... *chef's kiss*. (Of course, other melee job's ranged skills would need to be buffed in turn to make up for MNK's being the not only stronger in ppgcd but also not breaking rotations, or the buff to Meditation would have to be limited to when in melee range of an enemy.)

If TK was less cumbersome, I'd throw in a fluid, likely single-step Riddle of Wind and the one-minute PB atop it for a bit more macrorotational variance, give more reason to change between stances macrorotationally, and maybe use a different take on Deep Meditation for a bit more spice over the levels since, but still, that rotation was a work of art, especially at extremely high speeds.