Monk - Quality of Life Change

Hi, first post here.

Ever since I started playing, I always found Monk to be very clunky and disappointing (why can't I use tornado kick more often???). I wholeheartedly agree with other posts on this forum asking for complete rework, but I don't expect a huge change until at least next expansion. So I thought about what could be tweaked to current Monk abilities to make it less dissatisfying and less clunky to play. I think small changes can be implemented mid-expansion so I put together some ideas and put it into an image.

https://imgur.com/gallery/pkAyBnM

These don't change the fundamental gameplay but do address some of the core issues (or at least what I think are the most dissatisfying things about the job), such as constant positional change, chakra overflow, tornado kick and six-sided star that barely get used, clunky opener with anatman, and perfect balance.

Please let me know if the link doesn't work. I just wanted to include some visuals instead of just walls of texts.

Not to sound rude to other people who have brought up their own ideas of reworks/buffs, but this is definitely the one I have seen the most thought put into. I in particular like the idea of your Perfect Balance. It's no longer a SkS nightmare and it's not a mediocre GL recovery ability either. This hypothetical kit just makes it seem less painful to play overall. Good job.

The only other major issue not addressed is the fist stances, but frankly in the face of other problems such as TK/SSS being useless and comp dependent RNG, I'd rather wait until 6.0 for the team to address the fists.

I actually really like these changes.

I would like to ask, though: have you given any thought to stances? Tight now we really only build to Wind and stay there. The thing that made Monk an absolute blast to play in SB was switching between stances to get RoW stacks in between Tornado Kicks, and it's something I wish they brought back.

I just .... like it. Very good job

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Originally Posted by FLeet229

Hi, first post here.

Ever since I started playing, I always found Monk to be very clunky and disappointing (why can't I use tornado kick more often???). I wholeheartedly agree with other posts on this forum asking for complete rework, but I don't expect a huge change until at least next expansion. So I thought about what could be tweaked to current Monk abilities to make it less dissatisfying and less clunky to play. I think small changes can be implemented mid-expansion so I put together some ideas and put it into an image.

https://imgur.com/gallery/pkAyBnM

These don't change the fundamental gameplay but do address some of the core issues (or at least what I think are the most dissatisfying things about the job), such as constant positional change, chakra overflow, tornado kick and six-sided star that barely get used, clunky opener with anatman, and perfect balance.

Please let me know if the link doesn't work. I just wanted to include some visuals instead of just walls of texts.

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See, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about! A singular person can come up with such amazing and excellent ideas that actually fit, not only the lore, but abilities of the class, but a WHOLE TEAM of employees cant?

I LOVE the ideas, and cannot fathom how the Dev team didnt think of this first.

I love it, would be very interesting if SE takes a look and learn something, cause monk is the least played job right now. Not rewarding having to do so many positionals on a job with 1.90 gcd. It should get the same treatment as Sam and Blm.

Yo, that is your first post? Holy moly, the changes are absolutely LIT my dear! I love every bit of it.

I assume that if you take inspiration from Drill + Air Anchor that TK and Six-Sided Star (one of them) will have an interesting effect tied to it like Air Anchors +20Battery? If so, love every bit of it.

Especially that Anatman change, OH MY GOD I've been wanting that ever since they got rid of Wind Tackle (as much as ppl didn't like elemental tackles, Wind Tackle or current PvP Shoulder Tackle was / is a boon).

I'm still leveling Monk but I want to add something.

Leaden Fist should either change Bootshine's icon (Like DRG's) or add the yellow lines that pop up on other jobs when an attack is ready.

Example: Enpi on Sam and Firestarter on BLM

Some points are good but I disagree on making Tornado and SSS gcd, Monk is already a GCD fest that needs more oGCD options.

Generally i like it.

I personally also want to see changes to fist stances so they operate as phases, but many people disagree with me on that as ive seen in the past.

There would need to be number tweaks if six sided star was to be used so frequently.

And i dont like the perfect balance change. I primarily play nin (havent played monk in end game since arr) for a very long time ive hoped skill speed would be viable on ninja. But for many reasons its not. When bunshin was teased because it was duration based i thought some sks would finally have its day. But then they nerfed it. And then they made it last only a specific number of hits. I jave other complaints about the current ninja, but on the subject of monk I personally actually like that having a certain amount of SkS not only changes your rotation but enables you to better use your cooldowns.

So i agree with everything except making perfect balance charge based like bunshin.

I do have monk at 80 and do hope to return to the class someday.

I disagree strongly with removing positionals, on monk and on any melee DPS. They aren't what keeps players away from any job, and monk was underplayed next to other DPS even when positionals were more of a thing across multiple melee jobs (and had other problems next to other DPS at the time). I recognize, however, that I appear to be in the minority on this.

I suggest getting rid of all the methods Monk (and melee in general) has to ignore positionals instead. It strikes me as incredibly odd that SE left Monk in a state where it MUST engage with the bosses beyond just sitting still and hammering globals, but then gave us MULTIPLE skills that let us ignore than particular mechanic for an extended period of time. It really is an either or at this point, SE should either kill off positionals as a concept (and make the game less interesting IMO), or provide better feedback to players so they know they've landed a proper positional, up to increasing the "reward" for doing so.

KILL. ELEMENTAL. FISTS. These buttons are little more than rotting wisdom teeth on the kit of the job, and have been so since Heavensward. SE has constantly used the excuse of button bloat for nixing off multiple skills that players have actually used in their rotations on the regular, but has somehow managed to leave elemental fists more or less as is: buttons that we hit before a fight, that we switch once we get to a certain part of our opener, and then sit on for its particular buff for the duration. In HW and SB, it was Fire. In ShB, it's Wind. Functionally, SE has tweaked these fists, particularly in regards to our GL4, but practically, players just sit in the same damned fist for 10 minutes until the boss dies. You want button bloat gone? There's three right there. Maybe give us ONE of the actually useful OGCDs we lost between SB and ShB.

I would really support these changes. The Anatman change could have nice Synergy with PB to allow the perfect DK > Boot spam without having to use a coeurl skill to refresh. The Brotherhood change would also be highly welcome imo as it negates any RNG off of Weaponskills. Overall, I'd support this change. Would make the job feel more engaging and fun at least until 6.0

I like these overall and it feels in line with something they'd be able to in a X.3 patch. It doesn't fix certain problems but at this point I don't think we can expect a mid expansion overhaul on Deep Meditation or DK/Leaden Boothshine's being disproportionate without messing things up and making us lose a burst phase. But still, a big improvement on the total failure the job has been so far in Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by KalinOrthos

I actually really like these changes.

I would like to ask, though: have you given any thought to stances? Tight now we really only build to Wind and stay there. The thing that made Monk an absolute blast to play in SB was switching between stances to get RoW stacks in between Tornado Kicks, and it's something I wish they brought back.

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I couldn't really think of a way to tweak the current fists stances to make fists of earth and fists of fire viable to use. I personally think they should scrap the fists stances and make it into chakra related stance that includes elements from the job quests like chakra of light and shadows. But that would be more of a rework than a tweak, and my intention was to try and keep monk as it is but make it feel better to play.

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

I disagree strongly with removing positionals, on monk and on any melee DPS. They aren't what keeps players away from any job, and monk was underplayed next to other DPS even when positionals were more of a thing across multiple melee jobs (and had other problems next to other DPS at the time). I recognize, however, that I appear to be in the minority on this.

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Sorry if there was a confusion, but what I meant by raptor form GCDs, is that True Strike and Twin Snake would have no positional requirements. Opo-Opo form and Coeurl form GCDs still should have positional requirements. It does not give you a buff or anything that lets you ignore positional completely.

Right now, if you have a flawless rotation, you only have to swap positional every 2-3 GCD. Now if you make a mistake in your rotation (say you used Demolish instead of Snap punch) or you come off a downtime and have to refresh Twin Snake instead of using True strike, it screws up the positional so that you have to switch positional every GCD. This is also true if you are one of the hardcore monks that use double True Strike rotation.

If you remove positional requirements from raptor form, that negates the need to swap positional every GCD and you will be able to stay in flank/rear for at least 2 GCD, in all the situations above. You can test it yourself right now by ignoring positional for Twin Snake and True strike.

You could achieve the same result from removing positional from any of the one form and keeping it for the remaining 2. I think raptor form is the best to remove positional since the form bonus for opo-opo is a crit for bootshine and that makes it harder to tweak, and coeurl form has Demolish and Snap Punch that gets used in 1:2 ratio.



Oh and I agree with scrapping elemental fists. I just left them out because removing them is more of a rework than a tweak and requires shifting around what levels you would learn certain abilities. Also it would mess around with lower level-synced content. My goal here was to tweak the abilities so that they are simple enough and could possibly be implemented before the next expansion.

Id pref if Twin Snakes usage / rotation was every 2nd combo again (for a few reasons), .. but to keep Mnk positional activ, by turning TK and SSS into 4th combo finishers (TK rear after True Strike and SSS flank after Demolish)

ofc without using up GL stacks after using the 4th combo finishers..

Generally I think this is a good change, though there are a couple minor tweeks I'd like to see, personally, to make the job feel better than they way you've put things out there, or to make some of these skills work the way you are presenting by their counterparts.

I feel like your changes to Anatman and Perfect Balance are a good change, but still feel like they're bandaids on the current system that requires monks to execute more weapon skills than their counterpart jobs to get the same effect that they do. So to that end, I would like to see this.

Perfect Balance : When in fists of fire, grants 3 stacks of greased lightning. When in fists of wind, grants 4 stacks of greased lightning. Cooldown 30 seconds.

This would bring the skill in line with skills like Blood of the Dragon and Enochian, and could be maybe a level 54 skill if we wanted to balance it around when those jobs get their increases.

With that change, then the effect you wrote for Perfect Balance feels more in line with what you'd expect of Anatman based off its current funcionality. Halt the timer on GL and extend duration to maximum while still allowing the monk to gain GL stacks while active.

I agree with most of the changes though removing directionals is redundant when RoE exists. If anything I would promote higher potency for hitting positionals but not too extreme. 20-50 potency difference would be nice to reward those monks who love to move while not being too punishing on newer players and again RoE resolves most of these issues. Bortherhood is there to provide raid utility to physical dps and I think it works fine but it does need to be buffed to like 10% dmg especially with the chakra changes OP suggested, which SE really needs to take note of as that is what all monks have been wanting since 4.0. Anatman could easily be resolved if they just give you an instant GL stack on use then after it ticks as normal but they really should just make it a buff that freezes your GL stacks/duration for when you get interrupted with action time events. That's honestly been a pet peeve of mine that I lose my stacks because I had to watch the boss in a cut scene go a bit too long.

Fantastic suggestion OP, I really appreciate how much work you put into your post too! I think I'm down with every single one of your alterations here, although with your change to Anatman would it not be possible to gain GL4 in two gcds if you paired it with PB? This is the only tweak I think might be a bit wonky. I feel like most Monk players will agree the majority of the changes are for the better, things like not relying on party comp for Brotherhood procs is something we absolutely need and also having 10 chakra instead of 5 definitely means you should no longer have to worry about eating a potential chakra due to procs.

Honestly I don't even really know what I'd trust SE with changing on Monk in a real rework anymore but I would be really happy with these changes and I think it would go a long way to improving the feel and enjoyment of the job.

Personally i would love it if they straight up got rid of positionals as well as all of the abilities that negate them. Annoying to have to constantly move to the sides/back. Just let me punch the dudes in peace in my one spot and only move to do mechanics.
On to your post tho, everything you put on that picture, i love. IMO i would lower TK/SSS to 30cd from 60.

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Originally Posted by JisKing98

Personally i would love it if they straight up got rid of positionals as well as all of the abilities that negate them. Annoying to have to constantly move to the sides/back. Just let me punch the dudes in peace in my one spot and only move to do mechanics.
On to your post tho, everything you put on that picture, i love. IMO i would lower TK/SSS to 30cd from 60.

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I don't really like the idea of getting rid of them completely.
Maybe at least keep them for Dragon Kick and Bootshine at least.
I mean I think that the damage numbers are too low for the positionals to feel rewarding so I honestly wouldn't mind most of them being removed. It does kinda feel like you're putting in way more work for less.
On the other hand I like the tempo and I wouldn't want it removed entirely.

They are a kinda annoying at times tho when bosses just decide to turn randomly or if things are chaotic .

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Originally Posted by FoxCh40s

See, this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about! A singular person can come up with such amazing and excellent ideas that actually fit, not only the lore, but abilities of the class, but a WHOLE TEAM of employees cant?

I LOVE the ideas, and cannot fathom how the Dev team didnt think of this first.

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It's not that they can't think of it, as much as they can't make up their minds, because they're an entire team and not one person.
They also have to play test it all to make sure it all works as intended, and is still balanced, and they have more people to find flaws in these ideas where one person acting on their own can easily overlook them.

For example, the 10 Chakra's would mean you can get two Forbidden/Enlightenments out at once.
It wouldn't really serve as a crit-proc buffer as much as necessitate the use of two of these within a RoF window in place of one. (three with the RNG-less Brotherhood changes)
This would mean the potencies of both of these skills would need to be reduced.
And you're still hitting them when you cap at 10 Chakra, bringing you back down to 5, so as not to waste crit procs.
You're then just hitting buttons more often for no significant QoL gain.

This, combined with the Tornado Kick/Six-Sided Star changes TC proposes, along with Anatman working its way into the rotation, would basically mean you're increasing your APM considerably, on a job that already has high APM, with potential for forced double or even triple-weaving to hit burst windows, and potencies would be reduced for balance.

These are well thought out changes, can't dispute that but for me they would mostly be uninteresting. Sss and tk have niche uses right now but removing those uses so you can have an extra button solves nothing. I like the chakra change but not the brotherhood one, I like being the theme and feel of the skill and for every time I get very little chakra there is another time where I get lots.

Likewise why take the tight timing requirement from pb and replace it? Gearing correctly so you can hit 6 actions and timing your cast so you don't press too early and waste time is a part of optimisation that your change would remove. While monk has problems it's at least in a place where optimisation feels satisfying due to the difficulty of some parts, I wouldn't want to go back to easy street.

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Originally Posted by Carstien

These are well thought out changes, can't dispute that but for me they would mostly be uninteresting. Sss and tk have niche uses right now but removing those uses so you can have an extra button solves nothing. I like the chakra change but not the brotherhood one, I like being the theme and feel of the skill and for every time I get very little chakra there is another time where I get lots.

Likewise why take the tight timing requirement from pb and replace it? Gearing correctly so you can hit 6 actions and timing your cast so you don't press too early and waste time is a part of optimisation that your change would remove. While monk has problems it's at least in a place where optimisation feels satisfying due to the difficulty of some parts, I wouldn't want to go back to easy street.

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Yes, SSS and TK have uses, but they aren't even good at their own niches because of how specific and overall meaningless they are to the kit. They are capstone skills, they should be apart of the main rotation like a lot of others are and especially because MNK is so visually boring without being able to use them. There is no point to having them interact with GL anymore because all we need is Form Shift. I seriously have no idea why anyone would bother with keeping those ridiculous caveats and restrictions to skills when NO OTHER class has them for their own. It's a stupid idea and it needs to die.

It may be just a quick band-aid fix that won't solve anything in the long run (which is the intention of the OP as they're supposed to be minor changes to tide us over until a proper rework), but it's leagues better than what we have to put up with now with it's 6 weaponskill monotony every 2 minutes or so. Having independent GCDs on cooldowns gives us a buffer to move into positionals. It's why many MNK players are still sore about the removal of Touch of Death/Fracture.

I am aware that current Brotherhood is one of the few skills that actually adheres to Monk lore/canon in how it functions. But there are better ways to achieve that than by making MNK so dependent on specific team comps and RNG. By all means, I would like a skill that has both lore consistency and good play feel. But being at a disadvantage by default when other party members aren't is bad game design, especially when other jobs don't deal with this problem as much as MNK does. I hate not having full capability of the job just because of both luck and not having DNC, or DRG, or SCH in the party. Those are things outside of most players control. It's why SE has taken efforts to tone down synergy between jobs.

Aye, I'd definitely prefer if my brotherhood chakra could come from spells too so that it isn't so comp dependent, and give them the 5% buff too. I just feel the skill fits the mnk lore and is at least interesting compared to many other buffs where what the group gives back in return is a tangible resource for me to spend. The proposed chakra change to ten stacks would make it feel better too.

I like tk and sss. Sss used on downtime of only a few seconds but longer than the gcd feels satisfying and right, I do wish I could use it more but it doesn't bother me. Tk is more niche even than that but form shift is a direct loss if I can use it and anatman up at the right time. I admit there could be more places to use it but hey, I enjoy it and the feeling I get when timed perfectly. I do understand why others don't but that's why we are different people with different tastes, you don't have to enjoy everything I do.

The pb change I just don't like. I enjoy gearing for a certain skill speed and the satisfaction of hitting all 6 gcds in pb because I timed it well, especially in difficult or tricky fight phases.

These proposed changes were thought out well and I really wouldn't mind them, they just don't interest me any more than what we have now besides the 10 chakra stacks. I don't think that's wrong of me to say.

When we talk optimization, what does the mean? People are still clearing content with mnk as is so its not the damage output. If its for the feel of the class then that's a matter of opinion, not technical difficulties. I've played monk since ARR and whats kept me coming back to the class is the positionals and the frantic feel of the class. Dying sucks and is difficult to come back from (though you can still clear savage with a couple wipes under your belt) so what I do is not die. Having more to lose in a death makes the game more exciting for me. There are other classes melee classes that aren't positional heavy so people who don't like pos have options. Making the positional heavy class like the other melee classes is removing options for people who already like the play style. My opinion is the same for the final chakra.

Nice pic, other then that I just wish they would give monk a revamp like MCH got in SHB.

If they decide to do that then add a ranged move like the other melee have such as that DRG move were u throw the spear.

Those moves may not be very powerful but those moves are very helpful in solo content for pulling mobs, solo deep dungeon runs, eureka, etc.

Add 18 seconds on PB. So it be friendly ping and somekind safety thing we got ourself a deal.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

Yes, SSS and TK have uses, but they aren't even good at their own niches because of how specific and overall meaningless they are to the kit. They are capstone skills, they should be apart of the main rotation like a lot of others are and especially because MNK is so visually boring without being able to use them. There is no point to having them interact with GL anymore because all we need is Form Shift. I seriously have no idea why anyone would bother with keeping those ridiculous caveats and restrictions to skills when NO OTHER class has them for their own. It's a stupid idea and it needs to die.

It may be just a quick band-aid fix that won't solve anything in the long run (which is the intention of the OP as they're supposed to be minor changes to tide us over until a proper rework), but it's leagues better than what we have to put up with now with it's 6 weaponskill monotony every 2 minutes or so. Having independent GCDs on cooldowns gives us a buffer to move into positionals. It's why many MNK players are still sore about the removal of Touch of Death/Fracture.

I am aware that current Brotherhood is one of the few skills that actually adheres to Monk lore/canon in how it functions. But there are better ways to achieve that than by making MNK so dependent on specific team comps and RNG. By all means, I would like a skill that has both lore consistency and good play feel. But being at a disadvantage by default when other party members aren't is bad game design, especially when other jobs don't deal with this problem as much as MNK does. I hate not having full capability of the job just because of both luck and not having DNC, or DRG, or SCH in the party. Those are things outside of most players control. It's why SE has taken efforts to tone down synergy between jobs.

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On Tornado Kick, it's not just that Form Shift makes the skill irrelevant either, it's that by every indication the devs don't want us to use it with its current effect. On top of Form Shift we have Riddle of Earth and Anatman which were both means of upkeeping it, plus they nerfed Perfect Balance knocking our recovery back to near Heavensward levels of bad because we... were using Tornado Kick. By all rights they've gone to more effort to keep us from using Tornado Kick to dump our stacks than it probably would have taken to give it a different effect.

Six Sided Star meanwhile is also just totally redundant. We already had a skill for making up the damage on short disengages, it was called Meditation. There didn't need to be a second one, especially when the rest of the kit was so lacking.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

On Tornado Kick, it's not just that Form Shift makes the skill irrelevant either, it's that by every indication the devs don't want us to use it with its current effect. On top of Form Shift we have Form Shift and Anatman which are both means of upkeeping it, they nerfed Perfect Balance so our recovery would be worse because people were... using Tornado Kick.

Six Sided Star meanwhile is also just totally redundant. We already had a skill for making up the damage on short disengages, it was called Meditation. There didn't need to be a second one, especially when the rest of the kit was so lacking.

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Six Sided Star literally has one niche that COULD have been useful in Pre-ShB, but with the QoL improvements in ShB, it's intended use was dead on arrival (at least I assume it was intended...). The use being: There used to be fights where you couldn't control what form GCD you ended on (unless you waited in Coeurl for example) and short phase transitions lasting 10s+ could result in GL3 dropping off, however this could be nullified by ending on a Coeurl hit, often it was better to wait 1-2GCDs just to ensure you could keep GL3 up. Six Sided Star nullified that one tiny niche MNK suffered from pre-ShB. And as you said, downtime mitigation was from meditate.

Six Sided Star is just such a weird ability. Anatman already made 6SS's GL extension aspect useless, and meditate was already a thing. So I don't know why the devs felt it was necessary to include this kind of niche skill when the niche it was created for was already filled by anatman and meditate...

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Originally Posted by FLeet229

Hi, first post here.

Ever since I started playing, I always found Monk to be very clunky and disappointing (why can't I use tornado kick more often???). I wholeheartedly agree with other posts on this forum asking for complete rework, but I don't expect a huge change until at least next expansion. So I thought about what could be tweaked to current Monk abilities to make it less dissatisfying and less clunky to play. I think small changes can be implemented mid-expansion so I put together some ideas and put it into an image.

https://imgur.com/gallery/pkAyBnM

These don't change the fundamental gameplay but do address some of the core issues (or at least what I think are the most dissatisfying things about the job), such as constant positional change, chakra overflow, tornado kick and six-sided star that barely get used, clunky opener with anatman, and perfect balance.

Please let me know if the link doesn't work. I just wanted to include some visuals instead of just walls of texts.

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I definitely agree with your suggestions and I hope it's something that the developers will notice. To be honest, I've been working on some rework suggestions myself, and I liked how you presented your changes as a visual guide. I was wondering, would you mind if I use a similar visual format to present my suggestions? Thanks for taking the time to make these!

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

It's not that they can't think of it, as much as they can't make up their minds, because they're an entire team and not one person.
They also have to play test it all to make sure it all works as intended, and is still balanced, and they have more people to find flaws in these ideas where one person acting on their own can easily overlook them.

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Except they've literally said that they don't know what to do with monk. It's never been a case of them being unable to make up their minds because they have a plethora of ideas for the job.
Also "play test it all"? They arguably don't play test monk at all. Skill canceling in ARR, TFC clipping with GL3 in HW, TK Rotation in SB, Combos not receiving the timer increase because of forms. If they have an entire team testing, they sure do a piss poor job of it.

If SE doesn't change monk next expansion it's because they are too stubborn to listen to the fan base. I WAS a monk main until recently, but I could not play the job in its recent state. It's just too unrewarding. When ninja is looking so interesting and fast-paced with a super-strong opener and of course trick attack <3, or Sam who IMO has a very good kit of skills and hits like a truck and finally Dragoon that is a job that is still a very cool and badass job to play. Then there is monk...a super fast-paced job with no identity, that is super easy to mess up rotation, with 6 positionals, best-looking skill is locked away ... It needs help. It needs a complete revamp and if SE can't deal with it maybe they should hire someone who can.