Make Monk great again! 5.4 Monk doesn´t feel like Monk anymore...

So i really have to say that i dislike the new changes more than i could like them. I haven´t understood why such a rework was needed since Monk was pretty fine in Shadowbringers.

Monk was always a pretty fun and skill-dependent for me. The class had only 1! issue which is called "losing GL stacks caused by cutscenes".
The damage was fine compared to the other melee classes. Maybe a little buff would´ve been enough to compete with a samurai on the same skilllevel. A buff like Ninja or Dragoon got with 5.4.

So what´s actually the point for the rework?

Ok, GL stacks got deleted now, no cutscene - issue anymore, but on the other side, the "core-aspect" about the class in gone.

Riddle of earth was great. You checked boss fights, remembered some bad moments and placed your RoE right before that phase. Now you´ve 6s instead of 30, which means that you´ve to spam this button in your rotation if you need it in longer situations like you´ve at E8s (Shiva).

Fists of Wind with 4 GL stacks was great. The extra movement speed felt so smooth without any damage loss. But it´s useless again now unless you want to give up 10% overall damage from Fists of Fire.

The forbidden Chakra proccs much more at the moment with the new 100% crits and the caster-addition on brotherhood. But even this is actually more spam than anything else.

I don´t know if anyone understand me here. Maybe i´m a bit alone with it and the majority does love the new Monk, but i can´t and i don´t think the changes will attract so much more players since the most cry more about the permanent positionals than anything else. (DON`T TOUCH THOSE!)
And here i´ve to ask you devs, what is the point? The game has so many classes and pretty sure that everyone can find a class which is fun and playable. Samurai as example is a pretty easy DPS monster. Dragoon is even easier but not so forgivable like Samurai.
Why does the Monk have to be a thing for everyone? Why does it have to be that spammy class it has become?
I would rather care about "not dying" and holding up my GL stacks instead of losing the smoothness from Fists of Wind or spamming "live action buttons" like others do on their dancer.

It´s just a bit sad to see and more sad to play. A feature like "save all GL stacks on cutscenes" would´ve done anything in bossfights... nothing more was needed, no matter what other wanted to force.
All those rework claims until Shadowbringers were like i would say "I think blackmage needs a rework, casting takes ages and i can´t move without losing damage."

That´s all so far. Please bring Fists of Wind, RoE and a real job-bar back. And please stop making everything so "forgivable". Not everyone wants all classes to be played with one hand. That the tanks got forced into a "no-brainer" role with shadowbringers was already too much, yet we´ve a Spam-Monk without any real penalties for bad plays, and what´s next?!

I can sense this isnt your favorite change, obviously.

But tbh I prefer literally *any* path that gets rid of the old greased lightning. I maxed all jobs in under a year when I started playing in late June. I play all of them except for *two* regularly. Monk and Black Mage.

Monk was already a very busy job between positionals and useful oGCD skills. Greased Lightning was honestly the most obnoxious mechanic in the entire game for me. I *loathed* it with a passion. Any time there was a discussion about jobs with friends, I always brought up Monk and it's putrid Greased Lightning. I hated it *that much*. This change actually makes me want to try to play Monk again.

I am sorry you feel the change has taken something from your gameplay though. I can understand that.

Cheers.

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Originally Posted by Nightingaile

I can sense this isnt your favorite change, obviously.

But tbh I prefer literally *any* path that gets rid of the old greased lightning. I maxed all jobs in under a year when I started playing in late June. I play all of them except for *two* regularly. Monk and Black Mage.

Monk was already a very busy job between positionals and useful oGCD skills. Greased Lightning was honestly the most obnoxious mechanic in the entire game for me. I *loathed* it with a passion. Any time there was a discussion about jobs with friends, I always brought up Monk and it's putrid Greased Lightning. I hated it *that much*. This change actually makes me want to try to play Monk again.

I am sorry you feel the change has taken something from your gameplay though. I can understand that.

Cheers.

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I get your point and i´m pretty sure i know the "why" both classes are nothing for you. But there i´ve to ask, why does every class have to be something for everyone? There are still 4 tanks, 3 melees, 3 heal, 3 phys. range and 2 mages (+1 blue mage). And i can tell you that casters will never be something for me, but i won´t come and ask for a rework because the imobility is part of those classes.

And what is actually your point with GL? I mean, if you´ve done your early rotation you´ve them. Of course it´s a hard loss if a cutszene appears or if you die. But as i said, a GL save for cutszenes or even a passiv like "a death cause only a loss of 50% GL stacks" would´ve done a lot against it. Not to mention that "dieing" is still up to the player.
There were enough skills to bring or keep up GL in any other situation anyway. So i really don´t understand the hate about it. Maybe you can explain such things to me.


EDIT: I wouldn´t even mind if something more special than GL would´ve arrived at the horizon. But making the monk just a forgivable and more spammy button smasher doesn´t feel like monk anymore. I bet the damage loss wouldn´t even be that hard if you ignore positionals and spam true north and RoE just on cooldown since all the chakra proccs and tornado kick do a lot to the damage right now. The only exception might be bootshine... but hey, just stay behind the boss.

The removal of GL is a solution designed for people who weren't playing the job much in the first place and didn't like the mechanic. That's pretty much it.

It's straight up not a very good rework, and I don't know why I bothered expecting anything out of the developers at this point. We still have the elemental fists taking up space in our kit. At least before there was a reason to switch between fire and wind (such as when we had to ramp up again after a cutscene, or during our opener). Now we're back to sitting in one stance pretty much forever, and wind has been reduced to a joke speed increase that doesn't actually address the long standing issue of Monk's lack of disengage/leap away mechanic that other DPS enjoy.

Anatman still exists, is still worthless. The "utility" it offers is trash, and it basically no place in our kit and doesn't really deserve to be on our bars. And it was already bad BEFORE, MNK players had to stretch hard enough to pull muscles to justify working it into openers, and then they told us we were using this awful button WRONG and made it harder to use in that fashion!

Six Sided Star is one of the worst capstone skills in the game in terms of what it adds to the job. We're still going to be hitting the same combos over and over.

We have utility in terms of providing a raid buff for everyone now, which again makes me wonder why, exactly, SE believes the job is so underplayed. It certainly wasn't our lack of utility, otherwise SAMs wouldn't be getting the light of day in the eyes of most ultra double hardcore players!

For two expansions straight, SE has demonstrated they still don't really understand what they want MNKs to even be. Are we supposed to be a selfish DPS for technically oriented players? Do they want us to bring utility to justify our place in a group? My fear now is that they cut back on those potency buffs they gave our buttons because now we have "utility."

Killing GL as part of our job's mechanics was the easy way out. It's them acknowledging that lengthy cutscenes and breaks in fight was a problem for the job specifically, but rather than retooling one of the buttons they gave us, of THREE, that were intended to help us preserve the buff, they just threw it out the window entirely.

I'll be sticking with any other DPS at this point.

I would say Greased Lightning hasn't been a core component of the class since Heavensward. When it became impossible to drop GL at this point in time, it really had no reason to exist anymore. While I would have liked to see it become more important again, it's clear they didn't know what to do with it, and it's existence was a huge hinderance when it comes to getting new expansion abilities. Watching other classes get cool moves while you get your 5th move that saves GL feels awful. At the very least, I have hope that when 6.0 comes out, we might get some abilities that actually add to the class. I'm really jealous of dragoon getting a move that changes when they hit their positional and I feel like that would be great for monk. We the GL timer gone, we could use a second DoT again too maybe along with chakra being expanded?

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Originally Posted by IruruCece

The removal of GL is a solution designed for people who weren't playing the job much in the first place and didn't like the mechanic. That's pretty much it.

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That´s actually my thought behind it. But what´s the point of changing a class completely in its core, just because it´s not a class for everyone?! There are other classes which are not that common too, because of reasons... Having "niche-classes" is nothing wrong when the game has 15 other "majority - friendly" classes anyway. Can´t wait for a blackmage rework at this point.... maybe i´ll fall in love with casters then.

Agree on the rest too in some way. The brotherhood buff doesn´t make much sense on caster, but it´s a needed buff to the raid and the monk itself. It would´ve been actually enough to compete with a SAM at this point i guess.

And even when i take a cutszene like you´ve in E8s, the monk was still able to do his job. Improvisation rules...so yeah... It´s more like a lack of knowledge or the patience to learn a class in my eyes instead of being THAT issue. Same with tanks before shadowbringers...

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

I would say Greased Lightning hasn't been a core component of the class since Heavensward.

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I'd argue otherwise. It's very much been core to the job, so core in fact that SE literally didn't know what to do about it until they just gave up and removed it as a factor. Hell, ShB was when they gave us multiple means to keep the buff going.

Also core to the job, apparently, are elemental fists. Two of which are going to stay mostly ignored at all times. At least GL was something we actively engaged with in some fashion to build and maintain, whether we liked it or not.

But hey, Tornado Kick is relevant again!

Sorry to say buddy, but Monk was never that great in the first place.

besides Riddle of Earth change and Anatman just being there what monk got was great
as Grumble said GL management has been moot and you only lose it during force cutscene sequences weapon trial transitions,E1,E8s,WoL etc etc

new monk aint perfect but its a good base to improve upon for next expansion.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

besides Riddle of Earth change and Anatman just being there what monk got was great
as Grumble said GL management has been moot and you only lose it during force cutscene sequences weapon trial transitions,E1,E8s,WoL etc etc

new monk aint perfect but its a good base to improve upon for next expansion.

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It’s a poor base, old monk was better, riddle of earth change is horrible, after playing an entire expansion in fists of wind, being stuck in fists of fire is slow af, about the only positive is the tornado kick change.

As someone who has played monk thoroughly from ARR till now I can tell you that it feels like MNK has lost its soul, it’s a shell of how it played and is considerably less fun.

Class identities will inevitably change over time and that's something we're just going to have to accept.

I'm going to give my perspective, as some one who's leveling all classes simultaneously, but for me I honestly disliked doing dungeons as a Monk and Black Mage... I'd end up levelling them last. I'm not at max level though but for me, Greased Lightning always felt so artificial of a mechanic. You get it to full at the start of a dungeon by form spam thanks to the skill that lets you use any weaponskill, after that point, spend your time on a (arguably) strict rotation bc you need to never drop it.

On the occasion you clear a mob, you then STILL need to pay attention and use Form Shift when other classes can just do w/e in between pulls.

Things like these just made it sooo not fun. I mean it totally depends on a person but I hate rigidity when I'm playing a class and for me, Monk and Black Mage are the two that used to fit that definition the most lol. Now with the new Monk changes, it's so much more fun to play bc you're not limited by having to monitor GL anymore, lifting restrictions on what weaponskills you want to use (Which arguably isn't much bc now I just end up spamming Leaden damage with that weaponskill resitriction lift skill but w/e lol)

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Originally Posted by Duskane

new monk aint perfect but its a good base to improve upon for next expansion.

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People have been saying this every single expansion thus far, and every single expansion we get two baby steps forward and two giant leaps backward, with job fixes being largely band-aid updates and needed reworks taking a backseat to Gold Saucer updates and fishing content. Monk mains have never, in the history of the game, had a decently-playable job throughout the story, and we only tend to get the mother of all band-aid patches after all the primary story is all said and done.

So, you can think that all you want, but as the saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,"... except for those of us keeping count, it's more like five or six times now already, so the trust that "next time they'll get it right for sure" is dismally low. This isn't our first rodeo, after all.

I've also come to learn that lots of people who claim to have been MNKs back in 2.0 or 2.1 are full of it, since I've asked them what MNK was like back then, and their answer seems to just be like level-synced MNK in Labyrinth. They don't seem to remember the god-awful primitive and slow combat in 2.x, horrible moves nobody liked such as Featherfoot and Haymaker, how PB was on a 3-minute cooldown in a time when a party wipe wouldn't reset your cooldowns so you had to sit and wait for a few minutes before attempting the next pull, or how you were a White Mage's babysitter because Blunt Resistance Down helped the healers regen MP off of their auto-attacks back when they didn't have better MP management tools and auto-attacks were a more major part of the combat loop as things were that slow and lacking back then. It's just something people claim to bandwagon onto popular sentiments and demand the simplification of MNK since they don't like weaving oGCDs and would rather the job be dumbed down than endure a learning curve.

What's more offensive to me than the state of MNK is a lot of the stuff SURROUNDING the MNK updates and the live letter. From how abruptly the MNK demonstration was cut off to spend absurd amounts of time on Triple Triad, to Yoshi-P admitting he doesn't really know how to play the job, to none of the changes not brought up in the LL being anything of note in spite of us being told there was more, to even the elemental fists being noticeably absent from the patch notes, etc... it feels like they didn't even start working on it until the night before the live letter and then went "screw it" for the remaining stuff they didn't cover. So much for being told that it would be so expensive and take two more months to do, and that they worked hard to maintain the busy feeling of the job, when it feels like it was rushed out in an afternoon at the 11th hour and it's actually LESS busy because we have even fewer buttons to push now.

Meanwhile, Blue Mage gets the Suzaku kick (DRG gets to have Stardiver, but MNKs can't have nice things) and the raid gear doesn't even resemble Eden's features. I think the art director has some kind of complex about pirates, because we keep getting pirate attire and eyepatches when it's not remotely appropriate. I think they know it looks stupid on MNK because they use SAM in all the marketing images. *sigh* my kingdom for a Saint Seiya crossover... Alphascape had significantly more visually appropriate raid and tome gear IMHO.

As for Tornado Kick being useful... I think that's the biggest bait-and-switch ever. You could swap it out for Steel Peak or any other random oGCD and you wouldn't know the difference mid-rotation. TK used to be something you had to work for, and following one up with a recovery rotation to wind up a second volley was a maneuver which felt rewarding to pull off. As much as people didn't want to hear it, I have said elsewhere on the forums that in 5.0, before Anatman was forced onto the GCD as an anti-automation method, you could actually still do this if you cranked the speed high enough, and the adjustments needed to make it worth dropping your stacks to pull off were as simple as a minor buff to TK and shaving two seconds off its recast time. Now, it can be any [insert skill name here] ability with a 45-second cooldown timer, so it's not special anymore.

I think the thing that bothers me most about MNK discourse is that it simultaneously is accused of being easy, braindead, and it was never actually difficult to maintain GL, and in the same discussion other people will whine about how much of a hassle it was to maintain GL, how annoying the positionals are, how it was too hard to do any of the openers from HW all the way up until the patch just before 5.4.

I'm convinced that both SE and the people who didn't like monk before this patch are unified in their lack of understanding what they wanted the job to actually be.

Maybe 6.0 they can also remove the positionals, two combo paths and their associated buttons, and finally give MNK the MCH treatment people who weren't actually interested in playing the job until now are apparently looking for.

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

I'm going to give my perspective, as some one who's leveling all classes simultaneously, but for me...

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You don't have the perspective of what it was like before post-launch Shadowbringers. The job didn't used to be like that in dungeons in past expansions, so I can't honor your point of view as it actually lacks perspective more than anything. Also, the rotation hasn't actually changed, so the change hasn't actually fixed that as you claim, but furthermore, Monk has always been extremely flexible, so it sounds like your perspective is coming from someone who doesn't understand how the job actually works and how many ways there were to adjust on the fly.

GL management gave an excuse to remain engaged, keep your GCDs rolling, and look for opportunities to get creative to maintain uptime with respect to fight mechanics. Again, it doesn't seem like you really understand how the job works, and that's the entire problem... rather than you learning and understanding, you're making assumptions in spite of understanding. When changes are made to cater to players like yourself, who in all likelihood aren't going to seriously main the job in any endgame content, the rest of us who WERE interested in doing so get shafted in the process. This is the price of accessibility, and it's often not worth the cost. Pleasing players who are not likely to stick with the job in the long term often comes at the cost of making the job clumsy and problematic for the people who wish to main it.

The same goes for Black Mage, which is not only not so rigid at all, and has even greater flexibility than it did back in SB due to a lot of instant casts it didn't have before. It's also not an immobile turret as many bad players claim; it is highly mobile, but just uses unorthodox mobility through multiple kinds of teleports, triple-casting, swiftcast and slide casting, but because of how dumbed down the game has gotten, a lot of players have learned they can get away with not making use of these tools and staying put. That's not necessarily the best way to play the job, just what people have learned they can get away with.

If you truly hate rigidity, and you're going to call Black Mage and Monk the worst offenders as a Paladin main at level 58... you fall into the category of someone who shouldn't be listened to because you aren't experienced enough to know what you're talking about. Get to max level and unlock your entire kit first, and then learn how the jobs work before you judge them. This isn't a game where you learn as you go, you have to unlock your entire toolbox worth of tools and then figure out how they all work together before you can assess how fun or flexible their kits are. Black Mage was atrocious to level, but incredibly fun at max level, so the leveling experience is not truly indicative of what the jobs will be like later.

Judging a job based on an incomplete set of tools is like judging a book by its cover.

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

On the occasion you clear a mob, you then STILL need to pay attention and use Form Shift when other classes can just do w/e in between pulls.

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So you're beating on paying attention now? All players are expected to pay attention, regardless of job choice. Like I said, Form Shift wasn't like this until well after SHB launched. It was a new thing as a band-aid patch for a problem removing part of our SB kit caused. I kept saying the simple solution would be to give us PvP's Axe Kick, so we could drop our stacks while running down corridors, and then when the tank pulls the next trash mob we hit one button to go from zero stacks to full in an instant. In single-target situations it would give us back the instant GL stack we lost from Wind Tackle's removal. None of this was part of the job's identity even in 5.0, it was a new thing introduced later as a workaround for bad design decisions after people complained, instead of a true solution to the problem. We didn't like it either, but those of us who played the job in endgame understood there were better ways of dealing with the problem without resorting to this.

Not to mention though, no, other jobs don't just do "whatever," and people still need to pay attention. But again... the level 58 experience isn't exactly representative to what the game will feel like when you're caught up, so this is a very ignorant assessment of a game you don't fully understand. If paying attention is something you're not keen on doing, just wait until you have to deal with tankswaps and tankbusters as a regular par-for-the-course expectation of gameplay, and how much other players will hate you for trying to YOLO through a fight and get carried while you get everyone else killed.

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Originally Posted by ValStormbreaker

Again, it doesn't seem like you really understand how the job works, and that's the entire problem... rather than you learning and understanding, you're making assumptions in spite of understanding. When changes are made to cater to players like yourself, who in all likelihood aren't going to seriously main the job in any endgame content, the rest of us who WERE interested in doing so get shafted in the process. This is the price of accessibility, and it's often not worth the cost. Pleasing players who are not likely to stick with the job in the long term often comes at the cost of making the job clumsy and problematic for the people who wish to main it.

The same goes for Black Mage, which is not only not so rigid at all, and has even greater flexibility than it did back in SB due to a lot of instant casts it didn't have before. It's also not an immobile turret as many bad players claim; it is highly mobile, but just uses unorthodox mobility through multiple kinds of teleports, triple-casting, swiftcast and slide casting, but because of how dumbed down the game has gotten, a lot of players have learned they can get away with not making use of these tools and staying put. That's not necessarily the best way to play the job, just what people have learned they can get away with.

If you truly hate rigidity, and you're going to call Black Mage and Monk the worst offenders as a Paladin main at level 58... you fall into the category of someone who shouldn't be listened to because you aren't experienced enough to know what you're talking about. Get to max level and unlock your entire kit first, and then learn how the jobs work before you judge them. This isn't a game where you learn as you go, you have to unlock your entire toolbox worth of tools and then figure out how they all work together before you can assess how fun or flexible their kits are. Black Mage was atrocious to level, but incredibly fun at max level, so the leveling experience is not truly indicative of what the jobs will be like later.

Judging a job based on an incomplete set of tools is like judging a book by its cover.

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Haha I get it, you hate the changes and are taking it out on me for being under-leveled and not being qualified for this discussion but the thread exists asking who were these changes made for and why and I'm just popping in here to say most likely they were for people like me, and I like them xD

But as much as it sucks, a devs are not required to cater to those in the 99th percentile of a job or whatever :P

Blue mage is notorious for having spells that would be better on other classes
SMN,MCH,MNK etc etc

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

Haha I get it, you hate the changes and are taking it out on me for being under-leveled and not being qualified for this discussion but the thread exists asking who were these changes made for and why and I'm just popping in here to say most likely they were for people like me, and I like them xD

But as much as it sucks, a devs are not required to cater to those in the 99th percentile of a job or whatever :P

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You miss the point, though. You don't even know what the full kit plays like, so you're judging something by an incomplete set of tools. Ergo, you don't understand what you're talking about, since you don't have that perspective. So why should you, someone who doesn't even have the job leveled to max, be someone who should be catered to?

See, now you're giving me crap because of a veiled accusation of elitism. When did I ever say anything about 99th percentile of a job? I'm just talking about the basics of how it functions once you level it all the way up and catch up to current content. You're what, two expansions behind? You don't even know what the full kit looks like. THAT is why nothing you have to say should be listened to. You're just asking for the game to bend over backward based on something you don't completely understand. This isn't about not being a top-parser or anything, it's just the basics of not even having your full toolset unlocked and making a judgment of something that's impossible for you to fully comprehend until you are able to experience it for yourself. Like I said, plenty of jobs are atrocious to level - BLM being an example - but are dramatically different once you have the full kit unlocked. You don't even know that yet, because it's impossible for you to.

You made declarative statements about two jobs which may be your impressions NOW, but if you spent more time getting them both maxed out and getting caught up on all your job quests and skill unlocks, you'd reflect back on your statements right here and now and realize how wrong you were. You're just not there yet, so it's impossible for you to know that when you're too new. Your attitude, however, is incredibly entitled and ignorant, and you're trying to sideswipe what I'm saying with the "everyone who points out I don't know what I'm talking about must be elitist" line that is all too common in this community, when the reality is simply that it's impossible for you to know what the level 80 versions of the jobs look like, with all their skills fully unlocked, when your main job is a level 58 tank and you have no clue what the game will expect from you later. That's why it's easy to go after your previous statement about willfully not wanting to pay attention, because apparently that's too much of a bother for you.

But as much as it sucks to hear the truth, the devs aren't required to cater to those who don't even bother paying attention to playing the game because paying attention is too much of a bother. ;)

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Originally Posted by ValStormbreaker

You made declarative statements about two jobs which may be your impressions NOW, but if you spent more time getting them both maxed out and getting caught up on all your job quests and skill unlocks, you'd reflect back on your statements right here and now and realize how wrong you were. You're just not there yet, so it's impossible for you to know that when you're too new. Your attitude, however, is incredibly entitled and ignorant, and you're trying to sideswipe what I'm saying with the "everyone who points out I don't know what I'm talking about must be elitist" line that is all too common in this community, when the reality is simply that it's impossible for you to know what the level 80 versions of the jobs look like, with all their skills fully unlocked, when your main job is a level 58 tank and you have no clue what the game will expect from you later. That's why it's easy to go after your previous statement about willfully not wanting to pay attention, because apparently that's too much of a bother for you.

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Oh no no, I am fully aware of this. And I have been told this before by a friend that sub80, or whatever, kits are very incomplete. But it does not take away from my experience that I find doing dungeons to level as a Monk is more of a chore than the other classes, and this change to GL totally removes this negative feeling for me. If anything, it has made it one of the jobs I enjoy leveling now haha.

And yes, I admit to saying your remarks have a very large undertone of elitism, but you reply saying "BACK IN MY DAY X PATCHES AGO YOU HAD TO SUFFER" or whatever and I'm just like ok grandma. Time for bed now xD

It's just so hilarious for me how worked up people get over this. You say "Why should devs listen to YOU?" but I never asked them to...? I'm just saying, GL changes were probably done to help people like me enjoy it more and it's doing that so it's nice. I like 'em :D

I am also not a PLD main. I'm new to the forum so I didn't know how these job icon selections worked lol.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

Blue mage is notorious for having spells that would be better on other classes
SMN,MCH,MNK etc etc

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Yeah, the same is true for PvP, too. Too many skills that would solve lots of problems in PvE, if only they were migrated over. I kept arguing that Somersault and Axe Kick served functional purposes in PvP that would've worked great in PvE as well, like how Axe Kick solves lots of problems in PvE by virtue of how its SHB rework in PvP operates, and we definitely needed more reliable ways of getting chakra without having to rely on RNG, which Somersault solves. It helps that the icons and animations are already in the game, making them dirt cheap in terms of development cost to just migrate over and give marginal potency adjustments and recast time tweaks to as needed, and that they happen to look much cooler than the more "meh" animations of Steel Peak and Howling Fist were, which is a bonus more than anything. PvP is filled with plenty of cool-looking skills that could potentially solve many problems in PvE for a lot of jobs.

I never bothered to level my BLU past 50, so I can't speak to things I don't know (unlike pinkbubblegum who pontificates about things they haven't yet experienced), but my issue with the Suzaku kick being on BLU is partly the fact that DRG does have Stardiver from the HW Nidhogg fight, and that it was shown off in the same live letter that was supposed to be about Monk's major update, but while it was okay for SAM to get one of its removed oGCDs back in its previous rework, MNK wasn't getting any new or returning skills back. In spite of being told that this was a really heavy rework that would be so expensive and justify us waiting two months and that it would maintain the busy feel of the job, it felt like it was slapped together in an afternoon half thought out, and is certainly less busy as we are pushing fewer things now. Oh, and due to now staying in FoF, the job is slower, too. So, for me, showcasing the BLU skill in that live letter wasn't tastefully timed, and it felt like more of a slap in the face than anything.

well Suzaku isnt entirely related to Monk
Nidhogg literally turns into a dragoon
and Estinien has Nidhogg powers like there's a clear connections with Drg.

i get monk could do with some super strong skill like other melee but there would be optiond from other bosses like Temple of the Fist or swallows compass

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

Oh no no, I am fully aware of this...

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If you truly understood those things before I called you out on it, you wouldn't have written half of what you did, and your remarks about my attitude are all in your head. My point was, your leveling experience has nothing to do with what the job is like later, but you made declarative statements about two jobs which you clearly don't understand because you haven't gotten there yet. You're projecting tone onto me when there was no elitism present; nothing I said had anything to do with being an elite or admonishing you for not being a high-performing player. It was just the reality that you're talking about things you can't yet fully understand until later.

What I WAS going after you for was how you were beating on the concept of paying attention as you're playing a videogame. If using your head and thinking is too much to ask of you, and you're beating on a part of the job you didn't like because it expected you to be mindful of what you were doing like that's somehow bad, people aren't going to take you seriously. That's not elitist of me to say, that's just realistic. You moved the goal posts to attack me as though I was criticizing you for not being in the 99th percentile, which sideswiped the point just so you be incendiary.

I can guarantee you, that as the game expects more of you later on, if you do not outgrow that way of thinking, you're going to have a very rough time of things when the baseline expectations of tanking exceed the mental effort you are willing to devote to gameplay, and, speaking from years of personal experience in this game, tanks who act like that get kicked from parties because nobody wants to carry them through content and get held back when they don't feel like handling tanking responsibilities that require a bit of mental effort.

So, a word of advice from a more experienced veteran of this game than yourself... kick the attitude, spend less time on the forums lecturing players about stuff you aren't YET in a position to have a formulated opinion on, spend more time catching up, and then come back when you have a more complete perspective and might be able to come up with creative solutions to the problems we're experiencing. Who knows, maybe they'd be really good suggestions, and I might be wholly supportive of them. But you ain't there yet, champ. You've got a lot of catching up to do.

We'll see how you feel about the job once you're caught up to level cap and have unlocked everything, and if you still like it then, because let me tell you... the design philosophy of the content you're playing through now in HW is very different than what we have to deal with now. Encounter design in Heavensward is, in my opinion, superior to that of Shadowbringers for a lot of reasons, so your experience with the current kit you have may feel very different when you're playing through dungeons with a very different design philosophy behind them. You might find you dislike it just as much as you did spamming Form Shift in HW content, but for different reasons, and some of the things you liked in HW might become things you despise in SHB.

5.4 IS a band-aid patch for what is, assumedly, coming in 6.0 as an actual rework. 5.4 has been the single most useful band-aid for monk for as long as I can remember.

So what if we lose a very marginal movement speed buff? We didn't have it 2.0-4.9 so it's no big deal. We have nearly machine gun TFC/Enlightenment now thank to deep meditation and brotherhood. Yeah, RoE only being 6 sec is bleh but we still have true north to fall back on if needed. Anatman is still super situational but tbh IDC about that, it's likely gone/reworked in 6.0 anyway.

My gripes with this patch:
-wasted chakra because we overflow now thx to DM and BH
-AA weaker which is just dumb

Other than those 2 things, i see the rest as a net gain even if only qol, as in GL.

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Originally Posted by ValStormbreaker

So, a word of advice from a more experienced veteran of this game than yourself... kick the attitude, spend less time on the forums lecturing players about stuff you aren't YET in a position to have a formulated opinion on, spend more time catching up, and then come back when you have a more complete perspective and might be able to come up with creative solutions to the problems we're experiencing. Who knows, maybe they'd be really good suggestions, and I might be wholly supportive of them. But you ain't there yet, champ. You've got a lot of catching up to do.

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Ok grandma. See u in 2 years maybe, knowing the pace I'm going I doubt I'll get to ~relevant~ content til then lol :P

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Originally Posted by ValStormbreaker

...horrible moves nobody liked such as Featherfoot and Haymaker, how PB was on a 3-minute cooldown...

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Those moves were good for solo play, but next to useless in parties. I liked them; not every skill have to revolve around party play. One ilm punch could have been useful outside PvP too, but SE rarely made it relevant in party-PvE, "the real way to play", so, of course, peeps complain.
Perfect balance on 3 min CD was overkill, yes.

As you mention later, Axe kick, imo, it could solve many "problems" with Monk's GL maintenance. In fact PB and AK could be everything Monks need to keep GL up on a rotation that could include Tornado kick. Form Shift could maintain it during long pause in fights. But SE decided to separate PvP and PvE from the beginning, thus not making this an option.

Imo, the removal of GL is another dumbing down to the lowest common denominator. Everything seemingly have to revolve around the holy trinity, and if not, peeps can't stop complaining and SE will eventually give in.

Keeping GL up was never that big of a deal, but apparently I'm in the minority on here. I agree with most that Stormblood, the "Monk expansion", made the Job much worse and that "fixes" they applied just messed things up further.

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

But it does not take away from my experience that I find doing dungeons to level as a Monk is more of a chore than the other classes, and this change to GL totally removes this negative feeling for me. If anything, it has made it one of the jobs I enjoy leveling now haha...

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LOL, so since I like GL, should I expect SE to add similar mechanics to classes I don't like to level. Please, SE, add GL to Bard, else it's a chore to level it.
It's OK to not like every job and not have every job leveled. In fact, that there are jobs that don't cater to everyone, should make the game more interesting.
SE, of course, goes by majority vote. Understandable from a business perspective, yet disappointing as hell. Can't upset muh holy trinity!

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

Ok grandma. See u in 2 years maybe, knowing the pace I'm going I doubt I'll get to ~relevant~ content til then lol :P

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You do you. My only advice is that, she does have a point that most jobs really don't feel/play like themselves until cap. Being that you're working on all of them I'm sure you'll find the ones most fun for you. Have fun!

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Originally Posted by Duskane

well Suzaku isnt entirely related to Monk
Nidhogg literally turns into a dragoon
and Estinien has Nidhogg powers like there's a clear connections with Drg.

i get monk could do with some super strong skill like other melee but there would be optiond from other bosses like Temple of the Fist or swallows compass

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Suzaku, a phoenix, literally turns into a woman using martial arts moves, in the expansion Monk was the co-poster child of. Phantom Flurry is Chun Li's lightning kick, not unlike how Six-Sided Star is Chun Li's Tenshokyakku and how Four Point Fury is Chun Li's Spinning Bird Kick. Phantom Flurry ends in a Tornado Kick-like 180-degree cleave. Monk is the martial artist job, and martial arts moves go with the martial arts job. I mean, unless you know of any other job in the game that uses martial arts kicks in hand-to-hand combat, but other than Pugilist (which is a fancy word for "boxer") or its job, Monk, I don't really know of any other martial arts jobs in the game that have hand-to-hand martial arts combat moves. Unless I missed something.

Her other moves are pretty much reskinned Monk moves, too. Well of Flame is basically Howling Fist with a fire effect, all of Suzaku's tank autos are physical damage hand-to-hand combat strikes, and the only things she does that aren't physical damage attacks with hand-to-hand combat are to compensate for the fact that most of the party except for the main tank are behind her DPSing away, so there needs to be some raid-wide stuff for everyone else to do. Beyond that, insofar as I'm concerned, walks like a duck talks like a duck... you see where I'm going with this.

Swallow's Compass is actually themed after the Geomancer lore-wise, and has the closest relationship to AST in the story. The only real martial arts argument there, aside from the Far East Asian flair of the dungeon, is the final boss, but unless Monk were to get a staff weapon and could pull off some sweet Sun Wukong style moves, or essentially turn into Guild Wars 2's Daredevil, there's not a whole lot of relevancy there. And Temple of the Fist was awful... the less said about that dungeon, the better.

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

Ok grandma. See u in 2 years maybe, knowing the pace I'm going I doubt I'll get to ~relevant~ content til then lol :P

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At the pace you're currently going at, having started this month, you could hit current content in a week or two. It's not difficult. Then again, being an obnoxious little snot in an MMO to people trying to give you some helpful advice is not a great way to make friends or influence people, so good luck finding people to play with who are willing to help you with that kind of attitude. Have fun!

I didn't start this month though. I started like... half??? a year ago...? There are so many sidequests and achievements and crafting and gathering to do. Why rush it xD

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Originally Posted by MercuryD

You do you. My only advice is that, she does have a point that most jobs really don't feel/play like themselves until cap. Being that you're working on all of them I'm sure you'll find the ones most fun for you. Have fun!

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Aw thanks! Super nice of you u w u

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Originally Posted by Guesswhat

Those moves were good for solo play...

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Being someone who plays a lot of Guild Wars 2 lately, I can appreciate the idea behind wanting Featherfoot as a dodge and Haymaker as a follow-up. It sounds great on paper. I don't think it worked out terribly well in its implementation and in practice, though, and that's regardless of whether we're talking about solo or group PvE. I don't think the game engine at its state at the time was really equipped to make the most of the idea.

I get that SE wanted to keep PvE and PvP separate, but it's not like there aren't PvE moves also present in PvP. They just work differently in PvP. My concern is the PvP-exclusivity of certain moves that would actually fix issues in PvE quicker and in a more cost-effective manner than waiting so long on allegedly expensive job changes due to schedule and budget reasons. Migrating a skill over to PvE is simple when the animation and icon are already in game, so there's no additional cost to make a brand new skill involved.

Speaking of Axe Kick, imagine if Anatman (which puts you into the Anatman "state" in your status enhancements) used pre-pull did what form shift does now (which is essentially only there to be like Meditation, where instead of having to push the button many times it just gives you all your chakra at once, so if the tank is a Leeroy Jenkins who doesn't give you a countdown, you can just start the fight without having to lose 3 GCDs waiting to go into Opo-Opo form), and maxed out your chakra stacks like meditation. Now imagine if it also changed Shoulder Tackle to SB-style Wind-Tackle. Here's what the opener would start out with:

Wind Tackle > Demolish > Riddle of Wind double-woven with Axe Kick

Congratulations, you're not even at the second GCD yet and you're now at max 3 stacks of GL in FoF. Do your vanilla ABC rotation and swap to FoW to get to 4 stacks.

I'll raise you another version. Instead of Wind Tackle, it's PvP Riddle of Wind, where each shoulder tackle gives you a stack of GL. You'd max your GL stacks before reaching the second GCD.

If you could get up that quickly, nobody would have an issue with GL. The problem is that they gave us an extra GL stack to go faster, but instead of keeping the ways of getting our stacks up that we had, they took it away, forcing us to take longer to wind up. That's kind of counter-intuitive to the idea to giving us an extra stack of GL, which is where the whole problem was. One step forward, two steps back. Not sure what the thinking was there, unless they were concerned MNK would be too powerful and they tried to shackle it back. In that case, I think the smarter thing to do would be to just make MNK play fluidly, and then deal with potency adjustments later as needed. Nobody cares how powerful the job is if it plays like garbage.

(continued in another post due to the character limit)

I think the Monk rework turned out really good, it might have still some minor issues but overall, i think that Job is heading into a good direction.

(continued from a previous post) I had no issue with SB MNK. The rotations were fluid and great, though the internet appeared to be garbage at explaining it simply, making it seem more complex than it really was. I will concede the only issue it had for me was the inclusion of several layers of RNG for a job that shouldn't have had any to begin with. That was a big problem. Otherwise I think SB MNK was probably in its best form during Alphascape, and the main issue was the jargon-heavy explanations with graphs and flow charts which are not the best way to communicate this info to another human being.

Speaking of SB MNK, it was hard for them to find statics because it couldn't compete with the Piercing Resistance Down combo of DRG and BRD, and NIN buffing damage, even though technically MNK was more powerful than either of the three. I can't help but feel that if they updated the Blunt Resistance Down to still assist with healer MP regen instead of allowing it to be a vestigial feature that no longer served its intended purpose. healers would want to have a MNK in the party just in case, and it would still have a place.

Speaking of, prior to the potency changes, my stance on Leaden Fist Bootshine is that putting all your eggs in one basket was leading to the abuse of LF BS spam, and bizarre rotations around exploiting it. Instead, what they should have done is split that 150 potency 6 ways between your main weaponskills, so Leaden Fist would just be a 25-potency increase to all your main skills.

As for GL, even if they did what they did, I think they could've kept the meter and treated it like BLM's Enochian, where you still need to race the clock to keep your stacks up to access certain powerful moves. That would still make it more engaging. I think that the combo enders giving GL stacks could have and should have been replaced by giving chakra, instead of doubling down on the RNG mechanics which MNK really shouldn't have, making rotations plan around chakra gain instead of relying on luck from critical hits, resulting in a more reliable DPS output rather than random variance.

(continued again in another post due to the character limit)

Seeing as Brotherhood is now double-woven with RoF in place of Internal Release, instead of used a GCD later, it doesn't make sense to have a 15-second duration instead of sharing RoF's window. That being said, I don't get why PB has the 15-second duration AND a cap. If you kept your GCDs rolling, hitting 6 moves inside a 10-second PB is easy. If you can't keep your GCDs rolling... you're failing at basic gameplay, and probably don't deserve to hit all 6 GCDs. To me, this encourages GCD clipping and a safety net for sloppy gameplay. Ping is not a factor when you can auto-queue the next GCD in sequence (this is built into the hotbar, so you don't have to spam the button). The only reason MNKs wanted to get 6 moves inside PB is that was the most we could get, and the idea wasn't about 6 so much as just making the most of our short windows. If we had the full 15 seconds, we'd be able to make the most of our BH/RoF burst window, and that would lend to greater rotational flexibility. Caps make sense for NIN's Ten-Chi-Jin because you can't move until you commit to three moves, but MNK's PB window is a very different animal from NIN's Mudra system, which excuses GCD clipping (something unacceptable to MNK uptime), so it seems like a lot of lip-service for a change that affects nothing for people who know how to keep their GCDs rolling, but enables sloppiness for people who struggle with basic law-of-the-land gameplay. To me, that enables poor gameplay, not helping to lower the skill floor appropriately. Most of all, it ruins the potential of a 15-second window and how creative we might've been able to get with it.

Mr. Happy is at fault for ardently promoting this one, believing that "Monks want 6" instead of "Monks want to make the most of whatever they can get inside this window," which, fun fact... at the right speeds, could be 7. Now that's impossible for the folks who figured that out.

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Originally Posted by Anhra

I think the Monk rework turned out really good, it might have still some minor issues but overall, i think that Job is heading into a good direction.

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These aren't "minor" issues. RoE's rework makes it impossible to do any of the fights in the previous two raid tiers without suffering a 30% DPS loss, which is catastrophic. The job is now slower due to the "always be in Fists of Fire" requirement, with the other two elemental fists being now outright useless in combat, since it also reduces our movement speed, making it more difficult to disengage for certain mechanics. Also, it is more boring because there is now less to do, when the major complaint of 5.0 MNK was that they removed too much and needed to put stuff back as the job felt slow and clunky. Baking GL into the job as a trait didn't actually change any of the rotations, either. The clumsy rotations are still the same, even without Anatman there, because Anatman wasn't the only thing that made the rotations clunky or clumsy. There were other issues, too. SSS is still not going to be used by 99% of people as a disengage tool because the recast time is still too slow, resulting in a DPS loss over just re-engaging with your regular GCD moves. The movement speed addition doesn't change that. Anatman is still in the game, it still clogs hotbar space instead of something better, and it's now even more useless than it was before.

All of these things actually make Monk fit the battle content WORSE than before. Even if you were to argue that the GL change itself was good... the other changes were not.

See, I'm not just making an empty statement like "it might have some minor issues overall, I think that the job is headed in a good direction,". I'm actually breaking down what the changes are, and how they affect gameplay, and assessing the impact of the changes. I can back up what I'm saying there. You'd have to address all of these points and explain to me how you think this constitutes moving in a "good" direction when the job now no longer fits the battle content. I won't deny that some of the adjustments were good, such as not having to spam Form Shift in dungeons anymore... but the drawbacks now grossly outweigh the positives. I can't call this a "good direction" with a straight face when a lot of the changes don't actually change anything, like in the case of SSS, while others make the job no longer fit the battle content, like in the case of RoE.

I don't see a problem with that dps loss, more Jobs other than Monk should also get a similar treatment so we can actually withness Mechanics outside of endgame Raids. And from the way i see it, Monk currently holds the fastest in-combat movement speed which feels really good to play with. I think its a good trade.

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Originally Posted by ValStormbreaker

I can appreciate the idea behind wanting Featherfoot as a dodge and Haymaker as a follow-up. It sounds great on paper. I don't think it worked out terribly well in its implementation and in practice, though, and that's regardless of whether we're talking about solo or group PvE. I don't think the game engine at its state at the time was really equipped to make the most of the idea.

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Iirc it worked quite well when, lets say you solo a FATE boss. Combined with Keen Flurry the boss could stay slowed a lot. It certainly helped. Featherfoot guaranteed you get a proc on heymaker.
I agree that it doesn't have much application besides these kind of niche situations, but, imo, having niche actions gives the game more flavor. But, of course, maintaining these kinds of things isn't really practical with the philosophy SE have had towards the game since the beginning of FF14.

I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything else you say, however, the problem I had with SB expansion was mainly the slowdown of RoF, physical only buff on brotherhood and tackle mastery being too situational aka useless. I know I kinda sound like a hypocrite since I just defended Haymaker for niechness, but at the time SB came out, it was way too obvious SE weren't going to cater to anything else than mainstream appeal; the tackle mastery and physical damage buff thing were a really odd design choices with that in mind. SB was also the time they completely separated PvP and PvE which really left a sour taste in my case. Some of the ideas SE had on PvP Monk could absolutely "fix" the GL "problem" as you mentioned.
The worst part SB added though, imo, was random procs to Monk. I hate random procs; can't stand them. A personal thing I guess.

Imo, when it comes to monk, SE has always taken more steps backwards than forward, at least since HW.

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Originally Posted by pinkbubblegum

snip

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I respect any opinion here, no matter if it´s low level or whatever. But i´ve to come and ask again, what´s the point to rework a class for players who won´t main or 2nd main this class anyway? There are a lot of classes with different playstyles and difficulties. Making the monk a " slow no brain - button smasher" is no fun.

And you talk about dungeons. Dungeons are actually too easy anyway. It doesn´t matter which class you play. I know players which aren´t even able to read any skill of their class and just press some lightning buttons here and there, they die like 5 times on any dungeon boss but still manage to do it after 1 hour. This is nothing you can judge about, especially when it comes to leveling. The most classes haven´t even more than 2 useful skills until level 30. Then you´ve classes like the BLM where the rotation is completely different with each new skill-setup (addon).
So yeah, the only thing i want to judge and do care about are the endgame-raids. For everything else, you don´t even need the most of the skills and i won´t even care about GL stacks for trashmobs or not. The damage loss is like "1minute longer in the instance", wow...