MNK 4.0 Changes . . . I'm not a fan tbh

[Arkenne]

Skill or luck ?

Well, I really don't think a single OGCD will determine if you are good or bad, regardless of luck.
I mean, its not like all the other MNK attacks do -1 damage and only Forbidden Chakra does 5 millions.

Luck was already there ever since Crit has been a factor. And MNK had never been the only one affected by it.

The stun on one ilm punch requires you to be in the right stance at the right time.

Considering how many 80% hasty touches I've had fail when crafting, I have my doubts that Chakra would fire like a machine gun at 30% chance.

Our level 70 quest better gives the title "The Riddler"

1+ for The Riddler, I would like that title.
Well, for One Ilm Punch, it says that "Stun is impervious to nullifying effects", so maybe you can stun your target even if they are immune to normal stuns. That would make sense.
80% chance of success still has a 20% chance of failure that can happen... I've failed crafts at 98% chance, and HQed items with 1% chance to do so.

With that 30% chance, along with 1 ranged, 2 tanks and 1 melee companion, you get a 30%x4 chance per weaponskill every 2~2.5 seconds for 15 seconds. Some are bound to happen.

As a side note, MNK will hate casters.

[MrHobbit]

damn with bootshine sure crits and use being the only class with Internal release at +30% I now understand the potency nerf...

dude so what 1 move in 6 will be a crit yeye what about everythign els? everyone will have similar chance to direct hit/crit sure we got IR they got other buffs and ir isnt 100% of the time them introducing another rng stat that can do lots of dmg it buff EVERYONE not just monk so i dont get it how come you think that because of direct hit you need to nerf monk also great you got a flashy 12k move in the pic do you have the potency of that move?. anyhow i do not see how nerfing monk by 10 potency on each skill and giving him a tripple rng mechanic of the form of chakra nr 1 crit nr2 crit a weaponskill not AA nr3 30%chance for a proc .... reapet 5 times...

[SpeckledBurd]

This is mostly crossposted from myself on another forum, but I am extraordinarily unhappy with these changes and the new actions.

It seems like when SE decided to take the title of "Max Damage, low utility" from Monk and give it to Samurai, they had no idea what to do with us. First and foremost, they literally nerfed all of our GCDs potency. All of them, at once, while the other Melee DPS got some substantial buffs to their GCD combos and Samurai is coming in with potency amounts that are mind bogglingly huge. Second, we lost Touch of Death and fracture, while not unsurprising since everybody else lost their Uncombo'd DoT moves, is really aggravating on Monk since they were what made our rotation interesting.

Then for our new actions, they basically looked at Monk and instead of seeing that is was defined the short GCD and it's sustained damage they decided that it's defining features were... the very flawed "Fists of" Stance (literally want to be in fire 99% of the time, with 1% of the time being begrudgingly spent in earth) and... our gap closer. Riddle of Earth has some serious problems if it's meant as a means of sustaining our GL3, since it's both dependent on us taking damage and it only acts as a refresh instead of just granting it. Since it's just a refresh, if there's more time between the boss being targetable and dealing damage than there is Greased Lightning timer, it's going to be lost, and based on every fight in the game so far, that's gonna be the case the majority of the time. It also has anti synergy with Scholars and Nocturnal AST, since if they shield you for more than the hit is, your stacks will also not refresh. Why they gave us this instead of just reducing Perfect Balance's cooldown to be consistent with Blood of the Dragon and Enochian is beyond me. Tackle Mastery is 1/3 actively detrimental, 1/3 lackluster, and 1/3 okay. Earth Tackle is actually terrible, there is no situation ever where a Melee DPS wants a knockback because it means that our enemy is now out of hitting range. Wind Tackle is okay, it's a second gap closer which while useful is a solution to a problem that didn't exist and is already a thing of the past with sprint no longer costing TP. Fire Tackle is more damage, which as a DPS I can't complain about but it just doesn't wow in the same way something like Nostrund on Dragoon or Frog Summoning on Ninja does.

Then on the actions that are actually alright, they're still just kinda...aggravating. Riddle of Fire is a damage oGCD with a 30% damage boost, but it's barely an improvement over what we're losing in Blood for Blood on its own because it's drawback effect completely negates Monk's fast GCD. One of Monk's new abilities completely negates one of the classes defining features and I understand why they did it (which I will in a bit), but I still think it's fucking absurd to circumvent a Job's main point. It would be like giving Ninja a new ability that increased their damage, but completely prevented them from using Ninjutsu for it's duration. The other action, Brotherhood, a 5% boost in physical damage to everyone within 15 yalms which also gives them a 30% chance to feed Chakras back to you, which will theoretically give you the ability use a large number of Forbidden Chakras to you in rapid succession. This chakra build up is actually the reason Riddle of Fire increases your GCD. Forbidden Chakra's animation lock is so horrendously long that even at incredibly low ping you'll still clip GCDs when you use it, so instead of say, speeding up the animation and keeping Monk's job feel consistent, they decided to slow the entire job down 22% of the time. Brotherhood also is just kind of weak as far as party buffs goes, it does nothing for magic damage so it does nothing to assist Ninjutsu or some of Dark Knights edgier abilities, it's range is short, and it doesn't even affect the Monk using it.

The other action changes are just kind of sad to be honest. One Ilm Punch now has a non diminishing stun instead of a completely useless dispel, which is a small improvement. Now it just shares the same issue with Arm of the Destroyers silence by being tied to Monk's stances. If the need to stun/silences something arises, there's only a 33% chance that you'll be in the proper stance to perform it. Tornado Kick is now on a 10 second cooldown, but it still burns all of your GL stacks when you use it, so there's no point to even having a cooldown that low.

The only change I actually kind of like is Deep Meditation, and it comes with a few caveats. Building Chakra stacks during combat is a neat idea. It actually improves Purification as a skill since you might actually have acquired the chakra stacks to use it when you need more TP rather than it being eternally on cooldown so you can have less terrible burst damage. However, it being tied to RNG makes it unreliable and subject to fluctuation at the whim of the game. It also makes Meditation as a skill slightly less useful in some situations, as there will likely be times where you will enter a phase where you have to detach from the boss with Chakras already stacked. Normally you would build Chakras here and come back with a big hit, it was functionally identical to Piercing Talon or Throwing Knife but it cost no TP, didn't break combos and could be used if the boss was untargetable. Now it's possible for us to leave with Four Chakras already stacked, which would prevent us from being able to maximize our downtime into more damage.

Overall this is just...really, really, really, underwhelming for so many reasons, and it really stings because this was an expansion that was originally pitched as having monk as it's poster class. Instead, Monk lost one of the fundamental pillars of its Job identity to Samurai and got a load of genuinely bad abilities with the best one just being okay but flawed. It's honestly bad enough that the thought of cancelling my preorder and unsubbing has crossed my mind more than once.

[Shurrikhan]

Snip

This. Almost 100% agreed.

The ~2% difference/addition:
Personally, I'd rather have seen more use for buff removal, such as by giving it to certain other classes as not to be a unique bonuses but then reducing its TP cost, and for Meditation to become based on attack speed, allowing in-combat Meditation on demand, at least when rotational (de)sync allows, rather than being tied into RNG, alike to a smaller free-stance GCD option.

Of course, for even those smaller gaps (down to 60% or less of a GCD) to ever occur there would need be some reduced penalty for exceeding a given rotational plateau. Admittedly, now that our open stance skills (the DoTs Touch of Death and Fracture) have been removed, there are even fewer possible plateaus available to Monks. That in turn gives Meditation, too, fixed or not, less to work with. While retaining ToD at a lower potency would have already reduced skill-gap from use/disuse alone at small cost to sustained cleave DPS, instead a defining feature has been removed — the open stance fillers by which to actually control and strategize one's stance rotations. The result reeks of short-sighted pandering. The rotational nuance is gutted, and we've lost our unique ranged attack-equivalent to boot.

And I just can't... understand... why SE thought that would be a good idea.

[alex4815162342]

Well, I really don't think a single OGCD will determine if you are good or bad, regardless of luck.
I mean, its not like all the other MNK attacks do -1 damage and only Forbidden Chakra does 5 millions.

Luck was already there ever since Crit has been a factor. And MNK had never been the only one affected by it.

Maybe not determine good or bad, but things like parser or FFlogs will but completly random for MNK, maybe more than the other job !
I'm sure after the release, we'll see some saying "Job is great, I can hit FB 10 time in the fight", and other "Job sucks, I can hit FB only 3 or 4 time in the fight"
They said they want to reduce the gap between good and bad player, and RNG will not help !

It seems like when SE decided to take the title of "Max Damage, low utility" from Monk and give it to Samurai, they had no idea what to do with us.

I feel the same ! We shoul be at the SAM place and they shoul have their own spec !

Riddle of Earth has some serious problems if it's meant as a means of sustaining our GL3, since it's both dependent on us taking damage and it only acts as a refresh instead of just granting it. Since it's just a refresh, if there's more time between the boss being targetable and dealing damage than there is Greased Lightning timer, it's going to be lost, and based on every fight in the game so far, that's gonna be the case the majority of the time. It also has anti synergy with Scholars and Nocturnal AST, since if they shield you for more than the hit is, your stacks will also not refresh.

Riddle of Earth completly kill Tornado Kick ! It's only a refresh and fact is, we all prefer to keep our GL. If Riddle of earth grant to us 3 GL stack, we will be able to use TK and regain our GL after. They have to rework, Riddle of Earth, or Tornado Kick, or Perfect Balance !

The problem is, that all the new stuff we got as Monks are very situational and very RNG ! The synergy between some of the new and older move isn't that great.

[Arkenne]

As a main NIN I can see why you guys are seeing the grass on the other side as greener...

[SpeckledBurd]

The more I think about the changes and our new actions the more aggravated I get. Did the person who was assigned to design Monk's new actions actually play the Job at all? It sure doesn't feel like it. We should have gotten skills that make us go faster, not slower. Riddle of Fire literally forces the worst part of losing Greased Lightning into a regular part of the job by dropping our skill speed. Even some of the design decisions on the actions are completely counter productive. Riddle of Earth requires us to get hit to proc, and that was part of the issue with Haymaker which is being removed. Earth Tackle is a gap closer that creates another gap, completely negating the benefit. Why couldn't we have gotten some sort of expansion to Greased Lightning like how Blood of the Dragon got Gaze of the First Brood. Why couldn't a flashy hard hitting action like Tornado Kick get a trait to see more use, especially now that its purpose is being made irrelevant by Riddle of Earth (though it remains to be seen if this is true).
And worst of all Monk isn't even a popular poster job for the franchise like White Mage is. So while it seems like the majority of Monk players are unhappy with what we've gotten we just don't have enough voices for it to be heard like with White Mage.

[Blacktestament7]

I said the same thing about Riddle of Fire and Earth and both equally feel counterproductive. Way more than the RNG focused chakra issue. Earth is self-explanatory, it negates the point of Tornado Kick which was already way too situational and also refeshes a timer on hit while switching my fist stance lowering damage. My problem with Fire is more than just the GCD increase. It's the only window that they want MNK to do damage it seems like. The potency drop seems to be a result of the 30% (or 20%) increase just like the GCD drop. So now MNK's consistent mid to high damage is gone. It's another DRG heavy slow hit on a burst that's definitely gonna be lower than any other dps burst window without multiple FCs to counter that and even then at 250 pot it's not going to be nearly strong enough.

[Blacktestament7]

Riddle of Earth completly kill Tornado Kick ! It's only a refresh and fact is, we all prefer to keep our GL. If Riddle of earth grant to us 3 GL stack, we will be able to use TK and regain our GL after. They have to rework, Riddle of Earth, or Tornado Kick, or Perfect Balance !

The problem is, that all the new stuff we got as Monks are very situational and very RNG ! The synergy between some of the new and older move isn't that great.

If Riddle of Earth was just going to give GL3, they could have saved time and effort and just made Axe Kick a PvE move instead of a PvP only move. Which is a far superior move than everything they came up with to give monks this xpac.

[Vallhallix]

I think everyone needs to take a step back and focus on the changes that Direct hit and Tenacity are going to bring to EVERYONE's damage. Every class got "nerfed" in some way.

BLM got nerfed? because to me it seems like they got nothing but buffs and skills to make life easier on them during mechanics, and a cross class skill to restore mana when they have unlimited mana lol, meanwhile the classes that actually need the mana got their mana restoration skills nerfed. BRD seems to be improved as well.