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

[UshioOkazaki]

I will give my feedback here too. I am deeply sad about this cr*p change for the MNK. I am a main MNK since the beta, it was always fun to play it, but now, what, it's seems not that fun. HS made some changes in the MNK, like the chakra stack and tornado kick, and at that time, I thought "Does the devs knows how to play MNK or they just don't care this class?". Well, I mean, every MNK knows that losing our GL3 is a f*cking pain, and they'd released a skill who consume our GL3. Well don't mind that, we only use it 1/2 per fight, as finisher, and now they reduce the potency and reduce the CD, does they even test it first or...?

So yeah, I'm happy too see that I'm not the only one who think that the MNK will be useless at the release of SB, we're completely outclassed by the SAM (nice balance btw), we've been nerfed on our potency, losing some useful skills and the cross-skill thing is utterly useless for us. What a nice "MONK EXTENSION", our class will just disappear with that. So yeah, losing some potency, why not, guess we have a little too much dps compared to others (which is not), losing some skills for introducing new skills, why not, but make the MNK based on the RNG on a skill which is nerfed and now... Useless? I must say I don't know what's going on atm.

The concept of playing based on our Fists is a good one, I mean it, I truly love the idea, but the idea I don't love, it's our Riddles are... Well, stupid and everyone knows the MNK will stay on Riddle of Fire for increase our dps, sometimes using the earth when the battle start to be a little unconvenient for us, but that pretty much the thing is. If you're trying new things like this, just do something great at least, let's have a whole impact in all the others skills (or a good amount of them). Like, when we're using our Fist of Wind, we got reduce on our GCD/oGCD or some skills doing some DoT with a reduction of our potency, when we're using our Fist of Fire, our dps is greatly improved, but we have less time on our GL etc...
Instead of that, we have just have two Riddle useless and unplayable, with lot of skills loss. Also, what is the point of keeping Tornado Kick? We're losing potency on it and less CD, but don't you know it won't change the fact is still useless (even more now) and we're only using it twice on the battle? Even if we can keep our GL even easier now and stack it a bit more easily. Did you seriously play the MNK for more than two minutes? This skill need a solid rework, like losing just one stack at the current potency or greatly buff it, like 800 potency, losing all our GL but with a CD of 200s?

I mean, what is the point of playing a class when a better one doing the same thing but better? We got our raid buff (useless btw) and losing our solo utility, and at the same time, your releasing a class which is useless for a raid but terribly OP when it comes alone.

There is so much thing to say about this MNK 4.0, I hope this post will be read by a member of the dev' team and all of this will change because I don't even want to play this game anymore 'cause I truly love my MNK and no other class can change it.
I know that you want to make this game easier (it's already easy), but why killing some class like the MNK or the WHM? Just keep the MNK a little bit more difficult to play, like this you'll make a lot of people happy.

[Gleipni]

All he said

He is totaly right,cause,one thing that is not logical from the Dev,is that they did 2 paradoxal skill,i mean riddle of earth,and cyclone kick,before,we used cyclone kick to use our GL stack,but ith riddle of earth that refresh it...no one will use the cyclone,better keep full start for starting at max power that do a weak ass cylcone kick.

And Ushio said,it was a good idea that the dash have different used depending on wich elemental fist you use,but they should have done that to a lot more skill,,as he said fire fist hit stronger but GL is shorter,wind put DoT etc....
Its like they invented electricity,for then just using it for doing some spark. that dash elemental thing should have been on way more skill !

Monk extension my A**

[SpeckledBurd]

I feel like in order to really understand how disappointing these changes and new actions are, we have to actually take a look at what defines Monk, and while I'm not a top percentile Monk I have cleared every fight in the game with it barring two or three with pretty respectable DPS so without further ado:

What Defines Monk


Monk is, at it's core, defined by Greased Lightning, a massive stacking buff that boosts our damage and attack rate substantially that requires constant attacking to maintain due to it's short duration. Due to just how large of a buff this is our potencies were relatively low on all actions due to how much the buff and other actions inflated them. This made us a DPS defined by our sustained damage since we never really have a large burst phase. Beyond this, Monk is a Greedy Job, we never contributed damage buffs to the party, the best we had was Mantra, the Intelligence down effect on Dragon Kick, and the highest personal DPS of all jobs. In general I'd say that our defining characteristics are being a greedy DPS, consistent damage, and probably most importantly our fast GCD.

Now some of this design worked against it in Heavensward. In Gordias, the DPS checks were so high that actually taking a Monk was detrimental, as it's high personal damage wasn't actually stronger than the DPS adding utility of other actions such as Disembowel, Battle Litany, Trick Attack, and other skills. In Midas, there were several aspects of fight design at their core that worked against Monk. In A10S there was downtime between each robot where a Monk would lose Greased Lightning while waiting on cool downs to refresh; other Jobs with similar buffs to Greased Lightning were able to refresh those on a one minute cool down so the wait was manageable and you could get all four robots fought before the enrage. Monk couldn't, Perfect Balance, the equivalent skill to BotD and Enochian being on a 180 second cool down prevented waiting on it, the best Monk could hope for was being allowed to chain pull, which took away the rest of the parties openers. A7S and A8S were actually okay, relatively speaking, however Monk was uniquely terrible to handling the Melee Jail mechanic of A7S due to it forcing a loss of Greased Lightning and the positional requirements. Creator is where everything came to a head, and the meta became about clearing the fights as quickly as possible rather than just getting a clear, and it really put Monk's problems under a microscope. Despite having the highest personal damage, it still didn't offset Dragoon, Ninja, or even the casters who required less comparative coddling due to being able to control their aggro and having theoretically infinite MP. It's complete lack of Burst was another major problem, as some fights required controlled DPS at specific points to skip long mechanics (Skipping A11S's Lapis Lazuli phase), and actually skipping those mechanics prevented Perfect Balance from being up after the Action Time Maneuver at the end of the fight.

Which finally brings me to Monk's Stormblood actions

The Good: Brotherhood
Brotherhood is a 5% buff to the Physical Damage for all party members within it's range on a 90 second cool down. The Monk itself is unaffected by this buff on its own, however it still benefits by having the chance for any weapon skill used by a party member to open a Chakra and allow us the use of Forbidden Chakra, a hard hitting oGCD. Conceptually I love this ability. It allows Monk to provide a damage buff to the party while still maintaining the Job identity of being a selfish DPS. We're scratching everyone else's back entirely because it benefits us and allows us to get more of those sweet sweet Forbidden Chakras. The only issue it has is minor, opening Chakras is RNG gated so it has the chance to be inconsistent in how much it benefits us.

The Mediocre: Meditation, Riddle of Fire, and Riddle of Earth

Deep Meditation: A decent idea with some serious problems
Deep Meditation as a trait is at best just okay with a handful of problems. It does a few things well, by providing more Chakra's over the course of a fight, it gives us more opportunities to use Forbidden Chakra and actually makes Purification a semi-reliable TP regeneration resource since it actually has the chance to be up at a time where we've actually been using TP instead of naturally regenerating it. The problem it has is two fold. The first is it's RNG based layered behind RNG for 5/6 of our weaponskills, so it can't be relied on for a burst of high damage or more TP. The second problem is that it actually makes standard Meditation a bit worse, as it will now be possible to go into a downtime phase and only be able to build one Chakra.

Riddle of Fire: An action that runs contrary to the Job's core design
Riddle of Fire is a 30% Damage Boost that costs us Greased Lightning's haste for it's 20 second duration on a 90 second cool down. This skill is our replacement for Blood For Blood, with it's timer made specifically to line up better with pretty much all of our oGCDs. The cost to our haste that comes with it doesn't make it a true 30% damage buff, it's closer to about 10% like B4B's buff (by my Napkin math it's roughly a gain of 100 potency if you cram all of your off Globals into it).

On paper, it looks okay, however the cost to the Haste runs contrary to one of the three core characteristics of Monk. Losing our faster GCD is a miserable experience, when our stacks drop and we don't have PB to pick them up, we don't notice that our attacks are dealing 30% less damage in the same way we actually feel how slow we're attacking. It's like having to slog through molassus, and this GCD is going to require us to experience that about a bit over a fifth of the time, and it is something I very much do not look forward too. The reasoning behind the haste loss however, is at least sound. This action is designed to compliment Brotherhood's chakra building, because forbidden Chakra has Benediction levels of animation wind up that causes some pretty frequent GCD clipping. However that really isn't good reasoning to ruin the Job feel, especially when the animation lock can be reduced by just speeding up Forbidden Chakra's animation.

Riddle of Earth: An Ineffective Solution to a Big Problem
Riddle of Earth is a 60 second cool down that changes a Monk to Fists of Earth. On it's own it doesn't do anything, but when the Monk receives damage it grants them Earth's Reply, a 10% damage reduction and restores Greased Lightning, it does not actually grant it. From the way it's designed, it's meant to be used during phases where the boss goes invulnerable and does a big AOE so that you can maintain your stacks.

There's a lot of problems with this.

First, it's a skill that requires a DPS to get hit to proc. That's a no-no, effects like those belong on tanks. There's a reason you Eye for an Eye isn't usually used on anybody else after all. I fully imagine there's going to be a number of Monk's eating AOEs to restore their stacks and that's just... really really bad design. This also gives the skill anti-synergy with raidwide mitigation such as shields. Because this action procs on damage, if your healers (or Paladin) are working overtime/crit their Adloquium, it's not unheard of for damage to be completely eliminated. So in the event that that you get super shielded even though you actually need to take damage, you can say goodbye to Greased Lightning.

The second is this skill doesn't actually work with the fight design of pretty much every raid and trial in the game. After examining every fight in Heavensward, I found that of the fights with forced downtime, the ones which actually featured undodgeable AOEs that would refresh your stacks were... Zurvan's soar and that's it. The others either last significantly too long (Pretty much every Ultimate attack and quite a few of the downtime phases in savage), only had dodgeable AOEs so the goal was actually to avoid it (Sophia's tilts and charges, Ravana's Charges), or had no damage at all (A11S's QTE, 12S's time gate loading screen).

Lastly, and most annoyingly, it's just a new button that provides a highly situation and ineffective solution that could have been better solved by cutting Perfect Balance's recast time in half. Despite one of the goals of the design team being to reduce button bloat and useless/highly situational actions they gave Monk button bloat and a highly situational action. They also made Tornado Kick worse, as it still costs all your Greased Lightning stacks but it will now only be used even less since there will be a few fights where Earth Riddle might see use.

And speaking of situational and terrible skills

The downright Terrible: Tackle Mastery, or how SE used an entire new Trait to add 20 potency to an attack

For the life of me I cannot understand what they were thinking with this trait. Where other classes got new traits that gave them dynamic new ways to interact with their job or cool new effects, Monk got a kick in the teeth. Essentially, what it does is it changes the effect of our gap closer depending on the stance we're in. If we're in Fists of Fire, it adds 20 potency. If we're in Fists of Earth it adds a 10 yalm Knockback. If you're in Fists of Wind it's potency is cut in half, but you can use it twice.

So the core problem with tying any trait to Monk's Fist stances is that you really only ever want to be in Fists of Fire 99% of the time. The 1% of the time you want to be out of it, you've got Brink of Death and the next mechanic that requires you to get hit is just going to up and kill you. However, even then the effects they've given to Earth Tackle and Wind Tackle are just... not useful at all. Wind Tackle is a second gap closer, however it costs us damage to use by forcing us to switch to Fists of Wind, and sprint no longer uses TP so we still have pretty good mobility after the initial shoulder tackle.

Earth Tackle however is one of the most intuitively designed actions in the game. Monk has an effective attack range of 3 yalms. Earth Tackle knocks the enemy back 10 yalms. Some have said that it will have uses in 4-mans, but it won't. If Monk were say, a Machinist or White Mage using their knockback in a dungeon, then this would be fine, it removes pressure from you and you're still able to heal/DPS, it can even be used to knock a ranged mob into the pack the Tank has created. For Monk it doesn't do that, it just prevents you from doing your job. Monk isn't even going to be in a position to knock an enemy into the Tank's pack since Monk has to ride the Tank's heels in a dungeon so we can refresh our stacks. For raids, there's never a time where a Knockback is actually needed, and if it would be needed a Monk would be a terrible option to do it because, again, it creates downtime. It's a skill fine for PVP, but they were seperating the PVP actions out into PVP so there's no reason for it to be here. I've seen people say that it's kind of like the Cross Role actions, where some of the skills are situational, but the key thing is this isn't a cross role. This is tied to our kit, we can't select it off and take something useful in its stead, we're just stuck with it. I've also seen some people who don't actually play Monk say that it'll be hilarious to troll in dungeons alongside a Machinist and a White Mage but that's short lived amusement and still generally unhelpful to monk.

That just leaves Fire Tackle, the most useful since it actually improves how much damage we deal, but taking an entire Trait to functionally just add 20 potency is a huge waste of trait. They could have gotten the same effect by adding 20 potency to the action itself and giving us some other effect.

LONG STORY SHORT

With the exception of Brotherhood what we received in Stormblood was on some level bad. Riddle of Fire inflicts the most tangible penalty of losing Greased Lightning on a regular basis. Deep Meditation makes normal Meditation lose some of it's actual use during downtime. Riddle of Earth will require fights to specifically cater to its existence to be used, and Tackle Mastery has terrible bonuses and it's tied to a system that basically only wants you to be in Fists of Fire, so it basically amounts to a trait that gives us 20 potency. While some actions like Riddle of Fire's anti-haste or Deep meditation can be fixed, Riddle of Earth is fundamentally flawed enough that it would have to be completely reworked to be fixed and even then it's still a redundant button to Perfect Balance, and Tackle Mastery is so terrible that I can't think of any way to fix it beyond scrapping it and replacing it with something else.

I'm really not feeling the Monk love here SE.

[Orbiaus]

I agree what's being said here. The changes just seem weird. It's like they added stuff that looks interesting in videos but has no real use in raids or dungeons. They need to do a re-think.

[alex4815162342]

They try to add on monk a 3rd arms, but this 3rd arm have no hand !
Not well design, not stable, with a lot of contradiction !
Monk lost his identity and is not able to find an over.
We are the fastest job of the game, and we even don't have a skill like "The Arrow".

English isn't my native tongue, so it's gard for me to tell all I want to say, but the thing is here ; Monk have a problem of design !

I'm OK with SpeckledBurd, and if we want the dev to listen, we have to support and make this kind of post ! I did one in the French side of the forum.

[IchiExorz]

I'm 50/50 about what I see for Monk.
I don't like the potency nerfs to the main combo skills (I can understand the forbidden chakra nerf.) Really makes me think "why?" Especially after seeing the SAM potencies.

Also I would have liked to see an additional damaging ability.
Change the Riddle skills into a single skill that changes effect depending on which fist stance you're in (and add a Riddle of Wind?) and give Monk a badass looking damaging skill.
I was really looking forward to a skill like that. xD

Riddle of Wind could give MNK an attack speed boost (to the point where it at least outdamages being in Fists of Fire.) In addition to a movement speed bonus.

In the end I think Monk didn't get it as bad as some other classes but i'm not a huge fan of it either.

[Raionx]

I think that tornado kick shouldn't be something that is never used. I suggest removing the greased lightning requirement entirely. Instead every time you refresh Greased Lightning III you gain a new stack of a different buff. when you stack that up to 3 you can tornado kick and spend that and maybe make a second ability that uses the same stack of 3 to refresh greased lightning.

That way when we were fighting we could tornado kick every 3rd time thru our rotation and when the boss leaves we'd have a way to extend the duration on greased lightning.

All i know is I don't care about how much damage monks do or what their raid utility is. I'm sure all of that will be balanced in the end. I'm just tired of seeing all the other jobs gain new and interesting ways to interact with their skills while we are still doing the same thing we did in 2.0

[MrHobbit]

Bootshine is used every 12 seconds currently with a ~2 second global under GL3. That means you get 5 free crits every minute. At a 30% proc chance, that's worth 1.6 chakra a minute.
You use 5 non-guaranteed weaponskills in a 12 second period. With a 50% crit chance, you'll average 2.5 crits. That's an additional 12.5 crits per minute, or 3.75 chakra.
Adding it up, our base chakra generation through Deep Meditation is 5.15 chakra/minute, or 1.03 TFC a minute. With 30 weaponskills used during a minute, that makes Deep Meditation worth roughly 8.5 potency per weaponskill.

And thats with a such high unrealistic 50% critical chance, this is our new mechanic for what we were nerfed almost everywhere, aside for a 15 seconds 5% party buff...

you are missing 1 important thing here that you asume the crits you get will aply to your weaponskills and not your AUTO ATTACKS what makes our chakra generation silly since we got tripple rng in it nr 1 crit nr2 crit a weapon skill not a auto nr30% chance for it to proc

[MrHobbit]

What was the point of slowly buffing Monk over the past 2 years if it's just going to be nerfed damage wise? And for what?



Someone better at potency math than I should see, post buffs, how much more Potency a Sam has than the Monk. I feel like if it's 10% or higher, Monk... has no real value over Sam, since it's damage becomes so stupid it actually will make up for it's lack of utility. Not that I might I mind that. I'd just rather Monk be the same. Two sides of the huge DPS coin.

I'll cool my head tho. I, like everyone​ else, is getting more upset the more I think about how funky these change are. Let's all reserve final judgement for when the lvl 70 numbers and damage profiles come out. Who knows. We may yet still be Badass.

another thing that people seem to mis is that one of the sam weaponskill combos GRANTS him a gl2 speed buff... so he got potencys out of this world and gl2 speed+ gl3 dmg buff -_-

[MrHobbit]

Fire 2, Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 were all reduced by 20 base potency (36 at Astral 3 for F2 and F4). Flare AoE scaling changed, which is a nerf, unless you hit six or more mobs.

so what you are saying you got nerf on 1 aoe skill and 2 of your main skills sooo if my math isnt wrong your fire 4 got nerfed by +- 7% ok great now monk EVERY SINGLE ROTATIONAL SKILL got nerfed by +-6-8% now look what blm gained and what monk gained from the new skills and new goodies ..... and tell me again that you have it soooo much worse of then monks do this upcoming expansion.