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

[MrHobbit]

Monk extension my A**

this so much first video that was ever realeased for SB we saw 2 monks fighting on top of a hand and i was like YES finnaly drg had there expansion now it is time for monk... man i dont remember a bigger diaspointment then what we accully got everyone got new nice tools and stuff we got gimped down tools removed and all we can realy do is A slow ourself to do a bit more dmg with wont yield much anyway and it isnt the reason i play monk if i would want slow big hits i would play BLM and second is hey now we got a raid utility... 5% small range only weaponskills.... oh wait nin trick atack is actully better and his dmg will now be better as welll screw monk but we are devs we like balance so hey lets give monk something nice
lets reduce one of his cooldowns hmmm that tornadokick monk highest potency move has to big of a CD lets reduce that one....

[MrHobbit]

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

actully we do les with removal of fracture and ToD.... but hey its clear where they are going first we gave drg and smn a great stance/trance now in SB lets give them another one .... on monk lets make them slower ...

[J-Reyno]

I had to set up my forum account just to voice my opinion here, because like many I feel that MNK was not treated well with this expansion. I'm not even concerned about whether or not MNK will be "meta" or competitive at the highest level of play. I mean, I am, but that's something we don't know and even if it is, my biggest gripe is that we got more useless skills and we still have useless (or heavily underused) skills.

For one, who looks at MNK and sees Shoulder Tackle as a defining trait of the job? Why did they choose to highlight this particular ability as an elemental variant? More so, why would they give us three tackle variations, of which only one will actually be used? What's more, this seems to be how they decided to address the fact that we are in fire stance 99% of the time. It's not a bad idea, giving attacks that are only usable in the other stances. The problem? We will still be in fire stance 99% of the time! Why? Because the wind and earth tackle variants are not going to be used. I don't need to double tackle, especially if it requires me to swap out of damage stance. And I definitely don't need a gap closer with less range that... also knocks back the enemy? ...what? What am I going to do with this? Even if there were one situation where this is useful, I don't want skills that I'm only going to use once or in one fight and never again.

So we get two new useless shoulder tackle variants, and we still have two useless stances.

Then Tornado Kick has its cooldown reduced. No other changes.

....really?

So this criminally underused ability is just going to stay the same? I mean, yeah I get that they want us to have a way to dump our stacks, but fact is 99% of the time we do our utmost to ensure we don't lose those stacks at all. We're also getting a GL duration buff and a new skill that is going to make Tornado Kick even less used than it is now.

I find it especially upsetting because TK is one of our flashy, cool-looking abilities but we very, very rarely get to use it. I just would have liked for TK to become something we can use regularly. Maybe this should have been our elemental variant instead, and using it with no stance dumped GL stacks for a high potency attack.

Oh, I also think the low range on Brotherhood and the fact that we only get chakra from weaponskills is super petty. Especially since it's only a chance during the short period of this 90s CD buff. The least they could have done was allow us to gain chakra from spellcasts as well. They threw us a bone, but it's brittle and weak. NIN still has a better utility on a shorter cooldown. It's more powerful and convenient.

Last, I don't care for the across-the-board potency nerfs in exchange for RNG. I do at least see some potential there and think numbers tweaks can happen if MNK turns out underwhelming dps-wise. My biggest fear is that MNK becomes super comp dependent relying on, say, DRG and SCH for litany+stratagem to be a desirable pick.

Whatever the case, we got screwed.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

Didn't Flare go from -10/20/30/40/50... to -15/30....? That's a buff on any more than 4 mobs...

Atop the Flare AoE buff you later add a 650 potency AoE and 30-pt AoE DoT. Your AoE has only been reduced over a particular level range. It's a lot like Dragoon, whose base AoE was decreased from 160 to 130, only to later average 150 via Seismic Thrust and adding massive amounts via Geirskogul, DFD, and Nodstrand or h/e it's spelled. Monk, my comparison, hasn't lost AoE potency on their base skills because theirs was already only available per 3 GCDs (or crippling inefficient in the case of AotD) but only gain 10 pps atop this via Elixir Field all the way between level 30 and 70. Bard, further, lost Flaming Arrow with absolutely no alternate AoE to show for it, and Rain of Death refreshes now being locked to one song.

[Orbiaus]

Numbers can always be tweaked the issue is weird decisions being made that doesn't add much like different shoulder tackles and making tornado kick shorter CD and lower potency.

[SpeckledBurd]

Numbers can always be tweaked the issue is weird decisions being made that doesn't add much like different shoulder tackles and making tornado kick shorter CD and lower potency.

Pretty much true, Fire Riddle can be reworked to not break our GCD and potencies can be buffed back up to where they were before and the requirements for proccing Chakras can be adjusted, but things like Riddle of Earth and Tackle mastery are so broken on a fundamental level that they really should be scrapped.

[Blacktestament7]

I don't think I'll be as eloquent as SpeckledBurd was but I'd like to add my rational to why these Monk changes give me such a headache. I'm nowhere near the best, I'm a mediocre Monk at best and I've not been concerned with high-level raiding in this game ever. This won't start with SB, I'm a casual raider at best. For me, Monk has been the only class I've enjoyed playing in a skill based setting. It is a class I'm very familar with in tabletops like DnD and Pathfinder and in most MMOs I usually play speed based classes. For me I've always been a speed vs power player. It's rare for me to pick up the hard hitter instead the consistently fast. That being said, I can not understand any decisions being made to Monk in this xpac. I mean none of them. As far as raid utility is concerned you can defend Brotherhood to a degree but it's mainly still going to lose to the overall utility DRG and NIN bring and the strict setting of Brotherhood I don't believe will compare to SAM's dps. And outside of that, Brotherhood is a very hard sell. In a dungeon for example if the other dps isn't a physical dps you're boned.

I've always thought the only problem with Monk in 2.0 was losing GL since it's the entire point of the class, but you also have keeping up the abundance of buffs and debuffs and finding a way to keep all of it up and maximizing damage. All the while doing that consistently keeping up with the timers of not only all of your moves and GL but the form you're in as well. 3.0 HW, brought so much to the table to try up the damage a monk does overall but not fix the general issues that the monk suffers from. That being said it didn't hurt the class either. Form Shift was a great addition fixing the issue of getting to GL3 faster or keeping it up between fights or phases. Chakra as a system worked well with off time but the downside being it was a pain to build in combat since it's a GCD and a dps loss to repeatedly use it. Purification as a utility was fine but the downside was it took a FC to use. Exilir Field pushed MNK AoE damage theortically as high as a BRD. And Tornado Kick while coming with the worst downside was a all risk, high reward attack that while costing GL3 gave you a high potency move if you were losing it. All of this works to raising damage and we didn't suffer nerfs as a result. Could these have been implemented better maybe but I think HW was done a good job. The problem was no fights were made with consistency in mind and played to Monk weaknesses. One long phase change or jail or down would drop the MNK from highest dps which was the only real utility to nothing and making it not worth it. This is why SAM's potencies are so high, to ensure that doesn't happen again.

Stormblood repeats the same overall mistakes Heavensward did but instead of raising the potential of the monk with sheer damage they built on an already flawed system with an even more flawed design:

Deep Meditation:
The Chakra system's overall issue was usage. If meditation couldn't be built without that dps loss you can only use it on damage downtimes. My initial answer was to take it off GCD but I eventually figured why do that? Because then it's just pushing a button repeatedly and that could function as a build mechanic. Instead my suggestion was to make it so every reapplication of GL3 gives you one chakra. This way the more you do damage the correct way to the more FC or Pur you can use. FC is no longer a rare big hit, it's now Fell Cleave for monks. No need for nerf or buff as the overall damage of the system doesn't change since there are some like myself who build chakra every other GL set if ToD and Fracture haven't dropped. Deep Meditation is flawed in it's design becuase it you're in the extremely lucky crowd, it's overpowered and deserves the nerf but if you are unlucky in either RNG avenue (crit or applicaton) it's completely useless and doesn't give anything. This becomes a luck based dps as there's no way to raise the application only the chance the application can work in any way.

Riddle of Earth:
Riddle of Earth is SE's way of dealing with the GL timer issue of Monk. In my opinion, this is the worst way possible to ever fix this problem. It encourages stupidity. Sure BLMs sometimes stand in aoes to keep doing damage but I get that. This is a MNK running into an aoe to take damage to keep GL up. That's bad game design. I mean, animation locking is too but this is worse than that. This is forcing bad decision making. Riddle of Earth is at it core antithetical to being a dps. You shouldn't want to be hit yet here's a defensive cooldown that warrants you being hit. And on top of that, it's reactionary. So you have to make the conscious decision to do less damage and take damage to the face before you even get the refresh. You may be wondering why I'm not bringing up the 10% damage reduction? Because to keep that you MUST stay in Fist of Earth and that means you do 5% less damage. Again, conscious decision to do less damage. This is at it's core not a dps move. Unless the idea of offtanking has been removed from the game this makes no sense. Again, the PvP move Axe Kick is everything this move is but fundamentally better and somehow that has been in the game since I've started and this doesn't make sense and it's not even released yet.

Riddle of Fire:
I hate everything about this cooldown. I mean I really do. I hate it far more than Riddle of Earth. Where Riddle of Earth is antithetical to being a dps, Riddle of Fire is antithetical to being a monk. This class loses about 30% of it's overall damage because of the pot loss of ToD, Fracture, all of the nerfed weaponskills, FC, and the 3 secs of Demolish. In return we get a damage cooldown for 30% but in order to use it you must give up 15% of your GCD recast. Now, few a few days I've been fuming but I don't think the move is horrible. I just hate the aspect of the GCD increase. This makes stuff like PB harder to optimize and it is just dumb overall. I'd literally take B4B over this with the original 25% damage rebound. It changes the monk in it's damage cooldown to a overall burst damage DRG. Why am I playing a monk, if for 15 secs I have to function like a dragoon. And it really just feels like this move is here to add a reason for Riddle of Earth to exist. The downsides don't fit the upsides. And even then, again. If this is why my potencies were nerfed across the board. Drop this and give me raised potencies. Making Monk burst damage is stupid when you already have that.

Tackle Mastery:
Useless. Just Useless. Building on Fist stances is all well and good until you realize you drop 5% overall damage to use it. For example everyone keeps saying how Fire Tackle is equal to two Wind Tackles. Well it is if you don't count the 5% increase in damage. So it's ~140 to the two 65s. If the Fist stances worked better between them this wouldn't be an issue but overall it is.

Brotherhood:
I'm not opposed to Brotherhood. It's just bad in regards to it's limits and again how it puts you on an RNG mechanic. This is another luck based skill that doesn't need it. DRG's Dragon Sight is a nerfed version of this since it only affects one person but unlike Brotherhood it's not luck based and it is guaranteed 10% increase in damage for the DRG and 5% for the other person. Brotherhood is just a 5% increase to you and hopefully the people around you when you use it aren't casters and the boss isn't big enough for you to miss the tank. But again, I'm not against this move, I'm just sure I could design it better. And overall the unlucky just got shafted in these move additions.


Another particular issue I've had with MNK for a long time was how forms had timers. This is probably just specific to me but I noticed it when we started worrying about openers starting in Coeurl form. I've yet to understand why the forms have timers. Just like how MCH had the timer removed for ammunition MNK should have it removed for forms. And again, I don't understand why MNK was nerfed to this degree. If balance was a concern, SAM wouldn't be nearly as OP as it is and DRG and NIN wouldn't have been buffed. This is a hard nerf and it really makes me believe the development team wants less people to play MNK.

[FrostVecca]

i dont really post here much and ive been reading the updates to mnk and been a plenty of negative feed back. im not happy for the changes since i main mnk and raid midcore (but i always try to push for at the top tier that the class can perform at). Riddle of Fire seems to be everyones salt which i see opportunity only if Skill speed increases drastically for us. hoping they revamp SS because they took 2 dots from us. We took a big jump from 2.x to 3.x in secondary stats. building up enough SS i dont see RoF hurting us that bad. I know ppl want to stack crit/direct hit. I got my recast down to 1.35 with SCH and AST help(2nd tier of alex i had around 988SS i think). if we can get down low enough to stay around 2 sec recast or lower im not going to cry it's a challenge to figure out.

[Blacktestament7]

i dont really post here much and ive been reading the updates to mnk and been a plenty of negative feed back. im not happy for the changes since i main mnk and raid midcore (but i always try to push for at the top tier that the class can perform at). Riddle of Fire seems to be everyones salt which i see opportunity only if Skill speed increases drastically for us. hoping they revamp SS because they took 2 dots from us. We took a big jump from 2.x to 3.x in secondary stats. building up enough SS i dont see RoF hurting us that bad. I know ppl want to stack crit/direct hit. I got my recast down to 1.35 with SCH and AST help(2nd tier of alex i had around 988SS i think). if we can get down low enough to stay around 2 sec recast or lower im not going to cry it's a challenge to figure out.

The problem with RoF being offset by a stat allocation of Sks. Is that the other side of the MNK's new abilities and overall damage is heavily balanced towards Crit. And then you have Det and DirHit (Acc replacement) that increases overall damage on it's own. Damage calculation is being increased across the board and MNK is being forced into being dependent on 2 of the 4 overall. Seems very counterproductive to me but that's theorycrafting that I can't even speculate on without actively playing the class.

[Shurrikhan]

The problem with RoF being offset by a stat allocation of Sks. Is that the other side of the MNK's new abilities and overall damage is heavily balanced towards Crit. And then you have Det and DirHit (Acc replacement) that increases overall damage on it's own. Damage calculation is being increased across the board and MNK is being forced into being dependent on 2 of the 4 overall. Seems very counterproductive to me but that's theorycrafting that I can't even speculate on without actively playing the class.

Skill Speed will always be inferior at its current percentage-per-point unless damage is based almost solely in weaponskill outputs and a specific plateau makes a tremendous difference. By removing stanceless skills, there is now only one such plateau available, down from about 3 prior to a 1.70 GCD, and by adding Deep Med damage has become even more oGCD dependent.

With the changes, secondary stat choice will just further become "Crit or gtfo". While SkS can also produce more crits over time, it cannot influence the damage potential they cause.