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

[Arcian]

I've mained mnk since I started playing in 2.4, and I have to say that I'm frustrated and disappointed with the design decisions that seem to have been made regarding how mnk is going to function in Stormblood.

The Tackle Mastery system seems clunky and too situational to see wide use - we're still going to be in Fists of Fire 99% of the time, and while having an extra Shoulder Tackle is nice, the two from Riddle of Wind put together have the same base potency (130) as the standard, no-frills version, but without the benefit of the flat 5% damage increase from FoF. I also question the usefulness of Riddle of Earth, considering that the proc apparently requires you to take damage...in order to take less damage and potentially trigger the GL duration increase (I don't even know what's up with the latter). In endgame content (or in any content, honestly), you do not want to take avoidable damage, let alone deliberately seek it out to activate an effect with dubious benefits. I also don't see the benefit of dropping Tornado Kick's cd to 10 seconds. It's a situational ability to begin with in that you only pop it if you know you're about to lose stacks or the boss is about to enter an invuln phase, and since the GL refresh from RoE potentially mitigates both of those scenarios to an extent (if you can, you know, actually manage to get it to work), drastically lowering the cooldown time on an ability that we barely use to begin with leaves me baffled as to how that might ever be advantageous.

We're also losing essentially mandatory (for endgame at least) abilities in the name of minimizing button bloat (B4B, Fracture, ToD, Mercy Stroke), and as a replacement, we get...a trait and set of abilities that we're apparently supposed to keybind all three Fist stances and all three Riddle abilities for, two and a half of which seem dubiously useful (30% damage boost on Riddle of Fire is lovely, but having the 15% gcd slowdown negates GL3 - which is one of the core mechanics of mnk as a class). What we're receiving in exchange for some of our dps (and the ability to hit ToD/Fracture to avoid clipping Demo and squeezing an extra tick out) does not seem to compensate for what is being removed, and if it does, it's entirely unclear how.

Also the loss of ToD and Fracture renders our core rotation simple to the point of boredom. DK/TS/Snap. Boot/True/Demo. Repeat ad nauseam.

As for Brotherhood? 5% increased damage for 15 seconds is great. 5% increased damage for 15 seconds on a 90-second cd that doesn't apply to the person using it is...less than great. The chakra gain from it depends on rng twice over; if your group is primarily casters, you start out at a significant disadvantage since the proc is based on weaponskill use specifically, and the proc itself is a 30% chance.

Forbidden Chakra is still (as far as I'm aware) on a 5-second cooldown, and the animation lock is long enough that you can't realistically double-weave it, which seems to be what we're apparently intended to do with RoF's gcd slowdown. Both Brotherhood and RoF have a 15-second duration.

If rng is in your favor, the maximum amount of boosted Forbidden Chakras you'd be able to get in either window is 3, and that is with FC nerfed to 250 potency.

Our burst capability will be based on rng, and ultimately isn't much of a burst at all, especially after taking a 10-potency nerf on our entire core rotation and dropping Demolish's duration to 18 seconds down from 21.

With all of these facts taken into consideration, the limited raid utility from Brotherhood and role actions (that we share with the three other melee dps classes) is not enough to render mnk useful or viable in comparison to drg and nin's personal dps and additional raid synergy/utility, and especially not in comparison to sam, who is looking to fill our role as The Selfish DPS (TM) better than we ever did.

I'm lucky that my static is willing to keep me, but I'll be leveling sam regardless, because as it stands I'm looking to be dead weight on the class I enjoy most.

It's sort of additional salt in the wound considering that Stormblood was pitched as The Monk Expansion (TM).

Tl;dr - The proposed changes to mnk are dubiously beneficial at best and actively detrimental at worst, we get nothing truly new or significantly useful, and I'm not happy either.

[Arcian]

This. Ever since the reveal of the second half of the stormblood trailer, followed by Yoshi walking in with a full SAM cosplay, I felt like SAM and Doma in general dragged the carpet from under Monk.
This was supposed to be the Monk expansion, as HW was technically the DRG expansion. Yet Monk was changed the least, got nerfs every you look, and 3 new skills that essentially does nothing new as well as some new shoulder tackle traits, which is just weird tbh. Since when was Shoulder tackle this huge thing that needed so much attention?

Nailed it, imo.

[Leonus]

Why do people say "Mnk expansion"?. Isn't the expansion more about the story rather than the specific job? If that was the case, was ARR the War "expansion"?

[xxvaynxx]

I am EXTREMELY disappointed of what we've gotten in sb...it's so underwhelming it frustrates me.
Wasn't it SE goal to get rid of useless skills not give us more?

Let's start with riddles.
These are so underwhelming and boring skills...riddle of fire, buffs us 30% and lowers our speed...that speed nerf alone basically makes it around maybe 14% or so, it takes away our speed,Not sure about you but I play mnk for fast gameplay/GCD not to go slow and hit hard like a drg.
Overall the skill isn't that much of a train wreck but it does go against of what makes mnk fun to me.


Riddle of Earth..oh god..why...why did they give us this skill, we have to get hit to refresh our GL? what? The only fights I know where we have no control of getting hit is A12s from almost holy(But we can keep our GL fine during those) and a few face roll dgn boss.
actually...why even give us this skill at all? Just switching to fist of earth was enough migration to take a raid wide aoe, Why waste a skill to give us an extra 10%? did they forget mnk was a dps? Pretty sure we're not a tank...

Riddle of wind....what does this do again?...Oh right...a second shoulder tackle...awesome..thanks..just what I always wanted..

Shoulder tackle mastery...
A complete and utter waste of a new trait...
Fire tackle is just a "slightly" buffed shoulder tackle
Earth tackle is the dumbest thing they could've given mnk....it's a freaking knockback...they do know...mnk has GL to keep up and is melee..right?
Wind tackle..just a weaker tackle we can do twice that added up to the same power of fire tackle I think.

Man they could have at least change the freaking animations of the different tackles to make us feel it's at least new. Look at mch, their animations changed with the new heated shots...why do our shoulder tackles look the same?

Last is brotherhood; our party buff.
It gives the party a small 5% dmg buff and a 30% chance to gain a chakra from a weapon skill party member does...this makes us hate casters as caster do spells not weapon skills besides rdm I think.

All in all...mnk got nothing interesting imo everything we got is so boring and we're basically the only job in the game that got zero offensive skills...
We've been nerfed, we lost our single target king title to samurai, got lame boring skill that changes nothing..ugh..can they at least take away the fact that TK eats our GL? we use this skill so little it will feel like a new skill if they did.
Sorry for the vent, just needed to with fellow mnks instead of talking to my friends that don't care about mnk lol.

[Deithwen]

I think every main monk needed to vent because we really got screwed this time.

As if the person in charge of monk's new skills has absolutly no clue about how the job works.

[SwarleyMcSwarls]

I just can't get over how lazy it feels. Especially for one of the MAIN classes of the expansion.

[KingFrost]

An easy fix for Tornado Kick would be to have it only eat one stack of GL. Hell that'd even warrant all the Potency nerfs right there. It'd need to old recast, of course.

Or keep the new recast. TK and TFC for all!

[DatPotato]

or make it take the role of mercy stroke under 25% with a 40 or 30s cd

[SpeckledBurd]

Someone in a White Mage thread on Reddit floated the idea that the concept of the Lily's seemed like it was designed with PVP in mind, and Riddle of Earth and Tackle Mastery seem to be the same. Riddle of Earth would take Monk from being tanky for a DPS right up to Tank-lite and the GL refresh would work pretty well with the longer duration in PVP and the fact that you'll actually be targeted by something other than AOEs. Earth Tackle and Wind Tackle would both be amazing for PVP where knockbacks and multiple rapid fire gap closers would be great. Tornado Kick's CD reduction would actually be useable with Perfect Balance, Somersault, and Axe Kick to rebuild your stacks.


Now if only they'd put them into the PVP actions.

[Keramory]

Think monk lost itself after 1.0. Don't know how many remember but the job was amazing when we had the elemental wheel... and it packed a lot of power. Class was simple within itself too.

I've never been a fan of the GL mechanic in the first place. On paper it looks great but it's a bloody mess when you have EVERY boss jumping around like a mad man.

These changes have done nothing to excite me. Honestly though I don't know much they'd do to make me happy with monk again. Hopefully somehow playing it feels different then what I'm reading now