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

[EbonySeraphim]

Been playing Monk since 3.x. I think after getting Form Shift, I was very content with the necessary windup to get to GL3. Perfect Balance comes off CD perhaps once or twice a fight, and proper form shifting to coeurl form should get you 1 stack right away so in my opinion GL3 maintenance didn't need any boosts so think Monk needed three things coming into Stormblood:

1. Raid utility - nuff said.
2. Something else to do with those chakra stacks and some other way to gain those chakra stacks!
3. (Every job wants) New mechanics to integrate into their core skill rotation; or a new rotation to consider to handle certain scenarios optimally
4. Potentially look at ways to revise Tornado Kick

[EbonySeraphim]

I think Brotherhood was an attempt to give us #1 and #2. The problem is that the raid utility is only 5% damage, and only to physical damage dealers. I won't complain about the RNG mechanic feeding chakra stacks because I still think it is very strong as long you're capable of spamming Forbidden Chakra quite often. However, it is a reactionary chakra mechanic during the buff and the rest of the time, Meditation is still an out-of-battle thing to do. Maybe this buff to personal DPS is enough to contribute what a party-wide buff would do for the raid if the RNG lines up right? If so, there's not a balance complaint here - just a play mechanic one. I wish the chakra feeding aspect of Brotherhood was a permanent thing that could happen whenever a monk is fighting in groups. In order to perhaps not strongly favor only physical party compositions, maybe every time someone in the party spent a job specific resource (lily, aetherflow, etc) you'd get chakra?

[EbonySeraphim]

Personally, I think it would have been more interesting to give Monks something else to spend chakra stacks on as well. Either a very short and very strong party buff, or a self buff - maybe both. Something that keeps Forbidden Chakra relevant to use if the buff might be wasted (boss going away) and potentially lets you plan your usage of the incoming chakras instead of a no-brainer "I'm going to hit really hard with this." I'd even say it's worth considering ways to have Monks use Greased Lightning stacks beyond just dumping it all with Tornado kick. How about burning one stack or two stacks for something less potent but has some utility or situational damage? You could either pre-plan on spending it as you know a boss is going away to "wind down" your stacks or you could use them right before a coeurl stance to get it back immediately.

One thing people should keep in mind is that the designers of the game don't want the game to have skills learned at lower levels becoming useless. Monks already have large suite of attacking skills AoE and single target - though they lost a DoT - so I'm fairly satisfied with what they already have in terms of attacking, but wish there were more ways to use/manage the resource we already have. I think a lot of what I said would make playing monk more fun for me and feels like a good extension of what a Monk is, however I don't think that it keeps Monks easy to use. I'm sure the designers have this question at the forefront: How do you reward those who know how to play the class to a level that satisfies them while keeping it accessible to those who aren't as adept?

[Arcian]

One thing people should keep in mind is that the designers of the game don't want the game to have skills learned at lower levels becoming useless.

They don't, so they bypassed the problem by making the class itself become useless. Please Look Forward To It.

[xxvaynxx]

So can we at least get TK to not take away our GL now?...

I'm not looking forward to mnk, I'll still play it as it was my main for 2 years and it shares gear with samurai.

I think we'll get buffs and adjustments in 4.1, Because these changes and skills are not good whatsoever.
SE probably won't listen to us until probably raid savage tire as thats when these types of balancing and adjustments really matter. Yoshi even said we should calm down until we try it first then they'll make adjustments.
So we should be as loud as possible come raids and every see how mnk fairs(Not good pretty sure), there isn't that many of us monk compared to whms so we gotta make sure our voices are heard.

[EbonySeraphim]

They don't, so they bypassed the problem by making the class itself become useless. Please Look Forward To It.

If the 5% damage boost to physical damage + the average amount of added Forbidden Chakra damage landed to a raid-wide DPS boost somewhere between Battle Litany and AOE Balance would you consider Monk still useless?

[Arcian]

If the 5% damage boost to physical damage + the average amount of added Forbidden Chakra damage landed to a raid-wide DPS boost somewhere between Battle Litany and AOE Balance would you consider Monk still useless?

Maybe not useless, but at the moment we're incredibly underpowered compared to every other melee dps (we just edge out drg on personal dps, but they have Disembowel and BL). Brotherhood is weaponskill-reliant and since it only affects physical damage, every caster in the party besides the one (or two) healer(s) lessens its overall usefulness. BL is a flat boost to everyone. Balance is a flat boost to everyone. Brotherhood is gimmicky, does not apply to the entire party or the monk using it, and doesn't compensate for the nerfs and loss of abilities, and neither does the rng-happy chakra setup.

Useless? Not entirely. Godawful at the moment? You betcha.

[Seemo]

Maybe not useless, but at the moment we're incredibly underpowered compared to every other melee dps (we just edge out drg on personal dps, but they have Disembowel and BL). Brotherhood is weaponskill-reliant and since it only affects physical damage, every caster in the party besides the one (or two) healer(s) lessens its overall usefulness. BL is a flat boost to everyone. Balance is a flat boost to everyone. Brotherhood is gimmicky, does not apply to the entire party or the monk using it, and doesn't compensate for the nerfs and loss of abilities, and neither does the rng-happy chakra setup.

Useless? Not entirely. Godawful at the moment? You betcha.

The 5% physical damage boost that Brotherhood applies effects everyone but the monk if I recall correctly. If that is the case then all the 'free' chakra gained in the 15 seconds Brotherhood still makes it feel like an ass-backwards attempt at 'party synergy'.

[Arcian]

The 5% physical damage boost that Brotherhood applies effects everyone but the monk if I recall correctly. If that is the case then all the 'free' chakra gained in the 15 seconds Brotherhood still makes it feel like an ass-backwards attempt at 'party synergy'.

Everyone else, yeah. Pretty much useless on casters though, which is what I meant there. Still inadequate and ineffective, either way.

[SpeckledBurd]

Well with the data miners having done their data Mining I've gotta say I'm still pretty sad with Monk's new changes overall.


Brotherhood is fine, however since it's back to only increasing physical damage it's rather limited in how effective it can be in all parties compared to Battle Litany and Trick Attack's effects which effect all types of damage. Further, based on the Chakra generation from the E3 video I'm really not entirely certain we'll manage to get more than one Forbidden Chakra from it's use. Overall the party synergy aspect of it is very weak and it doesn't even look like we'll be getting huge numbers of Forbidden Chakras to make up for it.

Riddle of Fire is a fine cooldown, but at the end of the day it's just a replacement for Blood For Blood with a slow effect that takes away the haste of Monk, which is the aspect of the class that I enjoy most about it. In fact, it's the aspect of the class that pretty much defines it. Riddle of Fire removing haste is akin to Ninja gaining a new ability that prevents them from Using Ninjutsu or Dragoon getting an ability that removes their access to their jumps.

Riddle of Earth is at least functional now that it's final effect is released, but it's also just...incredibly redundant. It and Perfect Balance have the exact same role as a means of going through a phase change and coming out the other end with 3 stacks of Greased Lightning and it really didn't take a new action to accomplish this when a reduction of Perfect Balance's cooldown so it was in line with Blood of the Dragon and Enochian's would have done the same thing. Riddle of Earth as it is is like if SE's solution to Black Mages having Enochian troubles was to add a new action that added 30 seconds to Enochian's timer instead of giving them Foul. It's really boring and redundant and I would rather have a new action than a second button that does the same thing as a button we already have.

Deep Meditation, while initially seeming promising just seems incredibly uninteractive now that I saw it in E3 footage. It built up Chakras so slowly that it almost took 3 minutes to get a single forbidden Chakra, that's just a total bummer. Worse, since the chakra generation can vary wildly you won't necessarily be able to rely on Purification being up for specific points in the fight. It's also odd that they'd put focus on Chakra stacks in a trait and not expand upon it at all. We can build Chakras through a fight now, but we don't have any new way of spending them whatsoever.

Tackle Mastery is still Tackle Mastery. No comment really needed there beyond it still being a trainwreck.

A few people have said that the Auto attack changes could be where the majority of Monk's damage is going to be coming from with Stormblood and frankly that's really just...boring. We can auto attack harder than everyone but that's hardly fun at all, there's no interaction there since they're... well automatic. It's not something we the player gets to do, it's just something that happens in the background. If the thing SE is counting on to carry Monk compared to Samurai, Ninja, and Dragoon is having absurd auto attack damage that's really disheartening since there's nothing fun about that at all.

Overall Monk's changes at this point just look unbelievably boring and frankly for a video game, something being boring is just about the most damning thing you can say about it. There's barely interaction to most of what we're getting and what we did get goes against the core of the class or is just redundant.

I'm really hoping SE goes back to the drawing board and just...reworks all of this for 4.1, cause at this point the Job just looks dull.

Edit: Even sadder, a lot of the changes to the battle system gives Monk more useless and highly situational abilities. Riddle of Earth's new effect makes Tornado Kick so situational it may as well not exist (RIP our coolest animation) and the changes to Brink of Death and Weakness pretty much eliminates the 1% of the time you'll want to leave Fists of Fire in a normal fight, so the expansion which had the explicit goal of removing useless, situational, or actions that are just button bloat gave us a bunch of useless, situational, or more button bloat.