Criticism on Stormblood's Monk

[TrophyGalore]

So from the 70 sam's that I have played with in both Susano EX and Lakshmi EX have not out dpsed monks. I do not know if this is due people not knowing the ins and outs of Sam's yet. But Mnks are still doing about 100 more dps than them.

[Leonus]

So from the 70 sam's that I have played with in both Susano EX and Lakshmi EX have not out dpsed monks. I do not know if this is due people not knowing the ins and outs of Sam's yet. But Mnks are still doing about 100 more dps than them.

Do you have a way to correctly record damage at this time? I haven't seen anyone who was able to yet.

[TrophyGalore]

That is me using the ACT beta version that is out. And I do believe that it is calculating everything properly.

[Shea715]

Yeah, I fucking HATE the how monk got hit fucking hard. Samurai is fucking ridiculous.

[3ureka]

I have yet to reach level 70, so I'll reserve any final judgement until after I hit the level cap and mess around with all the available abilities. However, playing as a monk so far has felt very unsatisfactory.

As the OP and several others in the thread have mentioned, "Tackle Mastery" and the variations of "Shoulder Tackle" based on your current stance are pretty pointless. For example, even if you were to use "Riddle of Wind" and tackle to two enemies far apart, is that useful in a dungeon or raid? You'd be the first to generate enmity and likely die. While the concept is very nice, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

I remember reading/hearing that YoshiP wanted to close the gap between the DPS output of hardcore and more casual gamers. From a business perspective, making FFXIV more accessible is a sensible strategy. I imagine it's because of this "close the gap" ideal that we (and several other classes) lost DoT skills.

And while we're on the topic of viewing FFXIV holistically, I think Square Enix should strive to balance all the DPS classes so that they output the same amount regardless of which job you chose. This way, a player won't feel like s/he has is punished for choosing a class that has less than desirable damage output.

If there were a way to reach out to Square Enix and have them take another look at MNK, I'd suggest a few changes.
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SHORT TERM:
These are some things I feel like Square could change within a 4.x patch. Should be easy enough to do tuning numbers and not having to mess with the resource UI (see LONG TERM).
- Give Greased Lightning (GL) stacks an additional stat buff that increases our Critical Hit Rate. While this wouldn't address the obvious blunder of making MNKs rely on RNG, it would certainly help in allowing us to crit more often (and hopefully quicken Chakra stack generation). I think it'd be fair to have each stack of GL grant a 5% crit buff, totaling at 15% at 3 stacks

- Reduce the cooldown of "Perfect Balance" to 80s (which is the current cooldown of "Meikyo Shisui"). I welcome any argument that can be made for SAM to have the same skill MNKs at ~1/3 of our cooldown cost.

- Balance "Steel Peak" so that it has either a higher potency (let's say *minimum* 250) while retaining a 40 second cooldown OR keep the current potency and reduce the cooldown to 15 or 20 seconds.

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LONG TERM:
So, thematically speaking, it makes absolutely no sense for MNKs to have anything to do with RNG. Hell, gambling is blasphemous in some religions, which transitions to the first change:

- Overhaul "Deep Meditation". Make it so that a "True Strike" or "Demolish" will *guarantee* a Chakra stack. This will force MNKs to go through 5 rotations of Opo-opo > Raptor > Coeurl, but at least this way, Square can increase the potency of "Forbidden Chakra". I think it'd be cool to see "Meditation" removed in lieu of another damaging ability, although keeping it wouldn't hurt either.

- Increase the number of Grease Lightning stacks to 5. It should also go without saying that the bonuses for each stack be tuned down. I think a fair total would be 35% total increase in damage, 20% total reduction in autoattack/weaponskill/recast delay (this is an overall 5% increase in total for both damage and delay reduction). I think it's fair to say that the bread and butter of MNKs is GL, so why not focus around it? To make things even more interesting, maybe have the stacks fall off one at a time. At the same time, make it so that maintaining 5 stacks of GL requires a bit more skill. For example, reduce the duration of 5 GL stacks to 8 seconds. A good monk should be able to keep it up, but if they fail once, they don't lose everything.

- Overhaul "Shoulder Tackle" so that either it has: Low/no potency short cooldown OR moderate potency with high TP cost. Since monks suffer from having no ranged attacks, allow them more mobility at the cost of damage or TP. It's either that or give them a Hadouken skill (which I would not be opposed to lol). With every physical DPS class having a ranged attack (albeit not very efficient ones), I think it'd be fine for MNKs to keep to the tradition of being purely melee with this new tackle.

- Change the effects of the different Fist stances. For example, let "Fists of Fire" adopt the effect of "Riddle of Fire". Increase total damage dealt by 30% at the cost of -15% weaponskill recast for 20seconds. Let "Fists of Wind" do something like increase weaponskill recast by 50% and reduce damage dealt by 20% (or some balance thereof) again for a 20 second duration. And lastly for "Fists of Earth" maybe do something along the lines of: extend GL stack duration by 5 seconds and remove any current debuffs. Of course all of these would share at *least* a 90 second cooldown.

- Tornado Kick: I actually don't have any idea on how to fix this, but if I had to guess, maybe just make the potency 700-800 so that the skill might be able to justify losing your stacks. Or maybe have the potency scale depending on how many stacks you have but without consuming them. For example, at 3 stacks, it'd do 400 potency. At 5 stacks, maybe 600. Maybe put it on a 100 or 120 second cooldown as well (since you're not consuming GL stacks).

I'd love to know what your thoughts on these suggestions are!

[Orbiaus]

I was thinking for the wind being double they should just increase its range making it a bigger gap closer.

[Orbiaus]

I was thinking for the wind being double they should just increase its range making it a bigger gap closer.

And for earth mastery just make it a longer duration stun to recoup hp. Can't edit on phone btw.

[odintius]

Deep meditation is ok trait not something you can plain on being up at key moments in fights though it more like use it once it's up. Brotherhood makes it better though if like spamming it as long as you grease lighting doesn't falls off.

The tackle system is kinda meh ok but could done better earth knock back imo is pointless unless you PvP. I have made it cause a aoe dot instead for pve. Wind the double use is good if with riddle of wind perhaps increase ws/auto att speed at the cost of more tp consumed. Fire feels like it good were it stands increase damage at normal rates. /Shurg job not broken would say needs some more thought put into it though imo

[Nuclearducky]

I've yet to play monk to 70, but based on what I've read it seem like you've hit the main points fairly well. I've given up on having Stormblood being the "Monk" expansion, but I was hoping they would at least be a prominent melee DPS role, instead of staying in the back burner like they were in Heavensward.

Actually there were a lot of class changes I don't agree with in the new expansion, but that's a thread for another time.

[JinRoSul]

Echoing a few other monks here on the forum, all I can say is just wait -when you ding 70 it will all come together. Trust me! The amount of crit hits that rain down is freakin mind-boggling. And I'm not even at i300 yet. Plus, having access to way more Forbidden Chakra is just icing on the cake. And that is why MNK is still on top of the DPS chart over SAM because SE knows what it's doing (as hard as that is for some to believe).