Monk: My reaction to Shadowbringers changes.

[Kolsykol]

Points 1-3 are just baffling to me.
Especially the new ability, it almost seems like they're trolling.

Edit: It's worth noting however that this may not be final, so now is the time to speak out about it.

[Xau]

lets hope they react to the feedback and they decide to change some of the odd decisions they have done, especially regarding the skills what makes monk go slows when is a job suposedly to go fast, ESPECIALLY if we have hardly any ogcd going on on this expansion

[guardin]

i love that they got rid of howling fist, internal release, and steel peak- they were boring and pointless
ROF....why are you here? They speed us up to slow us down?
That new rising kick skill--love it--wait slows gcd to 4 sec? It's like monk broke his leg after the kick

The rest is welcomed and excited for the change. I want gl4 to get so crazy that its a skill just to keep up.

[reyre]

i love that they got rid of howling fist, internal release, and steel peak- they were boring and pointless
ROF....why are you here? They speed us up to slow us down?
That new rising kick skill--love it--wait slows gcd to 4 sec? It's like monk broke his leg after the kick

The rest is welcomed and excited for the change. I want gl4 to get so crazy that its a skill just to keep up.

I hope you are joking about IR, HF and SP otherwise...you really have no clue what you are talking about, the rest of the skills are okay-ish.

Do you have anything against Free dps? otherwise why would you consider HF and SP boring and pointless, if we go by that then MNK just got even more boring and pointless because there is nothing more to do it is still 1-2-3 combo but with less oGCD, which is boring and pointless.

IR alowed MNK to be self sufficient when doing DNG and solo things, without it Chkra stacks just became that much rare and it was a nice boost of dps while raiding, i just dont get it you want less dps options and that is fun for you?

[SpeckledBurd]

What's genuinely baffling about all of the Stormblood actions remaining more or less the same is that Yoshi-P admitted on stream that the devs also thought that it was a bad direction for Monk, but outside of Riddle of Fire no longer being stance locked and Tackle Mastery being changed to grant it charges (Which is part of the broader design change of adding Charges to gap closer actions). Everything else is the same. Riddle of Earth is as bad as it always was, Brotherhood is still extremely comp dependent for Monk. And they continue to double down on something that is uniformly considered to be terrible design. The fist Stances once again have the same problem they always had, it's just Fists of Wind is the new dominant stance you'll want to use at all time instead of Fire. Enhanced Fists of Fire is as entirely pointless as a trait as Tackle Mastery was on Stormblood launch, you'll only use it from level 72 to level 76 and then it's another waste of a slot.

I don't think it's crazy to say the devs should actually fix something when they think it was a bad direction instead of just ignoring it and continuing to pile more garbage on top of it. It just makes Monk's kit progressively worse and harder to fix.

[Xau]

snip.

fist of fire won't be a waste, since before you reach gl4, you will want to use fist of fire for the extra dmg, then swap to fist of wind before you get gl4

[SpeckledBurd]

fist of fire won't be a waste, since before you reach gl4, you will want to use fist of fire for the extra dmg, then swap to fist of wind before you get gl4

Yes, a whopping 3 GCDs then for an entire fight.

Really color me impressed with how useful a trait that is.

[reyre]

fist of fire won't be a waste, since before you reach gl4, you will want to use fist of fire for the extra dmg, then swap to fist of wind before you get gl4

Lets be real here they gutted MNK, as good as it might seem to spam FC (which we prolly wont because we no longer have IR) it means we only have ST, EF and FC/EL and that is its really pathetic, its not like GL4 unlocks new moves. So from a simple play style point of view nothing changed in fact it became more boring. Tk is still useless and kind of counterintuitive for the skillset that MNK has, which revolves in maintaning GL up. Anatman, SsS, RoE(why is this still a thing?) all work on the idea of not losing GL, and then there is PB which means quickly regaining GL.
And come on you would only want to use FoF for the VERY FIRST opener because after that, anatman, SsS means why go back to GL3 FoF when we have GL4 (basically FoF with extra 5% sks), also it seems that you can go GL4 from the get go, so using FoF is really only an opener thing maybe, if the numbers actually dont prove that getting to GL4 (hence FoW) from the start means more dps. So FoF its really kind of inconsequential in its current iteration, who knows if they will change that, probably not.

[echo78]

Monk went from feeling awful to play in Stormblood to continuing to feeling awful to play in Shadowbringers. Still has a slowdown, still has RNG, removed fun abilities like howling fist and internal release. Another useless trait and a bunch of situational skills that are effectively useless on a striking dummy. Another pair of GL maintenance skills, seriously? Because we didn't have enough of those already? Why am I not surprised, monk is never allowed to have anything nice. Another 2 years of an awful to play job coming up.

I would take 2.x monk over this. Monk was actually fun back then. Now we are just getting a gimped version of 2.x monk that feels worse to play. Can't wait to see monk be by far the least popular job in the game in 5.0, unless MCH continues to be a complete trainwreck.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

It's unbelievable how far they just keep missing the mark on MNK. Back when HW released we TK was a decent ability to gain, throughout ARR there was no stack control and MNK was the only job back then with a strict timer (GL). TK alleviated that loss slightly along with Form shift. This felt like natural progression considering all other jobs kit got strict timers.

Roll on SB and everyone's kit and timers get streamlined... Except Monk. Instead of hitting a button to simply refresh GL akin to what Anatman is, no, we had to have a convoluted way in the form of RoE (stack management skill number 3 at this point), RoF was a divide, but the general consensus was that it did at least go against MNK's core of going fast, although it made sense with the amount of double weaving needed (which wont be happening anymore due to lack of oGCDs). Finally they patch us and we get riddle of wind giving us a stack and reducing PB, aiding with what's that, more stack management. We're at 5 ways of managing stacks so far. You'd think the devs might be aware at this point that maybe, just maybe MNK is becoming overly focused on stack management problems?

Nope we are still getting 2 more stack management abilities in the expansion, six-sided star for an insta-duration refresh and anatman to keep and refresh the stacks in combat. RoW no longer grants a stack from ST however leaving us with a total of 6 abilities all dedicated ti keeping, refreshing or expending greased lightning stacks. Absolute madness.

Y'know what everyone else does to manage their resources? Hits a cooldown. The joke is that they gave BLM a way to refresh UI stacks and hearts with one button. Monk's have been asking for Form shift to do that since SB pvp... What a joke.

Honestly MNK only needs Form shift, if it worked like BLM's new ability, and PB if for some reason we did mess up stacks. they have streamlined every other job's buff management but made MNK's convoluted as hell and it's sad because now every expansion instead of progressing with rotations and identity we are taking 1 step forward 2 steps back and covering our tracks from previous expansions to the point we never actually evolve. I really wanted to like MNK this expansion but it looks the same as ARR only with GL4 but the same RoF slowdown and same punishing comp set up with brotherhood /sigh.

TL;DR

Monk's stack management is insane, we have 6 ways to refresh, retain or spend them and it's a convoluted mess. We havent evolved past HW and since SB have been regressing back to ARR monk albeit while losing more than we gain. Furthermore, we are still punished in caster comps with brotherhood despite them "lessening" job synergy. Guess they forgot about monk as always. I predict monk will be the least played job in ShB because it never evolves.