The state of Monk in Shadowbringers (long)

[Physic]

Of course not one person can definitively say what they want Monk to be. The devs made sure of that by dividing the player base in stormblood with all RoF, RnG chakra procs, removal of dots and contradicting kit while many other jobs got more added to their kit which benefitted the aesthetic of the job. It was already the 2nd least played job in SB according to FFlogs and it will be the lowest now. The job just doesnt evolve outside of maintaining GL, which, after years is getting stale.

No other job is actively punished like Monk is. Imagine if using xenoglossy on BLM got rid of AF and UI as well as Enochian. It would feel terrible to use because you'd have to ramp up again. That's what TK feels like now and server ticks on Anatman can mean it takes between 12 and 15 seconds to gain back GL4 after a phase transition, couple that with having to form shift x3 and build chakras back up which takes about 15 seconds just to get prepared for the boss coming back. That's around 30 seconds just to be fully buffed after a phase transition assuming TK was used prior. It's busy work for the sake of it.

Form Shift should give a formless buff enabling any stance attack for one GCD while also refreshing the current GL, similar to umbral soul/transpose. That takes out all of the nonsense with Anatman, RoE, PB and current form shift. TK should be rewarded for good play imo, exactly like xeno and foul.
Internal Release should be added back along with steal peak. SP should give guarantees 5 chakras every 2 mins or so. SSS is so niche and situational and competes with chakra gains, I'll give an example, imagine you are 3/5 chakras, there is a an aoe which will take 2 gcds to move out from. If you SSS you gain a 400 pot gcd, but if you chakra twice you gain TFC ogcd for 370pot plus whatever GCD you would have used instead of SSS. Six sided star is only decent if it doesn't cost you a forbidden chakra in the fight.

Despite the complaints I don't mind Monk. But it's a shell of its former self when compared to the TK rotation Monk. It also just feels like there's a lot missing from the job when compared to other jobs. I would still like to see changes though in some form to make the job more engaging rather than busy work just for the sake of it.

fflogs isn't a good measurement of general population, since the majority of users are high end raiders focused on performance in high end content. Regardless of entertainment value, if mnk had consistently higher dps, with similar difficulty to pull it off, it would have a lot of fflog users.


i agree it needs changes though, because right now, it's simply less entertaining than before, leveling to 80 or buying a new expansion to eventually become a bit less fun than it used to be isn't an attractive concept