MNK feels dismal to play and it's not anything that can be fixed with a simple patch.

[Bright-Flower]

For me, monk could be fixed if they took away all the situational buttons that can refresh gl, and just like, gave us a button that just refreshes the duration on current GL stacks, 30s cooldown, to help keep it going between trash packs or during downtime on bosses. GL falling off and having a bunch of situational means to refresh it instead of something simple is what drives me away from the job.

Six sided star? If I'm able to hit things GL usually isn't falling off, form shift is usually enough if I have a short bit of downtime.
Anatman? It's nice, if I'm able to hold still during downtime but often you have to dodge aoes.
Riddle of earth? Good if there's unavoidable damage, but having to choose between standing in something or losing GL isn't fun when the damage is avoidable.

Dragoon for example can more easily keep its blood of the dragon going by just pressing a button during downtime.

I like a lot of other things about monk. I like the way it shifts through stances instead of having linear combos. I like the aesthetic and flavor of the job. I like greased lightning on paper, it's just annoying in practice. But maybe I'm just bad at monk.

[WHITEOUT_93]

I’ve mained Monk since 2.X and every expansion I quit the job to go to MCH just to come running back to Monk like an ex girlfriend. I just keep coming back to this job I started the game with. I’ve seen other people talk about this so they’re not all my ideas but Six Sided star NEEDS to be an OGCD. I’ll use Titania EX as an example but when she does her point blank AoE if you’re in the middle of an attack you have to decide to cut it close and use SSS when you can or use it right when you see you see the cast then move out potentially missing a GCD it just feels like there’s no way to win when you use it.

The biggest problem with Monk is definitely Tornado Kick. If they made TK function like BLMs polyglot it would be amazing. Have TK hold 2 charges and you get a charge after holding GL4 for 30 seconds.

Lastly I still hate that Brotherhood only buffs physical and not all damage but that is no where near as problematic as SSS and TK.

[wereotter]

Monk would be so easy to evolve, but they seem to just want to slap more bandaids on the Greased Lightning problem.... and the ironic part is they could easily fix it and allow the job to evolve rather than give us now two expansions of skills meant to maintain this job buff. I think the original post did a good job of comparing the maintenance on enochian to greased lightning.

So easy solution: increase the duration of greased lighting. Huton is 70 seconds.... greased lightning is 16. Think about which job is more punished when a jump phase happens or when you have to disengage from a boss for more than 2-3 GCDs. This has forced the team to create Riddle of Earth (the single most frustrating skill out there since 99% of the time my greased lightning wears off 1 second before the party-wide damage goes off) Tornado Kick, Six Sided Star, and Anatman. That's four skills that could have been eliminated if they fixed greased lighting, and maybe brought down to two.

Another solution, allow form shift to at least refresh your GL timer when used in combat, even if it doesn't give more stacks. Considering black mages just had to hit transpose every few seconds last expansion and now they even GAIN benefit from umbral soul this expansion, I don't think we're asking too much to just say that we want to be able to keep our buff up with form shift, and gain stacks with anatman in jump phases.

If they do this, then they could change tornado kick into a skill with lower potency, still stays an off global cool down move, and maybe gives a GL stack rather than eats them all up. And riddle of earth could potentially provide some other form of raid utility, my though would be to apply a 10% damage reduction to the party for 10 seconds, basically a spread fists of earth.

Basically, for as long as the devs think greased lighting is fine, then we're just going to keep getting more and more situationally useful skills, and the job will continue to not evolve.

[Kazer]

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

[reyre]

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

NO, i agree with this as well. While RoE is kind of an annoying skill i have found its use in some fights (yeah sure it is niche but there it is), other than that ROF slow down always bugged me and still does. BH is way too party dependant so making it trigger chackra procs on any skill rather than just physical abilities would be nice, Gl is extramely easy to maintain, in fact is kind of over kill with PB, RoE, Anat and SSS.

To be fair without GL MNK would be am even more dull (if such thing is posible) version of DRG. I do think we need IR back and a least one more oGCD the Slow of RoF crashes too much from the lack of oGCD.

Finally bring back ToD.

[wereotter]

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

Greased lightning as a general idea, I like. I love the speed boosts since I prefer fast-paced jobs, and the extra damage it gives monk auto attacks is something really unique in this game. The problems come with how the buff needs to be maintained and it's incredibly short duration. Additionally since it falls off all four stacks at once if you mess things up, and the build up is 12 GCDs if you don't have perfect balance available, the punishment for losing it is much harsher than for any other job. Enochian has a fairly short cool down and is just a single button press if a black mage messes up. Same for dragoon. Samurai gets back its buffs in four GCDs (five if they finish the three move combo) and ninja can get back huton in, at most, 20 seconds from the goof plus 3 GCDs. This makes maintaining greased lightning a much higher priority for monks than any other job. As such the developers have wasted the last three expansions putting bandaid moves onto this buff rather than rethinking how it works.

One example of how it could be changed is simply having perfect balance grant all your stacks of greased lightning and reduce its cool down. Then you can eliminate all the other skills that exist only to augment the job mechanic and add in more off global cool down abilities.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Huton has a duration of 70 seconds, so a ninja would maintain its buff for the entirety of that jump window if it's planned for. Additionally, unless you're also locked from taking any action, black mages can use umbral soul to maintain enochian and three stacks of umbral ice and gain three umbral hearts, meaning they come back from that length of a jump phase ready to get right back into a full phase of astral fire attacks.

[SpeckledBurd]

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

Greased Lightning is not a problem in and of itself if you look at it in a vacuum of design, it only becomes a problem in the context of the wider game. It's design is simple, Monks base potencies are inherently low, all being at or around the potencies of the first step of most other jobs combos are, so to counterbalance this Monk must upkeep a buff that allows it to strike at a faster pace while boosting those potencies to around what a second step combo would be for other jobs. Simple enough, however since Heavensward other jobs have acquired buffs that are equivalent to it. Dragoon has Blood of the Dragon, Black Mage has Enochian, and Ninja has Huton. All fulfill the same role, upkeep this buff to boost damage, Dragoon gets extended combos to raise its average combo potency, Black Mage unlocks Fire IV and gets Polyglot skills, Ninja needs Huton to attack faster and build Ninki to use other weaponskills.

These jobs have all received flat out better quality of life for upkeeping those buffs than Monk has and they've gotten it in 1-2 skills each. Dragoon can instantly extend Blood of the Dragon to 30 seconds now with no need to channel anything, perfect for longer movement heavy transitions. In Stormblood Black Mage could just spam Transpose to refresh Enochian, now they just use Umbral Soul to refresh it and build Umbral Hearts to enter a new phase roaring and ready to go. Ninja's Huton buff is so long that if you refresh it before a transition it'll still be up when the boss is back most of the time, and if it's an extremely long transition you can refresh it with a Ninjutsu and have Ninjutsu back up because of the short duration. Monk by comparison has a skill that requires us to... take a hit to refresh our stacks, which ws extremely clunky in Stormblood content, often requiring us to run into AOEs we were supposed to dodge during transitions (Rofocale, Shinryu Ex, some others) and occasionally lose our stacks anyway because we have no timer control or because shields block it from working for some stupid reason. Six Sided Star lets us extend our buff, but it sets our GCD to be twice what it normally is which means the only time we want to use it is on disengages. Since not all disengages have a cast bar (Twintania EX going into adds for Example occurs roughly 5-6 seconds after her final Phantom rune of the first phase, but you have to manually count it out). Anatman is extremely lackluster compared to what Umbral Soul and Blood of the Dragon can do to refresh stacks, but it's useage in the optimal opener is as janky or jankier than Overheating Wildfires on Stormblood Machinist, and it being a channeled skill makes it worse than Black Mage/Dragoon's abilities to just hit one button and not care.

Tornado Kick itself just sits completely at odds with Monks entire design currently, we're supposed to keep up our stacks at all costs and never dump them, so we have a skill that lets us dump our stacks for a damage loss in basically every situation except for extremely long add phases or boss executions (and note they removed Boss executions as a concept).

Should Greased Lightning be 30-40 seconds? No, I don't think so, but I also don't think Monk should have 5 skills that are all for very niche situations of GL upkeep instead of ever getting a new GCD we can use in our rotation. It should have at most two, same as the other jobs, and those two should be as powerful as Transpose and Umbral Soul are on Black Mage since its timer for upkeeping its buff is about the same as Greased Lightning. The rest of the stuff should be reworked to, say, reward Monk for upkeeping Greased Lightning with a big potency satisfying hits or a flurry of 100 ten potency hits over the course of a GCD that basically equals one big satisfying hit.

[Irisdina_Wiloh]

There's some really good suggestions in this thread! I have to say, Wereotter, Whiteout and Kazer really nailed some of my feelings about how Monk plays currently and what changes could be made to resolve the current problems.

I think the suggestion of reworking RoE into a raid damage down is a nice idea and compliments our healing buff we can also supply. Form shift refreshing GL has been suggested many times and at this point I think it would be a nice inclusion and also compliments Anatman. Both can exist and this allows Anatman to maintain it's ability to rebuild stacks and not simply be button bloat. Kazer is right that Anatman does solve many of our issues and so far other than dropping GL from being bad, all the fights I've done have allowed me to keep my stacks or lose them with enough time for it to not be a big deal since everyone else lost their buffs too. TK working like Polygot sounds perfect to me and 100% resolves the problem of it being dead in the water. All that's left is making SSS OGCD.

Much like Whiteout I cannot simply leave Monk alone, lol. I complained a lot when we found out how our new skills would work but honestly, playing Monk in current content, it still fees really damn good and I'm still having a blast. However, I still believe deeply that the above changes will resolve the issues the playerbase is currently facing and will make it feel like we didn't just get changes that were superfluous.

[wereotter]

Should Greased Lightning be 30-40 seconds? No, I don't think so, but I also don't think Monk should have 5 skills that are all for very niche situations of GL upkeep instead of ever getting a new GCD we can use in our rotation. It should have at most two, same as the other jobs, and those two as powerful as Transpose and Umbral Soul are on Black Mage since its timer for upkeeping its buff is about the same as Greased Lightning, and the rest of the stuff should be reworked to, say, reward Monk for upkeeping Greased Lightning with big satisfying hits or a flurry of 100 ten potency hits over the course of a GCD that basically equals one big satisfying hit.

I can agree with you here. I don't know that we need a massive duration on the timer for greased lightning, and I do agree that we don't want to have this many situationally useful skills just to maintain our job buff. I do think that just some simple changes to the skills we have that help maintain it would be all we need. Personally I prefer the idea that we just get all our stacks by using perfect balance, but I could go for form shift maintains and anatman builds stacks too would be good enough.

I will say that if we are going that second route, though, that I would like to see a slight increase to the amount of time our buff has, I can't tell you how many times last expansion having a 20 second timer on the buff rather than 16 seconds would have saved my stacks (especially when you look at riddle of earth and raid-wide damage) but I agree we don't need a 30-40 second timer on it. However I will say that even if we went up that high or even up to the ninja 70 second buff that it would change nothing for our rotation, and would just make maintaining the buff easier when you have to disengage. So once we start increasing the duration, that also could solve a lot of these other issues of skills needed to maintain the buff since there would be fewer instances in which you risk loosing them, and therefore you could make the punishment for losing it even harsher. Like GL has a 3-4 minute cooldown, but the GL duration lasts for 40 seconds so you're less likely to lose it <shrug>

Lots of ways this COULD be fixed, but it's just a matter of if it WILL be fixed....

[Physic]

I am surprised to see how many feel this way about Grease Lightning. Is it really that big a problem?

The fundamentals for monk are pretty basic once learned and I believe losing that urgency / fast pace to refresh grease would make the job feel pretty stale unless they reworked it entirely.

While we lack anything super interesting this expansion Anatman is really good and solves many of our transition issues. SSS serves its purpose for disengage and if you major goofed and need to panic button refresh grease.

There are only two fights this expansion where we are forced to lose grease. And those transitions are so extremely long (over 40 seconds) I would be surprised if any ither job doesnt lose their buffs there too. Perfect Balance is also available to save for both of those.

Riddle of Earth allows for some big plays past refreshing grease if planned ahead (For example using it during Perfect Balance while a raid aoe is coming allows you to get an extra DK/Bootshine in). I enjoy that extra level of execution Monk has it is really fun to pull off. I don't know, a 30-40 second grease buff just sounds so... extremely boring.

Rework Tornado Kick, give us an extra off global or two back, and maybe change the current layered RNG on chakra gain. I must be in the minority here but those are my only complaints for Monk right now.

the problem is, monk has no control of the urgency, and the build up time is currently too long. They reduced our ability to quickly get it back, in favor of methods to maintain it in uninteresting ways. The other problem is SE wants to have a minimal amount of actions available, so essentially these maintence skills take up slots, which makes main combat pretty boring.

TK is cool when you can get back full gl in a few seconds, but lame when it takes 12 gcds, especially going to zero speed. So basically, it seems like gl is getting in the way of them evolving monk. in Stormblood, for me, it worked, because of wind tackle and 60 second no stance skill, with max gl at 3, but now its getting in the way, giving up gl is harsher, getting it back is harder, and maintaining it isn't that entertaining