People should be concerned seeing the recent monk buffs

[Xaert]

What you must understand is that this is the product of a failed version of Monk being salvaged by the (not-so) Balance Team. Generally, Monk mains have not enjoyed the progression of the class for two expansions, at the beginning of SB and now in ShB. The only redeeming factor of the SB variant is the late TK rotation which is no longer available.

Monk before 5.05 was so stressful to play, every fight boiled down to: Will I be able to keep GL up with management tools that I have? And the answer to that wasn't a definitive "yes" or "no," it was a "good luck trying." We have all of these GL management tools: RoE, SSS, Anatman, Form Shift, Perfect Balance, and Tornado Kick. Half of these are reliable, them being Form Shift, Perfect Balance, and TK, TK being only reliable in the sense that it can assuredly spend your stacks when you want when within range. The other half is unreliable almost religiously. Anatman was our transitional tool, something long needed to keep stacks and form over the lull. SSS I assume was supposed to be our "oh, snap" refresher when major errors came into play and you weren't near the target for GCDs and also not in Coeurl form, which... now thinking about it is a bit too situational to need in the first place.

RoE is now a fickle one. RoE is still RoE, requiring the player to incur damage to themselves to activate to refresh GL to maximum, though I'd argue that the GL management is now the side effect of the skill since the 30 second True North is simply too valuable to not consider it as the main effect of the skill. While people, including me, considering this overkill, it's definitely still a QoL change to Monk, since most raids nowadays have assured roomwide AoEs followed up by a series of mechanics where performing positionals would either be lethal, risky, or impossible. That being said, 30 seconds is still overkill to me, but I'm not underplaying the QoL that this brings to Monks. Positionals should never be removed from the game. It adds a layer of engaging complexity. The balance between not having to do positonals with True North/RoE as to just performing the positionals normally so you can save the abilities for a more crucial moment of the fight gives you more to think of, though it will eventually become more routine. It's just every fight won't be a cookie cutter employment of True North/RoE, it'd be formed by the fight.

As you probably know, Monk hasn't had a good time in evolution. The main reason of this being the presence of Tornado Kick in its current form. It brings Monk to a fork in the road: should I maintain Greased Lightning or should I spend it for a big hit (yes, it's a big hit, the tooltip still hasn't had the potency fixed)? And the normal answer Monks would give is "well, I'd want to keep GL if I can, but if not, I'd rather use TK." You'd want to keep your class's main damage increase mechanic as much as possible, right? But Devs thought that Monks wanted to use TK mid rotation since the late SB rotation employed it, encouraging Monks to use it in normal play. But it's not like everyone wanted TK to be a part of the normal rotation. We just wanted a more engaging rotation, and the TK rotation at the time gave us that. Despite them doing this, they added Anatman and Six Sided Star, two GL management tools to have us not lose GL. Even employing TK mid rotation is a DPS loss, so it's antithetical for Monk to use. Why?

The remedy for this is Form Shift. Form Shift refreshing GL from Coeurl -> Opo-opo was all the GL management Monk needed alongside Perfect Balance to complete the GL upkeep toolkit and was long desired since HW and grew in demand over the years. Rather than doing this, we had multiple skills over multiple expansions serve this purpose. You wouldn't want 5 variants of a skill to perform one purpose on every class in place of other damage, utility, or QoL changes they could've gone with. You shouldn't be afraid of these Monk changes, we've been asking for them for years. We're finally getting them. Even after the devs said they listened to the players, understanding their complaints, saying they'll change Monk to answer these complaints, then doing nothing the community asked for with the changes they implemented. The only notion you should be concerned with the Monk changes is that it took actual years for these to come into effect. That should be what stands out to you, not that they finally happened.

As for the identity and difficulty of classes, OP, I'd abandon the notion of this improving anytime soon, if at all. Surely, you must know the homogenization of classes directly stemmed from people pushing specific classes for meta raid compositions making others, like BLM and MNK, inferior to others regardless of individual performance. SE's resposne was "well, if people are liking these few classes, shouldn't we make all classes almost the same so there's no preference?" The job identity crisis was stemmed from the community itself, perpetuated by the devs, employed by the balance team, and suffered by the players passionate about their class, not the casuals who will play the game regardless. It's why weapon type debuffs were removed, why raid DPS abilities like Trick Attack are overvalued by the community and balance team, why crit buffs were taken away from every class but DNC. Homogenization wasn't the result, it was the goal. FFXIV balance is and probably will never be great, despite being a sub-based game. Just looking at how the classes progressed in direct relation to how the SE devs marketed the game this expansion alone, along with the small balance team (four people for seventeen classes) should show you how much they had class balance in mind.

[Rangar]

Yeah, these changes to MNK have been needed since SB, they're just 2 and a half years late in arriving. MNK is finally in a good place, and while some actions still need attention, it's not as bad as others.

[KanameYuuki]

I mean, Form Shift was a long time coming, like Xaert mentions the biggest point of concern should be how many years that took, take Enochian, Blood of the dragon and Huton, those basic buffs are technically impossible to lose, even more so Blood of the dragon with its new 30s / 30s (you can lose Dive stacks ofc but the buff itself will be always on).

RoE was a surprise for all of us, 30s is indeed overkill, but we really needed something to ease our life on solo play, I assume that one will have its time reduced eventually.

Hopefully MNK can now start getting new actual skills that evolve the job, instead of a million situational GL management ones.

[Jasmyne]

@Xaert
I appreciate your thought out reply and it does bring a whole lot of insight to the class and its history. As I said in my disclaimer I quit a few months after HW after what they did to bard and it took me 4 years to return, so I never actually experienced monk at its worst, I remember it during 2.0 and 3.0 when it was still fundamentally unique to all other melee dps jobs. However I gotta disagree with one point:

"You shouldn't be afraid of these Monk changes, we've been asking for them for years. We're finally getting them. Even after the devs said they listened to the players, understanding their complaints, saying they'll change Monk to answer these complaints, then doing nothing the community asked for with the changes they implemented. The only notion you should be concerned with the Monk changes is that it took actual years for these to come into effect. That should be what stands out to you, not that they finally happened." (I'm having trouble learning how to quote properly sorry I'm new here)

Firstly I agree that the fact it takes them years to fix a single issue is completely ridiculous, I was told it took them a whole 2 years to put bard back to its previous state after HW and I'm absolutely devastated right NOW that my bunny WONT GET HATS OR MODERN AESTHETICS HAIRSTYLES probably for another year at least so this is a huge issue for me RAWR! However I'm not going to be happy with lazy fixes, and by essentially ruining the complexity of monk (regardless of whether people say they enjoy it right now or not) In my opinion, is gonna be detrimental in the long run. What people don't understand about this post from what I've seen from a few responses is I'm not arguing the technical viability of monk. It very well may be much better than it was in simplicity and damage (hell you can make a job viable with a 3 button rotation if you balance it right) but that's not the point, that's not what makes it fun, what I'm arguing is its identity... what makes it different than a samurai or a ninja right now besides aesthetics? Maybe a few things, but I feel that's gradually going down the drain, and eventually ALL distinctions between jobs are going to be ALL aesthetic.

I'm not going to try and define how people have fun though, if I'm wrong then I'm wrong but it wont stop me from having an opinion (which is I believe the vast majority of the community care more about identity and unique game play rather than pure viability). But again thanks for the reply I really like this one.

[Bright-Flower]

I think the major thing is everyone’s been asking for this to happen to monk since GL introduction.

While it’s true in some ways, look at the most popular jobs, they are never the complicated ones. And given what they did to ninja.. I wouldn’t be too worried,

The community were the ones asking for this to happen to monks realistically

I certainly wanted something to make keeping GL up 'easier' rather than getting a bunch of different situational ways to do it, but I think tacking it onto form shift is tipping the scales a little 'too' far, now it should NEVER fall off outside of phase transitions where you lose control of your character, like Eden Prime or 'active time maneuvers', or if you die. I think they went a little too far with the change.

For example dragoon, you can't keep BOTD up indefinitely without something to hit, but you CAN refresh it once to keep it going before it falls off and you have to start over. Maybe something like that would have worked better, like a 1m cd that refreshes GL without having to hold still or take damage etc.

[ColdestHeaven]

Small preface: I haven't played MNK in high level content yet, so I might be talking out of my arse - feel free to correct me. The issue I personally have with form shift in its current form is...redundancy is the word I think? We have that, then we have the secondary effect of SSS (the primary being to "forcefully remind yourself of what RoF felt like, before thinkingof complaining about the potency nerf"), Tornado Kick for when you don't want to keep them (as Bright-Flower said, death/active time maneuver, Eden). And then there's Anatman. Anatman's main purpose seem to be (according to rotations I've seen on the internet) related to the TK opener/rotation, which...I don't know, feels like the clunkiest thing since Stormblood's MCH to me.

So either you use this clunky (again, to me) way of using SSS/TK/Anatman, or you get to have close-to-infinite GL AND, at the same times, tools to get rid of it or increase it. Back in ARR/HW (especially the former), a MNK's challenge was to keep GL up by all means available, including punching literally rock bombs (good ol' Titan) to let the GCD roll during downtime mechanics. Now things (including the controversial "HIT ME IF YOU DARE" RoE GL refreshing feature, which I forgot to include earlier) have shifted, and GL has become less of an issue.

This is, as many already said, what people asked for - and they got it. To be quite frank, I myself love not having to slow down every so often for being punished by the fight or simply because it's a dungeon and not every tank is Sonic - you play MNK to go fast, period, which is why I hated RoF back in SB and hated it even more in ShB until they removed the slowdown. Dungeons, in particular, feel a lot more enjoyable - leveling it felt like a breeze in comparison to previously.

Did this come at a price? Yes, the original "identity" (the GL struggle, that is). I myself feel unsure as to what the MNK is, or what it should be, but I wouldn't blame it all on the new Form Shift just yet.

As per positionals, I can guarantee that 50% of the reason of the recent RoE change was for solo play - and I welcomed it with open arms. Frontcritting Bootshine on enemies attacking you is a godsent.

[xxvaynxx]

Yeah, these changes to MNK have been needed since SB, they're just 2 and a half years late in arriving. MNK is finally in a good place, and while some actions still need attention, it's not as bad as others.

Mnk is in a place it shouldn't be. Mnk is outright broken atm, they're pulling BLM numbers...something...a certain sword using melee should be doing.

[SpeckledBurd]

@Xaert
I appreciate your thought out reply and it does bring a whole lot of insight to the class and its history. As I said in my disclaimer I quit a few months after HW after what they did to bard and it took me 4 years to return, so I never actually experienced monk at its worst, I remember it during 2.0 and 3.0 when it was still fundamentally unique to all other melee dps jobs. However I gotta disagree with one point:

"You shouldn't be afraid of these Monk changes, we've been asking for them for years. We're finally getting them. Even after the devs said they listened to the players, understanding their complaints, saying they'll change Monk to answer these complaints, then doing nothing the community asked for with the changes they implemented. The only notion you should be concerned with the Monk changes is that it took actual years for these to come into effect. That should be what stands out to you, not that they finally happened." (I'm having trouble learning how to quote properly sorry I'm new here)

Firstly I agree that the fact it takes them years to fix a single issue is completely ridiculous, I was told it took them a whole 2 years to put bard back to its previous state after HW and I'm absolutely devastated right NOW that my bunny WONT GET HATS OR MODERN AESTHETICS HAIRSTYLES probably for another year at least so this is a huge issue for me RAWR! However I'm not going to be happy with lazy fixes, and by essentially ruining the complexity of monk (regardless of whether people say they enjoy it right now or not) In my opinion, is gonna be detrimental in the long run. What people don't understand about this post from what I've seen from a few responses is I'm not arguing the technical viability of monk. It very well may be much better than it was in simplicity and damage (hell you can make a job viable with a 3 button rotation if you balance it right) but that's not the point, that's not what makes it fun, what I'm arguing is its identity... what makes it different than a samurai or a ninja right now besides aesthetics? Maybe a few things, but I feel that's gradually going down the drain, and eventually ALL distinctions between jobs are going to be ALL aesthetic.

I'm not going to try and define how people have fun though, if I'm wrong then I'm wrong but it wont stop me from having an opinion (which is I believe the vast majority of the community care more about identity and unique game play rather than pure viability). But again thanks for the reply I really like this one.

The problem here is the complexity of Monk you're talking about really wasn't complexity, it was just inconvenience relative to what other jobs had to do to extend a buff. In Stormblood Monk had to take damage to proc Riddle of Earth and extend GL3 while Black Mage could transpose indefinitely to keep up Enochian and keep building Foul, Dragoon could just hit Blood of the Dragon to extend it's duration, and Huton was (and is) so long that there's no risk of it falling off (my Ninja literally just recasts Huton during Eden 1 Savage after the adds are dead before her 50 second long laser transition and both Ninjutsu and Huton are up when she returns). The other jobs however were all in active control of their buffs and in the vast majority of cases they could upkeep those buffs indefinitely, with the exception of Monk. Why? Well despite all of those skills seeming to be equivalent, Riddle of Earth was terrible at its job, it could be blocked by shields, hastes like Arrow or Fae Wind could change where you were sitting in your rotation during a disconnect and cost you the seconds it would need for an AOE to go out. It even required Monk to occasionally run into AOEs which you'd normally want to avoid (Rofocale, Shinryu) in order to proc it because there was only avoidable damage at the time you needed to refresh your stacks. Othertimes there just wasn't damage at all, so Monk was alone in getting screwed in those situations.

Shadowbringers improved every jobs ability to maintain their buffs further, but while Black Mage and Dragoon had broadly useful skills added (Umbral Souls) or improved (Blood of the Dragon), Monk got more skills that only had niche use cases.

The reason the Form Shift change is unequivocally a good thing is that it brings Greased Lightning upkeep up to the level of what other jobs have, without it Monk is just needlessly getting screwed over by fight design that no other job sweats. Now changing Riddle of Earth because it's only function was invalidated by this into a 50% uptime True North? That's a bit extreme, even if Monk is disproportionately positional heavy, and I do hope that is adjusted in the future, but Form Shift's change had better stick around. This is the first time Monk isn't struggling for basic quality of life other jobs enjoy.

[KanameYuuki]

The identity is still there, if anything more clear than before, MNK is supposed to be fast, on its unique combo system with forms instead of a classic chain of skills, and positionals (just less punishing than before).

Missed opportunity from SE to add Raiden Thrust to Dragoon instead of rewarding the one class that's all about them but hey maybe now there is hope.

[Shurrikhan]

I think the major thing is everyone’s been asking for this to happen to monk since GL introduction.

I've asked to have back the positional freedom I had before through stance-less & position-less skills of low cost if delayed (as we had in ARR and HW). I have never once asked that MNK outright ignore its positionals for 30-50 seconds at a time.

I have asked that GL fall off stack-by-stack or have more frequent (or, relative to SB, responsive) means of quickly generating GL, anything that would make it a more reactive mechanic to match its urgency and importance. I have never asked that GL maintenance be reduced to a still-sluggish wind-up once per instance followed by spamming an additional button for the instance's remainder. In the process of giving us a "QoL' change, they've managed to gut a core mechanic and replace it with carpal tunnel. How is that a good thing?