My god, Square *head in hands* - RE: monk

[Oxdarock]

I agree, though I don't necessarily think Monk needs a 4th Form combo. I'd like to see them expand on Formless skills that we weave into the rotation in order have timers align a little better. Now that we have a permanent additional 10% haste, our timer durations have been ever so slightly off and having something to delay a tick on Demolish like Fracture did in Heavensward would be a godsend.

I think the big thing Monk needs however is a skill that rewards us for upkeeping Greased Lighting/Refreshing it. This is the kind of change Dragoon and Black Mage have gotten from expansion to expansion that have been so well received that Monk hasn't. Dragoon Jumps and keeps BotD up and it gets Super Geirskoguls and Star divers, Black Mage gets Fouls and Xenoglossies for keeping Enochian. Monk needs something (Maybe Tornado Kick?) that we earn a use of by refreshing your stacks or upkeeping GL3/4 for a period of time.

I mean, Six-Sided Star is used to delay the rotation, but only if you've used an Opo-Opo stance and there's like 6 seconds left on RoF's CD, which is rare (and at 4 seconds, you'd just do a filler DK).

I like the idea of being rewarded for keeping up GL though, especially since it's always been way harder to do so than any other class.

[SpeckledBurd]

I mean, Six-Sided Star is used to delay the rotation, but only if you've used an Opo-Opo stance and there's like 6 seconds left on RoF's CD, which is rare (and at 4 seconds, you'd just do a filler DK).

I like the idea of being rewarded for keeping up GL though, especially since it's always been way harder to do so than any other class.

That's completely wrong and you should stop misleading people and spreading misinformation.

[InfiniDragon]

I propose we call this new opener the "oh s*** I was grabbin' a Coke" opener, because it'll look like the guy was AFK and realized the rest of the party pulled when they're sitting in the back doing Anatman.

That change was hilariously bad, and I expect SE will further nerf/adjust Anatman to fully eradicate it as an opener, which appears to be the intent.

[HyperiusUltima]

I honestly don't know why they made Anatman like this. Generally, since it's connected to the GCD now, it prevents the whole "Free GL Tick Fishing" when in the opening sequence. However, as it's said here, it more or less does incentivize Server Tick Apps to get the right tick upon pulling.

SE, if you really, really want to piss off your playerbase, you probably have now with this by not listening to them. I would rather Anatman STAY a Downtime skill and just have one extra ability that starts you off in GL1. Heck, if you even add a trait that allows you to do a full form cycle out of battle for GL1(and no higher) it'd feel a lot better than this.

[Shurrikhan]

See, I think they're scared to do this as well in case they accidentally put in another Tornado kick rotation which they didn't want either.

Despite it still being a clearly superior play experience to Anatman? Moreover, at 4 stacks loss per TK, that potency couldn't pay back the damage and attack speed cost even with Riddle of Wind added back to the game, save perhaps once per minute if they're left with 2 charges.

(Though, again, I don't see how that'd be a problem if we could just apply the GL on Wind Tackle itself, rather than forcing a triple weave during the one GCD per minute that has the room to double-weave. If virtually no one's going to be clipping, and it's not terribly frequent, its use is still far from obligatory (due to the lost Fire Tackle potency), and its few uses make the toolkit feel more solid and cohesive... what's the harm?)

[Rockette]

Mate, you're preaching to the choir. I loved 4.2 monk, now that felt like job progression. But no, none of that, said square. Back in your box. We wouldn't want monk to be fun.

[Elysium]

Is this definitive or we need to actually try this after the patch is live?

Because seems like SE really have no clue what to do with MNK on ShB.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

I've been playing MNK since patch 3.1 and I gotta say, I don't know why in patch 5.1 MNK plays more or less the same as it did back then, except we have less offensive buttons to press now. Most of the abilities in our kit don't seem to flow well with one another, which I feel like should be a key point to designing a martial arts job, everything flows together.

Starting off with Anatman, I haven't really liked it much since 5.0, but I learned to live with it, but with this change it doesn't even really change the opener at all except for pushing everything back a full GCD. That said, it still contradicts MNK's "I wanna go fast!!" play style, I mean that's why we complained so much about RoF we don't wanna go slow if we wanted to go slow we'd play DRG. So just standing there doing nothing just felt wrong (but we do it anyway in the pursuit of numbers). I can understand wanting to make it more universal between PC and Console but I feel like this might not have been the best route.

With Six-sided Star, I honestly don't have an issue with it. There are enough small disconnects with bosses that it serves its purpose as mitigation for downtime. I don't like it slowing our GCD though. I feel like it should be an oGCD on like a 60 second CD that just does its 400 potency and refreshes GL timer. Would give it more uses, especially in buff windows, but we'd still have to be smart and save it if we're gonna have a somewhat large disconnect coming up.

My absolute biggest complaint though is that they still refuse to rework Tornado Kick. It is our HIGHEST potency move and we only use it a couple times per fight (with some exceptions). Additionally, it completely contradicts everything they've given us in terms of GL management. We get this thing at level 60 where we don't really have much to maintain GL, just form shift, but then we get RoE, Anatman, and 6SS yet Tornado Kick is still counter-productive to all of that. I really think TK should just function similarly to Foul/Xenoglossy on BLM. If they don't want us using it every 30 seconds, fine, make it a proc for maintaining GL for 60 seconds, idc, but I hate having this skill, that does the most damage in our kit on a single hit, that's useless outside of a few times per fight.

(Pending: After talking to some people, in their attempt to nerf Anatman SE may have made MNK's stronger, but we'll have to see on Tuesday when all the math from tests comes out. Also it still doesn't change the fact that Anatman feels bad cause it slows us down.)

[ForteNightshade]

Mate, you're preaching to the choir. I loved 4.2 monk, now that felt like job progression. But no, none of that, said square. Back in your box. We wouldn't want monk to be fun.

It's quite baffling since I imagine they killed the TK opener because it was more involved for less experienced players. But at the same time, Anatman basically requires a third party program to optimize and is stupidly clunky even without one. I guess it's more... straight forward than TK? At this point, I'm convinced they have a set idea of how they think Monk should be played and stubbornly refuse to accept that isn't how people play it. Sort of like the healers.

Monk really needs a Ninja/Machinist level overhaul. It's a complete mess they keep throwing band-aids on hoping it'll eventually work. Unfortunately, it's also popular right now due to its insane damage. So that may give them the impression everything is perfectly fine.

[Taranok]

Monk is probably the best example of it needing to be mandatory the dev team actually plays it at a semi-decent level before being allowed to claim the job is ready for release.

Seriously. They seem to have no idea what they're even doing with it anymore.

I hate to break it to you, but there's 5 better choices. Ninja (just for ShB), Summoner (for SB and ShB), Machinist (SB), Astrologian (HW), and Warrior (ARR).

Ninja, Summoner, and Machinist were broken in the expansion and needed significant, emergency changes to several abilities pivotal to the core rotation of the class in order to make them not play like garbage mid-expansion. Meanwhile, Warrior and Astrologian were launched so broken that you had trouble running basic content or performing your core role due to glaring design flaws. AST had serious trouble at high-level play running dungeons when HW first launched, and wasn't really raid-viable until closer to the final tier of HW, whereas WAR had cast bars on overpower, the health increase of defiance didn't come with bonus healing while also having the health tied to stacks of infuriate, meaning if you ever used inner release, you lost all of it, and they literally could not main tank Twintania because Death Sentence would just straight up murder them no matter what they did, as their only damage mitigation was Inner Release, which also crippled their health to use.

Monk issues are quaint in comparison to the 5 classes that had actual glaring design problems. If anything the devs are out of touch or aren't properly envisioning how abilities fit into the rotation, a problem Ninja had in ARR as well, but the class is perfectly playable and is nowhere close to the "best example of it needing to be mandatory the dev team actually plays it at a semi-decent level before being allowed to claim the job is ready for release." I'd argue Astrologian, Summoner, and Warrior are far better contenders for that title.