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

[Satarn]

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.

The saddest part is that all it would take to make SB's TK rotation way more user-friendly, would be to just replace Riddle of Wind with a single click ogcd that grants a stack of GL. The entire clunkiness issue was that you needed to swap to Wind, use Shoulder Tackle, use Riddle of Wind and then swap back to Fire, requiring 4 weaves just to do something that could've easily been a single weave.
But nope, better rip several ogcds from the job and introduce a new level of unintended clunkiness with Anatman and keep clinging to Fist stances which are pretty much the very definition of button bloat.

[Shiroe]

is this 5.1 change lowering the Mnk overall dps? .. or just making Mnk clunky

[SpeckledBurd]

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.

I wouldn't dismiss Monk's issues as quaint, because while the design problems on Monk may lack in the severity of some of the other jobs, no other job comes close to having to put up with their respective problems as Monk has. There are problems that exist in Monk's kit that date back to ARR, such as the Fist Stances by design only having one Stance you ever want to be in and the others being something to ignore making their entire existence 3 wasted slots. These are problems that have not only never been fixed, but have been the foundation for 3 Traits over two expansions that never addressed that core problem. This is also true for things like Deep Meditation and Brotherhood's RNG/Composition dependence. Both were things that we hated, but they've never so mechanically broken that the devs have addressed it so it festers.

The end result of that was an absolutely livid player base in 5.0 that was only placated by some emergency changes in 5.05.

As for the devs being out of touch, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head, but that's only part of it, the other part is they are for some incomprehensible reason completely pig headed about taking any feedback about Monk. You only need to look at what the devs said about Stormblood Monk, their beliefs with regard to how Shadowbringers Monk would be received, and the actual player response to it to see this in action. They implemented Riddle of Fire in Stormblood and people hated it. They said that if player demand was high enough they'd do something about the slow, but never actually did. Then they admitted during the media tour that the reason for Riddle of Fire having a Slow was because they had no idea what to do with Monk in Stormblood (which presumably extends to the RNG which everyone hates). However despite correctly identifying the reason why people hated the slow, they were still by all indications intending to keep it through Shadowbringers until the Monk player base started burning down the forums in 5.0. They thought that Greased Lightning 4 and more absolutely garbage GL upkeep skills would be what we wanted out of the job in Shadowbringers to the point where they were saying it was the job they were the most proud of during the media tour, and those statements did not age well to say the least.

[Rockette]

is this 5.1 change lowering the Mnk overall dps? .. or just making Mnk clunky

Extraordinarily clunky. Monks issues have never been its dps. As someone mentioned, Monk is a class of bandaid fixes slapped on haphazardly, complete with a bunch of random skills that the devs don't seem to intend Monks to ever use. Or they are extremely niche in their use. The main complaint about Tornado Kick was that it seems to be only intended to be used at the end of a fight or a long transition - sometimes only once per turn. This has been complained about since it's implementation in Heavensward. So what did they do? Gave us six sided star at 80, a skill exactly the same as TK, intended to only be used on a jump or end of a fight. In fact, in E2S, you use your 80 skill exactly once, before boss kill.

???

Basically they refuse to update monks core rotation and instead slap down these random skills that add little, or nothing, to Monk's play style.

When you see people on here talking about 4.2 TK monk, its because that was the first time in Monk history our rotation got a little bit of a spruce up.

This was swiftly taken away again come shadowbringers.

You know, since Monk is unique in its stance change combo.... I'm starting to think there is some back end issue in that they can't actually change it or add anything to it.

[Shurrikhan]

Monk really needs a Ninja/Machinist level overhaul.

How about one that doesn't cost us what's left of our core job themes and mechanics? Equal in size, but with less lobotomy involved? We need to make sense of our parts, not just to have fewer parts or for our APM to be drastically reduced.

[wereotter]

Honestly Anatman just needs a full rework into something else. After the patched in the ability to infinitely maintain GL by using Form Shift, the intended use of Anatman (to maintain and build GL during down time) was eliminated. Monk now has several skills it doesn't REALLY need since they were mostly made redundant with that one change for Form Shift.

There are still reasons that players have found to use Anatman, Six Sided Star, Fists of Earth.... but the fact that the job had so many redundancies to take care of just maintaining GL only to have it be made infinite means it's now the king of redundant skills.

Additionally the change to Anatman was likely to try to stop players fishing for GL stacks. If it's optimal, some players will do it still, while other will still choose to stop because it will feel clunky to do. Since I play monk as the job that likes to go fast... I will be in the latter camp even if it's not the perfect way to start a fight.

[Kahnom]

I never use Anatman openner or use it during my own openner.
so nothing has changed for me, I guess.

[Powercow]

How about one that doesn't cost us what's left of our core job themes and mechanics? Equal in size, but with less lobotomy involved? We need to make sense of our parts, not just to have fewer parts or for our APM to be drastically reduced.

Ooh, ooh, I got it! See, what they could do is replace Shoulder Tackle with another skill, one that has you rush to the target and do some damage to it! Obviously it'd only have one charge because, *scoffs* it'd be way too strong to give you two of that!

Or, ooh, they could bring back Tackle Mastery! Give monks a pushback with Fists of Earth active! Yeah, that's exactly what the only class in the game with no ranged attack needs -- a knockback skill! Ah, but that'd be way too strong, we better make sure it literally doesn't work on anything anyway.

Maybe they could just remove some of the penalty for missing positionals. That'll spice up Monk. Or, hmm, maybe just remove Chakras altogether and put TBC on a regular cooldown. Don't worry guys, it'll definitely make monk far more interesting to just keep making it simpler!

[Yes I'm still bitter, and I don't even play monk anymore.]

[Taranok]

I wouldn't dismiss Monk's issues as quaint, because while the design problems on Monk may lack in the severity of some of the other jobs, no other job comes close to having to put up with their respective problems as Monk has. There are problems that exist in Monk's kit that date back to ARR, such as the Fist Stances by design only having one Stance you ever want to be in and the others being something to ignore making their entire existence 3 wasted slots. These are problems that have not only never been fixed, but have been the foundation for 3 Traits over two expansions that never addressed that core problem. This is also true for things like Deep Meditation and Brotherhood's RNG/Composition dependence. Both were things that we hated, but they've never so mechanically broken that the devs have addressed it so it festers.

The end result of that was an absolutely livid player base in 5.0 that was only placated by some emergency changes in 5.05.

As for the devs being out of touch, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head, but that's only part of it, the other part is they are for some incomprehensible reason completely pig headed about taking any feedback about Monk. You only need to look at what the devs said about Stormblood Monk, their beliefs with regard to how Shadowbringers Monk would be received, and the actual player response to it to see this in action. They implemented Riddle of Fire in Stormblood and people hated it. They said that if player demand was high enough they'd do something about the slow, but never actually did. Then they admitted during the media tour that the reason for Riddle of Fire having a Slow was because they had no idea what to do with Monk in Stormblood (which presumably extends to the RNG which everyone hates). However despite correctly identifying the reason why people hated the slow, they were still by all indications intending to keep it through Shadowbringers until the Monk player base started burning down the forums in 5.0. They thought that Greased Lightning 4 and more absolutely garbage GL upkeep skills would be what we wanted out of the job in Shadowbringers to the point where they were saying it was the job they were the most proud of during the media tour, and those statements did not age well to say the least.

I mean, Monk has the curse of being a good class despite its ignorable abilities. It's a problem many MMO classes have where the class is so....okay that it basically doesn't garner attention. I get that, but the class is still functional and has a fine toolkit, and has since ARR. Yes, its issues are quaint. Having a bloated ability list is a simple problem to have, and many classes have had this problem at various times.

Monk players may not want to hear that, but the class is still fine. Its issue is almost entirely related around stagnancy and having a ton of abilities that exist because....well, no one can tell why.

These are minor problems compared to classes that literally couldn't run content.

So I am fully justified in calling Monk's issues quaint simply because the class is largely fine. It has issues and is stuck in mediocrity, but there is no absolutely glaring problem that, and I quote:

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.

Because there have been several instances where classes literally were so horribly cobbled together that it makes you question if the devs actually played it, but Monk's issues are that it makes you wonder if the devs understand what the playerbase actually wants out of monk. Which is, generally, a very fast, frenetic, fluid combo class. But the devs first wanted monks to have more to do (HW), then wanted monks to be able to do everything they could do while giving them some more flavor (SB), and then were like "This is too busy a class as of SB, we need to trim stuff back." But they forgot things like how abilities slowed the class GCD down and players didn't like that. All the while they haven't touched the core rotation at all, leading to the stagnancy.

So they're half hitting the mark, half missing, and the issues are still quaint by comparison to classes that are actually broken.

Hopefully Monk will actually be broken in 6.0 so that the devs actually will take the time to seriously analyze the class, just as they did with WAR, AST, MCH, SMN, and NIN, and I can sit here and say the issues aren't quaint and that it is justified to pretend the Monk is remotely close to classes that were so bad at release that you could use it as evidence that the devs didn't play the class at all in actual content.

And just to be absolutely clear. I am not sitting here belittling Monk's problems, because they are real, exist, and need to be addressed.

I am directly attacking people who are using blatant hyperbole to pretend Monk, a working, functional class with a core rotation tried and true and loved by the playerbase since ARR, is remotely in the same ballpark as classes so broken that they failed at running the easiest, simplest content in the game.

[ForteNightshade]

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).

While all those jobs were fundamentally broken. Only Machinist lingered throughout the entire length of an expansion. We can really dismiss Warrior because that was on the cusp of FFXIV's relaunch and they were experimenting with how tanks might function. The moment they realized tank busters needed to exceed numbers far higher than Warrior's HP threshold could ever reasonably maintain, they ditched the design immediately. Warrior subsequently went on to become arguably one of the best designed jobs in the entire game. Summoner, likewise, enjoyed a lengthily period of being laughably overpowered prior to Shadowbringers.

Monk has been among the few jobs which have seen rework after rework yet failed to gain even the slightest bit of traction until they unintentionally made it ungodly strong. It's the only job to date they completely gave up its original role of being a selfish DPS because they couldn't balance it properly. Samurai now enjoys that curse. Perhaps what is most baffling with Monk is the playerbase actually cobbled together a rotation that was widely loved in the TK opener. Instead of embracing this with some tweaks to make it more new user friendly, SE broke the whole thing to enforce the design they were forced to abandon only a month later. I suppose if I were to slightly amend my original statement, Monk better epitomizes the sheer stubbornness SE has. I cannot think of another job that has clung to systems routinely disliked for this long.

But really, we're arguing semantics because my initial statement wasn't hyperbolic. Monk may not have been a broken mess but it was far from "good." Throughout two expansions it lingered in the shadows of Dragoon and Ninja who were better in virtually every way.