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

[Imshail]

The only time monk actually felt well designed was during the TK rotation era and it turns out that was by complete accident, please replace whoever is in charge of this job with someone that's actually competent.

[Ramura_Sono]

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

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.

There is not a single class in this game that could not run the easiest, simplest of content in the game. WAR, Goon, and AST couldn't run top end end game content during their initial implementations. That's it. Anything else is not a case of a job being broken but rather clunky and/or unintuitive.
Don't come here calling out hyperbole while spouting your own.

The Dev's knew we hated being slowed all the way back in the HW beta (original 700 potency Tornado Kick says, "Hi"). They knew we hated RNG chakra and the composition dependency of Brotherhood. They have received more than enough feedback regarding monk to know what we like and don't like about the job. And they've ignored it (RoF at ShB start and let's not kid ourselves, if Monk wasn't specifically mentioned in that interview, we'd still be stuck with the slow). Or worse, decided to double down on it (Fist stance shenanigans). They've been slow to move on Monk issues and have repeatedly missed the mark when they have. It's gotten to the point where monks have simply lost faith in the dev team to put even a modicum of thought into the job.

How fast did they react to feedback regarding SAMs being unable to reset sen? To Bards losing their job fantasy passive buff songs? Why should changes like these take priority over monks issues? Why should the RoF change have taken 2 years? Or Formshift, 4?

How long does monk have to wait before it's properly addressed? Another 6 years? The next expansion? Or do we have to wait for another interview where they happily claim to take player feedback into account while having changed literally nothing about the job. Do we have to blow up the forums everytime? Is that the point we've reached?

I fear monk ever becoming truly broken. At that point, the players might as well abandon the job.
Because if the speed at which SE has reacted to our feedback is any indication,

They'll abandon it too.

[SpeckledBurd]

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:

In the history of the game there's never been a case where jobs can't run content, that's absolute hyperbole beyond the level of what you're accusing others of.

Further, when it comes to being the least functional in the game Monk was that during the latter half of Heavensward. It was the only job that lacked internal aggro control, it had the weakest burst damage, it's personal damage was comparable to Dragoon and only minorly above Ninja's when they both had raid buffs, it's TP Sustain was the worst of any job in the game (A problem that Ninja, a stronger Job than Monk for the entirety of the expansion had fixed fairly early on). And you know what they did? They left Monk in the gutter for Stormblood and didn't fix many of those problems until midway to halfway through the next expansion, and even then they only did it because they were flat out removing them as factors from the game.

Further you can hardly say Monk has the curse of being a 'Good' class when 5.05 is the first time since A Realm Reborn when Monk has been the desirable Melee. In Heavensward it was the worst DPS by a huge margin for the majority of the expansion after Machinist got fixed in the first patch, but they never fixed any of its problems until at least Stormblood if ever. As for Stormblood, The Design Philosophy that the devs espoused as the Major selling point for it was to "Remove useless actions" and they almost completely bypassed Monk, leaving in One-Ilm Punch of all things. And even in Stormblood the best you could describe it as was "Well it's better than Samurai but DRG/NIN is still better".

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.

That's flat out wrong. Monk has been either the least played class or the second least played class in the game for two whole expansions, and the only reason it isn't right now is because it's slightly outperforming its peers. After 5.1 I'd bet we'll see the Monk population drop like a stone now that Dragoon is being buffed after having a whole two months of not being the absolute best DPS in the game.

And again, No job has ever failed at running any content, there's clears for any and every job even the ones that you describe as "Broken" and none of the jobs that were "Broken" in Stormblood or currently are underperforming nearly to the extent that Monk has historically during the latter half of Heavensward.

Or need I remind you that #deletemnk was a Meme for years?

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.

Monk hasn't been reworked at all. It's been left stagnant for year after year when other jobs that haven't needed nor asked for reworks have gotten them (Bard and Summoner in 5.0 being two big examples). Further, the Tornado Kick Opener/rotation wasn't exactly widely loved, it was extremely divisive.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

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.

Alright, so to tackle some of the comments I've seen:
1) Every job was capable of clearing all Savages week 1. Yes, it was easier for some jobs than others, but that's true all the time, there's almost no denying that some jobs will have an easier time with some fights than other jobs. But to say that certain jobs just could not do content is the same hyperbole that you say you're condemning.

2) MNK in ARR was meta af but let's go to HW. Why bring MNK when you could bring NIN + DRG and have the raid do more DPS and just have a DRK for the INT down? MNK became so sub-optimal that it just wasn't played in the vast majority of groups. Going into SB: They actually slowed MNK down and Brotherhood still couldn't beat out the utility of NIN and DRG, so the meta remained unchanged and MNK still remained as a low played job. The ShB comes out and while MNK was doing better than NIN, MNK still felt clunky and off-putting so it was like, just play SAM and do equal or more DPS without dealing with the headache, until they removed the slow on RoF then everyone hopped on the hype train.

I won't deny that certain jobs definitely deserved overhauls more than MNK did, but that still doesn't excuse the treatment MNK has gotten thus far. It baffles me that people didn't like the tick reliance of Anatman and people were relying on 3rd party programs to use optimally, they decide to put it on the GCD instead of just making it grant a stack of GL then go on CD since we have Form Shift to keep stacks in downtime. Sure it would kill TK a little more, but they could've also changed TK to function like BLM's Foul/Xeno for an easy fix to keep the MNK playerbase content. I personally don't feel like MNK needs the overhauls that other jobs did at this time (but it will need them) and those 2 changes would make MNK feel good and keep the playerbase content until 6.0

[YojimboM]

Actually, chatting with someone made me realize that SE probably did this to lower the skill ceiling, since optimal play involves using Anatman on the server tick during the opener and PB windows, which people would track through third party programs and isn't accessible to console players. But it was still manageable with Six-Sided Star (which is also bar useless now), so wtf?!

Anatman was only used for the opener. I have no idea what you mean about SSS, since SSS only has two uses: Final GCD before downtime of more than ~8 seconds exclusively if you are not on a Leaden GCD, and final GCD of the fight if you're not on Leaden again.

The Anatman change is completely non-sensical from any gameplay perspective, beyond SE heavy-handedly attempting to crack down on players using certain TPS for ticks and macros for DK. Their intended design of the skill is clearly only for downtime gauge management and since it's being "abused" (in their eyes) for an opener, then they need to break that up without hurting its intended purpose (give it a GCD like SSS). This reeks of "you play the game how we want you to".

[YojimboM]

Alright, so to tackle some of the comments I've seen:
1) Every job was capable of clearing all Savages week 1.

Not Gordias. But that's a different topic :^)

Going into SB: They actually slowed MNK down and Brotherhood still couldn't beat out the utility of NIN and DRG, so the meta remained unchanged and MNK still remained as a low played job

MNK's raid DPS in SB was on-par or stronger than NIN's (allowing for perfect play on both) after 4.2. It was always stronger in a physical-only composition. NIN was hovering over obsolescence for a long time after the 4.2 MNK changes in terms of overall meta. Three melee was the absolute strongest comp in SB, with MNK, DRG, NIN, and BRD being the DPS composition. MNK is the only job that could take such ridiculous advantage of all forms of their buffs. For high-level raiding, MNK was an extremely desirable job to bring, until SAM and BLM were brought in line later on and many speedkill comps turned to abusing both BLM and SAM together.

The thing is that back then, not enough people understood MNK or even what MNK does (they still don't, to be honest), and Trick Attack has been a meme for years so NIN had more attention in terms of performance. Like how that idiotic "BRD best dragon sight target" myth lasted forever, too. The reason it remained such a lesser played job is because so many people viewed it as "complicated" and didn't want to deal with the TK rotation, when alternatives like DRG were much more simple and NIN was more universally wanted since the average player isn't putting out the raw damage MNK required to be better.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

Anatman was only used for the opener. I have no idea what you mean about SSS, since SSS only has two uses: Final GCD before downtime of more than ~8 seconds exclusively if you are not on a Leaden GCD, and final GCD of the fight if you're not on Leaden again.

The Anatman change is completely non-sensical from any gameplay perspective, beyond SE heavy-handedly attempting to crack down on players using certain TPS for ticks and macros for DK. Their intended design of the skill is clearly only for downtime gauge management and since it's being "abused" (in their eyes) for an opener, then they need to break that up without hurting its intended purpose (give it a GCD like SSS). This reeks of "you play the game how we want you to".

Not true. You could use Anatman to essentially take the place of a Coeurl GCD during PB so you could fit another Leaden Fist. Additionally SSS is used in cases where the disconnect time exceeds ~3 seconds (you would lose roughly 2 GCDs). Anatman was then used for any downtime phase exceeding 10 seconds in which you would TK before the downtime then Anatman to rebuild to at least GL2, but ideally GL3 or 4.

[ForteNightshade]

Monk hasn't been reworked at all. It's been left stagnant for year after year when other jobs that haven't needed nor asked for reworks have gotten them (Bard and Summoner in 5.0 being two big examples). Further, the Tornado Kick Opener/rotation wasn't exactly widely loved, it was extremely divisive.

Rework was probably the wrong word. Monk has been more crap thrown at the fan hoping something sticks and going Surprised, Pikachu when the playerbase hates it because it's yet again not the feedback they've provided. That said, I thought the Tornado Kick opener was relatively popular but I could be mistaken there.

[FeliAiko]

Why doesn't SE just remove the GL stack generation from Anatman and keep everything else about it, if they're trying to counter players supposedly 'abusing' it for non-intended purposes? This change just seems like a heavy-handed response that fails to recognise why Anatman is being used the way it is to begin with.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

Why doesn't SE just remove the GL stack generation from Anatman and keep everything else about it, if they're trying to counter players supposedly 'abusing' it for non-intended purposes? This change just seems like a heavy-handed response that fails to recognise why Anatman is being used the way it is to begin with.

Removing the GL generation would mean it's only purpose is to hold forms and GL. Which is just a worse Form Shift as it roots us in place. The reality is; Anatman is just a poorly implemented skill and needs a complete rework. Granting stacks on it's own static tick would be a start, like MCH's flamethrower where it tick every second and not on the server. Or it should just grant Max stacks instantly, but then I guess that would mean we can use our level 60 capstone ability - Tornado Kick. SE doesn't want us using that skill though, just once every so often, same with 6SS.

It's pretty tiring to get shiny new attacks (except SB, imagine being the only DPS in the game where you don't get a new attack) each expansion which are so niche in their uses that you'll see them only a handful of times. I love the idea of MNK and have done since ARR but SE keeps making bizarre decisions for the job that make it so clunky.