Monk Adjustment Feedback 5.1

[SpeckledBurd]

The 5.1 Changes are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things but you're seeing Monk players (myself included) being pretty annoyed at them for a couple of reasons. First of which is I think the changes in 5.05, while undeniably good changes, were also a stop gap measure against a player population that's basically gotten the short end of the stick in terms of additions and changes for two expansions. They're also the sort of changes that should have been a part of the foundation for Monks Shadowbringers iteration and there's many things that the Monk player base flat out doesn't like about the job that the devs haven't changed such as Brotherhood being Physical Comp Dependent, or Deep Meditation/Brotherhood's Heavy RNG Pseudo-Bard aspects being inappropriate for a job that's supposed to be about being set in a smooth rhythm.

Anatman as a skill is conceptually terrible and it shouldn't have been implemented in the first place. Monk already had enough Greased Lightning Upkeep Skills as it was in Stormblood and we didn't need a new one, what we needed was for the ones we had to not have stupid activation requirements. Anatman was one of those, and the fact that it's purpose of "Keeping your stacks during downphases" was immediately invalidated by bringing Monks GL upkeep to the level of other jobs buff upkeep says a lot about how bad it is. Frankly the change is removing the only purpose the skill had left beyond extreme edgecases, and that's why people are upset about the change. The Anatman opener feels terrible, but having another borderline worthless skill on a job with the kit that has the most worthless skills Two Expansions after they said they were going to fix or remove the worthless skills is an infuriating prospect, especially when it's one of the new skills for the expansion.

Mantra's nerf is just a kick in the teeth. This is the first time in the history of the game Mantra has been good for something other than Akh Morn or Akh Morn with a different name, and it gets nerfed. Even if Mantra was slightly too strong, it sucks.

The long and the short is that devs completely missed the mark on Shadowbringers Monk after completely missing the mark with Stormblood Monk and the short euphoria of us thinking they actually give a care after 5.05 has worn off. It feels like our complaints and feedback is always getting ignored in favor of other jobs, then we get told wait for the expansion and nothing changes. I mean, Shoha's getting fixed after Samurai's complained that it was too situational for one patch. Monks have been complaining about our capstone skill from Heavensward being useless for almost five years now and the only changes they've made with regard to it was making it pointless to use after they accidentally let us use it.

[Rika007]

Mantra's nerf is just a kick in the teeth. This is the first time in the history of the game Mantra has been good for something other than Akh Morn or Akh Morn with a different name, and it gets nerfed. Even if Mantra was slightly too strong, it sucks.

I feel like you have us Bard mains to thank for that. There was a lot of outcry on our side of why does Nature's Minne, an ability with the same effects in every way to Mantra, have the same cooldown when Mantra can hit a whole party and Minne can only be used on one person. After Minne got it's cooldown doubled from Stormblood on top of all the other utility we lost or got forced to share with out role, Bard's zeroed in on it being one of the skills that seemed very weak, and used the comparison to Mantra as the primary argument for it.

But then again we didn't argue to nerf Mantra (most of us anyway). Most of us instead wanted Minne's cooldown to be cut down to 30 or 45 seconds to reflect it's more single target use.

[Satarn]

I feel like you have us Bard mains to thank for that. There was a lot of outcry on our side of why does Nature's Minne, an ability with the same effects in every way to Mantra, have the same cooldown when Mantra can hit a whole party and Minne can only be used on one person. After Minne got it's cooldown doubled from Stormblood on top of all the other utility we lost or got forced to share with out role, Bard's zeroed in on it being one of the skills that seemed very weak, and used the comparison to Mantra as the primary argument for it.

But then again we didn't argue to nerf Mantra (most of us anyway). Most of us instead wanted Minne's cooldown to be cut down to 30 or 45 seconds to reflect it's more single target use.

It wasn't bards, it was just either Mantra or a DPS nerf. MNK has the highest rDPS of all melee, while being the only one with a utility skill since NIN's utility got completely cut in SHB and DRG/SAM had none to begin with. The other jobs might be brought up to MNK's rDPS with all those changes, but Mantra remains an exclusive perk, especially going into ultimate prog.

The whole effect sharing nonsense of the ranged classes is anyway some garbage of that SE should get rid off ASAP
What where they thinking with Troubador, Tacticion and Shield Samba being all exactly the same, not stacking their effects, but just overiding each other.
These 3 skills should have all different effects

Shield Samba > 10% Physical Defense Increase
Troubador > 10% Magical Defense Increase
Tactician > Recharges Skills of everyone by 10s

Something like that would make more sense just as example, when talking about shared/same skill effects among the jobs.

Physical only Shield Samba would be near utterly worthless due to great majority of raid damage being magical. Feint already has very little use in content.
Tactician affecting people's cds would be horribly annoying as that would affect how everything lines up, especially if MCH wasn't consistent with its use. There's a reason Spear's original cd reduction effect has been replaced with crit rate in SB(before the cards were completely reworked in SHB).

While I agree that ranged dps mitigation is pretty lame, these suggestions are nonsensical. SB Troubadour and Dismantle would be much better with their unique advantages.

[Kaiserdrache]

Physical only Shield Samba would be near utterly worthless due to great majority of raid damage being magical. Feint already has very little use in content.
Tactician affecting people's cds would be horribly annoying as that would affect how everything lines up, especially if MCH wasn't consistent with its use. There's a reason Spear's original cd reduction effect has been replaced with crit rate in SB(before the cards were completely reworked in SHB).

While I agree that ranged dps mitigation is pretty lame, these suggestions are nonsensical. SB Troubadour and Dismantle would be much better with their unique advantages.

Hmm was just only a 5 minute brainstorming out of the thought that all 3 should have different effects to be individual and not such copy paste same skills with just different names n icons

How about this then:

Shied Samba > 10% Damage Reduction
Troubador > 5s longer Debuff/Buff Effects for Party Members and 5s longer lasting DoTs, so for example a Machinists Wildfire under Troubador lasts 5s longer before it runs out
Tactician > 5s of all skills performed by Party members are guaranteed critical direct hits, basically that skill that Machinists have for that as party buff, remove therefore the single version and replace it with a different skill

[wereotter]

Anatman as a skill is conceptually terrible and it shouldn't have been implemented in the first place. Monk already had enough Greased Lightning Upkeep Skills as it was in Stormblood and we didn't need a new one, what we needed was for the ones we had to not have stupid activation requirements. Anatman was one of those, and the fact that it's purpose of "Keeping your stacks during downphases" was immediately invalidated by bringing Monks GL upkeep to the level of other jobs buff upkeep says a lot about how bad it is. Frankly the change is removing the only purpose the skill had left beyond extreme edgecases, and that's why people are upset about the change. The Anatman opener feels terrible, but having another borderline worthless skill on a job with the kit that has the most worthless skills Two Expansions after they said they were going to fix or remove the worthless skills is an infuriating prospect, especially when it's one of the new skills for the expansion.

I didn't hate Anatman at the launch of 5.0, but I can recall things such as Doom Train savage where unless you had your GCD line up perfectly, you'd drop GL before you could take the AOE damage and trigger RoE. To me, it felt like a strictly better version of the Stormblood skill since it not only maintained GL, but also built it up during jump phases.... then the patch to Form Shift happened, and it's fair to say that every other skill, except maybe Six Sided Star for temporary disengagement (I feel like that skill should have a jump back as part of it) became redundant.

Monk is still the king of redundant and unuseful skills, even after all the pruning, and is due for a reworking. Hopefully 6.0 offers something bigger for monks now that they developers have been unchained from just skills that are there to help maintain Greased Lightning.

[SpeckledBurd]

I didn't hate Anatman at the launch of 5.0, but I can recall things such as Doom Train savage where unless you had your GCD line up perfectly, you'd drop GL before you could take the AOE damage and trigger RoE. To me, it felt like a strictly better version of the Stormblood skill since it not only maintained GL, but also built it up during jump phases.... then the patch to Form Shift happened, and it's fair to say that every other skill, except maybe Six Sided Star for temporary disengagement (I feel like that skill should have a jump back as part of it) became redundant.

Monk is still the king of redundant and unuseful skills, even after all the pruning, and is due for a reworking. Hopefully 6.0 offers something bigger for monks now that they developers have been unchained from just skills that are there to help maintain Greased Lightning.

My reasoning for saying that Anatman was terrible as implemented wasn't because it wasn't superior to Riddle of Earth, it absolutely was. The reason it's terrible as implemented is because of how much worse it was than the buff upkeep skills for other Jobs for one of the shortest buff durations. Dragoon could refresh BotD with a hit of the button in Stormblood and the duration was extended in Shadowbringers (with the coming patch making it basically permanent), Black Mage could refresh Enochian with Transpose in Stormblood and got Umbral Soul in Shadowbringers which was even better, and Huton for Ninja is the longest buff in the game and it could be refreshed with Mudras twice over if the phase happened to take long enough for it to fall off. All of these allowed them full mobility and the only requirement was to hit a button. Anatman by comparison was needlessly restrictive for buff upkeep because it rooted you in place while you waited on a server tick on top of it being redundant with everything else in the kit that also existed for upkeeping greased lightning.

[wereotter]

My reasoning for saying that Anatman was terrible as implemented wasn't because it wasn't superior to Riddle of Earth, it absolutely was. The reason it's terrible as implemented is because of how much worse it was than the buff upkeep skills for other Jobs for one of the shortest buff durations. Dragoon could refresh BotD with a hit of the button in Stormblood and the duration was extended in Shadowbringers (with the coming patch making it basically permanent), Black Mage could refresh Enochian with Transpose in Stormblood and got Umbral Soul in Shadowbringers which was even better, and Huton for Ninja is the longest buff in the game and it could be refreshed with Mudras twice over if the phase happened to take long enough for it to fall off. All of these allowed them full mobility and the only requirement was to hit a button. Anatman by comparison was needlessly restrictive for buff upkeep because it rooted you in place while you waited on a server tick on top of it being redundant with everything else in the kit that also existed for upkeeping greased lightning.

I can agree with all of this, and I can say I felt like for monk to feel fair compared to every other job with similar buffs was that perfect balance should have just been adjusted to give you all your GL stacks. But I feel like that kind of change would then require the removal of TK, because we already know how much the devs hated us being able to use that so frequently in Stormblood.... which is unfortunate since that was actually a really fun rotation for the job. Monk without that and without Howling Fist and without Steel Peak etc just feels so hollowed out.