Monk Adjustment Feedback 5.1

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

Secondly, Tornado Kick NEEDS to be reworked to function like Foul/Xenoglossy on BLM.

It really doesn't.

Simply seeing a skill more often by turning it into a stackable CD (and yes, that's all Foul/Xeno is, as there is no way you're ever going to drop AF/UI) does little justice to what it could uniquely do or how it could uniquely play.

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.

So it was terrible as implemented for not turning GL into a non-mechanic as AF/UI (cannot drop unless stunned for 6+ seconds just before Fire), BotD (refreshes for more duration than its own CD), and Huton (costing only 40 potency per minute to maintain) were? Should all three just turn just turn into permanent effects, or even traits so they stop using up our gauge space? At least we later got the Form Shift buff to bring our mechanic down to par.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

Looking over a lot of the messages, I saw a lot of good points about potential reworks. I feel like the primary 2 skills that need a rework are still TK and Anatman. Anatman because having it slow us down to get a proc goes against the identity of MNK which is to go really fast. TK because it's our strongest single hit in our kit, but it's counter-intuitive to our kit since it dumps GL but we want to keep GL forever. I already suggested changes to these so I won't restate them.

I saw suggestions for the Fist Stances and I'm honestly kind of in the middle with them. I feel like they could be reworked into traits or something since pre-76(?) or whenever we get the Riddle of Wind trait we exclusively use FoF, then at that point FoW becomes relevant which doesn't make sense due to FoW just being a button to walk a little bit faster. That being said, I feel like GL4 should be a normal trait like the previous GL increases were and the stances should maybe be reworked to be competitive with one another and actually have various uses throughout a fight. Example: Increase FoF damage increase and change FoW to be a haste buff instead of a movement speed buff. This could make it to where you'd be in FoW outside of buff windows to get more skills/autos off but when buffs are about to go out you switch to FoF to increase your burst in that window. As for FoE, I literally have no idea since RoE covers that pretty solidly so honestly just remove it.

For Six-sided Star I saw a couple suggestions as well. Personally I feel like it can be left the way it is if they rework Tornado Kick and Anatman. It's a useful skill to mitigate the amount of DPS you lose when you have to disconnect from a boss and it slowing the GCD isn't so overly annoying that it breaks the job. That being said, I feel like because we have Form Shift we don't really need SSS to refresh the GL timer so I would rather see SSS become an oGCD on like a 60 second CD that does a large bit of damage and grants a Chakra when used. It would increase out burst in buff windows and allow us another way to generate Chakra outside of RNG, which is something MNK desperately needs right now in my opinion.

Another suggestion I saw was towards the number of Chakras we have and one person suggested having TK tie in with Chakra rather than GL and personally I wouldn't mind it, but I would prefer if each stay as is. With reworks TK becomes our reward for maintaining GL for x amount of time. The Forbidden Chakra should be our reward for getting Chakra. That said, I would like the 2 extra chakras simply because it would give an opportunity for another oGCD. I would personally like for it to be Touch of Death. Though maybe a 2nd DoT is a bit much and in that case just make it decent potency attack. Pretty much I want Chakra to be more than get 5 stacks, click TFC and nothing else. Having actual management with it would be neat and rewarding, imo.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

It really doesn't.

Simply seeing a skill more often by turning it into a stackable CD (and yes, that's all Foul/Xeno is, as there is no way you're ever going to drop AF/UI) does little justice to what it could uniquely do or how it could uniquely play.

While I agree with you that there are potentially more interesting things to do with it (none that I can think of admittedly) having it function similar to Foul/Xenoglossy is probably the easiest thing they could do to make the skill viable and kind of give us the feeling we had back when we could do like 2 TKs every 30 seconds or so. I don't want the devs to spend a bunch of resources on somewhat easy solutions. If they're gonna overhaul a job it's better to do it on the patch for an expansion rather than mid-expac in my opinion. Right now I feel like getting Anatman fixed so it doesn't feel awful to use should be their number 1 priority. After that I feel like most people can agree they want TK to be more usable as it's the strongest move we have but it also contradicts pretty much our entire kit, so that should be their 2nd priority to get fixed. After that they can look at everything else in the job and plan overhauls for 6.0

Honestly, if Anatman was just, for example, an oGCD that gave a stack of GL (maybe give it 2 charges or something) so the opener wouldn't feel awful to use and if TK functioned like Foul/Xeno would anyone really so dissatisfied with the job that they'd heavily prefer other jobs to MNK (as I know a lot of people swapped from MNK at 5.0 and are pretty angry about new Anatman so they'd rather play something like DRG that takes less effort, feels less clunky, and does comparable DPS)? Could you be content with MNK until 6.0 if those changes occurred or would you still want a bunch of other changes before being content with it?

[Shurrikhan]

While I agree with you that there are potentially more interesting things to do with it (none that I can think of admittedly) having it function similar to Foul/Xenoglossy is probably the easiest thing they could do to make the skill viable and kind of give us the feeling we had back when we could do like 2 TKs every 30 seconds or so. I don't want the devs to spend a bunch of resources on somewhat easy solutions. If they're gonna overhaul a job it's better to do it on the patch for an expansion rather than mid-expac in my opinion. Right now I feel like getting Anatman fixed so it doesn't feel awful to use should be their number 1 priority. After that I feel like most people can agree they want TK to be more usable as it's the strongest move we have but it also contradicts pretty much our entire kit, so that should be their 2nd priority to get fixed. After that they can look at everything else in the job and plan overhauls for 6.0.

Okay, so just a band-aid fix. That's fair, then.

Honestly, if Anatman was just, for example, an oGCD that gave a stack of GL (maybe give it 2 charges or something) so the opener wouldn't feel awful to use and if TK functioned like Foul/Xeno would anyone really so dissatisfied with the job that they'd heavily prefer other jobs to MNK (as I know a lot of people swapped from MNK at 5.0 and are pretty angry about new Anatman so they'd rather play something like DRG that takes less effort, feels less clunky, and does comparable DPS)? Could you be content with MNK until 6.0 if those changes occurred or would you still want a bunch of other changes before being content with it?

I'd still prefer it be done a little differently (in a way that feels a bit more uniquely part of the Monk toolkit, specifically, through synergies and priorities therein), but I think we're be looking at similar scopes of change, at least. I'd need more, but not much more for within the expansion. By the next, though...

I feel like many of the Anatman changes are going to rely on some readiness to accept TK back into macrorotation, however. That, or TK's going to have to largely be scrapped and/or Anatman left redundant. Neither seems an acceptable outcome to me.

I feel we shouldn't be content with changes that still fail to make use of GL as a resource, and not just a (free) maintenance (non)mechanic, or at least double down on GL's maintenance aspects to make that an actual engaging part of play. Similarly, Chakra should feel like a more integral part of play instead of just RNG bonus damage, Perfect Balance should likely be smoothed just a bit (e.g. Chimera stance for first attack after ending), and our positional bonuses and concerns shouldn't be 70-80% just Leaden Fist; the ppm strength of that skill should be spread out a bit.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

Okay, so just a band-aid fix. That's fair, then.



I'd still prefer it be done a little differently (in a way that feels a bit more uniquely part of the Monk toolkit, specifically, through synergies and priorities therein), but I think we're be looking at similar scopes of change, at least. I'd need more, but not much more for within the expansion. By the next, though...

I feel like many of the Anatman changes are going to rely on some readiness to accept TK back into macrorotation, however. That, or TK's going to have to largely be scrapped and/or Anatman left redundant. Neither seems an acceptable outcome to me.

I feel we shouldn't be content with changes that still fail to make use of GL as a resource, and not just a (free) maintenance (non)mechanic, or at least double down on GL's maintenance aspects to make that an actual engaging part of play. Similarly, Chakra should feel like a more integral part of play instead of just RNG bonus damage, Perfect Balance should likely be smoothed just a bit (e.g. Chimera stance for first attack after ending), and our positional bonuses and concerns shouldn't be 70-80% just Leaden Fist; the ppm strength of that skill should be spread out a bit.

I can agree to that. I would prefer that Anatman and TK be reworked first then have them move on to other parts of our kit and maybe slowly overhaul MNK over the course of 5.X. I do want TK to feel unique and not a copy-paste of another skill, but my worry is that they'd spend too many resources trying to completely transform the skill this expansion instead of devoting those resources to fixing other parts of the job/other jobs. I would rather deal with TK being a copy-paste from 5.1 or 5.15 until 6.0 than not see it get any change until either really late in this expansion or until 6.0, wouldn't you agree?

As for making use out of GL as a resource, I feel like there isn't much you can do to make it feel like an actual resource (but I'm not too creative of a person). I feel like a way to make it feel a little more impactful is by reworking the stances. In my earlier post I mention making GL4 a normal trait like the previous GL increases then reworking the stances to where FoF is stronger in burst (buff) windows and FoW stronger for sustained DPS between those windows. Would kill two birds with one stone in my opinion as GL would interact with more skills and make them useful in different situations rather than what it currently is of, sit in FoW forever and never drop GL4 if you can help it. It wouldn't be a direct involvement of GL as a resource but it would still make it more involved than it currently is.

[inhaledcorn]

I'm not a Monk main, but I do like reading up on other jobs and getting insight on those who do main various jobs (as being a healer main, knowing how other people play their jobs helps me with my own), and I do want to ask: I've wondered about giving Monk attacks in each form that have no positional requirement but aren't AoEs. One Ilm Punch could be returned in this capacity, with maybe Touch of Death as well. Right now, Monk has the most positionals, and I understand that Monk does have 2 True North stacks and Earth's Reply which help deal with this (and 1 and a half bosses in high end raid have no positional indicators), but I look at something like Ninja which now has a grand-total of 2 Positional Requirements (with Trick Attack losing its positional tonight at the time of writing) and Dragoon and Samurai, while having many, does build up something with it (an upgraded combo starter and oGCDs) while Monk is just damage. Sure, this could bring back button bloat, as that's three more situational-use buttons, but, sometimes, you just have to hit the boss from undesirable positions. Anyway, I dunno if this would be good for Monk or not.

I know you're saying about making TK like Foul, but what about making Six-Sided Star like Raiden Thrust? Sure, that's more "homogenization", but the job with so many positionals would probably like something like this.

PS: With this Antaman (and now Meditation) optimization openers, SE will probably eventually adjust it so that those skills can only be used while engaged in combat. I dunno, I just think it's something y'all shouldn't get used to.

[ZyrinMisharuji]

I'm not a Monk main, but I do like reading up on other jobs and getting insight on those who do main various jobs (as being a healer main, knowing how other people play their jobs helps me with my own), and I do want to ask: I've wondered about giving Monk attacks in each form that have no positional requirement but aren't AoEs. One Ilm Punch could be returned in this capacity, with maybe Touch of Death as well. Right now, Monk has the most positionals, and I understand that Monk does have 2 True North stacks and Earth's Reply which help deal with this (and 1 and a half bosses in high end raid have no positional indicators), but I look at something like Ninja which now has a grand-total of 2 Positional Requirements (with Trick Attack losing its positional tonight at the time of writing) and Dragoon and Samurai, while having many, does build up something with it (an upgraded combo starter and oGCDs) while Monk is just damage. Sure, this could bring back button bloat, as that's three more situational-use buttons, but, sometimes, you just have to hit the boss from undesirable positions. Anyway, I dunno if this would be good for Monk or not.

Mmmmm, I honestly wouldn't like it. Part of why I play MNK is because of the positional requirements. I'm forced to move and think about how the boss will move and adjust accordingly and doing an entire fight with no missed positionals feels amazing. Plus if they did that then we'd have yet another issue of skills overriding other skills. We currently have SSS, Form Shift, and Anatman that all kind of do the same job just in slightly different ways and it's annoying because it makes the skills feel less unique. So by introducing non-positional combo they'd override True North and Riddle of Earth and take up 3 spots on our hotbars. But yeah, I prefer MNK being the super fast, positional oriented DPS. It gives it an identity and makes it rewarding because they are direct DPS increases when compared to like SAM who wants to hit them for gauge but the DPS gain isn't as large as MNK. But I guess newer players find constantly having to hit positionals annoying and just wanna stand still and do damage, idk.

As for SSS, idk, I feel like it would be neat to see it tie in since MNK is a martial arts class so hitting one combo leads into a more powerful 2nd combo, but idk. There's a lot they could do for it.

For Anatman and Med I'm pretty sure you still have to be in combat to get the procs. If you didn't no one would be complaining about Anatman since we could just get to GL4 before the countdown starts then just spam form shift.

[inhaledcorn]

Mmmmm, I honestly wouldn't like it. Part of why I play MNK is because of the positional requirements. I'm forced to move and think about how the boss will move and adjust accordingly and doing an entire fight with no missed positionals feels amazing. Plus if they did that then we'd have yet another issue of skills overriding other skills. We currently have SSS, Form Shift, and Anatman that all kind of do the same job just in slightly different ways and it's annoying because it makes the skills feel less unique. So by introducing non-positional combo they'd override True North and Riddle of Earth and take up 3 spots on our hotbars. But yeah, I prefer MNK being the super fast, positional oriented DPS. It gives it an identity and makes it rewarding because they are direct DPS increases when compared to like SAM who wants to hit them for gauge but the DPS gain isn't as large as MNK. But I guess newer players find constantly having to hit positionals annoying and just wanna stand still and do damage, idk.

As for SSS, idk, I feel like it would be neat to see it tie in since MNK is a martial arts class so hitting one combo leads into a more powerful 2nd combo, but idk. There's a lot they could do for it.

For Anatman and Med I'm pretty sure you still have to be in combat to get the procs. If you didn't no one would be complaining about Anatman since we could just get to GL4 before the countdown starts then just spam form shift.

See, that's why I wanted a real Monk's insight on the idea because, clearly, I am not. I have a hard time myself on the positions because my dps mains are Ninja and Dancer, so I don't really have to worry about those things that much. I will say, though, tying the actual GL4 to FoWind was a good idea due to the amount of moving needed to hit positionals.

While I do know Antaman can only gain its procs while in combat, but the skill itself can be used outside of it, which is why people are seeing about using the skill pre-pull while using outside programs to track server ticks to optimize the use of the skill. That is what I was talking about when SE will solve the problem by making it so that the skill can't be used unless while in combat. Honestly, I think, at this point, it should be a combo Form Shift Meditate skill so that's less buttons you have to hit during downtime, maybe replacing both skills when the skill is learned. I dunno.