Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Metalwrath]

There are so many things wrong with the current version of monk its hard to know even where to start.
It really doesnt matter if the job is in a good place in dps.It feels like complete garbage to play.And im not talking from the view of anatman openers as thats a personal player choice to open that way.
The job is so boring now and has been dumbed down as much as possible to try and attract more players to the job.

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

Howling fist removed - Again WHY???.There was no justification for the removal of this skill.Button bloat?Yeah right.This skill would actually be used more than half off the situational meme skills that were later added on the job.Again feels like it was done to close player skill dps gap because people low skill players struggle to weave or double weave.

Internal release removed - Seriously? You make chakras crit dependant and then remove our crit buff.SO stupid...

Riddle of Earth change - 60 sec cd with 30 sec free positionals.Why even have monk as a positional based job if you're going to do that?
If people cant do positionals let them play samurai instead.

They really need to stop sucking all the fun out of jobs to accomodate bad play.I get the game is becomeing more popular but it doesnt justify punishing people who have stuck the job for years.

[monk-dps]

There are so many things wrong with the current version of monk its hard to know even where to start.
It really doesnt matter if the job is in a good place in dps.It feels like complete garbage to play.And im not talking from the view of anatman openers as thats a personal player choice to open that way.
The job is so boring now and has been dumbed down as much as possible to try and attract more players to the job.

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

Howling fist removed - Again WHY???.There was no justification for the removal of this skill.Button bloat?Yeah right.This skill would actually be used more than half off the situational meme skills that were later added on the job.Again feels like it was done to close player skill dps gap because people low skill players struggle to weave or double weave.

Internal release removed - Seriously? You make chakras crit dependant and then remove our crit buff.SO stupid...

Riddle of Earth change - 60 sec cd with 30 sec free positionals.Why even have monk as a positional based job if you're going to do that?
If people cant do positionals let them play samurai instead.

They really need to stop sucking all the fun out of jobs to accomodate bad play.I get the game is becomeing more popular but it doesnt justify punishing people who have stuck the job for years.

To be honest... there was a time where I'd disagree with everything you just said.. but right now. I'm in full agreement. Even more so with the skill removeals. Like gimmie me back what was lost, cause anaman, six faired sky, and spinning bird kick - spinning bird kick is fun- is just skills that replaced actual useful skills. So too many skills isn't the issue. Now we have skills we don't use or find useless when we had actual skills we were rewarded in using.

[Satarn]

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

The blunt debuff has been changed most likely because "well, we're removing piercing and slashing, so leaving this would be weird", but yeah, that's a really dumb reason. Leaden Fist doesn't just make MNK's gcd rotation more static, it's also responsible for the whole Anatman opener issue, due to making Leaden Bootshine spam in PB optimal.

Howling fist removed - Again WHY???.There was no justification for the removal of this skill.Button bloat?Yeah right.This skill would actually be used more than half off the situational meme skills that were later added on the job.Again feels like it was done to close player skill dps gap because people low skill players struggle to weave or double weave.

That's probably because of addition of GS4 making it near impossible to double weave. Increased chance to proc chakras was probably their "fix" for removing ogcds, but it really doesn't cut it and MNK feels slower as a result. I'd rather keep the gcd length above 2 seconds like NIN and have more stuff to weave.

Internal release removed - Seriously? You make chakras crit dependant and then remove our crit buff.SO stupid...

That's probably just because they figured that having 2 different buff windows with cds that don't align with each other every time was "too complicated", but honestly those drifting cds made MNKs rotation more fun due to not being as static.
Looking at all job changes in SHB, devs seem hell bent on removing any drifting or flexible resource management aka, anything that's actually engaging.
It also feels hella weird not having any damage buff before 68 as a dps job.

They really need to stop sucking all the fun out of jobs to accomodate bad play.I get the game is becomeing more popular but it doesnt justify punishing people who have stuck the job for years.

This. I wouldn't mind if we had various levels of complexity depending on the job you pick so newbies and more casual players can also find something for themselves, but dumbing down the entire game alienates those who enjoy more complex playstyles.
If the reasoning is that they want to let everyone play any of the "aesthetics", then perhaps it is time to start branching jobs into specs with different difficulty, rather than just adding more jobs.

[Shurrikhan]

The blunt debuff has been changed most likely because "well, we're removing piercing and slashing, so leaving this would be weird", but yeah, that's a really dumb reason. Leaden Fist doesn't just make MNK's gcd rotation more static, it's also responsible for the whole Anatman opener issue, due to making Leaden Bootshine spam in PB optimal.

Its also weird that while each expansion has seen positional value decrease, DK-LF then offers us roughly some 200 potency over not using it at every opportunity. Using DK in place of BS is, in a sense, a positional. You previously could delay DK refresh (Flank) with an overextended rotation, at little potency cost (except where oGCDs are coming back up) at low SkS tiers or faint bonus at mid and a then-typical positional bonus at high SkS tiers. Having the choices of double-Boot (or "Demo-drop" where you let DK fade only for itself, Demolish's mere 70 potency, and at worst an auto-attack, at lower SkS) and full DK maintenance so close in potency for so many SkS tiers allowed for flexible positioning -- a (risky) 25-60 potency bonus to use, generally on par with a typical positional. Now, we're obliged to do the opposite, at some 3 to 8 times the potency at risk. Instead of allowing for the skills themselves to give us freedom of positioning, and the closest we had to freedom to align ourselves to our CDs, internal balance was replaced with "80+% of all your positioning impact is now in a single skill and a core mechanic is nullified half the time." That's horrible design.

And the sad thing is that Leaden Fist doesn't need to strip us of that positional freedom, but with so many already redundant tools, there's scarcely anything else Monks would have to look forward to in their blow-by-blow rotation. Our frequent damage CDs are mostly removed, PB's cooldown was doubled, we lost our earlier core CD and synergy with our Deep Meditation procs, and GL is no longer a resource to maintain, gamble, or work around (only to build once and then leave, essentially, a non-mechanic).

[SnowVix]

There are so many things wrong with the current version of monk its hard to know even where to start.
It really doesnt matter if the job is in a good place in dps.It feels like complete garbage to play.And im not talking from the view of anatman openers as thats a personal player choice to open that way.
The job is so boring now and has been dumbed down as much as possible to try and attract more players to the job.

Probably the worst change was to dragon kick.Why did it need to be changed?Nobody knows.Only monk benefitted from the debuff anyway.It's clear the change was designed to benefit people bad at playing monk so they dont have to keep a debuff up and replacing it with a buff that now has a 30 sec window for one skill to do extra damage.Also how bad are people that they need 30 seconds to hit one button honestly?This change alone has made the job a lot more boring and static in rotation.

"No one knows why they made this change that they literally said why they were doing it in a live letter" They removed all specific damage type vulnerability ups from all player classes. You should try paying more attention.

Riddle of Earth change - 60 sec cd with 30 sec free positionals.Why even have monk as a positional based job if you're going to do that?
If people cant do positionals let them play samurai instead.

yes, because there aren't multiple fights where you're locked out of positionals due to mechanics (and not just in shadowbringers, this has been a problem for a while) for longer than the two stacks of True North will work for you.

[Satarn]

"No one knows why they made this change that they literally said why they were doing it in a live letter" They removed all specific damage type vulnerability ups from all player classes.

Piercing and Slashing have been removed due to forcing certain job compositions, because not having slashing meant both your tanks did way less damage and not having piercing(which only DRG provided) significantly nerfed your physical ranged dps. Both those debuffs were causing massive balance issues and frustration for tanks and ranged players.

Blunt debuff was both only used and provided by MNK, so it had none of those problems - it was functionally just another full uptime self-buff. Clearly the only reason for it's removal was "because of the other two", which is a garbo reason to do anything and itself has caused issues, due to replacing it with Leaden Fist.

yes, because there aren't multiple fights where you're locked out of positionals due to mechanics (and not just in shadowbringers, this has been a problem for a while) for longer than the two stacks of True North will work for you.

Between 30 seconds per minute on Riddle of Earth and 10 seconds per 45 seconds from True North, MNK has more free-positional uptime than it has to actually do positionals. Those are no longer "windows of ignoring positionals", you get "windows of having to do positionals" instead. It's no wonder some people are thinking that devs could've as well just removed positionals entirely.

While it's true that MNK was way more positional-intense than any other melee and there are mechanics which make positionals a nightmare, extra 30 seconds per minute is an overkill. If MNK simply got 10 more seconds than the other melee it would've probably been fine too.

[SpeckledBurd]

Piercing and Slashing have been removed due to forcing certain job compositions, because not having slashing meant both your tanks did way less damage and not having piercing(which only DRG provided) significantly nerfed your physical ranged dps. Both those debuffs were causing massive balance issues and frustration for tanks and ranged players.

Blunt debuff was both only used and provided by MNK, so it had none of those problems - it was functionally just another full uptime self-buff. Clearly the only reason for it's removal was "because of the other two", which is a garbo reason to do anything and itself has caused issues, due to replacing it with Leaden Fist.

It's also worth noting that not only was this change unnecessary because no other job used blunt damage (and indeed it could have been converted to a self buff should a job with something like a Hammer been implemented), but it's not the first time Monk has had skills removed from it that played differently with its kit because other jobs had that change made. It is just a fact that Form System makes Monk work just a little bit different from other melee Jobs because of the freedom it provides, even if with the freedom it ultimately results in a GCD loop similar to the other jobs.

Case in point Touch of Death and Fracture (Fracture technically being Marauder's but Monk almost had more use of it than Warrior in Heavensward) were uncombo'd dots, so they got removed in Stormblood along with Phlebotomize and Scourge. On other jobs they were just a part of your rotation that you'd use in a set order without any divergence. For all intents and purposes skills like Scourge and Phlebotomize may as well have been combo'd. However Touch of Death and Fracture were different because of the free flowing style of Form Based Combos, they gave Monk a certain fluidity and freedom to weave weaponskills in between its combos that other jobs lacked and in contributed to the feeling of playing a martial artist. In terms of gameplay they were also useful tools for manipulating your GCD to make sure you could end on a Coeurl form hit so you'd have max stacks for a jump as well. Though all things being unequal when it comes to Monk, Warrior, Dragoon and Ninja have also all gained new skills they actually get to use on a regular basis to replace their uncombo’d DOTs.

Edit: I used One Ilm Punch in place of Touch of Death RIP.

Between 30 seconds per minute on Riddle of Earth and 10 seconds per 45 seconds from True North, MNK has more free-positional uptime than it has to actually do positionals. Those are no longer "windows of ignoring positionals", you get "windows of having to do positionals" instead. It's no wonder some people are thinking that devs could've as well just removed positionals entirely.

While it's true that MNK was way more positional-intense than any other melee and there are mechanics which make positionals a nightmare, extra 30 seconds per minute is an overkill. If MNK simply got 10 more seconds than the other melee it would've probably been fine too.

While it's an extra 30 seconds per minute, it isn't on command like True North is because it requires you to take a hit (which requires you to take damage instead of proccing through shields like Third Eye because god forbid they fix one of the fundamental problems with it). Depending on how much AOE damage is occurring during a given fight/phase there's a limit to when you can actually trigger the effect (which can also get screwed by a spread Adlo, still) and therefore there's a limit to when it can be activated and actually be useful. While in theory there could be 50 seconds of positional free attacking, that's not always the case in practice. To its credit there's also some optimization that new Riddle of Earth creates in terms pre-emptively using it so you catch an AOE just barely and having it be back up in time for a future mechanic.

That said, I don't think it was well thought out at all as a change. In terms of duration it's actually a bit overblown, a longer duration is warranted because of the activation requirements but 20 seconds would probably be a bit more appropriate. It struck me as a panicked change to make a skill that would be invalidated by the Formshift 5.05 change still have a use. It wouldn't have been a problem if Monk's ability design in every expansion wasn't a contest to design new skills that are as nonfunctional as possible in many situations, but that's beside the point. It is also a skill that fixes a problem that Monk has had for a while in terms of solo play such as single player instances or any time it makes you face tank a mob for a quest. For whatever these encounters don't give enemies omnidirectional positionals and without RoE (or even I'd speculate with only 30 seconds of True North) that hits Monk the absolute hardest now that they've basically reimplimented all of the lost positional damage they took from Monk in Stormblood onto Leaden Fist. For people who are decent at the game it isn't a problem, but there's a sizeable portion of the playerbase that struggles on Monk because of it.

[Shurrikhan]

Case in point Touch of Death and Fracture (Fracture technically being Marauder's but Monk almost had more use of it than Warrior in Heavensward) were uncombo'd dots, so they got removed in Stormblood along with Phlebotomize and Scourge. On other jobs they were just a part of your rotation that you'd use in a set order without any divergence. For all intents and purposes skills like Scourge and Phlebotomize may as well have been combo'd. However Touch of Death and Fracture were different because of the free flowing style of Form Based Combos, they gave Monk a certain fluidity and freedom to weave weaponskills in between its combos that other jobs lacked and in contributed to the feeling of playing a martial artist. In terms of gameplay they were also useful tools for manipulating your GCD to make sure you could end on a Coeurl form hit so you'd have max stacks for a jump as well. Though all things being unequal when it comes to Monk, Warrior, Dragoon and Ninja have also all gained new skills they actually get to use on a regular basis to replace their uncombo’d DOTs.

This. So much this. Fracture was effectively just a position-less skill you could use at disproportionate TP cost for its potency advantage because half its value was just in being position-less -- usable as often as every 18 seconds depending on the number of fillers per odd/even Demolish (similar to filler counts per TG on Samurai and odd/even minutes on Ninja). ToD was as small a potency bonus as it was largely so you could use it for flexibility. How the devs could fail to see how badly their removal (heck, we previously had Impulse Drive, too, if we really needed position-less filler) would affect Monk positional flexibility is baffling. Modular control and positions were the basis for our job back then.

The GL timer being as tight as it was back then made it so even the seemingly subtle tools could have tremendous impact, rather than tools needing to be obtusely significant to notice any impact. If you didn't know how to control your rotation during T9, you'd lose GL far more often than you ought. That interdependence and flexibility just made it all feel right; difficult, perhaps, but fitting -- especially in the fights that gave it the most challenge.

The HW model was close to perfection in terms of general rotation. Had Meditation just been a bit stronger so it could be used situationally to align your rotation... *chef's kiss*. (Of course, other melee job's ranged skills would need to be buffed in turn to make up for MNK's being the not only stronger in ppgcd but also not breaking rotations, or the buff to Meditation would have to be limited to when in melee range of an enemy.)

If TK was less cumbersome, I'd throw in a fluid, likely single-step Riddle of Wind and the one-minute PB atop it for a bit more macrorotational variance, give more reason to change between stances macrorotationally, and maybe use a different take on Deep Meditation for a bit more spice over the levels since, but still, that rotation was a work of art, especially at extremely high speeds.

[Ramura_Sono]

Devs are biased against monk and any ignorance they have with regards to the job is willful and malicious.

[SpeckledBurd]

Devs are biased against monk and any ignorance they have with regards to the job is willful and malicious.

Eh, I don't think they're biased *against* Monk even if it frequently feels like they are biased towards certain jobs when it comes to how much effort they put into new actions/traits (like Black Mage consistently getting amazing additions). The problem with Monk is the devs have admitted to being clueless as to how to progress Monk, but in spite of this when they make a misstep like they did in Stormblood and now Shadowbringers, they're aggressively slow when it comes to actually implementing any of that feedback. We complained about Stormblood Monk from the get go and we got hand ringing but no action about it even on Shadowbringers Launch. The overwhelming design of Shadowbringers action is "GL Upkeep Skill, More Fist Stance stuff when you'll only want to use one stance, and taking out low end skill to put them on higher levels but worse!" which were all complaints about Stormblood Monk. When they finally did implement a small amount of the feedback we gave them... they turned around and ruined it by making what had just become a useless action even more useless for many of its intended use cases and only made it unpleasant for its unintended use case.

Compare to Samurai, who got Shoha changed in a single patch after player's complained.