Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

Ahh. Good catch. The reason I brought up the 1.5 second cd was because that's how long Heat Blast and Autocrossbow have for MCH. Timing isn't super tight for single weaving between those skills, but that's with *good* ping, so I can imagine how bad it'd be for those with higher latency.

A 1.5s GCD should have the half the remainder after the 600 ms of the skill itself ((1.5 -.6)/2 -> 450 ms) as a safety margin before latency could affect uptime, but it seems a whole lot more finicky than that, for some reason that doesn't seem accounted for by any on-paper generalities.

Granted, XIV's exact latency margins have always been a little... odd. For instance, for the brief period where during HW where the servers moved to within a couple hundred miles of me but they hadn't yet added additional protections from speedhackers, I could pretty consistently double-weave at a 1.8 GCD (my Howling Fist would barely get off the ground before being clipped). Now, even at that same 40 ms I need a 2-second GCD to consistently lose zero uptime (even with a VPN and Turbo-ing the oGCD keys), whereas I should theoretically need only 1.96.

Put simply, if they could allow for consistent single-weaving at a 1.2-second GCD (as would be possible if oGCDs had the same ping protection as GCDs), then that would probably be our cap and I'd love to see Monks thereby use multiple GCD lengths as to feel faster and more furious but still varied rather than merely wrist-breaking. Given the present workings of the game, though, ~1.75 is probably our lowest limit.

[SpeckledBurd]

I feel like it's also worth considering just how few people are actually playing Monk post 5.1. Now that Monk isn't the flavor of the month Job by virtue of very slightly overperforming over the other melee, Monk has fallen to the least played job in the game based on the number of FFlog Parse uploads it has compared to other jobs. In Savage it's below Ninja in plays despite Monk arguably being the stronger job in terms of raid damage and having Mantra, and it's actually less played than Red Mage which has a case for being the weakest job in the game at the moment. The Copied Factory is another important data point, in that its probably the best indication for how Monk is perceived outside of the relatively small group that's doing savage content. There it shows an even bigger disparity in player numbers with Monk having about 5000 uploads less than the next least played job (around 12000 monk players to 17000 Ninja players), when they're the only two jobs with less than 21000 plays. While this is certainly not a perfect metric due to the bait for people to upload to FFlogs being the leaderboard aspect and thus it’s extremely prone to publication bias if someone is dissatisfied by their performance, it is still the best look at what people are actively playing as opposed to what they just have unlocked or leveled as some census methods will provide by taking lodestone data.

While we can argue all day and night about what we want them to do (which we have been doing since the beginning of Stormblood if not throughout Heavensward) it doesn't change the fact that the devs need to do something about the Monk kit at this point. By all indications the Shadowbringers iteration of Monk is as unpopular or less than the Stormblood iteration which was a Developer admitted flop with the player base.

[Imshail]

Monk right now feels beyond bland to play, having to cycle through the exact same unchanged ARR combo along with the two layers of rng, the unrewarding optimizations and the loss of ogcds just makes the job unfun to play, especially when compared to how it played after the 4.2 patch, the Anatman nerf was the final nail in the coffin of a job that was only being played because of it being in a very overtuned state, I really hope the devs give this job some heavy reworks as soon as possible.

[Todhaseo]

I'm just glad that the Japanese MNK playerbase is just as vocal as we are.

Controversial opinion: Probably the reason as to why the dev team may not change MNK in the next major patch unless they do say so is because Leaden's fist Proc is unbelievably broken on monk and its their main source of DPS output. if the dev team wants to make Tornado kick viable again they have to rearrange numbers and properties on monk. basically a rework like ninja could work but they have to redo all the numbers and effects.

Monk is in a unique spot that while their numbers are high,their playstyle/rotation is incredibly dull and janky. thats something that im worried about because the dev team will just look at the numbers and say "YEP MONK IS DOING WHATS ITS INTENDED TO DO"
Just make the class fun again. I hate having niche abilities on my hotbar that does jack-squat except for situational mechanics/downtime.

[SpeckledBurd]

I'm just glad that the Japanese MNK playerbase is just as vocal as we are.

Controversial opinion: Probably the reason as to why the dev team may not change MNK in the next major patch unless they do say so is because Leaden's fist Proc is unbelievably broken on monk and its their main source of DPS output. if the dev team wants to make Tornado kick viable again they have to rearrange numbers and properties on monk. basically a rework like ninja could work but they have to redo all the numbers and effects.

Monk is in a unique spot that while their numbers are high,their playstyle/rotation is incredibly dull and janky. thats something that im worried about because the dev team will just look at the numbers and say "YEP MONK IS DOING WHATS ITS INTENDED TO DO"
Just make the class fun again. I hate having niche abilities on my hotbar that does jack-squat except for situational mechanics/downtime.

I would hope that the devs would understand at this point that just because a Job is where it should be in terms of DPS numbers doesn't mean that its in a good place or that players are satisfied. You only need to look at Stormblood Machinist or even Stormblood Monk to see that. They had the lowest and second lowest player numbers in the game respectively in spite of their personal damage and raid contribution, while not being DRG/NIN tier at the end, were still good enough. But they were absolutely in need of fixes. Machinist got them in the form of a complete overhaul to great effect (not the most played in the way that a DRG or a SAM is, but respectable enough numbers), while Monk got... changes more appeals at making broken skills becoming useful more than actual fixes or more skills that are redundant with what we had.

On some level I'd like to believe that the devs actually got the message that 5.0 Monk was absolutely unacceptable and that 5.05's bandaids were a sign for longer term fixes which typically take 1-2 patches as happened with Summoners 4.06 DoT buffs, but I'm not going to hold my breath. History has proven otherwise. Monk has historically been the job the devs historically just ignore. It was dead and ignored with multiple problems that went unadressed throughout Heavensward. It's playstyle concerns from Stormblood were completely ignored throughout that expansion to the point where they iterated on things we hated instead of fixing the fundamental problems with them. This is the dev team that left Riddle of Fire's slow in for the Shadowbringers release even though they knew that it was the single most despised part of Stormblood Monk.

When it comes to Monk the devs have repeatedly claimed that they had heard our complaints and were fixing it only to turn around and slap us in the face with more of the same of what we've hated. They've burned every shred of goodwill and now it's blowing up in their faces. Should they fix Monk with Something akin to a Ninja or Summoner level rework? Absolutely. Will they? Probably not, they certainly haven't before. Until proven otherwise I'm expecting nothing in the coming patches and 6.0 to have more skills trimmed out at the low level and added back at the top end if they're returned at all alongside a bunch of terrible Greased Lightning management skills.

[daespinoza]

Pebble Toss! Pebble Toss!

I just need that one enemy, not the whole mob.

[PeppermintBrown]

I really like the stance system they have in lieu of traditional linear combos tanks and other melee dps have.

Outside of that, I wouldn't mind if they scrapped everything and built something new around that core of the stance system.

[AncientCrystal]

I agree, it needs a rework. It kinda sucks to play.

[reivaxe]

I recently-ish leveled Mnk ... I love Love LOVE this job!

AND I see that it needs a from-the-roots-up rework.
I'm the type of person who likes to try to connect the dots on my own before looking at the thoughts of others ... so to me, as someone completely new to MNK, it seemed like "OH, PB allows me to do w/e attack I want .... there are 2 single target attacks that generate GL and 1 AOE that does that ... TK blows ALL your GL. Sooooo I should use TK and get back to 4 stacks of GL by spamming out the best attack for the situation, right?" Then this for a bit until I looked for info on how to do da deeps with the job and found out about the leaden Fist PB combo being better.

Like, that can't be what the devs intended ... right? Now I do the leaden fist PB combo and at the last second I pop a Six Sided Star to keep my stacks. So when do I use TK? When the boss is about to die ... or when they're about to do something that makes keeping GL stacks annoying.

The job is full of these strange holes and dead ends wrapped around a pretty chill and brain dead skill rotation.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

Now I do the leaden fist PB combo and at the last second I pop a Six Sided Star to keep my stacks. So when do I use TK? When the boss is about to die ... or when they're about to do something that makes keeping GL stacks annoying.

You don't use Six sided star in this way either. It's 400 potency but takes up 2GCDs. So unless it's just before a boss jumps it's the equivalent to 200 potency per 1 GCD. Sounds decent until you realise that it halts your rotation and you bread and butter combos are worth more potency than using 6SS. Therefore you are better using Snap or Demo (Demo is much stronger than if it can tick the full duration) within PB. The only time you don't use a coeurl WS is if you have max uptime on Twin and Demo and you can get RoE to proc during PB. Very nich optimization though.

Generally I agree though, many niche skills fulfilling similar roles within the job. It needs an overhaul similar to NIN.

MNK needs meaningful CDs, not just hit it and forget it. It needs to reclaim synergy back with it's kit and to not have skills that just sit there because they are a trap in most cases or you have to play russian roulette with Anatman and hope for GL ticks when TKing. It went from evolution in HW to regressing to a convoluted mess from SB. And while the TK rotation was a breath of fresh air and amazing synergy with PB, Fist stances and IR it was convoluted to pull of still.

NIN right now plays so smooth, everything makes sense, there is clear synergy between skills and ninki and CDs link together and interact (DWAD > Assassinate. Kassatsu > Ninjutsu. TCJ > Meisui.) Mnk has... Crit Boot synergy with Chakra generation very little synergy with anything else in its kit and it's sad when looking at other jobs.