Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

One thing I've noticed is that the "core" Monk rotation has existed mostly unchanged since 2.0: Opo-Opo alternates between Dragonkick and Bootshine, Raptor alternates between Twin Snakes and True Strike, and Coeurl does a rotation of Demolish->Snap Punch-> Snap Punch. During ARR and HW getting the gcd down below 2.1 let you intermix a Touch of Death every 30s while maintaining everything else and you could replace True strike with One-Ilm Punch in the rare case you wanted an enemy's buff (such as stone skin) removed.

When Touch of Death was removed in the great DoT purge of Stormblood they really should have added in 2 "formless" weaponskills that could be intermixed into the core rotation. Instead Monkmostly ended up with a bunch ogcds which were "enhanced" versions of existing ogcds.

One Ilm Punch or Six Sided Star (Maybe OIP could just upgrade to 6SS as a trait during leveling?) should have been reworked into a formless GCD with a recast of 30s or so with a decent potency attached. This would force it into the rotation but also alleviate the tightness of the forms by allowing a buffer between stances.
I'd then increase Twin snakes duration by 3s to allow for times in the rotation where OIP/6SS comes off CD. This would reinforce a 2x True per Twin but at least make things a little less strict

[SpeckledBurd]

One Ilm Punch or Six Sided Star (Maybe OIP could just upgrade to 6SS as a trait during leveling?) should have been reworked into a formless GCD with a recast of 30s or so with a decent potency attached. This would force it into the rotation but also alleviate the tightness of the forms by allowing a buffer between stances.
I'd then increase Twin snakes duration by 3s to allow for times in the rotation where OIP/6SS comes off CD. This would reinforce a 2x True per Twin but at least make things a little less strict

The One-Ilm Punch/6SS change would functionally be pretty close to Touch of Death from Heavensward except not as Dot effect, all they'd have to do is extend Demolish's timer a little to prevent drop off. I'd be pretty happy with that in all honesty, even if it isn't exactly job evolution so much as a de-regression and putting us back at our starting point.

[Ultimatecalibur]

To be fair, until 5.x, there were always distinct higher-speed rotational strings, such as via

• "Demo-drop" rotations in ARR (whereby DK was permitted to drop before Demolish and Twin before Dragon Kick itself to a loss of 36 bonus potency in exchange for 70 additional potency via an added Bootshine and True Strike per Demolish for a net gain of 34 potency minus 10% of any AAs or oGCDs that might occur over that period, making it effectively like any other positional, but in rotational form and requiring more foresight) and
• FracToD strings in HW to minimize clipping and delay on the 21s Demolish.

5.x is the first time we've been forced into just one one rotational string ad nauseum, let alone Double-True without including Double-Boot to make the repositioning far less awkward.

Those rotations, in my understanding, were more to cover flaws caused by lack of a 2nd viable formless gcd to fill in holes in the core rotation created by higher sks and GL. The rotation was fairly solid at 2.06 gcd (29 gcds per minute), but buffs and dots started clipping or falling off (depending on rotation) bellow that necessitating use of Cross-class weaponskills (of which Fracture being the best available at the time).

One Ilm Punch or Six Sided Star (Maybe OIP could just upgrade to 6SS as a trait during leveling?) should have been reworked into a formless GCD with a recast of 30s or so with a decent potency attached. This would force it into the rotation but also alleviate the tightness of the forms by allowing a buffer between stances.
I'd then increase Twin snakes duration by 3s to allow for times in the rotation where OIP/6SS comes off CD. This would reinforce a 2x True per Twin but at least make things a little less strict

I don't know if a Twin Snake duration change would be really necessary (or if anything a slight increase to 16s would be fine) and being on a 30s cooldown (even on a sks based one like GNB's Gnashing Fang Combo and DoT) is likely not enough. You would want to be using the filler gcd enough times every 15 seconds that TnS won't fall off.

[ValStormbreaker]

Sooooo... I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but as someone who has been out of the PvP loop since this past patch, I only just popped back over to the Wolves Den Pier to find my 5.0 MNK PvP hotbar had some skills removed, and when I went back to look at what was changed, I saw Axe Kick was not only reintroduced, but the way the skill works was completely different than how it was before.

And I have to say, potency numbers aside, it's exactly what PvE MNK needs right now. I mean, yes, I would agree that MNK needs a total overhaul, but in the short term, if no other changes were to be made to the job, giving it this one oGCD would make a huge difference in several respects.

For those of you who haven't seen it, 5.1 Axe Kick is now an AoE which gives a GL stack for each target hit. In a single-target fight, it would be swapped in where Anatman is currently being used in the Anatman opener, giving one stack instantly. However, since it's an AoE, it could be used in dungeons to help us get stacks back very quickly, which might even be preferable to something like Wind Tackle or burning a PB if you drop your stacks, as against a trash mob you can potentially max your stacks out right away.

With a tool like this, in addition to Anatman which can be used for things like phase transitions as it was intended, who knows, maybe having an accelerated way to get stacks back might wind up making a mid-rotation tornado kick viable again. Or maybe not, who knows until we test it out. But I love the idea of it being universal between the single-target and AoE rotations, and I would be more than willing to give up the very silly-looking form shift spam for this in dungeon situations and as a 2nd GCD replacement for Anatman in single-target openers.

5.x MNK has been lacking in oGCDs compared to SB MNK, and many players want one or two oGCDs put back. Axe Kick and Somersault were two I have suggested for SHB MNK since early access, and this is the best version of Axe Kick yet. If SAM could get an oGCD back, I think in the immediate short-term, this is the best thing we could all ask for, as it's unlikely at this point we'd get a full rework until 6.0. The best part is, its animation, icon, visual effects and job effects are already in the game, it just needs to be moved over, making it a realistic, quick, and cheap/cost effective thing to implement into PvE. The actual damage output of it could have a small potency, something like a formless Arm of the Destroyer (80 potency to all targets), or even less for all I care, it just needs to do its job with GL stacks and it's pretty perfect in both single-target and AoE/trash mob contexts.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

I don't know if a Twin Snake duration change would be really necessary (or if anything a slight increase to 16s would be fine) and being on a 30s cooldown (even on a sks based one like GNB's Gnashing Fang Combo and DoT) is likely not enough. You would want to be using the filler gcd enough times every 15 seconds that TnS won't fall off.

It's not really about Twin. The problems with no formless GCD that has rotational use causes desyncing issues with Demo and RoF. Currently it's better to do 2x Dragon Kick throughout the rotation to realign RoF with Demo, iirc it's every other RoF as the gain from getting 2 demos under RoF without clipping is a pretty substantial gain.

The Twin change would need another 3s. Currently Twin falls off for its reapplication under the 2 true per twin rotation. Adding a formless GCD would set that back by one GCD, resulting in needing another 3s (to ensure the buff is up for the reapplication aswell). Not changing the buff timer would result in awkward 2 trues per twin but only when OIP/6SS isn't coming up.

Tbh I would rather MNK take ideas from GNB and NIN.
Continuation ability on MNK would feel great imo and keep to the core of feeling fast.
Remove TFC, re add it, Haymaker and OIP as add them as part of continuation, with TFC being the finisher to it. Make it all cost 5 chakra, increase max chakras to 7.
Add a filler chakra cost for ST and AoE.
Have TK proc from GL upkeep for however long (30s?).
Move chakra building to certain positionals (true and snap as they have no extra effect) and have it increase linearly instead of RNG.
Remove chakra gains from Brotherhood, make BH 5% damage buff to all.
Remove potency from Leaden fist and spread it more evenly across the rotation, it's ridiculous just how much of MNK's damage is backloaded into Leaden Fist Boot and TFC...
Remove fist stances, they are just an illusion of choice. Even in prog Fists of Earth is crap.
Lastly I'd rework Anatman to give 1 or 2 stacks of GL instantly with no channeling.

These are just off the top of my head but it'd make the job faster without button, keep damage more consistent due to lack of RNG and have rewarding phases of TK for GL upkeep and 'continuation' for positional landing.

[ValStormbreaker]

Response part 1:

It's not really about...

This is only an issue if you go by the Balance rotation which is at a GCD speed of 1.94. If you play at a GCD speed of 1.86 or higher, lots of these problems are resolved and you don't have to double up on anything. The big issue with job balance overall is that there's little incentive DPS-wise to invest in speed because it results in a damage loss, but this is where I'd say for all jobs, if a SkS increase were tied to a main stat increase, there'd be a lot more freedom with rotation variety and dull jobs would become more exciting to play, without having to worry about a damage loss. It's clear from live letters and interviews that the battle design team is more interested in how jobs play in terms of flow and feel, whereas mathing out what does the maximum amount of damage is more of a community-borne attitude, and the devs don't seem to share that philosophy.

At 1.86 and higher everything falls back into alignment and DPS output is still viable for clearing Savage content, and the jankiness with the type of MNK play you're familiar with from this expansion goes away entirely.

Tbh I would rather MNK take ideas from GNB and NIN.

This is literally the worst idea ever. No. Absolutely not. The things that NIN and GNB do are like training wheels for MNK, where players are rewarded for understanding how to consciously time the usage of their oGCDs into their GCD window. By using something like Tenchijin or Continuation, you rob players of that choice which reduces the skill ceiling. When Mr. Happy suggested doing to Brotherhood what NIN changes did to Tenchijin, I immediately screamed "HELL NO," because giving it a fixed amount of inputs like 6 punishes players who understand how to time Brotherhood into a GCD window and get a 7th one, and this becomes harmful to alternative styles of play and high-speed rotations, restricting the variety of play style. That goes against what they said in a past live letter they want to do with MNK in SHB.

Continuation ability on MNK would feel great imo and keep to the core of feeling fast.

Remove TFC, re add it, Haymaker and OIP as add them as part of continuation, with TFC being the finisher to it. Make it all cost 5 chakra, increase max chakras to 7.

The chakra gauge needs to be at 5 because it's a visual reference to the Wu Xing elements and chakra points, so this is never going to happen.

Asking for things to be removed, re-added, and then putting in Haymaker and OIP (no thank you, that was removed for good reason) is excessively complicated, and I don't think you understand that requests such as these are why MNK feedback falls on deaf ears.

[ValStormbreaker]

Part 2:

The amount of work needed to implement all this stuff, and then rebalance the job, is just way too much work and cost to be reasonable, especially because it has to be balanced with a) every other job in the game, and b) every encounter design. You're getting wayyyyy ahead of yourself here and asking for the Taj Mahal. It is infinitely more likely for quick and cost-effective solutions (i.e. "this thing can be implemented within the hour and we already have all the assets/animations/icons/effects done for it") to be implemented over these requests. And that's pretty much a running theme with this post of yours.

It is simpler to just say "put this one oGCD into the game," and for that, see my prior post about Axe Kick, which already solves a lot of problems.

Add a filler chakra cost for ST and AoE.

Unnecessary.

Have TK proc from GL upkeep for however long (30s?).

Making TK a proc-based ability instead of a meter-based thing goes against the spirit of MNK as a martial arts job. The meter makes it more like a fighting game. Changing it to a proc-based ability is antithetical to the identity of the job.

Move chakra building to certain positionals (true and snap as they have no extra effect) and have it increase linearly instead of RNG.

I'm not the biggest fan of the RNG but chakra gain issues are some of the most minor with MNK right now and tying them to positionals instead of them being critical hit based, when we have guaranteed critical hits from BS and very predictable points in the rotation where we can expect a chakra gain, sounds like a nightmare to both play and balance.

Remove chakra gains from Brotherhood, make BH 5% damage buff to all.

This is a terrible idea, because chakra gain during Brotherhood gives MNK something more to do and allows for more weaving opportunities, which is where the fun factor of the job comes from, and it would totally nerf damage output in the burst window. BH can't be a 5% damage buff to all, because then it creates balance issues with DRG's Battle Litany, and pretty much any buffs from NIN, DNC or BRD. The amount of time and resources needed to rebalance the job would be absolutely staggering so the likelihood of this ever happening is nonexistent. A better idea would be to take the stacking effect of Meditative Brotherhood (which is listed nowhere on the tool tip but is indeed part of Brotherhood as of 4.3) and remove that, and instead double the percentage to 60%. At present, a stacked Brotherhood allows MNK to have tFC with enough of a frequency that it adds a tremendous degree of fun to the job, nearly making up for the lack of oGCDs.

[ValStormbreaker]

Part 3:

Remove potency from Leaden fist and spread it more evenly across the rotation

I agree with this. Specifically, instead of putting all their eggs in one basket with LF only adding 150 potency to Bootshine, spread that 150 evenly between the 6 single-target primary weaponskills, so +25 a piece. Then it becomes like Blunt Resistance Down, only now there's no confusion as to what it does. It's the simplest way to propose this solution in concrete terms.

Remove fist stances

While I agree FoE is pretty useless in its current incarnation, I'd disagree with you about FoF and FoW.

Firstly, in certain high-speed rotations, being able to switch between the two is necessary in order to maintain viable damage output while trying to get your stacks up.

Secondly, you have to remember that while some MNK mains like to go fast, a) not everyone is comfortable with high speeds, and b) not everyone has the ping to handle a ping-dependent job. The fists allow for a player to modulate speed based on their personal comfort while maintaining damage output. This was done in order to make the job accessible to a broader demographic of players. Getting rid of it and forcing MNK into a baseline speed would outright ruin the job for many players, so this idea would cause more harm than good.

Lastly I'd rework Anatman to give 1 or 2 stacks of GL instantly with no channeling.

Please re-read my post about putting the 5.1 version Axe Kick into PvE. It works for single-target fights, it works for dungeons, it slices, it dices, it cooks, cleans and does your taxes. Leave Anatman for things like phase transitions and just get rid of the silly-looking Form Shift spam to keep stacks up, as it wasn't even in SHB to begin with and was only a band-aid measure. If you're concerned about chakra gains as well, just add in Somersault to boot, because it would just give a chakra stack and help give players a bit more control over their chakra gain, so they're not left hanging with 4 out of 5 chakras and unable to tFC when it would be ideal to. Leave their PvP effects, give Axe Kick 80 potency like AotD and Somersault could have a lower potency as well, like 120 or something to that effect.

This is a very simple solution to a lot of MNK's problems. That, and just slightly buff TK and shave off two seconds from its recast time, so those of us who know how to do the SHB version of the TK opener can do so without it not being so worth it, and without having a weird GCD clipping issue if at specific odd-numbered GCD speeds (e.g. 1.87, 1.85, etc.). It doesn't rely on massive reworks or reinventions to the job, and it can literally be implemented and tested within the hour without having to rework job-wide potencies.

Anything else is just too much work. Keep the suggestions simple and you're more likely to get what you want, sooner rather than later.

[Rayplicant]

I'm not going to contribute much to this discussion other than I agree with most of the gripes about Monk.

I've been playing all Melee jobs in ShB. Really enjoy all of them... except Monk which I am currently leveling (75). The job has been a slog to level and feels super clunky. Rotation is confusing until you look up guides (the other jobs I found super intuitive in comparison).

Also spamming form shift between pulls/phases feels like some kind of archaic system from 90's PC gaming. Who thinks that's fun? And apparently this was a quality of life change RECENTLY... I also look like a total goof stomping the ground constantly. Is my character's foot asleep??

I'm totally in favour of a Monk rework. If this was the first job I decided to play as a new player I'd have unsubbed.

[3ureka]

snip

Not sure how you can reconcile bashing the idea of (I imagine you meant perfect balance and not brotherhood) PB having 6 inputs and being concerned about how higher ping players will be able to play monk if their skill speeds reach sub 2 seconds. Wouldn’t this be to the benefit of high latency players and whoever is uncomfortable with high skill speed? They wouldn’t have to worry about the tight timing and/or if they executed PB late enough into the GCD.

Also, the fact that SE allows MCH’s hyper charge > heat blast / auto crossbow to exist (among other things) would suggest that FoF wasn’t designed to be an option for higher ping players.

About the chakra gauge needing to be 5 because of Wu Xing… the job quest clearly talks of 7 (and 14) chakras. While it would be fulfilling to see the devs make the connection between the story and our actual gauge, I’d say the devs’ time could be better spent elsewhere.

I don’t think Sora meant TK being a “proc” as something random; it would be a reward for keeping max gl stacks for X amount of seconds (30 or 45 sound good). If you want to talk about what goes against the spirit of monk, look no further than deep meditation, which I would say is a major issue.

Like you said and how I mentioned earlier in the thread, having the devs tune/incorporate existing assets is probably more likely than a full rework (although MCH proves otherwise). Using assets like Axe Kick from PvP is a great idea; I’d say they can go one further and implement how chakra is generated in PvP to PvE (maybe locking the actual generation to landing a positional correctly).