Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

For a quick rework that could be done mid expansion I'd say you could probably do something like this and keep most of the job animations as is:

Delete the Fist Stances or turn them into traits. Add a backstep/Teleport at 40 to replace Fists of Fire, a ranged poke at 34 to replace Fists of Wind, and move Formshift down to level 15 where Fists of Earth was so the first 37 levels of dungeons are never a miserable game of losing your stacks again.

Howling Fist is returned at level 46. It is now a Weaponskill and no longer on a 60 second cooldown, you now build a meter as you maintain Greased Lightning over a certain period of time which allows you to execute this once its full. This provides further incentive for Greased Lightning upkeep and rewards doing so.

Enlightenment at level 74 is now a straight upgrade to Howling Fist in potency and animation.

Dragon Kick is changed to a 14 second self buff towards something. Let's say crit. This eliminates using Perfect Balance as a means of spamming leaden Bootshines which opens it up to be a recovery tool.

Tornado Kick is now our AOE Chakra skill. This provides Tornado Kick a function that doesn't hold our recovery hostage and gives us an AOE use of our gauge at a reasonable level.

Perfect Balance can now have a 60 second cooldown now that there's less incentive to use it for huge potency gains.

The Chakra Gauge now builds to 10, with you being able to build to 5 out of combat via meditate. Forbidden Chakra and Tornado Kick both cost five stacks. This eliminates overflow.

Chakra now builds by one stack every time you refresh Greased Lightning, eliminating annoying double Crit RNG and party composition dependence for good RNG and allows us to hold gauge for buff windows so we can take advantage of them.

Greased Lightning 4 is now independent of stances as they no longer exist.

Brotherhood no longer provides Chakra. Using it grants you a stack of an effect which grants you a certain number of free Tornado Kicks or Forbidden Chakras. This eliminates party composition dependence for Chakra during Brotherhood windows, overflow of gauge when you have good RNG, and not getting any chakras when RNG is bad.

Anatman now refreshes current form duration, Greased Lightning, and builds a Chakra Stack. This fundamentally just makes the skill as good as Umbral Soul, it refreshes your buff and builds resources all in one.

Six Sided Star is the higher potency, single target version of Enlightenment and Howling fist.

The Potency for basically everything would need to be tweaked because there's enough new sources of potency that its sure to be out of wack but I'm not going to spitball numbers. The point of this is to add certain things that are missing from the kit, eliminate the RNG layers that people hate, the Comp dependency people also hate, and ensure that we're using the majority of our kit and not just 60% plurality of it at any given point. Some of the changes are similar to what other jobs have but frankly, I don't care? Other jobs have copied mechanics from Monk near whole cloth and improved on them (and I’ll admit that the Howling Fist/Enlightenment/Six Sided Star change is inspired by Foul/Xenoglossy), if it improves Monk then they should be copied back to the OG.


I also don't think it's a bad thing to copy those elements onto Monk if they're functional. Other jobs have copied mechanics from Monk near whole cloth because they worked well and then improved on them, if it improves Monk then they should be copied back to the OG. Monk will still play fundamentally differently to Black Mage even if it has something similar to it’s nukes. Monk’s an agile Melee, Black Mage is a turret. Two resources building similarly isn’t going to suddenly turn one into the other.

[VentVanitas]

Some of the changes are similar to what other jobs, and I’ll admit that the Howling Fist/Enlightenment/Six Sided Star change is inspired by Foul/Xenoglossy.

I also don't care that it is. Other jobs have copied mechanics from Monk near whole cloth and improved on them, if it improves Monk then they should be copied back to the OG. Monk will still play fundamentally differently to Black Mage even if it has something similar to it’s nukes. Monk’s an agile Melee, Black Mage is a turret. Two resources building similarly isn’t going to suddenly turn one into the other.

I agree. I am pretty exhausted always seeing the "it's too much like Xenoglossy/Shoha" argument be brought up when proposing the idea of a new gauge or goal for MNK. I completely understand the concern of homogenisation, especially for the one job that has yet to be touched in this aspect in Shadowbringers. However in my opinion, if the development team isn't going to largely rework how MNK functions, then it needs something else to work towards or build up whether it be a gauge or not. Greased Lightning is maxed out within seconds of a fight and it's never dropped except in cases where the player has no choice. (Looking at you Hades EX and E8S...) Chakra can't be consistently built up without sacrificing GCDs. All it has right now is 6 weaponskills and a few buttons to increase its damage or make it less painful to play. Outside of waiting for said buttons, it has nothing else to do.

Don't get me wrong, if I had the opportunity to have MNK be totally different from the other DPS jobs and still be fun and well designed, I'd take that over anything else. But if the dev team is going to remain adamant about its current direction for MNK, then it in my opinion needs to take a page out of another job's book, bar the plagiarism obviously. As you had already mentioned, simply it existing on another job can be enough to make it different because of how they play.

[SpeckledBurd]

I agree. I am pretty exhausted always seeing the "it's too much like Xenoglossy/Shoha" argument be brought up when proposing the idea of a new gauge or goal for MNK. I completely understand the concern of homogenisation, especially for the one job that has yet to be touched in this aspect in Shadowbringers. However in my opinion, if the development team isn't going to largely rework how MNK functions, then it needs something else to work towards or build up whether it be a gauge or not. Greased Lightning is maxed out within seconds of a fight and it's never dropped except in cases where the player has no choice. (Looking at you Hades EX and E8S...) Chakra can't be consistently built up without sacrificing GCDs. All it has right now is 6 weaponskills and a few buttons to increase its damage or make it less painful to play. Outside of waiting for said buttons, it has nothing else to do.

Don't get me wrong, if I had the opportunity to have MNK be totally different from the other DPS jobs and still be fun and well designed, I'd take that over anything else. But if the dev team is going to remain adamant about its current direction for MNK, then it in my opinion needs to take a page out of another job's book, bar the plagiarism obviously. As you had already mentioned, simply it existing on another job can be enough to make it different because of how they play.

In my mind, having a resource build in a similar manner isn't Homogenization. Dragoon builds Dragon Eyes by using Mirage Dives which once you have enough eyes, allows you to use life of the Dragon. Samurai builds Meditate stacks by using Iaijutsu, and once the gauge is full Samurai can use Shoha. They fundamentally build the same way, but no one's calling Shoha a ripoff of Life of the Dragon. Ninki builds by using weaponskills, so does Beast Gauge and Kenki, but no one is calling those systems ripoffs of each other either.

Hi,
i'm french and i'm sorry for my poor english.
Personally, i want only 2 changes :
_ Perfect Balance with a 60 sc CD (to use tornado kick more often in fight) and Perfect Balance who stacks 2 greased lightning when the monk uses Snap Punch or Demolish (for a real openning)
_ True North up because the monk is unsuitable for boss game design

Perfect Balance at 60 seconds wouldn't allow more Tornado Kick use, we'd just use it for more Leaden Bootshines.