Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[VentVanitas]

If people think that Six Sided Star's only use is just before a downtime or a kill "like tornado kick", I seriously urge you to learn to use it. It's an absolutely great tool for every kind of disconnect due to mechanics

No, not every kind of disconnect. Keep in mind that SSS keeps us from using our actual disengage tool, Meditate. Some disconnects aren't long enough to justify using SSS (outside of high level optimization) when with the same time it takes us to use and recover from it, we can build 3 Chakra instead.

It's mediocre presentation as a situational disconnect tool is what has people upset about it, hence it being compared to TK, another situational skill. If it were something like a backstep however, it'd be far less egregious.

[Sqwall]

No, not every kind of disconnect. Keep in mind that SSS keeps us from using our actual disengage tool, Meditate. Some disconnects aren't long enough to justify using SSS (outside of high level optimization) when with the same time it takes us to use and recover from it, we can build 3 Chakra instead.

It's mediocre presentation as a situational disconnect tool is what has people upset about it, hence it being compared to TK, another situational skill. If it were something like a backstep however, it'd be far less egregious.

I have gotten used to using SSS right before Forbidden when it's ready. I don't really care how clunky it is when it's used as a disengage, but I do see that it is really great to use with Forbidden and Elixir field. It's just a crumby oGCD, but it is powerful compared to other skills. It is a nice compliment to forbidden to use during the extended recast time it tacks on.

I often find SSS critting for 50-60k with forbidden critting as well into the 40-50k range. Follow up forbidden with elixir or shoulder tackle. Just need to fill in that gap.

I'll use it this way until they change it, and I don't see a problem currently. Optimized rotations will argue, but monk is friggin busted and I don't care anymore.

[Rochedalaix]

I recently came back to the game I haven't played since Iceheart first appearance and Ninja was released. My question is did we get that revamp? I noticed a lot of my skills are missing but according to this thread that happened expansions ago.

[Mikey_R]

The revamp is coming in 5.4, which is scheduled for early December.

[SpeckledBurd]

I recently came back to the game I haven't played since Iceheart first appearance and Ninja was released. My question is did we get that revamp? I noticed a lot of my skills are missing but according to this thread that happened expansions ago.

They've removed a ton of skills yes, however the lost skills are basically just creating an illusion of change. If you played Monk in ARR/Heavensward it plays very similarly to how it did then but with less skills and more RNG to build a resource that gets used identically to Steel Peak. There's still positionals on every weaponskill and Monk still has an excess of useless/overly situational skills some of which are completely unchanged from how they were in ARR.

Monk however didn't get a revamp in Heavensward/Stormblood/Shadowbringers proper. Though the developers have promised such before but they've never actually materialized it, what's basically happened is over the last two expansions they've removed skills at lower levels and replaced them with something similar but weirder functionality at higher levels.

[Kahnom]

Gonna wait and see new monk in 5.4 before turn in the memories of dying.
People’s expectations are high and I don’t want to change my main.
I really hope we get an interesting openner for once.

[Jirah]

Gonna wait and see new monk in 5.4 before turn in the memories of dying.
People’s expectations are high and I don’t want to change my main.
I really hope we get an interesting openner for once.

Agreed, so far every time SE changes a job its usually for the worst or a complete lobotomy which my bets are on the latter. If Monks get that treatment i just wanna say i totally called it

[wereotter]

No, not every kind of disconnect. Keep in mind that SSS keeps us from using our actual disengage tool, Meditate. Some disconnects aren't long enough to justify using SSS (outside of high level optimization) when with the same time it takes us to use and recover from it, we can build 3 Chakra instead.

It's mediocre presentation as a situational disconnect tool is what has people upset about it, hence it being compared to TK, another situational skill. If it were something like a backstep however, it'd be far less egregious.

But... consider this, that's STILL a DPS loss to meditate over using Six Sided Star. Each chakra stack represents 1/5 of a Forbidden Chakra, being 74 potency each, or in the case of gaining three when you disconnect, 222 potency. If you use Six Sided Star when you do a disconnect, you're getting 400 potency from using the skill. This means you're getting about twice the potency from using the new tool to disconnect over continuing to do the Heavensward technique of meditating when you disconnect.

[Mikey_R]

But... consider this, that's STILL a DPS loss to meditate over using Six Sided Star. Each chakra stack represents 1/5 of a Forbidden Chakra, being 74 potency each, or in the case of gaining three when you disconnect, 222 potency. If you use Six Sided Star when you do a disconnect, you're getting 400 potency from using the skill. This means you're getting about twice the potency from using the new tool to disconnect over continuing to do the Heavensward technique of meditating when you disconnect.

However, these 2 situations are not comparable, as you do not use Meditate as a disconnect, you use one of your GCDs. This means you have to take into account that GCD + meditate to make it comparable to a SSS disconnect.

This means, you have to take SSS's potency and take away the potency of a GCD, which leaves the potency that meditate has to cover. Going through all of Monk's GCDs, the potency difference ends up like this:

Positive numbers are in SSS favour and negative numbers are in GCD favour.

Twin Snakes (170) = 230
Dragon Kick (200) = 200
Snap Punch (230) = 170
True Strike (240) = 140
Demolish (480) = -20
Bootshine (450) = -50 (Note I took crit damage increase as 1.5)

As you can see, in most cases, in a general potency vein, SSS will win out, even taking into account 1 or 2 miditation stacks (True Strike becomes better if you get 2 meditation stacks).

However, this still is not the end of it as you then have to take into account disconnect time. If the disconnect time is shorter than SSS GCD, then it is not going to be worth it as delaying your main GCD rotation will provide less potency overall. This fact could also start bumping up some other GCDs into the category of higher overall potency per second (though I'm not going to do the maths on that, so no guarantees).

In short, it does go deeper than just meditate vs. SSS and there is alot of stuff behind the scenes that could mean one is better than the other dependant on your GCD speed and disconnect time and, unless you know everything about every encounter, you will lose damage.

[VentVanitas]

But... consider this, that's STILL a DPS loss to meditate over using Six Sided Star. Each chakra stack represents 1/5 of a Forbidden Chakra, being 74 potency each, or in the case of gaining three when you disconnect, 222 potency. If you use Six Sided Star when you do a disconnect, you're getting 400 potency from using the skill. This means you're getting about twice the potency from using the new tool to disconnect over continuing to do the Heavensward technique of meditating when you disconnect.

I admit that for the point I'm about to bring up, it was a bad argument. The optimization hell of uptime, disconnects and SSS vs Meditate quite literally depends on the exact disconnect in a specific fight as well as the amount of Chakra in the gauge (thank you, RNG). However, the main point I wanted to get across is that we shouldn't pat SE on the back for making a skill like Six Sided Star on MNK. I get quite worried seeing people praise it for being "versatile" when it's pretty much the opposite, a situational skill. Yes, it has its uses, but it still doesn't excuse its, to be frank, backwards design.

I don't want the development team getting the wrong idea with SSS thinking that it's what MNK needed, and that it needs more skills like it. Because it sure as heck doesn't. Yes, I know no one from the dev team reads these threads, but it has me paranoid nonetheless.