Make Monk great again! 5.4 Monk doesn´t feel like Monk anymore...

[ssunny2008]

So i really have to say that i dislike the new changes more than i could like them. I haven´t understood why such a rework was needed since Monk was pretty fine in Shadowbringers.

Monk was always a pretty fun and skill-dependent for me. The class had only 1! issue which is called "losing GL stacks caused by cutscenes".
The damage was fine compared to the other melee classes. Maybe a little buff would´ve been enough to compete with a samurai on the same skilllevel. A buff like Ninja or Dragoon got with 5.4.

So what´s actually the point for the rework?

Ok, GL stacks got deleted now, no cutscene - issue anymore, but on the other side, the "core-aspect" about the class in gone.

Riddle of earth was great. You checked boss fights, remembered some bad moments and placed your RoE right before that phase. Now you´ve 6s instead of 30, which means that you´ve to spam this button in your rotation if you need it in longer situations like you´ve at E8s (Shiva).

Fists of Wind with 4 GL stacks was great. The extra movement speed felt so smooth without any damage loss. But it´s useless again now unless you want to give up 10% overall damage from Fists of Fire.

The forbidden Chakra proccs much more at the moment with the new 100% crits and the caster-addition on brotherhood. But even this is actually more spam than anything else.

I don´t know if anyone understand me here. Maybe i´m a bit alone with it and the majority does love the new Monk, but i can´t and i don´t think the changes will attract so much more players since the most cry more about the permanent positionals than anything else. (DON`T TOUCH THOSE!)
And here i´ve to ask you devs, what is the point? The game has so many classes and pretty sure that everyone can find a class which is fun and playable. Samurai as example is a pretty easy DPS monster. Dragoon is even easier but not so forgivable like Samurai.
Why does the Monk have to be a thing for everyone? Why does it have to be that spammy class it has become?
I would rather care about "not dying" and holding up my GL stacks instead of losing the smoothness from Fists of Wind or spamming "live action buttons" like others do on their dancer.

It´s just a bit sad to see and more sad to play. A feature like "save all GL stacks on cutscenes" would´ve done anything in bossfights... nothing more was needed, no matter what other wanted to force.
All those rework claims until Shadowbringers were like i would say "I think blackmage needs a rework, casting takes ages and i can´t move without losing damage."

That´s all so far. Please bring Fists of Wind, RoE and a real job-bar back. And please stop making everything so "forgivable". Not everyone wants all classes to be played with one hand. That the tanks got forced into a "no-brainer" role with shadowbringers was already too much, yet we´ve a Spam-Monk without any real penalties for bad plays, and what´s next?!

[Nightingaile]

I can sense this isnt your favorite change, obviously.

But tbh I prefer literally *any* path that gets rid of the old greased lightning. I maxed all jobs in under a year when I started playing in late June. I play all of them except for *two* regularly. Monk and Black Mage.

Monk was already a very busy job between positionals and useful oGCD skills. Greased Lightning was honestly the most obnoxious mechanic in the entire game for me. I *loathed* it with a passion. Any time there was a discussion about jobs with friends, I always brought up Monk and it's putrid Greased Lightning. I hated it *that much*. This change actually makes me want to try to play Monk again.

I am sorry you feel the change has taken something from your gameplay though. I can understand that.

Cheers.

[ssunny2008]

I can sense this isnt your favorite change, obviously.

But tbh I prefer literally *any* path that gets rid of the old greased lightning. I maxed all jobs in under a year when I started playing in late June. I play all of them except for *two* regularly. Monk and Black Mage.

Monk was already a very busy job between positionals and useful oGCD skills. Greased Lightning was honestly the most obnoxious mechanic in the entire game for me. I *loathed* it with a passion. Any time there was a discussion about jobs with friends, I always brought up Monk and it's putrid Greased Lightning. I hated it *that much*. This change actually makes me want to try to play Monk again.

I am sorry you feel the change has taken something from your gameplay though. I can understand that.

Cheers.

I get your point and i´m pretty sure i know the "why" both classes are nothing for you. But there i´ve to ask, why does every class have to be something for everyone? There are still 4 tanks, 3 melees, 3 heal, 3 phys. range and 2 mages (+1 blue mage). And i can tell you that casters will never be something for me, but i won´t come and ask for a rework because the imobility is part of those classes.

And what is actually your point with GL? I mean, if you´ve done your early rotation you´ve them. Of course it´s a hard loss if a cutszene appears or if you die. But as i said, a GL save for cutszenes or even a passiv like "a death cause only a loss of 50% GL stacks" would´ve done a lot against it. Not to mention that "dieing" is still up to the player.
There were enough skills to bring or keep up GL in any other situation anyway. So i really don´t understand the hate about it. Maybe you can explain such things to me.


EDIT: I wouldn´t even mind if something more special than GL would´ve arrived at the horizon. But making the monk just a forgivable and more spammy button smasher doesn´t feel like monk anymore. I bet the damage loss wouldn´t even be that hard if you ignore positionals and spam true north and RoE just on cooldown since all the chakra proccs and tornado kick do a lot to the damage right now. The only exception might be bootshine... but hey, just stay behind the boss.

[IruruCece]

The removal of GL is a solution designed for people who weren't playing the job much in the first place and didn't like the mechanic. That's pretty much it.

It's straight up not a very good rework, and I don't know why I bothered expecting anything out of the developers at this point. We still have the elemental fists taking up space in our kit. At least before there was a reason to switch between fire and wind (such as when we had to ramp up again after a cutscene, or during our opener). Now we're back to sitting in one stance pretty much forever, and wind has been reduced to a joke speed increase that doesn't actually address the long standing issue of Monk's lack of disengage/leap away mechanic that other DPS enjoy.

Anatman still exists, is still worthless. The "utility" it offers is trash, and it basically no place in our kit and doesn't really deserve to be on our bars. And it was already bad BEFORE, MNK players had to stretch hard enough to pull muscles to justify working it into openers, and then they told us we were using this awful button WRONG and made it harder to use in that fashion!

Six Sided Star is one of the worst capstone skills in the game in terms of what it adds to the job. We're still going to be hitting the same combos over and over.

We have utility in terms of providing a raid buff for everyone now, which again makes me wonder why, exactly, SE believes the job is so underplayed. It certainly wasn't our lack of utility, otherwise SAMs wouldn't be getting the light of day in the eyes of most ultra double hardcore players!

For two expansions straight, SE has demonstrated they still don't really understand what they want MNKs to even be. Are we supposed to be a selfish DPS for technically oriented players? Do they want us to bring utility to justify our place in a group? My fear now is that they cut back on those potency buffs they gave our buttons because now we have "utility."

Killing GL as part of our job's mechanics was the easy way out. It's them acknowledging that lengthy cutscenes and breaks in fight was a problem for the job specifically, but rather than retooling one of the buttons they gave us, of THREE, that were intended to help us preserve the buff, they just threw it out the window entirely.

I'll be sticking with any other DPS at this point.

[GrumbleBeard]

I would say Greased Lightning hasn't been a core component of the class since Heavensward. When it became impossible to drop GL at this point in time, it really had no reason to exist anymore. While I would have liked to see it become more important again, it's clear they didn't know what to do with it, and it's existence was a huge hinderance when it comes to getting new expansion abilities. Watching other classes get cool moves while you get your 5th move that saves GL feels awful. At the very least, I have hope that when 6.0 comes out, we might get some abilities that actually add to the class. I'm really jealous of dragoon getting a move that changes when they hit their positional and I feel like that would be great for monk. We the GL timer gone, we could use a second DoT again too maybe along with chakra being expanded?

[ssunny2008]

The removal of GL is a solution designed for people who weren't playing the job much in the first place and didn't like the mechanic. That's pretty much it.

That´s actually my thought behind it. But what´s the point of changing a class completely in its core, just because it´s not a class for everyone?! There are other classes which are not that common too, because of reasons... Having "niche-classes" is nothing wrong when the game has 15 other "majority - friendly" classes anyway. Can´t wait for a blackmage rework at this point.... maybe i´ll fall in love with casters then.

Agree on the rest too in some way. The brotherhood buff doesn´t make much sense on caster, but it´s a needed buff to the raid and the monk itself. It would´ve been actually enough to compete with a SAM at this point i guess.

And even when i take a cutszene like you´ve in E8s, the monk was still able to do his job. Improvisation rules...so yeah... It´s more like a lack of knowledge or the patience to learn a class in my eyes instead of being THAT issue. Same with tanks before shadowbringers...

[IruruCece]

I would say Greased Lightning hasn't been a core component of the class since Heavensward.

I'd argue otherwise. It's very much been core to the job, so core in fact that SE literally didn't know what to do about it until they just gave up and removed it as a factor. Hell, ShB was when they gave us multiple means to keep the buff going.

Also core to the job, apparently, are elemental fists. Two of which are going to stay mostly ignored at all times. At least GL was something we actively engaged with in some fashion to build and maintain, whether we liked it or not.

But hey, Tornado Kick is relevant again!

[VentVanitas]

Sorry to say buddy, but Monk was never that great in the first place.

[Duskane]

besides Riddle of Earth change and Anatman just being there what monk got was great
as Grumble said GL management has been moot and you only lose it during force cutscene sequences weapon trial transitions,E1,E8s,WoL etc etc

new monk aint perfect but its a good base to improve upon for next expansion.

[Ariel_Valmont]

besides Riddle of Earth change and Anatman just being there what monk got was great
as Grumble said GL management has been moot and you only lose it during force cutscene sequences weapon trial transitions,E1,E8s,WoL etc etc

new monk aint perfect but its a good base to improve upon for next expansion.

It’s a poor base, old monk was better, riddle of earth change is horrible, after playing an entire expansion in fists of wind, being stuck in fists of fire is slow af, about the only positive is the tornado kick change.

As someone who has played monk thoroughly from ARR till now I can tell you that it feels like MNK has lost its soul, it’s a shell of how it played and is considerably less fun.