Controversioal Changes to Monk

[dezzmont]

I think the core issue to Monk, at least for people 'bouncing off' the job (as the needs of people trying a job and the people already 'all in' are different) is that it has terrible player feedback, leading to a bad job feel.

If you are playing a monk well... what do you get? More DPS. But DPS in XIV is deliberately obfuscated and most jobs are designed so that preforming the basic, core loops of these jobs gives you something flashy to say 'You are on the right track.'

When you are doing the basics of your BLM rotation, you get giant explosions to clue you in on something good happening. When you do the basics of your RDM rotation, you get tons of cool sword attacks followed by an explosion. Warrior? FELLCLEAVE. PLD? Confietior. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD LILLY, crazy Iajutsu effects, ect.

What does Monk do to show you that things are going well and you are doing damage? Literally nothing. Monk is actually pretty uniquely terrible as a job (in part because half of its new abilities over its life were basically 'try to fix the terrible mistake of GL') in that you are doing the exact same thing you do at level 30 with the class. It plays and looks like a job that is stuck in Copperbell Mines forever. It, in essence, plays like a class, because even when you are doing the right thing you just get nothing but very invisible potency increases.

This isn't me saying 'positional abilities should go away' anymore than I think BLM cast times should go away. It is just the Monk BADLY needs TLC to its abilities and how it tells you that you are doing well. One of my buds put it best as they were leveling Monk: "I have no idea what I am doing or if I am even doing damage, but then I solo something and it dies fast so I guess I am?'

The job lacks an Iaijutsu equivalent; a technically unnecessary ability (You COULD just put Iaijutsu's potency into the rotation's buffs and debuffs and keep the job's performance and difficulty exactly the same) that exists for the player's benefit to let them feel like they accomplished something within the rotation. Greased Lightning was... kind of that? But in the worst, purely negative way. The obvious answer is either giving them cool animations when they are hitting a positional vs a debuffed target with their buff on (the "Black Mage Fire IV" solution), or give them a chakra every time they hit an attack in said situation so that doing the rotation correctly gets you a big flashy attack every so often (The "Samurai Iaijutsu" solution). It won't fix all the job's problems (it ultimately needs more done) but if the core thing you are doing in the job feels limp adding crazy secondary stuff won't matter, and MNK is mainly about its "1-2-3, 4-5-6" rotation.