Monk Positionals 6.0

[Mikey_R]

Give it a couple of weeks and we can see if you still enjoy it and of course, honest answers only. I am genuinely curious as to whether it will bring new Monk players in and actually hold on to them long term.

[Dewslam]

It's brought in a ton of monk players, I spent half of my playtime helping newbie monks who latched on to me for god knows what reason asking me all sorts of monk question. I assume it's because I was the only level 80 monk wandering around in the city at the time.

Anyway; it really feels like monk has lost its identity now. Like, I guess that sounds melodramatic? But to me at least monk felt like its own thing with a solid identity. You had your fist passive buffs, your flank and back positionals to rotate through a pretty sweet 90 second burst where you could just blow everything at once and generally monk was a fast class all about blasting out those combos and shit.

Now it doesn't seem to know what it wants to do. Is it about being fast and getting your attacks off? Well, not really. Because your burst is staggered so weirdly now. You have one buff that has a 60 second cooldown and one that has a 120 second cooldown so you can only get your big burst every two minutes rather than 90 seconds. Your OGCDs are gone and replaced with the blitz system which means your big boy burst is going to be focused on getting off your big boy blitz. So presumably monk will now work like this, in dungeons at least: you use trash to get your nadi open, then start the boss fight and pop both CDs, blow your big blitz and your chakra, then just go back to your normal rotation or whatever. At the 60 second mark use your riddle of fire to do two more blitz. Then at the 120 second mark do it all again? Maybe I'm off here, but it just feels pointless. Monk didn't need this blitz mechanic at all, it doesn't feel like an organic integration of it into the monk kit given how much of it had to be hacked apart to wedge it in there.

Oh also all of the blitzes do AOEs. Why is monk an AOE focused class now? The class what punches is like, the one class I would have expected to be focused on taking down single targets as fast as possible.

Double also; we still have Anatman and Six Sided Star being literally useless. Why did they cull so much of the kit but not even touch these?

Also the third: they didn't give us increased movement speed to compensate for taking away our fist styles as far as I can tell. We just kind of lost a lot going into this update and it sucks.

[HappyHubris]

To be fair, other classes are getting their "quirks" stripped away. BRD for example has had most DoT-related procs stripped away. SMN is losing its DoTs and core rotation. Etc.

[Shurrikhan]

To be fair, other classes are getting their "quirks" stripped away. BRD for example has had most DoT-related procs stripped away. SMN is losing its DoTs and core rotation. Etc.

That... doesn't make it any less a problem here, though. It worsens it, even, since the problem that much less circumventable by switching jobs -- now that so many jobs, in total, have lost the core of their identities.

[ElHeggunte]

Didn't hate them, didn't like them either. I don't even think they made the job more complex or meaningfully engaging. They were kind of just there and something I did on reflex so I don't really care that they've gone away. I'll probably still be doing them due to muscle memory anyway. I'm more concerned with having lost our oGCDs rather than losing a mechanic that just had me shuffling back and forth every once in a while.

[ssunny2008]

To be fair, other classes are getting their "quirks" stripped away. BRD for example has had most DoT-related procs stripped away. SMN is losing its DoTs and core rotation. Etc.

It´s actually the worst state of gameplay so far and it doesn´t make the MNK changes less irrelevant. I thought things couldn´t be worse like they have been with the release of SHB and its tank-reworks, but now we´ve DPS and Healer classes going nuts for no reason.
Just stupid dumbdowns and changes who doesn´t fit the job or play well. Homogenization at its best and on top such "QoL features" to make evrything a no brainer. No more cancelled combos, lined up buffs, 1 million dashes, heal aoes which are as large as the whole map is, so the last idiot stays in the star.
Coming up with such changes in the last minute is actually the worst part. I´m sure they expected such reactions. If i would´ve known that Endwalker brings such radical changes, it would´ve been a 50/50 chance to buy or not. Story fine... but to pay for dumbdowns, lazyness and no communication? NO!

[Genbe197]

Im glad I hated all the positonals was super annoying. Postionals and the current chakra system would be over kill.

[Mikey_R]

I just quickly went and hit a training dummy (I'm taking PLD through the story, so I won't properly test Monk for a while) but I didn't get a consistent Forbidden Chakra between PB windows, so take that as you will. I also haven't tried to optimise PB windows for damage or anything, just a quick test. Considering its all just upgrades from 80-90, the level 80 rotation is going to be the same as 90, so it is a fair test.

[Kiteless]

So, messing around briefly with things, I find that without positionals, I definitely get 'lost' a lot easier. In general, hits lack 'oomph.' Maybe its the dated animations, especially compared to the new kids on the block, but landing hits definitely feels less satisfying without those positionals.

Different strokes and all, but it's less satisfying for me. In hindsight, I'd take the positioning over the increased skill speed. The feedback just felt better. I was planning on playing MNK in Endwalker, but I think I'm just going to shelf it for now.

[HappyHubris]

That... doesn't make it any less a problem here, though. It worsens it, even, since the problem that much less circumventable by switching jobs -- now that so many jobs, in total, have lost the core of their identities.

I wasn't trying to say "MNKs calm down" but rather noting that this appears to be a game-wide strategy to squeeze rotation execution out of jobs.

My guess is that the vast majority of subscribers execute at a low level and that classes are being redesigned to create more appeal (and thus keep people interested).