MONK is to confusing / annoying of a class now

[ssunny2008]

- The current monk rotation doesn't work above 1.95s (ish) on the GCD because Riddle of Fire is too short (why do we still have timers when we could just have stacks those days??), and suddenly allows for an extra GCD past that speed threshold. The optimal speeds make the rotation out of a proper loop and it becomes extremely galaxybrain to play if you don't want to go for a suboptimal rotation that tries to realign it every 2min (cf the "braindead rotation" on the balance). The rotation loops back again at 1.88s, which becomes suboptimal in terms of stat effectiveness.
- MNK is a crit addict job, which means getting too much speed means sacrificing crit, and staying at low base speed means potentially giving up good crit gear that also has skill speed (on top of not being able to get the 11th GCD under RoF). This means that the job is played optimally at speeds that clash hard with the design of the rotation/job itself: nothing aligns.
- The elephant in the room: we are seeing already double solar nadi openers because they prove more powerful than a standard lunar/solar, and I really, really doubt that it was intended by the designers. They made it so that phantom rush could not be used in the opener (only 2 perfect balance charges), and yet people are still finding ways to realign it on the 120s cooldowns because it's just better. This feels just wrong to overwrite nadi and still getting the most optimal numbers out of it.

MNK at high level is left in a very awkward spot were you just have to pour so much flawless effort into it that it feels kinda depressing. Maybe it's by design though, and it's meant to be like this. But the problems I quoted above are hard to look past objectively.

With more than 1,95s you could plant RoF behind the first Demo. It´s not like you gonna lose 1000 DPS because you adjust the rotation a little bit. The stuff on balance is calculated with programs to get the best out of the class of course. But since crit, direct hit, RNG mechanics and even a Ping exists in this game, it should be negatable. If you´re more comfortable with something adjusted, you should give it a try.

The DPS difference in kind of the openers are a joke so far too. Given to their messures there is no real difference without raidbuffs, but a 15 DPS difference with some. It´s something for those who play for parses, but overall not really needed. On top you´ve fights like the current primals, where you swap from EF / RP burstwindows into PR / RP thx to the downtimes between the phases. So far i wouldn´t care about that much and just pick the own preference again, unless you want to go for the 100.
Within the Lunar / Solar rotation you could even go for TS - Demo - DK - RP - BS. So you gonna play the standard rotation without any curious interuption like TS - DK - Demo - RP - TS . All you´ve to do is to delay the next RoF about 1s and your rotation will continue flawless. The damage loss is pretty much non existent.


Just my personal note, but we had to keep up Demo and TS for a long time now, meanwhile playing around positionals and spamming BS / DK since PB has become a thing. All this is nothing new and MNK got way easier to play without positionals and oGCD´s. I´m pretty sure if you wouldn´t have played it just casually, keeping up both would´ve become a no-brainer for you. It has been part of the rotation you got used too and once achieved, you would rarely check them.

SMN rework made them so ridiculously popular that they are almost on par with RPR, before SMN was in no way was that much popular, heck you see now more SMNs than frigging RDMs. On the other side Monk got reworked and its an unpopular as it was before and boy they were bare bones on ShB.

People have different tastes but when a job has been so hugely unpopular for so long, means that something is real wrong with it. Not like martial artist classes are so widely unpopular on other games so its not mainly an aesthetic issue. BLM a "niche" job as you call it stands on a healthy midddle tier job popularity wise. Or we can mention how Ninja a very beloved and useful job is now bottom of the barrel popularity wise being even rarer thank Monk (but they did not get a rework as Monk had)

Dozens of ppl, especially more casual orientated players waited for a SMN rework like this. Ofcourse it´s going to be popular in is first instance, but i´m also sure it´s gonna drop for raiders with its current output in savage.

BLM battled about the last place with MNK in Shb even when it was super strong. Some little changes mixed it popularity imo ofc. NIN was way more popular before, but you shouldn´t forget that we´ve RPR now and a bunch of melee - players ofc check it out until it gets boring. But since it´s easy to play like SMN and the strongest DPS on top, why should they?

No, that something is not that popular is no issue, even over 10 years or so. It would be an issue if the reason is, that the class underperforms hard, but that isn´t the case here. The most players in FF14 clearly don´t want to get punished for missplays, are too lazy to play positionals or need so hardhitting pew pew mechanics to feel satisfied. MNK punished them with the loss of GL, so it got removed. Positionals got drastically reduced and yes we got those burst skills. So what´s the issue now? Is the 123 456 rotation too hard to perform? Who knows... they took so much of the job away and it´s still at the end of popularity. What is it if not just "glam and animations" or "because it´s a melee which needs more input than 123 gauge". ?!
The most ppl just rely on classes they can easily get used to, just look at DNC or SAM, even SMN now. MNK had always a loyal playerbase and just because 2-3 classes aren´t that popular in a MMORPG with 20 classes overall, doesn´t mean there is an issue.

EDIT: It has nothing to do with gameplay so far, but Rhoegadyn aren´t very popular as characters. Should we get ride of them or change them? Maybe we should add some cat-ears and shrink them down to 80cm? Being niche is no issue. It´s higly welcome for ppl who don´t run around with a mainstream-mind.