The dev team did a fantastic job on the MNK rework. I love it.

[Navnav]

MNK is good the way it is. Plus no amount of complaining will bring the positionals back unfortunately. I see a lot more monks now than I did in ShB, whether that is due to their current power or the removal of positionals, I don't know. Though I will say it is very accessible now. Myabe harder to optimise, but not as punishing as the previous iterations of MNK. In the end square done the right thing. It is not a widely played Job to begin with, better to try make it more playable to your player base in general, than to just a niche crowd.

Positionals in any game will always be an arbitrary way of trying to add depth to a class you play. You don't see them in many, if any other games, because they actually fill the class with diverse mechanics that can be changed either in combat or out of it. We don't have that here, we play with the same rotation for more a less anywhere from 2-4 years for most jobs in this game. At least with PB you can switch it up a bit and make an actual decision based off of how the fight is going or what mechanics you had to deal with.

Anyway, do not get confused between players not enjoying positionals and mistaking that for cannot do positionals. You would be surprised how many players you think are 'casual swine' can hit positionals juuuuuust fine. But they can't stand them.

[Bhearil]

MNK is good the way it is. Plus no amount of complaining will bring the positionals back unfortunately. I see a lot more monks now than I did in ShB, whether that is due to their current power or the removal of positionals, I don't know. Though I will say it is very accessible now. Myabe harder to optimise, but not as punishing as the previous iterations of MNK. In the end square done the right thing. It is not a widely played Job to begin with, better to try make it more playable to your player base in general, than to just a niche crowd.

Positionals in any game will always be an arbitrary way of trying to add depth to a class you play. You don't see them in many, if any other games, because they actually fill the class with diverse mechanics that can be changed either in combat or out of it. We don't have that here, we play with the same rotation for more a less anywhere from 2-4 years for most jobs in this game. At least with PB you can switch it up a bit and make an actual decision based off of how the fight is going or what mechanics you had to deal with.

Anyway, do not get confused between players not enjoying positionals and mistaking that for cannot do positionals. You would be surprised how many players you think are 'casual swine' can hit positionals juuuuuust fine. But they can't stand them.

You see more MNKs than before because right now their damage alongside with RPR's is the best you can get, wonder how many will remain once the balance patch hits and more competitive options appear... MNK gameplay outside Blitz phases is more barren than a desert. Heck Dragoon of all jobs right now have MORE actions per minute than current MNK despite being a 2.5 gcd job vs the 2.0 baseline gcd MNK

This reminds me to early ShB when MNK was busted and everyone played it just to leave it to rot once the balance patch hit and other jobs become once again good contenders

[Navnav]

Only time will tell I guess.

[MellowMink]

Cope and seethe, honey. Cope and seethe.

Pretty sure that a comment like this violates the forum’s terms of service. Either way, attacking players who prefer (and are often great at using) the controller interface isn’t a good look on here.

[Mikey_R]

It's not much different from Sam or Nin or Reaper just doing their GCDs in downtime. It could be mostly 123 like Ninja but at least Monk has the faster GCD and its usual six GCDs it's bouncing between. The downtime might be boring on a striking dummy but in a real fight that "downtime" is appreciated to focus on mechanics, even in NM trials. If a job was constantly busy casual players would be turned off from it. I'm not saying jobs should be dumbed down for casuals but we aren't only playing the job we are also doing the fight and enjoying the visuals and mechanics. 40s really isn't that long to me when I'm in an actual instance with Monk. I do think some of the things you mentioned will be addressed in a later expac (gotta have something to add/improve), i.e more to do inbetween PB. With all of the movement involved in current fight design that's another reason to not have a job that has to land one on every weaponskill as to reduce frustration. Idk maybe I'm just bad at the game if I don't find myself bored during said downtime. I can kinda understand the complaint with Ninja though since it it's literally just 123 and occasionally refresh huton.

*The bold will be expanded on later*

It is very different though. Monk's Burst phase is busy, however, everything else is unengaging. The only thing that deviates from the normal rotation is the burst phase is the PB window and MB, so 4 GCDs on every odd minute and 8 GCDs on every even minute, this leaves 52 seconds of doing your normal rotation after odd minute bursts and 44 seconds on even minute bursts. Over 2 minutes, you will do 12 GCDs for MB and the rest will be your normal rotation, using 2 second GCD base, you do 60 GCDs, you spend 20% of your GCDs on your MB.

I compared this to Reaper, at a rough estimate (I done a 2 minute rotation where I counted the number of GCDs spent on the 123 combo) I counted 18 uses, over 2 minutes you can get 48 GCDs of 2.5 seconds, this makes a grand total of 62.5% of your GCD actions NOT on your basic 123 combo, bear in mind this isn't accounting for the Enshroud Phase which is a rapid series of GCDs lasting 8.5 seconds overall. Take into account the fact you have to take into account Soul Slice to ensure you do not overcap on Soul Gauge, keeping track of Death's Design debuff, lining up your Enshroud uses to maximise uses in the buff windows, and you have a job that deviates away from using a repeating combo and gives you plenty to keep track of.

However, having a job deviate from it's basic 123 rotation doesn't necessarily mean a job is better or worse, take Dragoon on the opposite end of the spectrum. It has a rigid GCD rotation that never changes (We can effectively say that 0% of a Dragoons rotation is not the 123 combo, though it is more like 12345 in this case), you do not have to worry about GCD cooldowns, so, how does Dragoon prevent someone from getting bored from doing the basic rotation over and over again? Keeping track of alot of oGCDs. Just to name the shorter ones, High Jump, which also procs Mirage Dive, and Wyrmwind Thrust, all having effective cooldowns of <30 seconds. Once you hit 60 seconds, you have even more come off of cooldown AND you get even more from your LotD phase.

Comparing these 2, Reaper keeps people occupied by having your GCDs be varied, as it is a very heavy GCD job, however, Dragoon keeps people engaged by more frequent oGCD uses. What does Monk have? It has no consistent oGCDs attacks to keep track of, instead having TFC which could pop at any time it pleases, aka, when the games likes you or you do enough Bootshines. Other than that, it is empty. Even in the burst phase, you get Riddle of Fire, Brotherhood and Perfect Balance, then you smash TFC in hopes you lose as few Chakra as possible to RNG overcapping, then it ends. The GCD rotation is effectively rigid, you have no oGCDs to keep track of, so, what is there to keep me engaged? It isn't the buffs/debuffs as most Monks can keep track of those easily enough. I focused on Reaper/Dragoon as I do not have Samurai and Ninja at 90 yet, however, I am aware with Samurai that they have a fair bit to keep track of, not losing Kenki when you use Ikishoten and making sure you have enough when you get to Iaijutsu, getting your 3rd eye procs, and if you want to optimise fully, lining up the rotation again with proper use of Hakagure, I know even less about Ninja (my least favourite Melee) but using your Ninjutsu in the right order, taking into account Kassatsu, Meisui, again, making sure you do not overcap on Ninki etc.

However, I still want to talk about Monk and the 'dreaded' positionals. Why is it, Dragoons have a higher frequency of positionals than Monk, the job that used to have the highest? Whenever Dragoon ends it's combo string it will always have to move from rear > flank or vice versa within a GCD, on a job that has jumps that lock the Dragoon in place. However, as far as I can tell, noone complains, however, Monk who had free movement is not good because they were on everything? It wasn't even the case where you had to move every GCD to hit them. Monk also had a few oGCDs to keep track of and no proper big hitters. Now, it has a proper big hitter, much fewer positionals and virtually no oGCDs. It seems all the focus has been on the burst phases, but the bits between are boring. You can stand on a bosses flank for 18 seconds and hit every positional after using Demolish. Dragoon is thinking about positionals every ~12.5 seconds AND it has to keep track of oGCDs. It cannot be stated enough how much Monk has lost from it's downtime and how it has essentially been bought below other jobs in those aspects. The job that was quick and kept you on your toes has effectively become slow and boring.

It has already been stated how Monk is potentially only being used because of it's high DPS, so we will have to wait and see what happens after the balance patch. And last but not least, to address the bolded part, Monk has effectively been shafted for 3 expansions in a row now (2 if you do not want to count EW), how much longer do we really have to wait?

[SquigglesMajor]

The monk rework was awful, please don't encourage it. Blitz was a dumb idea and makes the job needlessly complicated, restrictive, and punishing way more than it was previously. If you make one mistake you ruin your cooldown window forever. And they wanted so bad to not have us use perfect balance on pull that we have to design our opener to fix it. Apparently they didn't think we'd want to use our best skill when both our buffs were up.

I don't know what job you played but it definitely wasn't monk. Options for different scenarios? Is there a whole other skill page I'm missing or do you just mean the abilitiy to switch between aoe and single target? Because otherwise you don't have any option. You have a very strict rotation, and any deviation from it will harm your dps. For example, in theory you pop PB and you can use any 3 skills you want. Except it must be 3 different forms or all the same. No mix and matching or your blitz gets nerfed. You could use all snap punch for your lunar nadi or use a mix of true strike/twin snake, but you're just intentionally using the wrong skill if you do that as opposed to bootshine/dragon kick. Solar Nadi is the only saving grace because ideally you can do the same rotation you were going to do anyways and it'll work. You still can't deviate from your rotation but at least you don't need to interrupt it. You also can't pop perfect balance whenever it's available, because then you're wasting damage using blitz outside of your buff window.

You can't prep your blitz early and save it to use when your buff window comes up or the boss returns to the arena. God help you if you pop PB and the boss goes invuln or leaves the arena. Because now you've spent the perfect balance charge and you don't get a blitz or the nadi. Even if you do get your blitz active you only have 20 seconds to use it. But you have to spend it now because otherwise you don't have a form when you leave perfect balance. You only get formless by either wasting a GCD on nothing or spending your blitz.

I'm sorry to shit on your parade, and I don't want to say that you shouldn't be allowed to enjoy a job. But I don't think you've actually played monk before EW, or you haven't thought about what you need to do in order to play the job properly. Elixir field, for example, is just a reused skill that we used to have as an oGCD every 30s. No need for a combo, or perfect balance we just got that baseline. Enlightenment is also completely unchanged. The only difference is now Howling Fist replaces it at lower levels. If you think I'm wrong I'd like to hear you explain why new monk is better. What are the different scenarios you're talking about? Why is being more complex a good thing for the job, and how is it different from old monk?

[Kahnom]

Can we get some of DRG's ogcds ?
I'm sure DRG doesn't mind it.

[Yokubo]

The monk rework was awful, please don't encourage it. Blitz was a dumb idea and makes the job needlessly complicated, restrictive, and punishing way more than it was previously. If you make one mistake you ruin your cooldown window forever.

I agree and disagree. First off, it's something new to Monk since the dawn of time that actually gives the class something to stride for. Before it was maintain GL under any circumstances which they did away with. I personally liked GL, but there were definitely some fights where you just don't play monk because of downtime and having to start from GL0 and rebuild without PB. I was on the hating Blitz front for a while since it's a copy pasted mechanic from other jobs, but it's been growing on me to see a fresh coat of paint on the class I've been playing. It's like the start of an unfinished tattoo, I can see it getting cooler but I'm not at the point I want to show it off to people yet.

Also as for the punishing, yes it sucks, but it's not nearly as bad as classes like Ninja. I'd love to see the class have a more reasonable use for Celestial Revolution cuz honestly sometimes I mess up just to see the animation, wish it wasn't completely useless.

Basically as long as I've been playing the class, we've lost a lot and this isn't the best the class has looked -I personally loved 2.0 monk juggling ToD, Demolish, and Fracture - but I enjoy that they're trying to give the class something new to go for. I truly hate that they missed the big opportunity to reinvent the class with a new chakra system because what we have is just not anything special, and bland as can be. But Blitz is a nice addition to what we have, I just pray there's more in mind for it.

Give us positionals back though, please.... I refuse to play the dumbed down version and still risk everything for a positional that doesn't exist anymore. The class was just way more engaging when you got to move around

[Amh_Wilzuun]

I was gonna address all of the post, but I simply do not have the energy honestly. All I want to say is that why is it inherently bad if Monk doesn't use the most positionals between the melees? Why does it have to have the most rather than evolving into something else?

[Navnav]

I was gonna address all of the post, but I simply do not have the energy honestly. All I want to say is that why is it inherently bad if Monk doesn't use the most positionals between the melees? Why does it have to have the most rather than evolving into something else?

It doesn't, which is why they changed it, and why it is better now. It isn't perfect and could definitely use some work, however this is 100% a better direction for the job. I think PB should have opened up 3 new form abilities to only use within it, while resetting your Disciplined Fist(not demolish though, so you have something to manage, but not severely punished damage wise).

Oppo Strike
Raptor Kick
Coeurl Devestator

Each ability could visually look different and when we execute the blitz we could receive a small buff like 10% extra crit for 10 seconds, or heals you for 500 pot etc. There is a lot of scope for this new format of monk.