Endwalker Monk — Feedback, suggestions, etc.

[Eorzean_username]

Explanations of perceived issues
Skip this section if you don't care about my explanations and just want to see what changes I'm actually suggesting. Those are all in the next post.

Leveling / Downsync gripes

Every once in a while I just boggle at a certain FFXIV design decision, and I can't really find any objective perspective where I can understand it.

That is how I feel about the following facts:

• Monk unlocks Arm of the Destroyer, the first step of its AOE, at Level 26.
• Monk unlocks Rockbreaker, the third step of its AOE, at Level 30.
• Monk unlocks Four-Point Fury, the second step of its AOE, at Level 45.

...Why. Why are you like this?

This feels awful because:

This makes a Job insert the 2nd step of its ST combo into the middle of the 1st and 3rd steps of its AOE combo whenever it gets thrown into duties in the 30-44 range.

This makes maintaining Disciplined Fist, Monk's top rotational priority, require constantly punching a single target in AOE situations.

By putting the actions in this order, it fails to make use of an opportunity to teach leveling Monks about using Demolish to multi-target because Rockbreaker is given at the exact same level as Demolish.

It's also mildly annoying that Opo-Opo only becomes the 'preferred' AOE form at level 82+, leading to having to re-train AOE muscle memory specifically for downsynced duties.

Separate to the AOE issue, it also just feels pretty bad to get dropped into any Level 50 / ARR duty, due to lacking two major and important tools:

• Form Shift to open encounters cleanly with Dragon Kick into Leaden Fist
• Formless Fist after ending Perfect Balance to cleanly flow back into the loop

Skill Speed instability

The Monk rotation feels like it becomes counterproductive with too much Skill Speed, but it also doesn't quite seem to loop properly with too little Skill Speed, especially once Blitzes come into the rotation.

So getting synced down, or even just getting 'imperfect' gear, feels janky and strange — and this is exaggerated even more by the various tiers of Greased Lightning Traits that ping-pong my GCD around as I get synced up and down.

Like, uhm... Monk feels like its traits are designed to make it SUPER-FAST? ...But then you're still slightly not fast enough. It's... weird, somehow.

I don't know exactly how to fix this. And having awkward Speed tiers is not a problem unique to Monk (but it does feel exaggerated on Monk due to the speed traits). And as problems go, this is not a very high priority.

But for posterity, I think that it feels weird.

Poor communication of important information

Well, this isn't new, it's a problem that's plagued Monk for as long as I can remember... but I feel like it's being exaggerated by the new Perfect Balance / Beast Chakra system.

Monk is a Job that relies on knowing buff/debuff information constantly in order to make keypress / rotation decisions. Yet Monk is forced to have that information floating around in a bloated row of non-essential information that's constantly expanding and contracting, creating a visually-cluttered mess to sort through, especially during distracting encounter situations.

This is especially confusing to me because Director Yoshida touted Gauges in Stormblood as the opportunity to communicate important information to players and give them 'hints' about how to play their Job effectively.

So... why are the following 'mission-critical' effects not somehow separated out from the clutter of other personal effects?

• Current Form
• Leaden Fist existence and duration
• Disciplined Fist existence and duration
• Demolish existence and duration

For example, look at Black Mage. It has most of its critical information packed into a single efficiently-designed Gauge.

But even despite getting a 'mini overhaul' for EW, Monk still has to squint at the generic blob of status effects to pick out important information that's fundamental to the rotation.

And separating out just Leaden Fist with the new Conditional Enhancements setting introduced in EW, while leaving Forms and Disciplined Fist stuck in the generic effects swarm, is like offering to sell someone 50% of a kitten.

No Phantom Rush in opener

Something just feels wrong to me about not getting to use the big capstone Level 90 attack when opening an encounter.

For me, this isn't a "numbers" problem, or a balance issue, or anything like that... it's just, less fun. The opening of an encounter is usually that part where you get to unload everything in a big flashy burst sequence, and building 2 Nadis and then — just having to... trail off... and stop... feels like the personification of a "damp squib".

"Forbidden Chakra" is frustrating

I like the concept of "Forbidden Chakra", and "Enlightenment" is a fun button to press.

But, in actual practice, I have to admit that I honestly dislike the basic Chakra system, because it quickly becomes frustrating.

The problem for me is that Monk is given a super-fast GCD. This makes double-weaving on Monk difficult without resorting to ahem certain hypothetical things that only terrible people would know about.

But I can gain Chakra pips from any action. And other people's actions, during burst windows.

So every time Chakra fills up, and I don't immediately use Forbidden Chakra, I'm uncomfortably-aware that I'm potentially throwing away damage.

But Monk also has other OGCDs to weave that can't really 'wait'... like Feint, Mantra, Riddle of Fire, Perfect Balance, Bloodbath, Sprint, True North, etc.

So I'm frequently forced to either clip my GCD by double-weaving with Forbidden Chakra (which I'm guessing quickly negates any gains), or just sit on full Chakra for a GCD or two, and imagine all those pips I'm not generating.

It's... not even about whatever the numerical loss is, it just feels unfun.

Especially because I had a nightmare in which a faerie of the Unseelie Court told me that wicked children who use "third-party tools" can potentially bypass this limitation and comfortably double-weave Chakra with other actions. So I almost feel like I'm being nudged by FFXIV's own design into misbehaving in order to have the Job play properly. ...But I would never actually do that, of course!

Timing clashes of Beast Chakra / Perfect Balance / Masterful Blitz / Riddle of Fire

The Blitz system kind of feels paper-thin if I look at it too closely... but I don't really care that much about that, because it still looks cool, and it's fun to do.

My only real issue is that it gets extremely awkward and janky to try to keep re-aligning the 'drifty' Monk Form loop with the rigid Riddle of Fire timer, due to the pressure of trying to keep Blitzes inside Riddle of Fire without dropping Disciplined Fist.

I think that it's a little weird and annoying to be able to end up in a 'car crash' of a burst window if a Monk sometimes fails to psychically anticipate certain factors about the competing Riddle of Fire, Disciplined Fist, and Demolish timers.

Then there's also the fact that it stings a bit to have to spend the post-Blitz Formless Fist on anything but an Opo Form action due to the huge potency differential of Leaden Fist Bootshine, leading to a lot of additional pretzel-shaped convolution to try to ensure that Formless Fist never needs to be sacrificed to a Twin Snakes or Demolish.

And I also think that it's a little janky that Monk can end up in so many different entry and exit patterns every 60/120s, especially since it can become even more volatile as a result of even small changes in encounter conditions from pull to pull, KOs, etc.

Looking forward: Does Twin Snakes / Disciplined Fist constrain Monk's design space?

I don't have a personal issue with Twin Snakes on its own, and the alternating rhythm of True → Twin → True feels fine to me.

But, zooming out to the design level, I see Twin Snakes as a problem in the sense that it puts a tight cap on the Monk GCD loop, locking out room for adding any additional GCDs to the rotation in the future.

Even Blitzes have to "tip-toe" around the Disciplined Fist timer, and sometimes just demand intentionally clipping Twin Snakes in advance in order to be able to finish a Blitz properly. That feels... pretty inelegant to me.

At first glance, Monk seems like a flexible, super-fluid job... but then in actual practice, it's kind of not, in the sense that you're under tight pressure to repeat the same basic loop just-so without variation — fundamentally due to Disciplined Fist being a narrow timer that undermines every other action if it falls off.

Since Monk is also constrained to looping through the Forms, it can't insert new ideas without all-but-guaranteeing falloff from the hard Disciplined Fist timer.

But Monk's zippy-fast GCD, combined with the ever-present pressure of Chakra procs, also means that adding more OGCDs is also bumping up against a wall.

I think that doing something heretical with Twin Snakes might help break open Monk's design possibilities.

I don't consider this is a 'critical issue' for Monk or anything like that, it's just something I've been thinking about when considering how Monk could possibly expand in the future, and why the Monk design has stayed so limited for so long.