Monk needs more synergy...thoughts?

[Sqwall]

I feel that SE trying to address the problem of Grease L. falling off in combat has met mediocre results. I like the idea of chakra, but I feel that it can be better suited as a chance on hit, chance on critical, mechanic rather then mashing a button 5 times.

It feels like an awful lot of work for ONE dps skill and a measly TP skill (I would rather use invigorate since it dosn't require chakra and it's a one hit skill with decent cooldown). I understand that gimicks in fights force me to lose my Grease, but that shouldn't force me to mash a button 5 times to "stay in the fight".

Form Shift is COMPLETELY situation based. I find myself using it when a mobs AOE cast time is longer then 2.5 sec. I feel that is needs to be reworked for incombat you gain Grease L., but with the trade off you do 0 damage. That seems fair right? I don't know I just feel like they really altered the job to be more work and confuse people more to an already tough job to play.

[Fendred]

Frankly, monk is way over complicated. It's hard enough just jumping back into one at level 50. The last thing this class needed was more buttons to press when every move we have except for one dot must be applied from a particular angle to be maximized. Even when I was good at monk, I would sometimes lose track of my surroundings just trying to keep dots and buffs up with all the dancing.

Healers have to keep track of health bars and status, which requires paying attention to one thing. Tanks pay attention to enmity and their damage taken. Damage dealers pay attention to positioning, multiple dots, and multiple dps buffs. They're paying attention to three different things besides the battle field. That's a lot more to pay attention to than a tank or healer.

[SwarleyMcSwarls]

I actually chose to focus mnk in the expansion because of how complicated it seemed. The current system just doesn't flow well for me though and you get almost no direct buffs to your damage when actually in combat besides elixir field and the new shoulder tackle.

If it was somehow viable to use tornado kick or build chakra in combat I'd be 100% ok with everything but right now either one is a dps loss. And when you are out of combat you are more focused on form shift to keep your stacks so having to spend 7.5 seconds to build up your chakra is usually neglected. So I'd hope that they either change how meditate works by making it a shorter cast or by making it useful to actually use it IN combat.

[Hiatus]

I think the current changes aren't that bad. I find myself using them quite often. You hit form shift in between pulls in dungeons in order to keep stacks up, and for when you're doing mechanics and you're stuck in opo opo form and you won't have enough time to reapply greased lighting. Hit meditate during downtime, jumps, invulnerabilities etc. These skills weren't made to add to our dps. They're there to tweak those little things that use to bug us before the patch. It's not really that complicated, these moves aren't there to change anything, just to add a little extra if you can pull it off. If it's too much to handle during fights or you just don't think it does much, you can ignore it completely. It won't hurt you, but you're just missing out on these little things.

[Craiger]

I think the current changes aren't that bad. I find myself using them quite often. You hit form shift in between pulls in dungeons in order to keep stacks up, and for when you're doing mechanics and you're stuck in opo opo form and you won't have enough time to reapply greased lighting. Hit meditate during downtime, jumps, invulnerabilities etc. These skills weren't made to add to our dps. They're there to tweak those little things that use to bug us before the patch. It's not really that complicated, these moves aren't there to change anything, just to add a little extra if you can pull it off. If it's too much to handle during fights or you just don't think it does much, you can ignore it completely. It won't hurt you, but you're just missing out on these little things.

You pretty much described my problems with these new abilities... They don't add much at all.

I'm not talking about DPS, though MNKs are behind right now... I'm talking about simply giving the job something new to do. It's not like our rotation is complicated, it's one of the most simple ones actually.

In a fight with little downtime, MNKs are almost completely the same as in ARR, and in fights with lots of downtime. they're still behind NIN and DRG when it comes to recovering...

The potency of Forbidden Chakra would have to huge for it to even make sense too, since while there are times to use Meditate in lots of raid fights, you will still only get to use it like 2-3 times in a fight...

If it's all about numbers, then they could have just kept everything like it was... They add new abilities to freshen up the jobs, and to fix problems they had. They didn't fully balance out MNKs losing GL, and they didn't freshen up the job at all. Mission failed.

[ncx24]

only 2 skills i would keep would be form shift and elixir field, rest are sub par and super situational and not usuable in real fights

[w153m4n]

well pre-fight you would want the 5th Chakra ready, but yea atm unusable mid-fight.
When dodging mechanics I would still prioritise Form Shift to get (closer) to Coeurl form and ready to refresh GL when I can hit the boss again. More awareness and knowledge is now needed to decide whether or not to use TK, so this skill is very very situational.
Elixir Field... (nothing need to be said, the skill's awesome!)
Haven't had to use Purification yet, maybe later when longer fights are introduced.

NOTE: I for one am actually glad that we don't have to relearn our rotations as that's what MNK does in essence, continuous sustained dps. Am I the only one? ^^;

[ncx24]

well pre-fight you would want the 5th Chakra ready, but yea atm unusable mid-fight.
When dodging mechanics I would still prioritise Form Shift to get (closer) to Coeurl form and ready to refresh GL when I can hit the boss again. More awareness and knowledge is now needed to decide whether or not to use TK, so this skill is very very situational.
Elixir Field... (nothing need to be said, the skill's awesome!)
Haven't had to use Purification yet, maybe later when longer fights are introduced.

NOTE: I for one am actually glad that we don't have to relearn our rotations as that's what MNK does in essence, continuous sustained dps. Am I the only one? ^^;

nuh uh i wish we had more to learn our class is too easy atm =/

[Craiger]

well pre-fight you would want the 5th Chakra ready, but yea atm unusable mid-fight.
When dodging mechanics I would still prioritise Form Shift to get (closer) to Coeurl form and ready to refresh GL when I can hit the boss again. More awareness and knowledge is now needed to decide whether or not to use TK, so this skill is very very situational.
Elixir Field... (nothing need to be said, the skill's awesome!)
Haven't had to use Purification yet, maybe later when longer fights are introduced.

NOTE: I for one am actually glad that we don't have to relearn our rotations as that's what MNK does in essence, continuous sustained dps. Am I the only one? ^^;

The changes I would want to see wouldn't change our rotation enough that you would really need to relearn anything...

Shift Form is a boring ability, but useful at times... though I don't like how it depends on when you're forced to stop attacking. If you have to stop attacking right before using Demo/Snap, then Shift Form wouldn't help at all. Also, it doesn't work well together with Meditation too during downtime. Would want some type of change that wouldn't completely alter how it works, because it's a decent idea.

Meditation should in some way or form be used even when doing your normal rotation, without losing out on DPS. I would like it still be on GCD, but instead of just giving us a Chakra stack, it would also give us some type of buff that increased your potency(or something) for the next X amount of weaponskills(so only GCD abilities). So it would still be used during downtime just like now, but it would also be good to use during your rotation. They could increase GL duration too then ofc.

Purification... well, I think it's useless in many cases, since it's so hard to get 5 chakra stacks, but if chakra took the route that I said above, then all of a sudden it wouldn't be so bad.

Tornado Kick... It should be much higher potency. It's supposed to be a huge attack that sacrifices your GL stacks, but in reality it's just a slightly bigger hit...

These changes wouldn't really alter your rotation all that much. Not like DRG for example. You would only use Meditation when that buff runs out, and nothing else in your rotation would change compared to how it's now.

[Sqwall]

Meditation can be reworked
Skill that lasts 30sec and every critical hit you achieve grants you chackra, and chackra dosn't fall off.

Forbidden charka can be used at any point once you have 5 chackra but would benefit with 3 Grease L. for full damage, and now grants 1 GL with use

Tornado Kick potency is increase with 5 chackra available by 100, and all Grease L. is lost upon use.

Basically Opo-Opo--> Raptor --> Corel x3, Internal Release, Meditation, Tornado Kick, Forbidden Chakra....Repeat Just really makes the rotation have much higher burst damage with out the silly meditations after every fight and only during phase shifts. WAY MORE SYNERGIZED for combat flow.