MNK 4.0 Changes . . . I'm not a fan tbh

[Haaki]

The stat gear allocation between whichever option one picks is irrelevant to the argument of TP. But it's another issue altogether. There's isn't a guess, you have to use Crit/SS with background Det & Direct Hit. Monk has to counterbalance the RNG and RoF downside. This isn't an option. If Sks is too low, Rof has a larger downside. Crit has always been king but prior to now Mnk just got more damage from it. NOW, Monk is dependent on it, dependent going into another RNG wall.
Direct Hit and Crit are two different procs that can happen together or not at all, as far as the Tooltip build from the videos were concerned. And again, even counting internal release (a 60sec cooldown not native 30% increase) monk is still forced hard into this hard burst. And again IR is still an increase not guaranteed, it's the lucky vs the unlucky argument that repeats itself with this class. (Before you ask, I have seen an IR window with no crits before. Enough times for me to point it out.) A burst that is no different than DRG. B4B/IR for Monk wasn't that big of a burst nor did it take a large amount of time to execute. Which is why DRG was a burst dps and MNK not so much. Now DRG and MNK has switched. DRG's overall damage isn't a large increase and MNK is now a hard slow hit for a long burst for 15s every 90s.

Monk as a solo dps, this isn't a discussion. It's the weakest of all 4 melee dps without a question. It takes the longest windup unless you use PB and has too many tradeoffs and conditions to damage least of all Monk is still the only dps of the 4 fully governed by positionals and True North isn't going to stop that.

Hmm I don't think it's that black and white that you'll need to stack SS to counterbalance RoF solely. Sure you'll be slower attacking but its really just putting you as slow as a Dragoon, and you dont stack SS on that either. I like the fact that you can stack SS however due to RoF being able to make it less stressfull on TP. It's still not clear that pure raw damage from crit + direct hit will surpass it. Honestly, my monk at +1300 Crit on a dummy has roughly 35%+ crit. Add Battle Litany, Chain Stratagem, higher numbers of crit from Gear and you'll be critting over 70% of the time on the opener alone. So its "RNG" DPS but its a pretty damn favorable RNG.

So in the end, just need to remain skeptical and try it upon release. As with every single other class in the game. I mean I sympathize that some people aren't too happy we didn't get any new attacks or anything like that but as far as numbers go, I think we'll have it covered.

[FrostVecca]

Do you really think the crit rate will jump that high. They will change the change the formula. I don't see it going that much past 50% with buffs. Gear alone will keep us around 35 to 40% at best.

[Darkhalt]

Everyone has already talked about how they're upset with potency changes, uncertainty about if the rate at which we get Forbidden Chakra will outweigh the potency changes, and how things like Riddle of Fire, Riddle of Earth, and the new Shoulder Tackles are counter intuitive to the Monk playstyle or useless in general. I pretty much agree across the board.

The thing that I'm upset about the most isn't the potencies, or the duration of buffs, or how much Skill Speed Riddle of Fire does or doesn't reduce. Those can all be changed and modified with future patches. It's how the skills functionally interact to affect the gameplay of Monk that I'm upset about. Or rather how they don't affect the gameplay at all.

I have been playing since the Shiva patch in ARR and have been a Monk main since the start. I feel like I put in a lot of work to become good at the class as well (currently 91st percentile overall on Creator savage). Between ARR and SB, every single class has gotten something that changes how you engage with the class during battle in some way. Some classes got more steps to their combos, others got various buffs they have to maintain and maximize such as BotD and Enochian. Even the lily mechanic on White Mage will become an engaging and fun mechanic for the class once it is properly balanced (and based on some reports made by Yoshi-P earlier it seems they may have already taken steps towards fixing it). Every class has gotten something, except Monk.

In Heavensward, the only skill that we got that we actively use in combat is Elixir Field. Everything else is used pre-pull, the moment just before the boss transitions, or as the boss is transitioning. Nothing actually affected our gameplay or how we interact with the class. Stormblood seems to be more of the same. In their current state, the new skills we get will do nothing to change Monk gameplay. A buff that we use, then wait for everyone else to get chakra stacks for us. A buff that is a simple damage increase. Three modifiers for a rather inconsequential oGCD, a majority of which are extremely niche if not completely useless. Even if they do things like completely remove the Skill Speed reduction on Riddle of Fire, or make the GL refresh on Riddle of Earth not based on a damage proc, they will still functionally be the same, and not add anything mechanically to the class.

Seeing all of my friends have fun theorycrafting and figuring out how the new skills fit in, or coming up with entire new rotations based on their new mechanics, then looking at the empty toolbox that I'm getting for Stormblood...it makes me jealous. Whenever we went into ARR content and my FC mates would complain about having forgotten their level 50 rotation, I would jokingly say that Monk is exactly the same, lucky me! Coming to terms with the idea that I'll have to make the same joke and go through the exact same rotation (which what little spice we did have via ToD and Fracture are now gone), makes me have a lot of empty stares and long sighs.

Long story short I think that the new skills on a conceptual basis, are uninspired and lazy. They've done little to nothing in changing how we interact, engage, and play the class since 2.0. And that makes me sad when looking at how much the other classes have evolved through the expansions. I love this class and want to continue playing it, but it seems so dull...

[AussieBloke]

Where to even begin, people have covered the issues with the new monk changes, I am just here to reiterate that disappointment. As someone who has only ever really enjoyed Monk I feel utterly ripped off, to the point I am kinda wishing I didn't pre-order so early.

Other classes get interesting new stuff, potency buffs and things to have fun with that effectively change their rotations. Monks don't... We get the same rotation patch after patch, we get our potency reduced, and the new skills we do get we will barely use.

I feel like the chakra gained through crit is SE patching up the crockery of skills they gave us in heavensward (outside of elixir field). FoW and FoE are still useless, One-Ilm punch is pretty useless. The tackle mastery, although the concept of fists interacting with skills is interesting, the implementation is useless as we will still only use FoF.

All I can say is I hope Samurai or Red Mage are fun...

[Asher_ff]

I agree with what others have said re the new abilities being mostly garbage. It's pretty sad that my friends are all hyped for SB and here I am trying to decide whether I want to switch to sam or unsub after at least 2 years of maining monk. It looks like the flagship class for this expansion will be #deletemonk. Looking forward to seeing more PFs with "no monk" in the comments. It's as if no one on the dev team plays monk, no one solicited advice from someone who plays monk, and no one understands what makes monk fun.

-Why not remove the slowdown from RoF and decrease the dmg buff? Or why not give us a bad ass red or blue aura like in the trailer and speed us up? I was really hoping we would have that kind of effect in-game seeing as it was so prominent in the trailer.
-Remove frames from TFC to reduce clipping.
-Reduce cooldown for PB.
-Do something with steel peak. It's just button bloat without its stun. Why not remove one ilm punch and move the stun to steel peak? Or remove steel peak and undo the GCD nerfs?
-Increase the dmg on TK and give it a mercy stroke hp gain effect.
-Increase the dmg buff for brotherhood and have it apply to you too, include a chance to gain chakra from every GCD, not just weapon skills.
-Each shoulder tackle should be associated with a solid dps gain and/or realistic utility or nobody is going to use it. E.g., add burning dot to fire tackle, sks buff or global cooldown reduction to wind tackle, and backstep + dmg to earth tackle similar to Yaten for sam.

[Shurrikhan]

The stat gear allocation between whichever option one picks is irrelevant to the argument of TP. But it's another issue altogether. There's isn't a guess, you have to use Crit/SS with background Det & Direct Hit. Monk has to counterbalance the RNG and RoF downside.

The trade off isn't really nearly so analog as that, though. You want a mod3 of 0 on your Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes (15s) and especially your Demolish (18s) to maximize your rotation. At a 2.15 rotation, this gives you 8.37 GCDs per Demolish, or refreshing 1.12s late, meaning that you'll lose one tick's potential every 3 Demolish, or roughly once per 58 seconds. This is already nearly ideal. It's better to be late by less than two ticks than to clip by a tick. To be late by two ticks, however, now outputs exactly equal potency, and any more than 2 ticks, which should be impossible given that each GCD takes less time than a tick, would be worse.

At a 2.00 GCD, one makes 3 cycles every 9 GCDs, exact, still shaving only one Demolish. This is the maximum frequency at which you can use/clip Demolish (without Snap Punch being superior). Should lenieny make the effective frequency actually higher than that, then a higher GCD (e.g. 2.02) should be used as not to risk clipping. Should you aim for 2.0, RoF would bring you to 2.3, where Demolish would be 1.17 GCDs, 2.7 seconds, late. You would lose potential tick damage every other Demolish, or roughly 150 over a minute.

The next modular rotation isn't until 1.5s, at which Demolish would be cast once every 12 GCDs. Should you aim for that, RoF would bring you to 1.725, which leaves you with a 1.56 delay, again costing potential tick damage per every other Demolish.

It's less a balancing act as figuring out what plateau you need, and then figuring out where RoF will least harm your rotation (e.g. from Demo to early Demo).

[silentwindfr]

Well, Samurai shares gear with Monk. If their intention was to make Monk mains swap then I'd say that they're doing a great job. The only good addition is Brotherhood, and even then can definitely be better. At least with Heavensward we got some neat stuff, but with Stormblood I'm not excited for any of it. It's...really really bad.

Monk gets fed scraps in their own expansion. How sad. The only saving grace here is that the media tour build was a late April build and Monk went through significant changes before early access. They're doing stuff for White Mage, so hopefully they'll do stuff for Monk, cause I'd say that they're both in the same spot right now.

i will be blunt, what the monk need is a rework of all the skill they have announced, when i say rework, is simply scrapping the riddle of earth and tackles mastery. because like said by many riddle of fire will be the only one really used.... we need change, we need more attack we need to have the monk evolve for god sake... i want to have to learn new combo and such.

why dragoon that are a jobs, based on jump can get new combo and even extend them combo to 5 hit, do what the monk that have the free form combo system can't do?
and before people say it's not easy? i gonna give you an idea!

we all know about the greese lightning 3 stack, why not make after we did get the three stack, we unlock another stance we can reach adding a fourth combo. offering new skill to use, more devastating, since it's what we are... devastating machine gun.

an important point, we are still the only job that suffer a downfall violent if we loose our buff... because at best, you will need 21-22 second for be back to full power... none of the other jobs loose soo much from loosing them buff.

we was in right to hope for evolution, for change in our mechanic... and we did get a slap in the face. i'm not fond of this movement of #deletemnk, but in all honesty what they plan to give us... is not saving monk, it's killing it. why? because they think monk is already to hard to play, when the only hard part to play is the greese lightning downside.

[alex4815162342]

Yes, changing some numbers won't be enouth to help monk, the new skills need a rework.
I just hope they won't wait for 5.0 to do it !

[Orbiaus]

I think tackle mastery is useless but the right idea. I think Fire, Wind, Earth should all do the same damage but each one makes skills do different things.

[Deithwen]

As a main monk since 2.1, I am beyond disapointement with the new skills we're getting in SB.

I won't bring anything new to the topic as everything as been said, but here's my 2 cents :

- The dps nerf is not welcomed at all since the utility we gained is minimal and still far from relevant compared to nin or drg. I plan on spending some time in SSS when SB hits to measure that loss, but I fear 4.0 will be far below 3.0 monk. And none of the new skills cover that loss.

- The new skills are counter intuitive : riddle of fire lowers your GCD which is against monk basic design. Riddle of earth is clunky (getting hit to refresh GL, really ?) and nullyfies the use of Tornado Kick. Also many fights have too long downtimes for it to be actually useful. Riddle of Wind is just useless.

- Removal of Touch of dead : why ? It was a good source of damage and integrated well in the rotation (could be used to delay demo refresh). It's an unjustified loss that dumbs down the job even more.

- We lost many buffs and skills, and gained one small party buff and a replacement for blood for blood. That's it. The rest won't be used as it doesn't bring anything useful to the table.

The job is losing it's identity (fast paced, top solo target dps), it's dps and utility is still outmatched. Even worse, the job is less interesting than ever, 4.0 monk is just a simplified 3.0 monk that does less both in terms of dps and fun.

Something needs to be done, because if it stays like that I don't see any raid group accepting a monk over another melee and more important, I don't see how one could find enjoyable to play a simplified and clunkier version of his job during SB. Nothing feels appealing regarding monk right now.

Edit : typo