Thread: How should Monk 4.0 have been done?

1) For me, Monks are a class that should have their damage gradually ramp up as battle goes on, eventually peaking in single target damage. That is at least what I feel Greased Lightning is meant to do. It increases damage and attack speed the more of it you have.


2) The part I liked the most about Monks are their three form and combo system. Unlike many other damage classes that only trigger it by chance, Monks can do it consistently and have a chain of three (I really wish there was more though).

3) Monks got a few skills to address their weaknesses. For example, Purification granted 300 TP. In long fights, you would run out of TP. You also got Form Shift, which made it easier to get that first stack of Greased Lightning and combined with Perfect Balance, it made it easier to get three stacks.

I felt that in 4.0, they should have taken this one step further by making it easier to restack Greased Lightning. Why? It is the core of the Monk's damage and with long transition phases between a lot of bosses, most of those stacks are immediately lost between boss phases. The other option is to extend the duration of Greased Lightning, but I feel that the changes with the other stances in Stormblood makes it even harder to keep the Greased Lightning stacks up.

4) If I had to sum it up, the Monk class felt impractical and contradictory. The chakras were impractical to set up most of the time, except for transitions during boss battles because they shared cooldowns with everything else and you basically needed to charge up five times in like 10 seconds. This makes it even harder to keep up Greased Lightning if it was not already. The same goes for Tornado Kick, which takes away all your Greased Lightning stacks, which might be useful for a last hit before the boss goes invulnerable since you'll lose the stacks anyways. I felt like this remained a fundamental problem in Heavensward and sucked out a lot of fun for the Monk class. I had more fun playing White Mage than Monk in Heavensward.

5 and 6) My focus is on turning the chakras into an ammunition type resource that charges on its own rather than requiring you to charge it up.

Option A: Basically, Stormblood needed a way to keep Greased Lightning up much longer and to get it up much easier. If Form Shift and Perfect Balance did not share cooldowns with the other skills, you could it to 2 stacks quite easy. What Monks need is one more skill to boost you up to that third stack and for skills like Tornado Kick and Forbidden Chakra to be only usable while on that third stack, but have a long cooldown to make up for the increased damage. Over time, expansions could introduce more "conditional" skills that might actually be usable.

Option B: Chakra is a secondary resource that charges up per attack and upon reaching certain numbers of chakras, you gain access to different skills. Upon reaching six stacks, Forbidden Chakra becomes usable, but you will lose those five stacks upon using it and will have to wait for the chakras to charge up again before you can use those skills. Tornado Kick would be powered the same way and would not take away your Greased Lightning stacks upon use.