Thread: Thoughts on 4.0 Monk at 70

Hello, all. I\\'ve been a Monk main since I started playing almost three years ago, and despite our rocky place in trying to find places in raid groups for 3.0, I\\'ve continued to love playing it and do so regardless. It\\'s really exciting to play a class so fluid and I\\'ve always loved the "High DPS, Low Utility" and "Hit really fast, but relatively light" aspects of the job.

Now we have Stormblood and I have to say I\\'m pretty disappointed so far, and here\\'s why:

-Losing Fracture hurt, because it was a wonderful tool for getting in a bit of extra damage here and there while avoiding clipping Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes every couple rotations.

-Losing Touch of Death hurt because it was pne of our highest potency skills.

-Losing 10 Potency on all our GCDs in the name of letting us shave 10 TP off of all our skills hurt a lot, as without Touch of Death and Fracture, running out of TP without spamming AoE skills is actually a challenge.

-Losing the stun from Steel Peak and having it added to One-Ilm Punch as a stun with no diminishing returns hurt. It may be usable regardless of how many stuns have beeb used, but due to it being on a GCD and locked behind Raptor Stance, it's extremely unreliable now as a source of stun. We'll only have a 1/3 chance of having it when we need it as opposed to 100% chance via holding off on using Steel Peak.

-Losing 70 Potency on Forbidden Chakra kinda hurt, but this I will accept due to us getting at least one more Forbidden Chakra per fight, each extra Forbidden Chakra we get being a net 180 potency extra for first and 250 extra for each after that.

Now what did we gain in exchange for these concessions?

-Level 62 we get Deep Meditation. I will say, this sounds kinda cool on paper, getting a free Chakra stack 50% of the time we land a GCD that crits, but from experience at 70 in i310 gear, it feels kinda underwhelming, and due to the lack of predictability/consistency on it, it kinda feels like it detracts from the fluid feel of the job. This one I feel like positive arguments can be made for, though.

-Level 64 we get Riddle of Earth. This one, I was actually pretty excited for. A move that gives us a bit of damage reduction, but more importantly lets us hold our GL stacks while the boss is untargetable?! Sign me up!
...Then I realised through extended use that in every fight I've tried, either 16 seconds pass between the boss going offscreen and their ultimate attack landing, or 16 seconds pass between their ultimate and them returning to the field. I've thus far found only one part of one extreme Primal where you're able to keep you stacks through using this, and that's only after an earlier part of the fight where you're forced to lose your stacks due to the way timings line up.

-Level 66 we get Tackle Mastery. I was really excited for this one as well. We get different kinds of Shoulder Tackles now?! Well... kinda. In effect, the Earth Tackle is kinda useless as you have half the range, less damage than the other tackles, and it pushes the enemy away from you. Your *Gap Closer* pushes your enemy away from you. Wind Tackle sounds awesome, but between the low time you have to use your second tackle, and the lack of real practicality to either stun two separate targets within 5 seconds of each other (While every meler can cross-role a stun skill, including Monk), or the practicality of chain-tackling through two mobs to get to the other side of a small enclosed space, it just feels hard to see how this will ever be useful. Fire Tackle seems to be the only one you\\'ll want to use, basically just being the old Shoulder Tackle, but bumped up to 130 Potency.

-Level 68 we get Riddle of Fire. Sweet, this is why we lost Blood for Blood, we get a +30% damage buff! ...at the cost of our speed buff from Greased Lightning. This one, I can see arguments for, it is a buff overall, and I think if the rates of Chakra influx from Deep Meditation and Brotherhood (more on that skill in a moment) were increased, coupled with a removal of Forbidden Chakra's cooldown, this could actually be a fun thing. You pop this, pop Brotherhood, and machine-gun Chakra blasts and your other off-GCD skills at the boss while slowly executing your other skills. But this isn't how it plays out currently, instead it just feels slow and uncomfortable. It also just seems a little backwards as a major part of our identity is hitting fast, hitting light. Doesn't stripping us of our speed to make us hit harder run directly counter to that?

-Lastly we have our level 70 skill, Brotherhood. This one had so much potential, and had me so excited at first. I get to buff my allies and have them feed me a deluge of Chakra to rain down upon my foes?! Well... not quite. This skill grants +5% Physical Damage to all allies within a 15-yalm radius for 15 seconds, and during the duration there is a 30% chance that each weaponskill used by an ally benefitting from Brotherhood will grant the Monk a Chakra stack. (Splitting this one in two parts)

(Continuation of Brotherhood explanation) Breaking this down shows three pretty awkward things. First of all, it's only physical damage, which means at best you're hitting four people with this in a raid setting: both tanks, the other melee, and your Bard/Machinist. Secondly, it's only "Weaponskills" which trigger the potential chakra, so it's only GCDs used by half the party. Thirdly (kind of a combination of two things), it's only half the increase of a Trick Attack/Spread Balance, and it doesn't actually hit the Monk (presumably because they figure the Monk will be doing a lot more damage from the influx of Chakra, which isn't false, but still feels odd.) In effect you will get on average, maybe two extra Forbidden Chakra uses from my experience, maybe one and a half, but it is very RNG-dependant. All while affecting half your allies with half a spread Balance, and half of those players are Tanks, which had their damage nerfed.

-Oh, and Tornado Kick had its cooldown dropped to 10 seconds. I've never recovered my Chakra after using Tornado Kick in less than 10 seconds before, because I would have to go far out of my way to do so, but... neat?

All in all I wanted to really enjoy Stormblood Monk, and I feel like there were some neat concepts, but that they just really weren't fleshed out well. The skill changes aren't the only problem that warrants mention, though, as there is one thing that hits harder than everything listed above: