Thoughts on how to clean up Monk a bit

[SargentToughie]

Hey guys!

I've been playing Monk since the expansion dropped, and while I admit that our changes look really poorly thought out and weak on paper, the reality of the matter is that Monk is absolutely terrifying right now. Our consistency, our burst, being able to provide a little bit of (albeit unimpressive) utility to our DPS brothers, as well as changes to the meta and the means by which all melee DPS actually contribute to the party, all make Monk a contender for the top DPS slot this cycle, easily rubbing shoulders with Samurai in my experience.

I've played Monk to 70, I've gotten myself a handful of Susano clears (working on Lakshimi this weekend), and I'm able to verify that Monk is 100% viable right now, even if all of it's stuff doesn't really... click. Additionally, Monk as it stands right now is fairly handcuffed by the team comp, and what your allies are playing as. Simply put, the more casters your party has, the more Monk suffers.

This thread isn't really another "buff Monk" thread, Monk in terms of pure power right now is actually totally fine. Instead, I'd just like to theorycraft a few ways that we could revise the new skills we get, to maybe make level 70 Monk a bit more cohesive and maybe prevent a few more people from panicking about it's viability.

Let's start at the beginning!

Deep Meditation: On the whole, this trait feels pretty alright. You get enough chakras to justify the nerf to Forbidden Chakra, and there are ways to shore up your RNG using Bootshine and Internal Release. That being said, I can't really approve of the design idea behind making one of our core damage gimmicks gated behind RNG stacked upon of RNG. Not only that, but it means that Monk's damage potential is forever tied to crit specifically, which will get scary enough as we grow in ilvls that it's probably going to need to get nerfed in a few gear sets.

It's actually tricky to revise this ability, since changing it so that you proc a chakra for refreshing Greased Lighting could actually result in LESS Forbidden Chakras than we're currently getting. My best suggestion would be dropping the % chakra chance down to 40% or 30%, and having it scale off of any form of damage you put out, including Autoattacks and OGCDs. Sometimes it's just a bit annoying when you get huge Elixir Field or Howling Fist crits, and know that you have no chance of added value.

On that note: get rid of the 5 second recast time for Forbidden Chakra. It's kinda weird when Brotherhood pops off super hard and you're actually gated by the recast timer more than you are chakra opening. RNG flows both ways.

Riddle of Earth: This ability does see some practical use, at least during the final trial and in Susano where you can use it to save GL3 without needing to burn PB. Using it to keep your stacks up after Susano's ulti does let you sit on PB for situations in which you may end up being the one in the Gaol, so it's actually a pretty huge deal. That being said, the GL3 refresh still feels really... weird and out of place here. I really don't like how it forces you to take damage in order to get the refresh.

A good Riddle of Earth change, in my opinion, would actually be one that acts as a counterattack of sorts, or perhaps provides the 10% damage taken down to your entire party, or something like that. Some kind of party based utility based on increasing the defenses of you, and everybody around you. It'd also give Monk really great party synergy, combining with Mantra to make Monk the "defensive" utility DPS.

Don't panic about taking away the GL3 refresh from this ability. Keeping up GL3 is important, and that brings us to our next skill...

Tackle Mastery: Delete this.

No, really. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wants this, nobody likes this. Wind tackle and earth tackle are total traps that provide nothing of value, and fire tackle is so underwhelming that it's not really worth talking about. Delete it, get rid of it, and replace it with a real skill.

Riddle of Wind could be our GL3 refresh, either restoring it to maximum duration upon usage, or freezing the countdown for an arbitrary amount of time, or until an arbitrary action is taken... Maybe something like throwing it on a 60 second cooldown, and letting it freeze your GL timer in place for 10 seconds or something? It would massively increase flexibility, and basically erase that frustrating feeling in a dungeon run when the tank's just a bit too slow and your stacks drop in between packs.

Riddle of Fire: Everybody hates this skill but me, I guess. It's meant to synergize with brotherhood, and the damage you crank out when both skills are up is absolutely obscene. Admittedly, it does make Monk feel a bit clunky, and it can be difficult to use dry when you don't have GL3 up.

I'm fine with it as it stands, but if the community wants it changed to be less potent, but not have the attack speed reduction, I'll stand in support of that decision. It's cool either way. Not a lot to really say, I think it's a perfectly good skill.

Brotherhood: While this is a great skill, it does kind of pidgenhole Monk into a "Melee's Melee" in a sense, in that it only plays friendly with other melees, and other jobs that deal physical damage.

You only get Chakra stacks from weaponskills, and having run an EXR where the only other person benefiting from it was a tank, as well as a Susano with 2 other melee and a Bard, the amount of variance in the value of this skill is nothing short of staggering. I've gone entire Brotherhoods without getting a single Chakra, which does admittedly reduce the novelty of Riddle of Fire, and feels really bad on the whole.

I'd like to see the 5% damage increase changed to affect ALL damage dealers, as well as allow the gathering of chakra from ALL GCD actions, to include spells. The proc rate would need to drop a bit, probably down to somewhere like 20%, since there's at LEAST one to two other people in every party who will now be benefactors of this buff, in the healers.

This change allows monk to synergize better with casters (Especially Red Mage), as well as makes them more optimal in a wide variety of team comps. Simply put, if your static is going to be running more than one caster, there's no real reason whatsoever (aside from comfort/preference) to take Monk over Samurai, since they use all the same gear and Samurai is more self dependent.

Conclusion: This... was a lot of typing about something that may not even really matter all that much, truth be told. Monk right now is in a perfectly fine place, and it's definitely capable of holding it's own at the highest levels of play. I know for sure that I'm at least going to try it out in Omega savage, even though I may play Samurai instead, static permitting.

But being viable doesn't mean there isn't room for QoL improvements, or simply making the job more user friendly, or feel better for those learning it. I wouldn't blame anybody at all for quitting at Riddle of Fire, for instance. While it's damage is absolutely competitive in experienced hands, the job is most definitely more punishing when messed up than other melees, meaning that entry level Monks will struggle to keep up with Samurai or Ninjas, and it could cause them to drop the job.

Dragoon's got it's own set of issues which allow us to be favored over them, but I'll leave that to Dragoon boys to discuss.

TL;DR: Monk is good, great even! But it could be better.

[BucklesTrespen]

My thoughts are similar to yours.


Deep Meditation was a great idea that could/(should?) be tweaked moving forward either in the way of increased chance on direct crits or less chance but procs from more sources. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been stuck at 4/5 and groaning every time Bootshine crits with no proc.

Riddle of Earth was a skill I had given the benefit of the doubt to - until tonight when in an EX I was in a situation where a mechanic forced me to step in the bad to maintain the stacks. This skill again is a good idea - an attempt to maintain GL - but poorly implemented. A defensive skill to keep an offensive buff... They should have maybe changed Purification to give GL - or perhaps to give 3 seconds of GL per charge spent. I understand where RoE is coming from but Tornado Kick was our GL dump and that, at least, was reliable. RoE now makes TK less desireable to use for the purposes of a GL saver - but it's return is haphazard at best. It's too dependent on where we are in our rotation, if we take damage during the GL countdown - if after we take damage the boss returns and we can refresh GL again before the refreshed timer expires. We can quite easily find ourselves in the situation where we lose GL and then take damage - resulting in the loss of half of the ability's function.

Riddle of Fire. I personally am in the "dislike it" boat. Hamon told us on day 1 the way of the pugilist is to hit fast and not necessarily hard. A hundred blows for one of theirs. RoF is a bad replacement for Blood for Blood. I honestly think it should provide less damage and no penalty - or an entirely different function such as a temporary fourth Chakra - or no Chakra spent on TFC meaning Brotherhood and RoF aren't always used together because two skills on an identical CD that should be used together may as well be the same skill.

Tackle Mastery... l so bad. With all our iconic moves, TFC and the Chakra system - Tornado Kick ... they give stance based effects to a gap closer... a bad idea badly implemented.

Brotherhood - all or nothing. Another rng based move where we don't even get the damage boost ... make it more consistent because again tis a great idea just poorly implemented.

[Rheumasalbe]

Deep Meditation: On the whole, this trait feels pretty alright. You get enough chakras to justify the nerf to Forbidden Chakra, and there are ways to shore up your RNG using Bootshine and Internal Release. That being said, I can't really approve of the design idea behind making one of our core damage gimmicks gated behind RNG stacked upon of RNG. Not only that, but it means that Monk's damage potential is forever tied to crit specifically, which will get scary enough as we grow in ilvls that it's probably going to need to get nerfed in a few gear sets.

It's actually tricky to revise this ability, since changing it so that you proc a chakra for refreshing Greased Lighting could actually result in LESS Forbidden Chakras than we're currently getting. My best suggestion would be dropping the % chakra chance down to 40% or 30%, and having it scale off of any form of damage you put out, including Autoattacks and OGCDs. Sometimes it's just a bit annoying when you get huge Elixir Field or Howling Fist crits, and know that you have no chance of added value.

On that note: get rid of the 5 second recast time for Forbidden Chakra. It's kinda weird when Brotherhood pops off super hard and you're actually gated by the recast timer more than you are chakra opening. RNG flows both ways.

Yes. 100% agreed. Although if a Chakra pops with EVERY attack skill and auto attack, it might become too overpowered when it comes to AoE situations with 30% proc rate. I'd suggest either weapon skills and auto-attacks OR all attack skills but no auto-attack. (I'd prefer the latter).

Riddle of Earth: [...]

A good Riddle of Earth change, in my opinion, would actually be one that acts as a counterattack of sorts, or perhaps provides the 10% damage taken down to your entire party, or something like that. Some kind of party based utility based on increasing the defenses of you, and everybody around you. It'd also give Monk really great party synergy, combining with Mantra to make Monk the "defensive" utility DPS.

YES! That would be amazing. The lore of Monk this expansion seems to be a "we're stronger together" (see Brotherhood title and effect), so a defensive utility would be amazing. That way we'd switch from "offensive as a party" to "defensive as a party", and on a more personal note, I could support my white mage friend even better!

Tackle Mastery: Delete this.

No, really. Nobody asked for this. Nobody wants this, nobody likes this. Wind tackle and earth tackle are total traps that provide nothing of value, and fire tackle is so underwhelming that it's not really worth talking about. Delete it, get rid of it, and replace it with a real skill.

I concur. For example with an actual Riddle of Wind (see next skill), since Tackle Mastery is basically the same because RoW is only usable because of this trait; as opposed to Riddle of Earth or Riddle of Fire, which are autonomous skills.

Riddle of Wind could be our GL3 refresh, either restoring it to maximum duration upon usage, or freezing the countdown for an arbitrary amount of time, or until an arbitrary action is taken... Maybe something like throwing it on a 60 second cooldown, and letting it freeze your GL timer in place for 10 seconds or something? It would massively increase flexibility, and basically erase that frustrating feeling in a dungeon run when the tank's just a bit too slow and your stacks drop in between packs.

This would be a great idea. Giving RoW a button assignment like RoE and RoF that instantly changes your stance to Fist of Wind. The idea would be to freeze GL3 and become "highly" mobile (like the wind, ha), run around/follow a tank during pulls and then open with a RoF for example.

That would give all three fists a purpose: Fire is offensive buff (for self and party), Earth is defense (for self and party, see above), and Wind for movement in between fights or in breaks/transitions.

Riddle of Fire: Everybody hates this skill but me, I guess. It's meant to synergize with brotherhood, and the damage you crank out when both skills are up is absolutely obscene. Admittedly, it does make Monk feel a bit clunky, and it can be difficult to use dry when you don't have GL3 up.

I'm fine with it as it stands, but if the community wants it changed to be less potent, but not have the attack speed reduction, I'll stand in support of that decision. It's cool either way. Not a lot to really say, I think it's a perfectly good skill.

Yep. I like it. Someone in another thread posted the idea that in this time frame the Monk focuses more on his fists than speed to burst out more damage and I think it's a cool idea (if I think of classic Manga and Anime characters sometimes doing the same kinda thing).

Brotherhood: While this is a great skill, it does kind of pidgenhole Monk into a "Melee's Melee" in a sense, in that it only plays friendly with other melees, and other jobs that deal physical damage.

[...]

I'd like to see the 5% damage increase changed to affect ALL damage dealers, as well as allow the gathering of chakra from ALL GCD actions, to include spells. The proc rate would need to drop a bit, probably down to somewhere like 20%, since there's at LEAST one to two other people in every party who will now be benefactors of this buff, in the healers.

This change allows monk to synergize better with casters (Especially Red Mage), as well as makes them more optimal in a wide variety of team comps. Simply put, if your static is going to be running more than one caster, there's no real reason whatsoever (aside from comfort/preference) to take Monk over Samurai, since they use all the same gear and Samurai is more self dependent.

Yeah. I did the final story trial once with 2 other melees, which makes 5 physical attackers in total, which was insane and FC was in CD a few times; then there were other times I went a whole brotherhood with one Chakra...

Conclusion: I agree with every idea and hope some of the devs reads and likes them! Especially the Riddle of Earth adjustment and the Riddle of Wind idea are great and would give Monk a new identity (since the idea of pure DPS is now the one of SAM). It would also allow to fill a niche: a defensive-supportive melee. BRD and MCH are, afaik, the ranged support for both, and we have two offensive supports already (DRG and NIN have high offensive utility compared to MNK and esp. SAM), and with this we would have a melee support. Although having high damage and supportive functions might be a bit imbalanced, so that would need adjustment maybe.

[Guesswhat]

Get rid of the RNG! It's super annoying to await that last proc when it never happens. Even if you got brotherhood + internal release on.

Make it more consistent.

And RoF's decreased speed seriously makes me scratch my head. Monks are supposed to be fast, it's even in the lore.

I agree the ideas are good, that is, indirect ways of filling your chakra stacks and keeping your GL alive.

From top of my head:
RoE. GL timer reset on activation AND when damage taken + (raid?) def buff.

Deep Meditation Imo, make it like it is in PvP. Snap Punch, Rockbreaker and Demolish grants a Chakra stack.

Brotherhood Raid damage buff + any WS I use (not party) is guaranteed to add a chakra stack.

RoF. While active you can't lose any GL (for tornado kick, or to sustain [timer stops at 0]) + some (raid?) buff (I would say increase skill speed, as you already have dmg+ and crit+ and monks are supposed to be fast hitters).

RoW. Grant 1 GL stack (and maybe a chakra stack too?). Remove tackle mastery and just keep RoW. Seriously, when will I ever use Earth tackle?

Overkill? Perhaps, but it depends on cooldown etc.

As it stands now I'll probably switch main.

[SpeckledBurd]

Frankly, cleaning up Monk in 4.0 is a bit of a chore because of how completely and totally the devs failed to actually clean up the job with the action rework. We still have seven actions on our hotbar that are hyper situational or actually useless. So before we even get into the new items in Monk's kit, let's actually fix some of the old ones.

The Fist Stances
Frankly, these pretty much make up the core of Monk's terrible design decisions in Stormblood, they based 2/3's of Monk's new actions and one of our two traits on a series of stances that could basically be folded into a trait for 5% extra damage to actions and it would change nothing about how the job plays. You always want to be in Fists of Fire, as a DPS, that's just a fact. The only thing Stormblood did to change them was to remove the one reason you had to leave Fists of Fire by changing weakness. I would propose removing Fists of Wind and Fists of Earth and replacing them with Touch of Death (bring it back) and some kind of sub 20% health execution move (Like Suplex).

Arm of the Destroyer
Unreliable as a silence and too TP expensive for how much damage it actually does, even with Monk's huge number of stacking buffs. Boost its potency to 70 though and it's basically as worthwhile an AOE to use as Samurai's first AOE combo move or Ninja's Death Blossom.

One Ilm Punch
Still useless, the nondiminishing stun sounds interesting on paper, but with stuns being taken off most DPS cooldowns when will you ever need this? And if you actually will need this, how will you use it? The stun has the same issue Arm of the Destroyer has of being Form Locked, meaning you can only use it 33% of the time rather than whenever you actually need it. The solution? Remove it. There's no point to it, it's exactly as useless now as it was in ARR and Heavensward. Replace it with a ranged GCD like Piercing Talon, Throwing Dagger, or Enpi.

Purification
Monk now has incredible TP sustain, even without Riddle of Fire's slowdown we come out even in single target. So do we really need a second TP regen? Not really. I'd scrap this and give us an AOE chakra attack with moderate damage (180-200 seems fair for this), rather than clinging to it.

Perfect Balance
Blood of the Dragon is on a 30 second cooldown. Enochian is on a 30 second cooldown. These are both persistent buffs that are as critical to the class that they're on as Greased Lightning is to Monk? So why is the ability that grants Monk GREASED LIGHTNING 3 STILL ON A 180 SECOND COOLDOWN? I understand that Monk is able to restore it's stacks by just attacking, but at this point there's just no excuse. We still get fucked by phase changes because Riddle of Earth is terrible for maintaining stacks outside of very niche circumstances. Reduce this to a 60 second cooldown, it's not hard. This also makes Tornado Kick slightly more usable overall outside of times when the boss jumps.

With these changes, Monk should now have a mostly functional kit to build off of.

Stormblood Actions and Traits

Deep Meditation
I largely don't have an issue with this Trait. The only change I would make would be to have it proc based off of specific moves in our Rotation (True Strike or Bootshine perhaps). This keeps Monk's DPS consistent rather than being subject to the whim of RNG.

Riddle of Fire
With Forms scrapped, there's no need to build on them with the new actions, so we don't even have to call this Riddle of Fire any longer. I'm also very much not a fan of the slowdown from Riddle of Fire, I think it goes against the foundation of the Job to eliminate our haste. Instead, I would propose making us go faster without actually reducing our GCD further by changing this to Hundred Fists, which would reduce the damage of outgoing Weaponskiills, Auto Attacks, and oGCDs by 40% but hits each of them twice for an actual gain of 20%. I'm aware that this interacts strangely with dots because of how snap-shotting works, so it could also just be a haste like what Hamon used during the level 70 Monk quest.

Riddle of Earth

I'm not going to split hairs about it, this action is terrible. As a DPS there's really no point for a Monk to need a damage reduction, getting hit to refresh Greased Lightning is stupid fix to the problem of Monk hitting phase changes and it makes Tornado Kick inherently more situational in the few instances it might end up working. It can still be defensive in nature, I don't really have any problem with Monk being a defense oriented DPS frankly. Potentially it could be a Chakra spending action that gives all party members in the immediate area a shield worth 10% of Monk's HP or something similar.

Tackle Mastery
Again, terrible. Building on the Fist Stances in Stormblood was a terrible idea. I'd change this to something that actually emphasizes parts of Monk that sees use or to make something that doesn't see use marginally more usable. For example, Tornado Kick Mastery or Positional Mastery. Tornado Kick Mastery could just reduce the amount of Greased Lightning used by Tornado Kick to a single stack, allowing it to be used before snap punch for a small gain and Positional Mastery could give monk a minor stacking buff for every hit positional to minorly expand upon the class.

Brotherhood
I really like this concept, but it has the issue of making Monk very party composition reliant for both it's party synergy and it's own personal DPS. I'd just make it a general outgoing damage buff instead of Physical Damage exclusive and allow chakra generation to proc from spells. The proc chance for chakra generation can be reduced to 15-20% to counterbalance the number that would produce.

[wereotter]

I've only leveled to 66 so far, but...

I think Deep Meditation and Riddle of Earth should have been swapped regarding what level the skills unlock. Riddle of Earth has been incredibly handy when it comes to staying alive in the field, especially since field enemies still aren't omni positional. The 20% damage reduction has made running Fates and doing hunts much easier. Additionally, I seem to only get maybe 2 extra Forbidden Chakras in a boss fight and almost never get extra on trash pulls in dungeons, so upping the percentage they proc or basing them on something else would be good. If they want it based on cries, then give us a chakra 100% of the time on crits so that at the very least you'll get one on Bootshine.

Tackle Mastery is garbage. There never was anything wrong with Shoulder Tackle before, though if they were going to adjust it I might suggest: Fire Tackle extra potency, no stuff. Earth Tackle, same as pre 4.0 potency including stun. Wind Tackle, increased distance with reduced damage.

Now for speculation:

Riddle of Fire just feels bad to even read. It might be a DPS increase even with the speed reduction, but it doesn't seem right for the job. If I wanted to play a slow DPS with high numbers, I'd be a dragoon/samurai. Possible fix: speed reduction after Riddle of Fire wears off, similar to old Warrior pacify, make it cleansable so a good healer can keep you going.

Brotherhood: This looks handy, but it's unfortunate it's completely useless when you're solo. Since it's only a 30% chance to open a chakra on a weapon skill usage, it's entirely possible to get zero extra Forbidden Chakras while it's in effect, and so should apply the same damage buff to you as to everyone else. Side note regarding your analysis: this effect does boost your bard or machinist, and since they're much more mobile now than they were in 3.x, communication will mean they're very likely to want to come closer to you for the buff.

[Blacktestament7]

I'd post my old idea but without certain abilities that have been cut it doesn't function the way it should. That being said, For Deep Meditation any proc based idea is a bad one. RNG doesn't fix the chakra issue since even at a 99% chance there's a 1% chance you could never get a chakra from it. Which is why a 100% chance of building chakra on a GL3 reapplication (performing a form 3 weaponskill with GL3 up) is the most balanced way of working. There's not a wasted chakra point that is constantly there from having TFC up at any point without using it, like now with the proc based system.

As for the Riddles. Earth works on activation and Fire is just a 10% damage increase with a pyretic effect or something that doesn't hinder actually playing the job.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I only have two complaints with Monk really.

Riddle of fire feels like a debuff, and Brotherhood needs a buff.

For Brotherhood, it only effects physical attackers, and doesn't apply the dmg buff to you.
In the end, it only actually benefits maybe 3 or 4 of your party members.
It should, at the very least, be 10%. If not that, have it's effect extended to maybe 30s. Honestly this feels a lot like 3.0 launch AST balance to me, except that was better than this because it effected all members.

As for Riddle of Fire, please do something about how clunky it feels. I don't see why it needs such a strong nerf to our speed to work correctly. No other job is punished this harshly for their buffs.

If you can't fix the speed, at least increase the damage so we really feel it's worth it. Because if we're not throwing out constant Forbidden Chakra during this, it feels like a debuff.
Speaking of Forbidden Chakra, why is it on a 5 second CD again?...

[Crushing_Wake]

snip

I think I can agree with most of this stuff. Especially with the changes to Brotherhood. Comparing this to, say, any other Raid-Wide buff, the lack of raid-wide applicability is a little frustrating. Though, where I disagree is the changes to Riddle of Earth and Riddle of Wind. I'd actually had my own ideas for some changes, particularly ones to make the class use Chakra more frequently, and for more things.

Deep Meditation: Not sure where to word it properly, but I'd like to strike a balance between PvP chakra and PvE. Lower the chance a little, and allow it to also have a chance to proc upon the completion of a Coerl Stance ability, perhaps?

Riddle Of Earth: Make it cost Chakra, and turn it into an on-demand version of Earth's Reply. On activation, it grants 10% damage reduction and refreshes GL3, on a 60 second cooldown.

Tackle Mastery: Gone with the (Riddle of) the Wind. Swap this for some sort of AoE Chakra spender. Maybe it could even have a similar name, and be a wind-themed ability animation-wise?

Riddle of Fire: From where I'm looking (haven't used, but talked with people who have) it's annoying, but gets better with better Skill Speed. Leave it as-is. The cost is worth the result.

Annnd, dipping a little further into Monk; Purification. As it stands, thanks to TP cost reductions almost across the board, this ability feels less useful. I'd say, lower the TP regain, and make it cleanse one cleansable debuff- it is named 'Purification', after all!

I understand most of these ideas are likely stupid, and poorly thought out. But I like the idea of a Monk more intimately and diversely involved with its Chakra stacks.

[KanameYuuki]

I wish they would remove the Fist altogether, no reason for them to exist, they did it with Ninja, no reason to not do it with Monk you only want Fire the whole time, if you need FoE then you better get a new tank and Wind is just useless even more so now that we can sprint and the speed buff from Range is instant, I've been loving RoE more and more but switching to Fist of Earth is what I hate the most, I always keep forgetting to switch to fire, they can keep it the way it is so its our Foresight that helped me every once in a while. RoF, they could give us barely any dmg increase maybe throwing some critical buff but removing that stupid speed reduction nobody likes, Tackle mastery... just delete that... they could add Riddle of wind as some sort of party Refresh even a battle Peloton would be more useful, they fixed Chakras now but I only wish deep meditation would be from the same level you get Forbidden Chakra.