Like, I have been busy with life since the start of 2017. When I realized we got a expansion that seemed to be tailored to Monk (kind of like HW was for DRG) I was really excited but I didn't want to be too excited because frankly with what Monk was, being top DPS, it felt like the class was getting spoiled.

A week before SB came I logged on. I visited my forest house on the lakefront and smashed my training dummy, seeing if I'm up to snuff with my inactivity due to college and work. I didn't nail fracture perfectly which was fine with me, muscle memory got the rest down quite well and I was satisfied.

So SB came out. I didn't buy it right away let alone pre-order because frankly finances were tight and well I had other things to do at the time. A week went by and my old buddies were yelling at me to get SB, like the excited friends I'm happy to still have in my own little linkshell, even after my inactivity.

I lost b4b, featherfoot, enhanced mantra, steel peak stun, ToD, fracture, and they nerfed (from what I could tell) demo back to 18 seconds and a potency drop in FC. I knew right away that TP management was better without my dots but then it might've made purification useless... Which is a shame, as we got that skill when we needed it the most, and lost it when we lost the abilities that needed it.

But hey I stuck to it. At around 62 as I was watching the forums and the feedback from SB, I heard word about the distaste with Monk and how people felt. THen I realized I didn't look close enough to my skill riddle of fire. I then heard that it was a mearly 3% more DPS than b4b... So really it didn't feel like a new ability, more like a compensation for nerfing my favorite class..


And let me be clear. I started playing Monk just before 2.3 was released. The only time I played it was outside light grinding for my WHM relic because well I was sick of WHM! Haha. However I began to enjoy Monk. It was fast paced and truly made me feel immersed in the game. It reminds me of my favored character from Smash Bros; Fox. It's not that I only played it to escape wHM, I was simply working my hardest on my relic. It turns out the only time I remember playing Monk was when I raided. As I raided more and learned the skill (after you know, saying eff you to the true rotation with positions, at least at first. Once I accepted it and took up the positional rotations, it was so fun, it felt like dancing. As I raided more and more and got better and better, I played WHM less and less and before I knew it, my WHM relic felt useless and my main shifted to Monk.

Back to the top DPS thing. This was actually a problem for me. You see, I happeend to be a friend of a very insecure bard. And as you might remember, Bard had the absolute lowest DPS. It was so bad that when MCH came out, bard was ignored by everyone. Anyway. It was even worse in final coil because while we raided, I got my BiS gear after our first T12 clear. I didn't even need T13. The bard, unfortunately, could never get the treasured bracelet from T11 no matter how many clears we got.


So after hearing more and more about Monk, I was seriously considering leveling SCH who was only 2 levels behind me (little did I know at the time that you guys screwed over SCH too.. yeah... since i touched on it, thanks also for dropping SCH down the status of "possible main healer"). However, I love Monk and it deserved the benefit of the doubt, so here I stand at 68.. I've tried riddle of fire a few times.. And don't really like it.. It basically takes our GL speed away, something we've had to get use to since level 40, 28 levels ago.. It ruins my flow and.. yeah. I'd rather have b4b even if it meant taking 25% more damage, or whatever it was.


So let's talk about SAM. I like SAM. It's awesome, it uses the same gear as Monk and considering I don't exactly like DRG and NIN all that much, I was excited to level it, and still am.

Only... today I learned something interesting. Apparently SAM was advertised as the top DPS..? Or at least in one of the articles I found talking about its announcement back in february, it claimed the job "will focus on dealing "massive damage"" (source which is fine, but...

Pre SB, Monk was top DPS. There wasn't much reason this would change. It didn't have many raid utility that could otherwise contribute in the place for DPS (think Bard/MCH).

Did SAM replace Monk? Did you (SE) do this because you didn't know what to do with Monk? Or were you seriously trying to make the job more appealing to new players and... Yeah. Because I get that maybe you wanted SAM to be the best, but you didn't have to go against the basic playstyle that this job has had from the start and just.. give us crappy excuses for new abilities...

Thanks for reading.