Monk suggestions

[Ghostwk]

this will probably tilt people, but i really wish they would add 100 fists, Formless strikes, and Mantra from FFXI back to Monk. I feel like you could change Brotherhood to a raid wide HP buff(Mantra), or keep brotherhood and add mantra as well. Formless strikes could turn Auto attacks into unaspected damage for x duration. 100 fists is what i want the most though, my take on it for 14 would be to make you auto attack 100 times in rapid succession, but you are unable to perform weaponskills or anything else for the duration. I will note that i know very little about monk in 14 except that it seems to struggle to find a place in content. I think the HP boost would be a welcomed mechanic and utility that isnt really in the game currently and would help them find a place. mnk mains will know better than i though, so hopefully this at least sparks the imagination on ways to improve the job.

[wereotter]

Good News! Mantra exists already, it gives a 20% healing received buff for all party members in range. It's a neat skill, but the problem is that there's not exactly a way to make this skill relevant. Either they make fights with healing checks so insane that Monk becomes mandatory, or the keep it so healers can get through them without it and monks remain in their current awkward role.

There have been several suggestions, and it's honestly not that monk is terrible, just Square has left in a lot of bad skills on the job, taken out useful ones, and the new skills make the job feel clunky. We've all been wanting a buff to Brotherhood. I'm personally in the camp of wanting the skill to boost all outgoing damage for all nearby party members, making the skill not useless if you're in a comp with a lot of caster, and also give the monk the same chance of getting a chakra stack when an ally connects damage with a spell.

Another way to make monks instantly more valuable is to introduce another job that does blunt damage. Currently the only attacks that count are the monk attacks, and book/pole smacks from casters/healers (not counting red mage, they do piercing damage with auto attacks) and possibly reintroduce the INT down debuff that monks could apply with Dragon Kick.

Also there are several skills that just need a complete overhaul that have been added this expansion that we keep brining up but Square insists monk is fine despite all the voices saying otherwise.

[Llugen]

Monk is doing really well, I promise. The biggest problem with Monk is that DRG is too good.

Hundred Fists sounds like a 5.0 skill. Count me in.

[Alexalibur]

Monk is doing really well, I promise. The biggest problem with Monk is that DRG is too good.

Hundred Fists sounds like a 5.0 skill. Count me in.

Doesn't change the fact that most of its kit is useless at best.

[Llugen]

Welcome to BLM:

Freeze
Blizzard II
Sleep
Scathe (particularly as it relates to Sharpcast)


All basically useless.

[SpeckledBurd]

Welcome to BLM:

Freeze
Blizzard II
Sleep
Scathe (particularly as it relates to Sharpcast)


All basically useless.

Oh please, Black Mage can take a seat then because four useless actions doesn't compare to the amount of garbage in Monk's kit. That's not even half of what Monk has in terms of garbage skills. Fists of Earth, Fists of Wind, Fists of Fire, Arm of the Destroyer (Literally the weakest AOE in the game for one of the highest TP costs), One Ilm Punch (still so useless as to be a meme), Purification (was never useful), Tornado Kick (basically never used), Tackle Mastery (two useless skills in one! Arguably three!), and Riddle of Earth (it's activation requirements are so dumb it ends up here). And that doesn't even begin to count other actions which have long standing issues like Perfect Balance's enormous cooldown or issues with new actions which make Monk miserable to play like Brotherhood.

There's a legitimate argument to be made about Black Mage's performance (even though it extends to Monk and Samurai because the exist in the exact same niche of being Greedy DPS), but there is absolutely no comparison when it comes to which Job has the absolute worst kit overall. It had the most useless actions in Heavensward, and despite the action reworks goal being to fix useless actions it basically didn't touch Monk. We're also the only job to actually get new actions and traits that can be construed as being useless.

[Llugen]

Fists of Earth is used by top tier monks to reduce incoming damage for 1-2 GCDs to survive during progression
Tornado kick could use some love but it's absolutely useful for dumping stacks and doing high damage before large downtime (grand cross omega, possibly animal farm, possibly even -100 Gs if your Perfect Balance is already back up though I don't know that one for sure)
Arm of the Destroyer is still aoe damage that is stronger than Bootshine/Dragon Kick on 5ish targets
Purification means more TP for more aoe damage, see also: use Arm of the Destroyer when it's more potency
Tackle Mastery gave you a potency buff to shoulder tackle as Mr Happy preaches endlessly
One-Ilm Punch..... is still pretty useless. I'll give you that one.


So, tell me what Freeze and Blizzard II and Sleep are good for when mobs just resist the status disorders? I'm not saying that these aren't issues that SE should address, but having useless skills is pretty common around here, and apparently less skills are useless than you realize.

[SpeckledBurd]

-blep-

You're only proving you don't know what you're talking about.

Fists of Earth is not used to survive in progression because the tradeoff for 5% DPS isn't worth gaining marginal survivability against attacks we can already survive. Either the mitigation put up is sufficient for you to survive or you're dead. You used to be able to use it to recover if you had Weakness/Brink of Death and outgoing damage actually could kill you but that's a thing of the path.
Arm of the Destroyer's TP cost is massive compared to how little damage it does. You can say that it's a DPS gain in 5+ targets, but the gain is so marginal for how much TP it costs that in the long run its better to just use bootshine. The number of AOE situations where it should actually be used can be counted on one finger.
Purification: See Arm of the Destroyer's rebuttal. And, even in the one pull where Arm of the Destroyer is warranted even if you do use it you still often don't need it if your other DPS is pulling their weight or if they at least have the good courtesy to throw you a goad/tactician.
Tornado Kick: The situations where it actually can be used for a gain can be counted on one hand.
Tackle Mastery: They didn't need an entire trait to add 30 potency to an attack, they can just stick 30 potency onto it whenever. They've literally piled potency onto other jobs without ever having to do that. It is the definition of useless. They did not need to waste on of Monk's new traits/actions to do that. In fact making it add potency to Fists of Fire actively makes the issue with the Fist Stances worse. It's designed to be an appeal towards the fist stances being useful when they flat out aren't when the devs couldn't be assed to actually fix them.

Sure, Freeze and Blizzard II are useless. So is Repose on White Mage. That still doesn't make Black Mage's kit even a third as asinine as Monks. Do you have to potentially stand in an AOE that will give you a vuln stack so you have a chance at saving your Enochian, even though its entirely possible for it to just fall off before you get hit? No you just have to spam Transpose. And if that exact mechanic happens within a minute (cough third boss of Rabanastere cough) you don't just get dicked by the fight.

Does Black Mage have anything nearly as useless as One Ilm Punch? As the Fist Stances? Is Enochian nearly as inconvenient to maintain as Greased Lightning? Is the skill you use to restore Enochian in the event of catastrophe on a 3 minute cool down? Does Black Mage have stances that serve no purpose? Does Black mage have traits which at their most useful do something that actively makes an issue that has long been complained about worse? Is Black Mages capstone skill so utterly dependent on party composition that the mere act of using it in a 4-Man guaranteed to make it seem like a flub?

I'm not denying that Black Mage doesn't have issues, but if you want to pretend that Monk's issues with its kit, that have existed for pretty much as long as ARR mind you, are non-existent you're flat out lying to people.

[Alexalibur]

But, this thread is about MNK, not BLM. BLM has 4 skills that are useless and are all old skills, but this expansion they got about 4 mandatory skills/traits (Umbral hearts could use some change though) in Thunder IV, Foul, UH and Triplecast. Between the lines is niche at best, but look at MNK's kit. This expansion they got no new attacks (the only DPS job that didn't, mind you), three niche tackles where only one of them is used (boring as hell), Brotherhood (very composition dependent), Riddle of Fire (good skill, but not a community-favourite), Riddle of Earth (kinda good, but goes against Tornado Kick), while removing good skills like ToD and not touching skills like PB (seriously 3 minutes is way too long), Tornado Kick and a bunch of others Burd mentioned in their post.

Niche skills aren't bad, but when 50% of your kit is niche, it becomes a problem.

[Llugen]

You didn't even successfully refute a single one of my points lol

I don't need to fight with you about this, but you should probably take a long hard look at your skills and determine which of them are actually useless because many of them are not. Situational, sure, but not useless.

You are right, though. I apologize for derailing the thread and ruler-comparing it to BLM. I only meant to point out that there are many jobs that have less-than-useful skills (if not all of them).

Monk is the job whose design has changed the least over the course of this game. If anything I'd say that means that they had good design from the very beginning and they are simply staying true to what they had in mind. It is lamentable that they still haven't learned from the deleteMNK mentality about jobs needing utility, though.