MCH and Monk - Why is underplayed?

[CrimsonDark]

I play a few months and seefew people playing monk or mch. why? is weak in the current patch?

could tell me the strength and weaknesses of these jobs?

I'm searching for a new main job. I thought about tank / healer too, but it must be hard for solo quest.

[Mhaeric]

MCH is underplayed for a variety of reasons. One is that it is one of the more complicated jobs to play successfully, and isn't something someone can just sit down and figure out the basics of in a few minutes. And when the job is finally learned well, its dps is highly subject to your latency and mechanics that interrupt combat. There's nothing worse than a Wildfire burst that gets ruined by a hit of lag or a boss jump. There's also a bit of stigma attached to it, since when it was released it was generally though to be under-powered and with some less than effective mechanics. It has had quite a few adjustments since then to finally exist in a good spot in the last several patches, but the damage to its reputation was done and the stigma carries on. Plus, once someone chooses a main, they're more likely to stick with that main than change it so the low numbers now are reflective of the low numbers from back when it wasn't as good of a job to play.

[Dualgunner]

Can confirm what Mhaeric said. Its playstyle of building to a burst and keeping all of one's cooldowns in-line is not what everybody likes doing, either. But from personal experience, the job feels really good when pulled off well.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Machinist requires a ridiculous amount of micromanagement for what many consider clunky gameplay at best. A frequent complaint is a lack of flow between each ability, almost as though they are add odds with one another in terms of functionality. Flamethrower is, perhaps, the most notable offender. Optimal use is to cut the cast at five seconds... which is just silly design.

Monk, meanwhile, struggles primarily due to the sheer dominance of utility in this game. Dragoon and Ninja simply offer more in Trick Attack, Battle Litany, Disembowel, Shadewalker and Smokescreen. Another contributing factor is Monk's gameplay has evolved little beyond its ARR iteration, which has caused plenty to find it stale. Stormblood attempted to encourage Fist stances but Tackle Mastery proved to be such a laughable disaster, it basically changed nothing. That being said, Monk's 4.1 buffs brought it much closer to its melee counterparts.

[Aeliott]

Mained MNK in 2.X and got bored in HW, switched to MCH in 3.X, in 4.X found it clunky and...basically yeah confirming the above :P

With MNK though I think it's the most fun it's ever been, but RoF is a jarring skill that most people despise for lowering speed temporarily, or at best tolerate. While Brotherhood is nice, the 4.1 buff to affect self didn't make waves, but I think it has become more desirable since. It just hasn't really ignited a spark in amount of people picking it up when they didn't before.

While all these posts are highlighting main flaws and reasons why people wouldn't want to main them though - note that both are still good jobs, and played well nobody will scorn you at all if they're what you want to play. For pros: MNK is very active and fun, if you don't mind the temporary speed penalty of RoF - getting lots of Chakra procs under Brotherhood feels good and they have among the biggest personal DPS along with SAM and BLM. MCH also has some satisfyingly big numbers when you get the hang of it, if you don't mind the clunky feeling of Flamethrower, and get a feel for how to best correct yourself when you die / need to adjust your timings for certain events. I do really really like MCH, though not as much as in 3.X, and after getting accustomed to the new version, I'd probably still main it if not for the fact that I feel much better and confident on BRD - pumping similar numbers that are a fraction lower, but not getting as overwhelmed sometimes and feeling worse for mistakes. But that's a personal thing. Dismantle, MCH's enemy damage dampener, is also a super under-rated skill.

Neither job is weak!

MNK:
+ Fast paced
+ Easy to learn, moderate to master
+ Very high damage
+ Very good AOE
- Losing GL stacks feels awful
- Crit proc RNG which is sometimes annoying
- Overshadowed by DRG and NIN in hardcore comps but still very respectable

MCH:
+ Satisfying bursts every 60s
+ Feels powerful while pretty much completely mobile
+ Very high damage when played well, more personal DPS than BRD.
+/- Doesn't synergise as well with some other DPS compared to BRD in what it offers, but lines up better with buffs from others, especially NIN and RDM (BRD's burst every 80s, MCH every 60)
- Flamethrower feels clunky
- Awkward leveling experience where it feels distinctly incomplete until level 70.
- Steep learning curve, takes practice to get the hang of certain timings (which you also can't do until Level 70).
- Feels punishing when you screw up / die.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Monk's unpopularity simply comes down to it being underwhelming, really.
Its just so....bori to look at, and aesthetically they have both going for them against icon jobs like DRG and SAM.

It doesn't help that they haven't changed since ARR.
While DRG had more combos, abilities and mechanics added to them and Ninja had their Ninjutsu tightened up and things added to them, Monk is exactly the same. No new combos, no new mechanics. Just boring oGCDs that you press every now and then.

[zuzu-bq]

A lot of people just hate how Stormblood MCH is played.

[Azerhan]

Flamethrower.

Really one of the worst idea I see in this game x)

However, I love the core gameplay of the MCH : you're a clock. Every one minute, you burst. I find this really fun. But, FT, a lot of clipping, ping dependant, boss mechanics dependant, DRG dependant...

You need to be really motivated to play MCH.

But we have really cool moves !

[wereotter]

Monk took a hard hit in Heavensward due to the utter dominance of dragoons and ninjas for raid comps, not just because of the added utility that those two jobs brought, but because on top of that, monks required you to play encounters differently since they had to maintain near 100% up time. Remember, back then a monk still had a 3-minute cooldown on Perfect Balance and didn't have skills like Riddle of Earth or Riddle of Wind to help maintain stacks. Monks did boast high personal DPS, but it was never quite high enough to make up for the rest, and was in the same kind of spot Samurai occupies now.

That legacy has somewhat remained with monks through to today. Many fights are designed directly against your job's toolkit, and while the riddles have made things easier, there's still a lot of fights that just don't work well for monks. I'm thinking right now of O8s, clown phase where he goes untargetable while you do mechanics multiple times, and O7s where there's a lot of the boss spinning around, which lowers your DPS. And that leads me into my second observation. People see all the positional requirements, and get overwhelmed thinking the job has a steep learning curve. This means some people who might have picked up the job don't in favor of jobs with less positional requirements like ninja.

They've started to address monk's issues by making Mantra more valuable than it was before and removing it from role actions, and the addition of Brotherhood, but in order for the job to truly be competitive, the job still needs some help. Two obvious methods would be to buff Brotherhood to increasing all outgoing damage, including from casters. This would put it closer to on-par with Trick Attack, even if the monk doesn't gain any chakra stacks from spells cast. Another boon to the job would be the addition of another job that deals blunt damage. Some sort of hammer-wielding tank job would be ideally suited to this, and would make monk's blunt resistance down more of an asset than it currently stands. That said, the job isn't in a bad place now, just would need some slight adjustments to be competitive with ninja.

[Mahrze]

I'm searching for a new main job. I thought about tank / healer too, but it must be hard for solo quest.

Allow me to enlighten you. Tanks and healers are very strong and have considerable DPS to solo quests the damage potential they lose (hardly any, brutal honesty here) is easily and considerably outweighed by mitigation and healing (tanks and healers have both of these at varying degrees at late game).