is there any hope for monk?

[Xau]

well, the fact what the devs said they gonna rework monk for shb, i say there is hope, albeit i will wait until the skill showcase to see if it ends good or not, i just hope they change many of the issues the job has like how chakra is only used for only 1 skill, since the other skill(purification) it uses it is outright useless in more than one way outside of one scenario(aoe spam, and no one uses it for the agro redution effect since it cuts into your dmg anyway), on me opinion sb monk was a wasted chance to give nice things to mnk, and what they added made it worse outside of the later change effect to riddle of wind

[Physic]

@kalise, it looks like you dont like the concept of skills that require more button presses, and require you to use them at the right time for maximum benefit(which means they are not always as effective if used at the wrong time)

but i think this is what they are going for with mnk. It could definitely use improvements, like fist of wind needs a better basic ability. But basically they want it to feel like its about building up and managing flows.

and mnk definitely doesnt do 1-2-3 for good dps. your best damage is bootshine true strike and snap punch, but you need to maintain buffs/debuffs from demolish dragon kick and twin snakes, so you are constantly using all 6 skills.

pulling everything together feels like pulling off a great comboination

d and d monks are conceptually cool, but the actual moment to moment doesnt compare to the style id want from a martial artist.

id definitely want improvements, but i prefer mnk to sam/drg playstyles at least up to 60.

[Daralii]

A guy on youtube called DrakGamestein compared the evolution of MNK abilities to DRG abilities in a video. He said that DRG's evolution was much more natural. Get skills to improve your jumps that improve your lance skills. Where as MNK doesn't really do that. Chakra doesn't amplify your base attacks it just gives you a powerful move to use. Tornado Kick removes the whole mechanic MNK is based around, and Riddle of Fire lows you down when the job is built around going fast. I agree with him.

This was the video he did on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MUEXpEOTsQ

Basically, the job's identity is split between PGL abilities(Greased Lightning) and MNK abilities(Chakra) with little synergy between them, while others have their class aspects(archery, lance techniques, gladiator arts, etc) intertwine with their job aspects(music, jumps and dragon blood, oaths).

[Kalise]

it looks like you dont like the concept of skills that require more button presses

Huh?

I literally state that I like NIN. Which requires multiple button presses to utilize Mudra and access their Ninjutsu.

Which, outside of some occasional lag, is actually pretty fun.

MNK's multiple button press skills are not fun. Since they're all GCD actions so they're slow and not possible to actually use in an actual rotation for any kind of dynamic play because they compete with your actual skills.

require you to use them at the right time for maximum benefit(which means they are not always as effective if used at the wrong time)

That's literally a description of basically every skill in the entire game.

Heck, at its core that is the base of combo's. That combo skills (Outside of MNK) are less effective outside of their position within a combo.

To say nothing about other jobs whom have resources to manage or time sensitive skills to use.

If I take just Warrior alone, then there is:

* Fell Cleave that is less effective if used at a time when you're not about to overcap on Beast Gauge, with some cases where you use it earlier to get the CDR on Infuriate to bring it back up.

* Butcher's Block combo is less effective outside of times when you need to gain extra enmity.

* Shake It Off needs to be managed around CD's as it is a less effective shield if it doesn't consume other CD's, but if its being used for self preservation then it can be less effective to consume your defensive CD(s) by using it.

* Upheaval is less effective when used at a lower amount of life, in addition to being used while not having Thrill of Battle active.

* Anticipation is less effective while Raw Intuition is active.

* Rampart and Vengeance are less effective while the other is active due to damage reduction stacking multiplicatively not additively.

I can go on and on with literally every other job in the game.

Having to use the right skills at the right time is not unique to Monk.

What is unique to Monk is those skills feeling bad to use because they all actively make your gameplay worse after using them. No other job receives penalties to its stats from using its skills. No other job feels as clunky as Monk outside maybe the RNG ridden Machinist that also has similar jank in its kit.

and mnk definitely doesnt do 1-2-3 for good dps. your best damage is bootshine true strike and snap punch, but you need to maintain buffs/debuffs from demolish dragon kick and twin snakes, so you are constantly using all 6 skills.

It literally is 123.

Dragon Kick > Twin Snakes > Demolish/Snap Punch
Bootshine > True Strike > Demolish/Snap Punch

You rotate between 2x 123 combos.

Just like how Warrior rotates between Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Eye and Heavy Swing > Maim > Storm's Path.

How Paladin rotates between Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Goring Blade and Fast Blade > Riot Blade > Royal Authority

How Ninja rotates between Gust Slash > Spinning Slash > Shadow Fang and Gust Slash > Spinning Slash > Aeolian Edge and Gust Slash > Spinning Slash > Armor Crush

How Samurai rotates between Hakaze > Shinpu > Kasha and Hakaze > Jinpu > Gekko and the slightly different Hakaze > Yukikaze

pulling everything together feels like pulling off a great comboination

It feels like playing literally any other class. Only this one arbitrarily hits like a wet noodle until you get your 3x Greased Lightning up.

That is, until you use one of your "DPS Cooldowns" and consume your Greased Lightning or tank your attack speed (Right after you just built it up...)

Heck, even Perfect Balance feels like poop to use because when it's over you're back at square 1 without a form active so you have to go through an entire 123 combo to be able to utilize Dragon Kick properly or get the guaranteed Bootshine crit.

i prefer mnk to sam/drg playstyles at least up to 60.

Ironically, up to 60 these 3 jobs all play pretty much the same.

With SAM/DRG evolving post 50 to include extra rotations (DRG getting Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust putting them into 1234 style rotations) or extra resources to manage (SAM getting the Kenki Gauge)

In fact, MNK at 60 hits its peak of clunk, with gaining Tornado Kick, but the only way to actually use it as a DPS gain is via Perfect Balance, since you don't get Riddle of Wind until level 66 to be able to use RoW > Snap Punch to get an instant 2x Greased after using it. Nor do you have the Deep Meditation from level 62 to make The Forbidden Chakra an actually usable skill outside of once per fight if you pre-spam Meditate before each pull.

[Satarn]

Like, it's so niche when Tornado Kick is a DPS gain

How does "regular part of your rotation" translate to "niche"? If you ask anybody who actually plays MNK at high percentiles, they will tell you that not using TK is a huge dps loss. With Perfect Balance and Riddle of Wind changes, you can regain the stacks really quickly and you're supposed to play around that.

I agree that there is some clunk to the job - I'd rather remove stances and make Shoulder Tackle upgrade to Wind Tackle as a trait for example, also RoF slowdown does indeed feel iffy(I know it's there to help with weaving, but I don't think it's necessary). Some things you see as clunk however, are what makes MNK rotation feel active and varied, more so than other jobs.

You keep praising the other melee and honestly it seems to me like you never enjoyed MNK in the first place, so perhaps you should just not play the job. I don't mean that in a bad way, but if SE kept taking feedback from people who don't play certain jobs to change them, then they can easily alienate the players who do enjoy them right now and I think the latter should be a priority. A NIN/DRG/SAM main saying they want MNK to change, isn't the same as HW MCH player saying the SB MCH is bad - those MCHs were actually driven out the job they used to love. Universal appeal isn't always a good thing, that is the point of having multiple options.

[ReiMakoto]

Hopefully.
* Needing to go into Fists of Wind to access Riddle of Wind in order to get a Shoulder Tackle that generates a Greased Lightning. Why?

* Riddle of Fire reducing attack speed. Why?

* Tornado Kick eating Greased Lightning (Which is both Attack Speed and Damage). Why?

* Excruciatingly short durations on things like Greased Lightning, Twin Snakes and Dragon Kick that punish downtime heavily with no way to alleviate that. Why?

* Opo-Opo Stance not being baseline so you can't get the combo bonus on your first strike without using Form Shift. Why?

* Form Shift being a GCD action. Why?

* Riddle of Earth?!?!?

Taking Point by Point

1. I agree this is dumb, riddle of wind was changed to give greased lightning otherwise it was useless.
2. Its so you can weave more to maximise burst windows. With the way buff stacking works, having riddle of fire with other party buffs up makes you hit like an absolute truck, which imo is well worth the slowdown, especially when you weave more in that window thanks to brotherhood and cd's lining up
3. Tornado Kick was initially designed as a way to make down time not as punished. I.E. You tornado kick when you know your stacks are doomed and you get a neat dps gain out of it. Since its release, perfect balances' CD was reduced and riddle of wind now exists, so that in combination with aformentioned lining up of burst windows makes a monster DPS gain for monk.
4. The short durations on the buffs just encourage high uptime, which melees should be doing anyway, and in times you know you're going to lose the timers, youve got tornado kick
5. Dunno, I can't think of a reason not to just let you throw up dragon kick immediatly
6. Formshift as a gcd makes sense, as you'll only use it when things are untargetable anyway, and having it as an OGCD would introduce more complexity into the monk rotation, i.e skipping certain bits of the combo chain to recover stacks quicker.
7. Riddle of earth is great, boss becomes untargetable but theres still damage going out, pop riddle of earth and refresh your greased lightning. Loads of times when you can use it, biggest one that comes to me atm is o12s when the bosses split, you can use riddle of earth on the stack marker to maintain your stacks until they become targetable again.

The idea is monk has its own ways of dealing with downtime that they can optimise to minimise loss, using form shift and riddle of earth to make stacks stay longer and when thats set up meditate to gain more dps, its kit actually works together with itself very well.

[Kalise]

How does "regular part of your rotation" translate to "niche"?

Because it's not just a "Regular part of your rotation"

"Regular part of your rotation" makes it sound like you just toss it out as soon as you hit 3 Greased. Which is a good way to make it a DPS loss.

You need a bunch of requirements met in order to actually gain from using Tornado Kick. Such as having Demolish with enough duration to allow you to get 3 Greased + Twin Snakes before it needs refreshing. Having either Perfect Balance or Riddle of Wind + Snap Punch ready to quickly get back Greased.

Also, ideally, you'd want these things to also happen at the end of Riddle of Fire too. So that you can get RoF's damage bonus onto TK and then once RoF ends you're more freely able to do your noodle damage skills while you build Greased again.

You keep praising the other melee and honestly it seems to me like you never enjoyed MNK in the first place, so perhaps you should just not play the job.

I enjoyed MNK around level 50ish. While in a party.

After level 50, they started adding in all the clunk mechanics and prior to level 50 I did a lot of soloing back when positional bonuses where 40 potency so it felt super awful...

I feel that MNK has such potential to be fun for me, so I put forward my feedback. If SE listen, they listen, if not, then they don't.

However, as things stand, I want to reiterate:

MNK has a unique combo system that doesn't necessarily need to abide by the 123 standard that every other job has. They can be designed to have more reason to mix up their rotations utilizing the fact that their "Stances" open up multiple options for each stage (IMO, NIN has the most dynamic combo purely because while at a Flank Armor Crush will deal more damage than the standard filler Aeolian Edge. While MNK is at the mercy of basically having to flip-flop between Buff and Damage because of such short durations and well... Lack of alternatives)

MNK has their Chakra resource which can be developed on. Heck, if you relate it back to their actual job quests, there should be the potential to go to a 14 point Chakra system, with 7 Light and 7 Dark Chakra to open up and thus allow generation and spending of 2 types of Chakra - Instead of what we have now with the 5 points of Chakra leading to basically just "The Forbidden Chakra" skill.

MNK has stances and Riddle skills to promote being in certain stances. Which, if done well, could actually have stance dancing as an actual part of MNK's rotations (Outside of FoW > RoW > RoW > FoF for Greased generation). Such as if things like Riddle of Earth and Riddle of Wind were DPS CD's like Riddle of Fire that could offset the lack of Fists of Fire.

2. Its so you can weave more to maximise burst windows.

... Am I missing some skills then?

Since I can quite easily weave all 4 oGCD's into the space of 2 GCD actions without the slowdown. Maybe at high SkS? But even then, given that burst window CD's are 10s it shouldn't be necessary to have slowdown to fit your 4 oGCD's into the time frame even if you only single weave.

4. The short durations on the buffs just encourage high uptime, which melees should be doing anyway, and in times you know you're going to lose the timers, youve got tornado kick

Other melee are also encouraged to have high uptime. But don't have annoyingly short durations on their maintenance skills (Also, can quickly get their SkS buff up to make it faster to get the rest of their maintenance skills up. I.e. SAM can get Shifu up as their second skill and NIN can regain Huton via oGCD if for some reason the 70s duration buff ran out...)

Does Tornado Kick reapply all the buffs/debuffs? No.

Meaning that, yes, while Tornado Kick does mimic MCH's Overdrive in terms of frontloading damage before you get into forced downtime, it doesn't alleviate the clunk that is having to re-apply all your maintenance stuff for so many forced downtimes.

6. Formshift as a gcd makes sense, as you'll only use it when things are untargetable anyway, and having it as an OGCD would introduce more complexity into the monk rotation, i.e skipping certain bits of the combo chain to recover stacks quicker.

Why would it be a bad thing to have some extra complexity into the Monk rotation where you can use an oGCD Form Shift to skip some actions? Especially when Monk's rotations aren't progressively stronger like other jobs (In fact, True Strike is their hardest hitting combo action - Outside of Demolish's full duration that is)

Not to mention that even when things are untargetable, it being oGCD would be smoother as it wouldn't take 2.5 seconds to shift between each stance (Meaning that if you're shifting to get to Coeurl to get an instant Greased stack it takes 5 seconds as you go Nothing > Opo-Opo > Raptor > Coeurl)

[ReiMakoto]

Snip

A lot to unpack here.

Yes, tornado kick is a regular part of your rotation, much like how on warrior onslaught is a regular part of your rotation during IR, and how holy spirit is a part of your rotation as pld, but you typically dont use it unless req is up. You don't always fire off abilities off CD, but those abilities are still regular parts of your rotation. Just cos tornado kick has some strict requirements to be good, it doesn't mean its not a regular rotation skill (plus with riddle of wind it takes like 3 gcds to get your buffs back thats like nothing)

You're not missing skills, but you weave those 4, with forbidden chakra coming off cd randomly you can weave a lot more. I'm probably in the minority that likes the slowdown, because it makes the skills in rof feel more oomfy, then again i liked ranged cast bars.

I don't quite understand your point about Tornado kick refreshing the buffs/ debuffs, also the point is that mnk isn't SAM or NIN, its its own thing, and its thing is maintaining buffs. It doesn't take much at all to get your maintenance buffs back, plus most fights really dont have a lot of downtime built in (at least in savage) there will be like 2 maaaaybe 3 times you'll be forced to lose stacks, which you'll get back in 3 gcds, its just a skill ceiling thing I suppose.

I don't get why you're saying you have nothing wrong with making the rotation more complex, when its arguably the rotations complexity (or clunk) that you have an issue with. Having form shift be ogcd would mess with the buff timers even more, cos even if you extended the buff timers, the rotation would just be about squeezing out as many non buff combos as you can, which would make the timing still tight. Also I don't see the issue with it being 5 secs to form shift over to the right form to start the targetting, if you are losing stacks the boss is likely untargettable for a lot more than 5 secs, so its a non issue, if you're not getting ther fast enough, thats on you.

[Kazrah]

I'd think the biggest issue for Monk was really that where all the other jobs got rid of "useless" skills and abilities, Monk seemed to have greater focus placed on them to the point where nearly everything they got in Stormblood seemed borderline pointless. Such an issue may have been further impacted by the fact that the core components (the six baseline weaponskills) have never really needed to be altered or adjusted since ARR in comparison to the baseline weaponskill rotations of other jobs.

More abilities using Chakra, maybe a cooldown that grants a 3-stack of Greased Lightning, maybe even a utility ability that actually feels like you're helping others in your group....that might help for Shadowbringers.

[Darkplanet]

I personally love playing monk. I made a rotation that I’m sure it’s not 100% meta but I think it’s pretty good, and it’s a blast to play. It’s a LOT more intensive then other classes, but I feel like it has this intensity and fast paced aspect to it that actually feels like you are performing martial arts combos, I liken it to doing combos in say a 2d fighting game to a degree. Idk I’m a huge fan personally, but I can understand why people don’t like it.