is there any hope for monk?

[Kalise]

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.

IR is not War's rotation. It is their CD. Outside of IR, Onslaught is not a part of their rotation and is only used when its mobility is necessary.

Holy Spirit is part of your rotation as PLD. Since, when you don't have Fight or Flight up, you want to use it as often as possible, while still making sure to gain enough MP to Requiescat with a full MP bar. Since, outside of FoF, Holy Spirit is your highest damage skill (Not accounting for Goring Blade's full rotation)

What next? Your going to say that Enkindle Bahamut is a regular part of Summoner's rotation because it gets spammed on CD during the burst window they set up over 2 minutes?

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

You need to learn what a "Rotation" actually is.

Rotations are the things that you use continuously, which are only adapted when CD's are up that might change how you play (Such as how WAR's will spam Fell Cleave during IR, how PLD will spam Holy Spirit during Requiescat, how SMN will spam Ruin II during Bahamut)

Tornado Kick fits in with CD's, because you typically only want to use it when you have a CD available to regain Greased. But not only that, due to the way Greased affects your damage, you have extra conditions surrounding its use not just having CD's available - Such as ensuring you have enough duration on your Demolish and sometimes also trying to fit it into the tail end of your RoF.

If its intent was to be tied to Shoulder Tackle/Perfect Balance... Why not simply make it so that the skill is unusable unless you've used Shoulder Tackle/Perfect Balance without it consuming Greased?

You're not missing skills, but you weave those 4, with forbidden chakra coming off cd randomly you can weave a lot more.

I still don't see the need for it. I've never experienced a point in the game where I was unable to weave in skills fast enough. Outside of Machinists Wildfire rotation, because the oGCD's have animations that prevent double weaving...

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.

Buff maintenance isn't its own thing though.

Literally all the mDPS do that thing. Heck, DRG even has the exact same buff maintenance combo > damage combo flip-flop rotation.

But even DRG gets more lenient timers for its maintenance.

Like, MNK's buff/debuff maintenance timers makes sense if it was all about keeping 3 Greased and having tons of SkS to keep punching madly so that their short timers are still somewhat lenient because you perform your rotations so much faster. But they're not. They're arbitrarily designed around slowing down because TK eats their Greased and RoF eats their SkS.

It doesn't take much at all to get your maintenance buffs back

It takes at least 4 GCD's.

That's significant. Also, that's only if you have Perfect Balance available to use (Which also means one less TK because you have to use the PB duration to spam out your 3x Snap Punch for Greased + Twin Snake + Dragon Kick)

In a world where you don't have Perfect Balance available, then you have to use 6 GCD's + Riddle of Wind (Also costing a TK)

If you have neither available, you have to use 9 GCD's. (Depending on how much downtime you had and whether you spammed GCD Meditate or GCD Form Shift during said downtime)

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.

Monk isn't complex. It's simple.

It's literally, 123/123 and use Tornado Kick when you have things set up so that it won't be a DPS loss.

That's not complex. That's simple and just clunky.

Complexity =/= clunkiness.

Complexity will be something to do with how many options you have available where they each have ideal situations. So would be more closely shown through something like NIN where their combo finisher can alternate between Aeolian Edge or Armor Crush depending on where they are currently positioned (As opposed to MNK where you just do your 123 irregardless of if you hit the positional or not because even a non-positional combo'd Bootshine/True Strike does equal or more damage than a positional combo'd Dragon Kick/Twin Snakes) or their Ninjutsu where you have Doton/Raiton/Fuma Shuriken to pick from depending on how laggy you are and if you can snapshot a buff (With the boss standing in Doton for its full duration)

Clunk is when things are awkward or not fluid, because of poor design. Such as how DRG loses eye stacks when Blood of the Dragon drops. How MCH has RNG for their combo and awkward animations to deal with for their oGCD skills. How DRK has to mash Dark Arts before most of their skills and how it has a CD so you can't DA for an oGCD skill and a GCD skill back to back.

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.

It wouldn't mess with them, since it would be easier to maintain them. Since you'd be able to skip to the skills that would refresh them more easily. Especially for Greased which requires Coeurl, which is 2 GCD's to get to (5 seconds) meaning you need at least that long to get there as is.

Also I don't see the issue with it being 5 secs to form shift over to the right form to start the targetting.

5 seconds of Form Shifting is annoying to do pre-pull. Especially if I also want to Meditate pre-pull.

Like, we're talking 7 GCD's pre-pull to be maximally efficient. That's really god damn annoying to deal with when you want to optimize in all content (It's less annoying in Raids since you have countdowns so people can pre-pot and pre-cast anyway)

[Satarn]

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.

Also, ideally, you'd want these things to also happen at the end of Riddle of Fire too.

You don't get to arbitrarily decide what "regular" means, just because it "sounds like it" to you. By that logic Holy Spirit is "niche" because while you usually have extra MP outside of Req, casting it is a dps loss as the spell doesn't benefit from the slashing debuff. You could say Fell Cleave is "niche", because you generally want to get as high on Beast Gauge as possible for the crit bonus or save gauge for raid buffs and gods forbid you use Fell Cleave rather than Onslaught while Infuriate is off cd and you're at 60/70 gauge. Literally no resource based action is used "as soon as it's ready". Regular just means it's something you do fairly often - which you do with TK if you're playing correctly.

That setup you dislike so much, is what makes it engaging and enjoyable for a lot of people. It also adds extra optimization above "the standard" which some people would love to see in more jobs actually.
Also if you're only using TK at end of RoF, then you're screwing yourself out of a lot of dps.

Making Form Shift ogcd would most likely make it something you want to weave in constantly. I mean, double weaving that shit nearly every gcd. Now that's clunk.

I feel that MNK has such potential to be fun for me, so I put forward my feedback.

I feel like RDM has potential to be enjoyable for me, because I like the distance switching, but it would need a lot more ogcd weaving and more complex melee combos chained with spells to reach that potential. It would be however very unreasonable of me to ask SE to change it, as big part of RDM's appeal is it's simplicity. Not every job is for you and it shouldn't be, as that would mean there's not enough variety.

You need to learn what a "Rotation" actually is.

I'm afraid that might be you, considering you don't think buffs are part of the rotation.

[Kalise]

By that logic Holy Spirit is "niche" because while you usually have extra MP outside of Req, casting it is a dps loss as the spell doesn't benefit from the slashing debuff.

Holy Spirit is a DPS gain because it is stronger than the 2 skills you need to perform to access Royal Authority which reduces RA's DPS value even with its theoretically higher damage due to Slashing Debuff.

You could say Fell Cleave is "niche"

I literally did.

Fell Cleave is only used when about to cap Gauge (So, 90/100) and when Upheaval is not available (Or if Upheaval is available but you're below 60% life, without Thrill of Battle up).

Regular just means it's something you do fairly often - which you do with TK if you're playing correctly.

Regular means something you do fairly often.

Rotation is something somewhat cyclical that you perform repeatedly.

That setup you dislike so much, is what makes it engaging and enjoyable for a lot of people. It also adds extra optimization above "the standard" which some people would love to see in more jobs actually.

Yes, and people can opine about how much they love it.

I'm still allowed to express my own opinion too.

Making Form Shift ogcd would most likely make it something you want to weave in constantly. I mean, double weaving that shit nearly every gcd. Now that's clunk.

Why? What exactly are you cycling for? Are you cycling for the sake of cycling?

You'd only need to weave it if there was a reason to weave it. Which would be, like at best maybe you'd try and skip Snap Punch and Bootshine in favour for more True Strikes? (Unless Snap Punch got its potency increased to 180 with the positional bonus and then it would equal True Strike and thus you'd only maybe skip Bootshine?)

Unless we were still clinging to the mechanic of having Tornado Kick eat your Greased so then the rotation became literally just about putting up Dragon/Twin and then skipping to Snap/Demolish to Tornado Kick every 10s?

It would be however very unreasonable of me to ask SE to change it, as big part of RDM's appeal is it's simplicity.

It's not unreasonable to opine about it.

That's literally what feedback forums are for. To give your opinion about things.

Not every job is for you and it shouldn't be, as that would mean there's not enough variety.

Again, I'm allowed to provide my thoughts. Just like everyone else.

There are people who loved Bow Mage but that still didn't stop people providing their feedback saying they disliked it.

All I'm doing, is providing my feedback on this job that I play, just like with every other job that I play. Saying what I personally feel about the job.

If you don't like what I say, you don't have to agree, nor does SE have to do anything with my feedback.

My stating my thoughts that I think Monk is designed as a clunky mess won't magically make SE turn them into a carbon copy of DRG, in fact, it's likely that they won't even read my posts (Not unless people keep arguing with me in this thread so it becomes very long and people keep liking my first post in the thread where I mentioned about some of the clunky parts of MNK)

I'm afraid that might be you, considering you don't think buffs are part of the rotation.

What on earth are you talking about?

[Physic]

@Kalise

uhhh why are you calling different skills 123

call them 123 456

Doing 123456126453
is not the same as 123123123123
and if you get enough skill speed it starts looking like
123456456123

so your rotation evolves and changes, and changes again with like riddle.

mnk is different in that you are not commited to one chain or the other.


optimal monk rotations change based on your skill speed and greased lightning level.

which also changes when you use riddle/tk

also there no reason you would take 9 cool downs to get back gl3, you basically use it right before a couerl stance skill, so you will need 6 or 3

[ReiMakoto]

Regular means something you do fairly often.

Rotation is something somewhat cyclical that you perform repeatedly.

I'm glad you understand what a rotation is. Now say theres a buff, lets call it Inner release. Inner Release comes off cooldown every 90s, and to make optimal use of it you use it every 90s, you could almost say then that your rotation is operating in 90 second... cycles? That you are rotating through your skills over a 90 second period of time? Also yes to your point earlier, bahamut is part of your smn rotation, smn has the longest rotation in the game requiring a build up of minutes. Rotations arn't the few abilities you use the most regularly in a short time span, they're the cycle of abilities you use and are generally defined by your longest cd damaging cooldown

[SpeckledBurd]

Is there hope for Monk? Sure, but it's been tempered by bitterness at this point after Stormblood's promises of the Action Overhaul and Monk being the "Poster Job" (lol) gave me a ton of hope and utterly crushed any expectations with what they ended up delivering.

Monk has been in need of an action overhaul for the longest time of any Job in the game full stop. Going into Stormblood it had the greatest Number of useless actions of any job in the game, and even after the action overhaul it's still basically that. We had three fist stances, one of which we actually want to use because as a DPS we want the one that boosts potency. Skills like Haymaker, Featherfoot, Arm of the Destroyer and One Ilm Punch were worthless, and while they removed the two Former, the latter two are in the game and just as bad as ever. Tornado Kick in Heavensward was cool in terms of its animation but it’s opportunity cost was so high we could never use it except as a 1% mercy stroke. We had Purification, a TP regen that could only be used after using Meditate to build 5 chakras. Not a bad idea, Monk had TP woes in ARR, but building chakras was a damage loss unless the boss was untargetable…which meant you had already regained your TP, so the skill was useless. Meanwhile The Job Critical action, Perfect Balance (IE, your get to GL3 button) had an obscene cooldown, three times the length of equivalent skills Blood of the Dragon or Enochian.

The Stormblood actions and traits were also varying degrees of… bad. Tackle Mastery elected to try and tackle (heh) the issue with the fist stances while never actually fixing the inherent problem with Fists of Fire’s effect making the other two worthless, and it did so in the worst manner possible. Tackling in Earth gives you an effect you literally never want and it cuts your range, tackling in wind let you close a gap again, but only after using the gap closer once, and fire was additional potency… so you only wanted to stay in Fists of Fire more. Riddle of Earth is the dumbest conceivable solution to Greased Lightning possible. We have to get hit and take damage in order to refresh our stacks. The use case is when the boss jumps and does a big aoe. Sounds fine, but it isn’t because the bosses don’t always do an undodgeable AOE, sometimes you’re supposed to dodge and not supposed to take damage, so you have to run into the AOE like a fool (Shinryu, Rofocale, some others). Sometimes the boss won’t come back in time for it to be easy to refresh (ExFausts timing is extremely tight and if he thunders you gamble with your life). Sometimes they just don’t do an AOE in time, or AOE at all (Susano, Tsukiyomi, Lakshmi, some others). Further, because Greased Lightning’s duration is so short, if you didn’t get a combo finisher before the jump you might lose your stacks anyway. And, because you have to take damage for it to proc, a scholar critlo-ing might block you in the instances where it should work anyway (Twintania to Nael Transition). In Black Mage Terms, this would be like getting "Mana Ward Mastery: Extends Enochian Duration to Maximum when full 30% damage is absorbed" instead of tying enochian to AF/UI and letting you transpose”. Riddle of Fire is a powerful buff, allowing for Monk to have the strongest Burst in the game, but it also evokes the feeling of losing your stacks by giving you a slow, and quite a few people hate that and feel that it goes against what the Job is supposed to be. Monk’s timers also assume a ~2 second GCD so you’re required to clip or drop your buffs/dot occasionally. It was implemented to allow you to double weave when Brotherhood (discussed later) feeds you procs, but it’s literally impossible to get enough Forbidden Chakras to make this necessary. Deep Meditation and Brotherhood attach Bard Mechanics to Monk, but the procs come slow, they make Meditation worse at mitigating lost down time if you enter a down phase with Chakras built, and we have no means of dumping stacks early in the case we’re getting a lot of procs like Bard does with Pitch Perfect while also getting locked out of them because of Forbidden Chakra having a long cool down. Further, Brotherhood only procs from Weaponskills, not spells, so Monk just feels worse if there’s a caster DPS in the party. Many people don’t like the RNG aspect of it inherently, preferring the more consistent playstyle from Heavensward/ARR.

That was just at launch. Moving forward to 4.2, they made some other changes that, while it did make Monk recover from losing its stacks much easier, also allowed quite a few of the terrible design choices to coalesce into a lot of really clunky mechanics or made Monk suffer losses that no one else had to put up with. Riddle of Wind gained the effect of Granting one Stack of Greased Lightning and Perfect Balance’s cooldown was cut to a third because 3 minutes was unreasonably long and had been forever. That’s a good idea and it also made it feasible to use Tornado Kick, which a lot of people liked. Indeed, the optimal monk rotation involves doing that, but it’s extremely clunky. It takes a stance change and two oGCDs to finally get Riddle of Wind’s effect and one stance change to get back to fire after a Tornado kick. Monks buff durations, as mentioned, all assume a 2 second GCD, so wildly fluctuating it by dropping your stacks makes performing this rotation extremely tight and sensitive to fight mechanics. Some people like how much maximization this allows for, others hate the way it feels. It’s probably the most polarizing aspect of the job at this point, but since it goes against the devs stated desire to bring down the skill ceiling it means that the TK rotation is a total accident and probably getting the axe.

Purification also got an Aggro cut attached to it, so we can cut our aggro finally, but we’re the only job to lose 400+ potency oGCD to do it. Samurai doesn’t even lose kenki, just more efficient Kenki use. Black Mage doesn’t have to give up a Foul to Lucid, so why should Monk get penalized? Answer, it shouldn’t but it does anyway.

So at this point Monk has two problems both of which necessitate an overhaul. Bad Skills and Traits that work poorly or shouldn’t exist. The Three Fist Stances that shouldn’t exist and by extension Tackle Mastery. One Ilm Punch, a skill so bad the devs have mocked it in game on multiple occasions. Purification, which makes monk take a penalty for basic functionality that other jobs can just do and will soon be without it’s primary usage because TP is being removed. Arm of the Destroyer, a 50 potency AOE that costs more TP than our higher damaging AOE Skill, but hey it has a silence that’s never of use since everyone else can do that much easier and for less of a loss. It will be less bad in Shadowbringers because of TP's removal, but the amount of damage it does is so pitifully low that it’s often better to just bootshine in AOE. And Riddle of Earth, a skill whose activation requirement might make sense on a Tank but on a DPS just makes no sense. The other is skills, that while effective, go against what the job should be such as Riddle of Fire. Yet in spite of having so many bad actions, Monk still has basic utility missing from it's kit such as a ranged poke Weaponskill, an AOE Gauge dump, a disengage skill, a DPS neutral gap closer or movement skill, and literally any kind of new Weaponskill since ARR.

[enthauptet]

It'd be better if they just gave us 3.0 monk back to be honest. SB changes and tornado kick rotation are just a big joke (especially if you remember the job quests).

[Burningskull]

MNK will be awesome in 5.0 when they remove positionals.

[SpeckledBurd]

The positive to this is, the devs are aware of how poorly received Stormblood Monk has been. They acknowledged how much we didn't like Riddle of Fire's slow during a Q&A during sometime in 4.1 or so and I'd be surprised if they've missed the feedback on pretty much everything else wrong with the job. With Bard and Paladin going into Heavensward, it resulted in them being overhauled into the most popular iterations of those jobs ever. That is why I can still say there's hope for Monk, they have overhauled jobs to great effect when they actually knew what the issues are.

I'm just praying we get a an overhaul like Bard or Paladin and not one like Stormblood Machinist.

[KingFrost]

I hope they correct the flow of the job. Too much feels "off" about Monk.

Riddle of Wind is clunky. Double tackle keeps you locked in place, potentially costing a positional and is anathema to the job's motif of speed and agility (Read: Moving around a lot).

Stance dancing just adds to button bloat. FoW is still useless and FoF is still mandatory. They're only ever hit for ONE oGCD, which in and of itself feels like clunky design. 2 (3 with RoW/ST) more buttons to press for one move? A trait could solve this.

Riddle of Fire is anathema to GL3 and what makes Monk fun (For me anyways). This has already been discussed to hell and back, but it's still pertinent. It just shows that SE has no sense of what to do with Monk.

The job needs a makeover. Here's hoping the 24th leaves it sitting pretty.