Speculations on Shadowbringers' Monk (Long)

[Xaert]

Inb4 woah buddy, that’s a big wall of text, get your book published.

TL;DR: Despite the Devs claiming they listened to the playerbase about Monk not being fun in 4.0, the class seems disappointing, ambiguous at best in 5.0 with few of the glaring flaws being resolved from the previous expansion.

From the time I am writing this on May 29th, I have just read the GamerEscape Ability and Trait descriptions as posted on their website and finished eating my quesadilla. While I understand that the contents of these images are tentative and not reflective of the final product, I have no extraneous reason to believe that the tooltips contained inside the images are to be changed in any way for the 5.0 expansion, Shadowbringers; when there was similar malcontent to how Monk was showcased at the San Francisco Media Tour from 3.0, Heavensward, leading into 4.0, Stormblood, there were little to no changes reflected from the Media Tour to the actual expansion.

The well-rounded, fast-paced Monk from A Realm Reborn (2.0), which the Developers considered to be a completed class, was expanded upon and well received by many Monks with the addition of the vital Form Shift, Chakras, an AoE oGCD, and an oGCD that expended GL3 when you knew you were going to lose it regardless. The only critical reception of this rendition of Monk is how negligible Monk performed in a raid-environment, with little to no raid utility to offer being described as a “selfish” DPS class. Regardless of how the raid community held the lackluster Monk bringing around the Delete Monk meme, the Monk mains I have spoken to generally regarded that version of Monk to be the best gameplay-wise.

Going from 3.0, the Dragoon-themed expansion, to 4.0, the Monk-themed expansion, people were expecting a continuous metamorphosis of the class similar to how 2.0 transitioned into 3.0. However, the 4.0 rendition of Monk was not very well received at first, bringing about a slew of flaws in its wake. Due to demand from players, the developers implemented a way to generate Chakras within battle. This was done by adding a trait called Deep Meditation that tied generating Chakras to Critical Hits from weaponskills (GCDs) at a rate of 50% per crit from GCDs. Another Ability was tied into this, called Brotherhood, which was also demanded from the raiding playerbase to have form of raid utility. Brotherhood gave a 5% physical damage increase to allies (and post-4.2, the Monk themself) along with a 30% to generate Chakras when party members performed a weaponskill. The introduction of this Trait and Ability decreased the potency of Forbidden Chakra from 320 to 210, and while in theory may have felt as a positive addition, I, and I assume a multitude of others, did not enjoy the new main Gauge mechanic being tied to RNG for mid-battle generation as I did not feel that the Deep Meditation Trait generated Chakras well enough to compensate for damage outside of Brotherhood, which the effects were only felt when there were a reasonable amount of melee DPS in the party. It is widely regarded that Brotherhood itself is not bad, just not ideal as many other forms of raid utility like Trick Attack (a utility much too strong, in my opinion) and Battle Litany.

The latter portion of the skills implemented in 4.0, however, were very critically received by the Monk populace. These skills were: Tackle Mastery, Riddle of Earth (RoE), and Riddle of Fire (RoF). The first, Tackle Mastery, was the first implementation of the idea of a stance-based skill which effects varied depending on which stance you were in. With Fists of Fire, there was a potency increase. Fists of Wind gave Shoulder Tackle a follow-up move called Riddle of Wind, which had the same potency as Shoulder Tackle but added a stack of Greased Lightning. Finally, Fists of Earth featured a knockback tacked onto it. The most notable out of these three variations is Fists of Wind, which drastically changed the most optimal rotations to incorporate Tornado Kick, a move rarely used in 4.0, into normal use. Many Monks embraced this evolution of the Monk rotation, adding another layer of complexity and rewarding better play although some claimed that it felt clunky.

The second addition, Riddle of Earth, was another move that may have been good in theory, but very poorly executed. The supposed idea was to add a way for Monks to be able to refresh Greased Lightning stacks on the fly. In reality, it was an broken ability that not only encouraged bad play and disrupted Monks damage output, but also broke a taboo of basic DPS mechanics: don’t get hit. Riddle of Earth was an ability that changed your stance to Fists of Earth and would extend your Greased Lightning duration to maximum and give you a 10%, but only if you were to sustain damage. This forcibly put you out of your main DPS stance, Fists of Fire, into a defensive stance and reduced overall DPS output. On top of this, Riddle of Earth would only extend your GL to maximum were you to incur damage, not just taking a hit. This means that a healing spell with a shield could deny you refreshing if the shield was too strong or the damage was too weak to break the shield. This move is widely considered terrible, especially when compared to other moves like Armor Crush and Fang and Claw/Wheeling Thrust which can extend their buff at just the press of a button and tied into the main rotation.

The final addition, one that disgruntled Monks far and wide, including myself, is Riddle of Fire. Riddle of Fire was Monk’s damage increase move after cross-class actions from 3.0 were made defunct. Riddle of Fire boasted a hefty 30% increase in damage at the cost of slowing down GCD recast time by 15%. What this essentially meant is the Haste bonus you get from your main battle mechanic, Greased Lightning, was reduced from 15% back down to 0, so the speed of Monk would be equivalent to that of a Monk with no Greased Lightning stacks. This move is by far considered the most contradictory move as of yet to be added to Monk’s repertoire by going against all the identity the class had built up from 2.0: hit hard and hit fast. The developers justified this decision by saying that Monk in Stormblood would be operating on too low of a GCD recast timer and that weaving would become increasingly difficult, so the slowdown was meant so you could consistently double-weave oGCDs in your burst rotation easily. The main playerbase of Monks did not accept this as an acceptable reason, as speed of gameplay was the primary reason they played the class. Another factor in why this disgruntled many a Monk is the identity that Monk had was undeniably usurped by the new Stormblood class, Samurai, which left Monk in a very precarious place for the Developers, as they had no idea what to make of the class with Samurai introduced. The community, on the other hand, was persistent in Monk being the class that emphasizes speed above power, as Samurai was nowhere near the speed of Monk.

With the two years of disgruntled Monks (and MCHs too, you know who you are), Yoshi-P admitted in Liveletter #51 that Stormblood’s Monk was simply not fun to play and that they had listened to the players and made changes to make the class more fun and better to play. As I’m sure many other Monks, including myself, jumped for joy to hear Yoshi-P actually admit that the class the playerbase said played bad that was so fervently denied by him in the entirety of the expansion was sweet, blissful nectar to their ears and gave Monks hope, especially after seeing Greased Lightning 4 being implemented in the Liveletter job skill showcase.

That hope was almost immediately met with equal worry from Monks after seeing the traits and skills that were shown in the San Francisco Media Tour, similar to the distress from Heavensward’s Media Tour. Primarily the reason for worry, two of the staple oGCDs that we use in and out of burst rotation, Steel Peak and Howling Fist, along with our Critical Hit Rate buff, Internal Release, are being removed from the game in 5.0 (One Ilm Punch is, too, but that skill has long overstayed its welcome). These abilities, that have been with us since 2.0 and have been a core part of Monk’s gameplay, are being erased. This hasn’t been the first time Monk has lost a core part of its rotations, with its staple DoT, Touch of Death, being culled with most other classes DoTs in 4.0. Another worrying issue of this is that this means that Monk will be receiving their first self buffing ability at level 68 rather than at level 10. This is a rather serious pacing issue introducing a self buff so late in the game. I sincerely hope the Developers reconsider this action as this takes away a significant portion of the engaging burst rotation Monk has.

There were numerous changes to existing skills along with the addition of new skills; I’ll talk about the revamped skills and traits first though. Starting with Arm of the Destroyer, it has been revamped to have an Opo-opo Form potency bonus, which is a respectable increase and makes it very worthwhile to use. Next is Dragon Kick, which no longer gives Blunt Resistance Down, but instead Grants Leaden Fist, which increases Bootshine Potency by 100. This change actually feels like a nerf, as I feel a 100 potency increase to our main crit move wouldn’t compensate for the loss of the resistance debuff on every move; however I don’t think that the change would be significant in this case. The next move is Perfect Balance, which has, regrettably, had its cooldown reinstated to its original cooldown of 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. The worst part of this change is how it makes the Tornado Kick rotation unviable, which many Monks utilized and adored. The Forbidden Chakra has also had its potency returned to its original amount, going from 220 to 320 potency. I assume the main reason for this change is solely due to the fact they have taken two of our main oGCDs away from our kit entirely and as such I am perturbed at this reason. The next is Tackle Mastery, the terrible trait. It has been changed from stance based variations to simply allow multiple charges to stack, allowing consecutive execution of the oGCD. It seems this change has been made to many movement-based skills, so this is more of an across the board change. That completes all of the changes to already existing skills and traits.

Starting from level 72, we are introduced to new skills and traits (though one is an old trait revamped). At level 72, we have a trait called Enhanced Fists of Fire which increases the damage increase for Fists of Fire from 5% to 10%. A simple implementation and change to understand. At level 74, we have our first AoE Chakra based skill Enlightenment. At Forbidden’s Chakra’s old potency of 220, this move has enormous width but the same range as the now deceased Howling Fist, assuredly meant as a replacement. At level 76, we have a familiar name: Riddle of Wind. This trait has been revamped to give access to Greased Lightning 4, which goes in hand with the Enhanced Fists of Fire trait so one stance isn’t more powerful than the other, but Riddle of Wind will give a 5% speed increase over its counterpart. At level 78, we have the Monk equivalent of Samurai’s skill Meditate which is called Anatman. When possessing GL stacks and you use this ability, it will freeze the GL timer from decreasing and if you aren’t at maximum GL stacks, you will slowly generate to the full amount. However, if you are at maximum stacks, all it will do is stop the timer from decreasing instead of refreshing to the maximum duration. It has a cooldown of 60 seconds, which is fairly generous and any movement will cancel this move. This ability is nice to have, a wonderful GL management tool, much more desirable over its counterpart, Riddle of Earth, though I will admit I have my reservations about its efficacy in actual play. At level 80, we have Six-sided Star, which is a GCD with 400 potency but a natural recast time twice that of your normal GCD. When used, it extends GL to its maximum duration and does not share a recast timer with any other GCDs. However, when you use it, its GCD will be applied to all GCDs on your bar. This move seems to be best utilized when the boss is moving just out of reach to where you can’t catch up to keep up DPS or at the end of the RoF burst rotation for a nice chunk of damage, but may be primarily intended for an anti-clipping tool.

With all this in mind, many things that players griped about that ruined what Monk is was not addressed with these changes, and there are a slew of problems that carried over from 4.0 and problems that seem to exist within 5.0 potentially. The number one gripe of Monks was how the class was forcibly slowed down by Riddle of Fire, something that had not changed that a great multitude were hoping for, including myself. When the devs had said they listened to the players, I assume many were hoping they would address this. Riddle of Earth still only procs its GL refresh on damage taken, which keeps it in its same broken state as it was in 4.0. Fists of Earth is to highly situational to actually use, especially going into this expansion which is curious as to why they didn’t cull it with the rest of the skills or be rid of the stances entirely as they feel as if they’re a failed concept that they just keep around to not have to worry about overhauling. Tornado Kick, while sure to be seldom used in the future, can be used under the effect of GL3 and GL4 and consumes all stacks, but with no difference in efficacy. Deep Meditation still has Monk crutch a good portion of its damage dealing potential behind RNG making crit bonuses from other classes like DRG, SCH, and eventually DNC. On top of that, Brotherhood is still reliant on weaponskills for its mechanic, making Monks still reliant on fully physical DPS compositions, which really just stymies class diversity. Six-sided Star seems to have a lot of potency, so it’s going to be given you’re going to want to be spamming that mid-burst rotation for big damage, but it comes with another forced slowdown like with Riddle of Fire, which, again, Monks don’t want. Along with all these lack of improvements to Monk, you have also streamlined all of Monks abilities to the point where it feels like we’re just back at 2.0, where rotations are just 1>2>3 perpetually, but now with fewer oGCD to utilize.

While I do understand most of this information is not final and is tentative, that gives me no relief. I was there when they said that for 4.0 Monk and nothing was changed at all. All of what I said is just speculation as to what the class will be upon release. I will be playing Monk immediately when Shadowbringers hits and will reserve final judgement until then. When I heard Monk was getting a rework, along with DRK, MCH, and WHM, I didn’t want skills I’ve had for years taken away from my rotation. What I wanted was a clear attempt to improve Monk from what it previously was, a forcefully-inhibited class, into a class that did not need to be inhibited artificially by slowdowns tacked onto damage increases.

Yoshida, Balance Team, Square Enix Japan or NA, I don’t know who or what even views the forums for this content, if at all, but I have to tell you honestly: I don’t have faith in you. You said you listened to the players, but were we really talking about the same players? A huge amount of the Monk mains I’ve talked to said that they’re not happy with where the class is at; I’m trying to avoid the “royal we” when talking about Monks because there are some that I have talked to that are okay with how it is, but they usually don’t have Monk as their main class. Not discrediting their perspectives on the class, but what even is your vision for Monk? The progression that Monk has had is near non existent from Heavensward. Do you really feel Monk was a completed Job in 2.0? Do you actually have no idea what to do with it? If that is the case, then I implore you to find capable people to replace your balance team as it seems audio issues on streams aren’t your only issues to worry about. I don’t expect anyone to actually read all this, just wanted to get it out there before it actually hit. I’ll probably edit this post later with my actual thoughts on the class once it arrives and experiencing it.