Soooo... Shadowbringers Monk

[Shurrikhan]

The changes we got just feel wholly aimed at the lowest denominator, so to speak, of Monk. That or reactionary and equally unpolished bait-and-switch changes to the Stormblood toolkit.

We take the "obvious" thing asked for since HW by... precisely anyone who doesn't understand how ramp-up works or that power will be balanced around having it up basically full-time. And so dies the one bit of interesting gameplay we had surrounding TK in 4.2. Even if RoW had remained, the costs would make it no longer viable for rotation and utterly redundant with Riddle of Earth (now Anatman) as a on-jump mechanic.

Riddle of Earth was bad because shields could prevent it from being triggered, despite forcing the mitigation stance that makes it even more likely for its main effect not to work? Well, we'll replace it with Anatman, which now only half works so long as you're in the highest level of GL, requires that you be stationary, and has no defensive benefits on the offhand chance you wanted them.

Balancing AoE dps around a single core AoE have decent focus target damage and good burst through Perfect Balance? Well, we can't have that; players might be confused if they had to hit a non-AoE ability during AoE fights. Worse still if they had to consider resource efficiency or the like (as casters will continue to do). So, once the fight's begun, you get just one option per form for AoE, hurray!

Aside: I still don't know why people so want to remove RoF's slow-down. I rather enjoy it, since it offers significant burst to my oGCDs without having to squish my base damage as it would if it was a mere HW-era Raging Strikes copy. I notice speed when my speed changes, and I don't notice slow-downs any more than speed-ups so long as the side-effects are equally advantageous.
At present, no-RoF allows me particular rotational breakpoints (Double-Boot), while RoF allows me perfect breakpoints one rotational style slower (Demo-drop, if I care to make use of it) and allows me to double-weave at only very faint uptime cost. They're different, but neither is clunky for me. And thus I enjoy the variance. At most speeds, it's far more interesting than just another Raging Strikes.

But, of course, while it's true that we can't actually remove the speed penalty while supporting GL4 without overpowering Monk, we wouldn't want to leave a foot for such opinions to stand on, so let's just remove all the oGCDs that you otherwise could have double-weaved! There, now everyone will be ready to beg that the job be simplified even further in 6.0! Master plan successful.

We already had an interesting burst CD without penalties, and they took it away, likely to support GL4 and even more RNG-based performance. Internal Release actually synergized well with our Deep Meditation trait. So of course they took it away and gave its carbon copy to Dancer to ensure that one job will likely be basically non-competitive without the other. Out with the Piercing and the Crit-Bards -- in with the Dancer and the superCrit Monk from which to take both or skip both... Hurray?

So, what, ultimately are we getting?
- Greatly simplified macrorotation
- 2 GCDs and 123123123123123123 AoE gameplay.
- Even less choice of stats
- Redundant, rather than varied, jump choices; still unpolished
- Even more dependence on Crit raid buffs. RIP trying to play w/o DNC, DRG, SCH.

[KanameYuuki]

I understand they don't want to have MNKs run with GL3 all over the place but they should make it so Form Shift just refreshes GL timer with no stack gain when in battle, and there, no need for Anatman, RoE, SSS and they could rework TK, with that simple change MNK will get rid of skills bloat and then they can finally evolve the job like they did with BLK.

And if they believe that's somehow going to be unbalanced for old content then at least make that a trait for lv 60+

[SpeckledBurd]

I understand they don't want to have MNKs run with GL3 all over the place but they should make it so Form Shift just refreshes GL timer with no stack gain when in battle, and there, no need for Anatman, RoE, SSS and they could rework TK, with that simple change MNK will get rid of skills bloat and then they can finally evolve the job like they did with BLK.

And if they believe that's somehow going to be unbalanced for old content then at least make that a trait for lv 60+

Frankly Monk's potencies are so low and greased lightning's duration is so short that having Form Shift reset the GL timer really doesn't break anything. It just puts Monk's fight flexibility on par with Black Mage, which can do that exact same thing with Enochian/Astral Fire and Transpose. Upkeep for them is more difficult during the fight proper granted, but they aren't absolutely shafted or need 6 niche skills to keep it up. It's even something they have as soon as they get Enochian.

[wereotter]

Frankly Monk's potencies are so low and greased lightning's duration is so short that having Form Shift reset the GL timer really doesn't break anything. It just puts Monk's fight flexibility on par with Black Mage, which can do that exact same thing with Enochian/Astral Fire and Transpose. Upkeep for them is more difficult during the fight proper granted, but they aren't absolutely shafted or need 6 niche skills to keep it up. It's even something they have as soon as they get Enochian.

Monk potency numbers look low... until you factor in that Monk is a job that's all about stacking buffs. So take Bootshine as an example. The tooltip says potency of 140, but then you have to take into consideration that monk has Twin Snakes, Fists of Fire, and three stacks of Greased Lightning all buffing that potency. So once that's all added in, the actual potency of the skill is 220, putting it well above the comparable ninja move, Spinning Edge, which is a potency of 150.

But to the point that the job doesn't seem to evolve, that's something I 100% agree with. I often feel that the developers don't really know what to do with the job. In general monk players get what they ask for, though sometimes the developers don't really know what we mean. So as an example two things we asked for after Heavensward were reasons to use other fist stances and party utility, so in comes Riddle of Earth, Tackle Mastery, and Brotherhood.

I do think that you're right that the best way to help monk evolve and allow us to get more moves and have more meaning (I'm still salty that monk was the only job in Stormblood not to get any new attacks) is to allow Form Shift to refresh Greased Lightning as we cycle through our forms. Treat it the same as Enochian.

[SpeckledBurd]

Monk potency numbers look low... until you factor in that Monk is a job that's all about stacking buffs. So take Bootshine as an example. The tooltip says potency of 140, but then you have to take into consideration that monk has Twin Snakes, Fists of Fire, and three stacks of Greased Lightning all buffing that potency. So once that's all added in, the actual potency of the skill is 220, putting it well above the comparable ninja move, Spinning Edge, which is a potency of 150.

But to the point that the job doesn't seem to evolve, that's something I 100% agree with. I often feel that the developers don't really know what to do with the job. In general monk players get what they ask for, though sometimes the developers don't really know what we mean. So as an example two things we asked for after Heavensward were reasons to use other fist stances and party utility, so in comes Riddle of Earth, Tackle Mastery, and Brotherhood.

I do think that you're right that the best way to help monk evolve and allow us to get more moves and have more meaning (I'm still salty that monk was the only job in Stormblood not to get any new attacks) is to allow Form Shift to refresh Greased Lightning as we cycle through our forms. Treat it the same as Enochian.

I phrased what I typed poorly. Monk has low potencies, but as a buff Greased Lightning it’s one of the most powerful persistent buffs in the game. However even when stacked with other buffs, it’s not overpowering to the point where there needs to be situations where we have to lose it. All it does is bring Monks average combo potency up to a little above the average (where it should be relative Brotherhoods buffing ability).

[reyre]

I phrased what I typed poorly. Monk has low potencies, but as a buff Greased Lightning it’s one of the most powerful persistent buffs in the game. However even when stacked with other buffs, it’s not overpowering to the point where there needs to be situations where we have to lose it. All it does is bring Monks average combo potency up to a little above the average (where it should be relative Brotherhoods buffing ability).

You know what the sad part is, GL4 is just a 5% skill speed increase, since DK no longer grants the blunt debuff (10%) they just added it to Gl4 so we are actually hitting just as hard as now, maybe slightly faster, its kind of stupid that MNK feels like its limping because the devs cant make up their minds. RoF is the shittier version of B4B, in fact since they are making the healers "just heal" B4B is better than RoF from a desing point. SsS is kind of useless in rotation, so basically Tk 2.0, sorry, 5.0. Anatman is overkill and pointless since PB and RoE are a thing, oh right SsS also does roughly the same as anatman...but why?.

The more i ponder about it the weird-er MNK "new" skills are. WHY give MNK a crit based skill and then remove the crit buff? that is so contradictory, in the first place you dont crit enogh outside IR to make up for not having 2 oGCD (deep meditation II). Why is MNK still heavily dependant on party comp for a chunk of its "standard" DPS? I honestly dont get how it will play out in the game, i mean can you imagine going from 1-60 with just 2 oGCD, because Deep meditation i.e usable FC, only exist after 60, so stupid i just cant see MNK in a new light, also yoshida seems to be kind of a liar, "reworking the class" my foot.

[Shurrikhan]

Frankly Monk's potencies are so low and greased lightning's duration is so short that having Form Shift reset the GL timer really doesn't break anything. It just puts Monk's fight flexibility on par with Black Mage, which can do that exact same thing with Enochian/Astral Fire and Transpose. Upkeep for them is more difficult during the fight proper granted, but they aren't absolutely shafted or need 6 niche skills to keep it up. It's even something they have as soon as they get Enochian.

As someone who enjoys both BLM and MNK... I'd honestly prefer neither get such a cheap gimmick solution.

[Beddict]

Frankly Monk's potencies are so low and greased lightning's duration is so short that having Form Shift reset the GL timer really doesn't break anything. It just puts Monk's fight flexibility on par with Black Mage, which can do that exact same thing with Enochian/Astral Fire and Transpose. Upkeep for them is more difficult during the fight proper granted, but they aren't absolutely shafted or need 6 niche skills to keep it up. It's even something they have as soon as they get Enochian.

Black Mage is also getting Umbral Soul which will grant Umbral Ice and one Umbral Heart. If you're in a phase transition then just hit Transpose to pop over to Umbral Ice and then spend some GCDs on Umbral Soul to keep Enochian active and start off the next phase with a full stack of Umbral Hearts. It's an instant cast too so you aren't standing around like with Anantman and it doesn't require a target like Six-sided Star. It's amazing how bad the GL management tools are in comparison.

[SpeckledBurd]

Black Mage is also getting Umbral Soul which will grant Umbral Ice and one Umbral Heart. If you're in a phase transition then just hit Transpose to pop over to Umbral Ice and then spend some GCDs on Umbral Soul to keep Enochian active and start off the next phase with a full stack of Umbral Hearts. It's an instant cast too so you aren't standing around like with Anantman and it doesn't require a target like Six-sided Star. It's amazing how bad the GL management tools are in comparison.

Same with Dragoon, Blood of the Dragon can now be extended for 59 seconds and Life of the Dragon automatically goes to 30 when activated. Ninja doesn't have to worry about Huton either, it's duration is massive and refreshing it is simple. If you drop it it's on you.

Monk has the most buff upkeep skills of any job, but it's buff upkeep is still going to be the worst because all of the skills have some huge weakness. And the devs nerfed Monks recovery options for Greased Lightning back to having obscene lengths. It's asinine.

[Kolsykol]

I don't even care anymore, the Tifa FF7 reveal made me hype as all hell for Monk lol.


.....

BUT PLEASE MAKE TORNADO KICK USEFUL AND MAKE IT NOT EAT OUR GL.