Soooo... Shadowbringers Monk

[SpeckledBurd]

Sooooo… Shadowbringer Monk.

So I’ve got a lot of opinions about Shadowbringers Monk at this point, just as I had quite a few opinions about Stormblood Monk. While I certainly don’t have the same visceral revulsion I had toward Stormblood Monk I still think there’s a lot of problems the devs need to seriously consider regarding it before they ship it. Because I feel what we are getting now is incomplete. Technically they’re three separate topics and I considered making three threads for them, but for the sake of not dumping a bunch into the forum I’ll just address them all at once. They can be summarized in three points: Stormblood Monk’s very existence, continued attempts to expand upon the Fist Stances without addressing their inherent problem, and Way Too Much Greased Lightning Management.

1. Stormblood Monk was poorly designed per the devs admission, but they haven't done anything about it

So during the live letter a few weeks ago and during several of the interviews following the media Tour, Yoshi-P said that the players of Monk didn't like the direction the Job took in Stormblood, and that the dev team agreed that it did not evolve well during 4.0.

So my question is, why have basically none of the actions from Stormblood changed at all?

Just to go down the list of problems people had with Stormblood Monk point by Point:

Level 62 Deep Medition. People wanted more Forbidden Chakras, so we got this. However, people didn't like Monk becoming RNG dependent. People Especially didn't like Monk becoming double layered RNG Dependent. This hasn't changed, and indeed, our level 74 Trait is an expansion upon this.

Level 64: Riddle of Earth. It’s activation requirements are bad and absolutely counterintuitive on a DPS. Monk’s Greased Lightning, like Black Mage’s Enochian, has an incredibly short timer on it’s buff. What it needs is a powerful, on demand tool to refresh its stacks and be able to do it easily. Black Mage got exactly that in Transpose, meanwhile Monk got this. Riddle of Earth, frankly is the worst 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 for many reasons. 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 refreshable (O4S Exdeath timing following Decisive Battle is extremely tight and if he Thunder III’s 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, sufficient party mitigation can make you take no damage and it won’t proc (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. This is bad design.

Level 66: Tackle Mastery. At Launch it was the new One Ilm Punch for obvious reasons. The trait was worthless. It payed lip service to the idea of Monk having Multiple Stances you’d dance between in order to elevate your play, while not addressing the core issue of Fist Stances. More on this under it’s own bullet point.

Level 68: Riddle of Fire. Riddle of Fire is a powerful buff, allowing for Monk to have the strongest Burst in the game even, 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. Monk should not receive skills that cut it’s GCD, flat out, as it runs contrary to the core of the Job (Greased Lightning’s Haste). Now it exists to allow Monk to double weave it’s several oGCDs and because of the RNG nature of Deep Meditation and Brotherhood, but that in and of itself is a problem, as the RNG isn’t something Monks want and many people liked that Monk didn’t need to double Weave in Heavensward.

Level 70: Brotherhood. Brotherhood addressed Heavensward Monks desire for some means of buffing the party and the Devs Desire for Samurai to be the new max damage Melee in one fell swoop. That’s good. The problem is the way it’s implemented. As mentioned, it’s RNG proc based which isn’t something Monks like. But what’s worse, is that it also makes Monk comp dependent. Brotherhood does not proc off of Spells, for every caster in the party, a Monk performs notably worse.

So what changed from Stormblood? Well basically nothing. Tackle Mastery is now a trait that gives Shoulder Tackle charges, which rather than being a change for Monk is instead part of a change in ability design for the expansion as a whole. Riddle of Fire can now be used outside of Fists of Fire, but that was never the problem. It was the slow, and the Double Weaving that the Slow existed to Facillitate is now actually less prevalent than it was because Steel Peak and Howling fist are being removed. But all of the rest of these problems that are inherent to the skill’s designs or part of peoples critique of Stormblood Monk are still the same.
So what gives? Why are you acknowledging that Monk evolved poorly and not actually addressing it?

Why are you actively expanding upon something people didn’t like in Deep Meditation’s double layered RNG with Deep Meditation II?

And speaking of things that keep getting expanded upon without addressing their problems…

2. The Fist Stances
So the selling point for Monk in Shadowbringers is Greased Lightning 4. I love the idea, it’s fantastic. It’s what I wanted in Stormblood. Unfortunately, it’s tied to the Fist Stances and once again reinforces a problem with them that’s existed since ARR.

Monk is a DPS. DPS exist to Deal Damage. During ARR, HW, and SB, there has always been one Fist Stance that boosts Damage output, and that’s Fists of Fire. Ideally, you’d never touch the others and maximize your time in fire (Except for 4.2 when Wind Tackle allowed you to pick up a stack of Greased Lightning and accidentally created the Tornado Kick rotation). The fist stances still have that problem, it’s just that now that GL4 is tied to wind, we’re going to maximize our time in it and never touch Fire outside of recovery periods.

The other fist stances, again, may as well not exist in an ideal world. Enhanced Fists of Fire at level 62? Will get used for 4 levels and then get dropped outside of all other situations. There is no thought in how to use these stances. We do not rotate between them, there is no reason to. We will just want to be in Wind as much as possible.

Do away with the Fist Stances, stop tying things to them. They may as well not exist at this point.

3. The continued focus on Greased Lightning Management Skills are Preventing the Job from truly evolving.

So two of Monks skills for Shadowbringers are Greased Lightining Management Skills, Anantman and Six Sided Star. While they seem great at first blush, we’ve already got a lot of those at this point. Form Shift, Perfect Balance, Riddle of Earth, and Tornado Kick. That’s a total of 6 skills for buff management. Form Shift is only good for short transitions. Riddle of Earth has all the problems I previously mentioned in the Stormblood heading. Tornado Kick is only supposed to be used when the other two skills won’t work (TK rotation not withstanding). Anantman can only be used during phases where Monk can’t move, limiting its Mobility in down phases. Six Sided Star meanwhile is just better Tornado Kick, great for disengaging, but almost invalidates TK’s existence with the other skills considered.

That’s a lot of skills for a single thing, especially for a Job like Monk that hasn’t gotten a new weaponskill we can routinely use literally ever.

By comparison, Dragoon has one Button to grant and extend its buff in Blood of the Dragon that can allow it to go for 59 seconds without hitting the boss. Ninja has one Jutsu and Armor Crush and can go 70 seconds without hitting a boss. Black Mage has Transpose which can currently extend Enochian Indefinitely with full mobility and soon Umbral heart, which will extend it indefinitely while also building a gauge Umbral Hearts.

I believe the big reason Monk never actually feels like it evolves is because we keep getting highly situational Greased Lightning Upkeep skills, while everyone else is getting Single Target Nukes and AOE Nukes that reward them for actually performing their rotation properly.

For Monk to truly evolve, it should have design that’s more like these jobs. Greased Lightning has a short Duration like Enochian, so I shall make a direct comparison to black mage. Form Shift Should work like Transpose and just Refresh Greased Lightning when we go from Coeurl to Opo Opo, we don't need all these other tools. Instead of having a bunch of tools to upkeep it, we should be rewarded for upkeeping Greased Lightning we should be getting Tornado Kick to use as our our Foul, Six Sided Star should be our Xenoglossy. The new skills we get should be used in every fight, they shouldn’t go unused because that particular fight doesn’t have the niche it’s meant to cater to.

[CyriacWolfe]

I completely agree with all your points. They really need to double down on Monk's identity as the fastest job in the game in terms of GCD speed. I really wish they just let us go fast all the time without these silly slowdowns and niche maintenance skills forced upon us. At least we got GL4.

[echo78]

Yep, everything you said is accurate but it won't get any attention anyway. Monk is the worst designed job in the game and no one cares. Another 2 years of monk getting trash for new abilities while still having trash from previous expansions while every other DPS job actually evolves and gets new stuff. Monk just loses things (touch of death, internal release, fracture, howling fist, steel peak) and gets nothing that is actually new in return. After wasting 2 years of stormblood hoping the devs would actually fix monk for 5.0 we are stuck with more garbage for another 2 years. Can't wait to see what redundant and useless GL maintenance abilities they tack onto monk in 6.0 cause we sure won't get anything new or fun.

[guardin]

Sooooo… Shadowbringer Monk.

he niche it’s meant to cater to.

i disagree. monk was trash begignning but now it feels amazing minus the rof slow down. now with the changes for 5.0 the ONLY problem is the slow down and rof. maybe they are adding a safety net because in the live letter they said by 5.3 monk will be unbelievably fast. If they see we can handle the speed they may just remove the slow downs or maybe they are right. maybe a 15 sec slowdown from rof is what we need to catch our breath? wait and see

[KanameYuuki]

Another two years of disappointment with MNK, not like they would or could change anything now but the sad part is that MNK has the numbers so on their eyes it means the job is perfectly fine, it needs a rework of some kind, not MCH extreme but they need to reconsider about it.

At this point if they remove RoF slow I would be more than satisfied and shut up about the job.

And I'm just baffled by TK and Six Sided Star, don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about the new one but what's the point of adding it, they should have reworked TK to have that exact effect, it would have saved them so much dev time and money and I think we would finally move on about TK complains.

[echo78]

And I'm just baffled by TK and Six Sided Star, don't get me wrong I'm not complaining about the new one but what's the point of adding it

Because they are unable to add anything new to monk. Riddle of fire was just blood for blood with a slowdown tacked on. Meditate trait is just more chakra but with RNG layered with RNG. Tackle mastery was literally just shoulder tackle (in 4.0). Riddle of earth was mostly useless and if it did work... It just kept GL (thanks for the tank stance on a DPS job I guess?). Brotherhood was just more RNG chakra with the most worthless token utility tacked on. In SH we are getting... Another freaking RNG chakra trait that won't make up for losing internal release. A throwaway trait for FOF that shouldn't exist. Howling fist with a chakra requirement (better for dungeons, worse for raids, so its actually a bad thing). Another situational (aka useless in most fights) skill to keep stacks. GL4, which probably took 2 whole seconds to create. And our whoop de doo level 80 skill is a useless tornado kick rip off that is useless in a max uptime fight. I can't imagine using SSS more then a couple of times per savage fight. We can't even charge chakra immediately after using it. The devs are unwilling to create anything new for monk. They just keep rehashing skills we already have and pretend its new and exciting. Its a joke.

[xxvaynxx]

I feel for you.
Its just a shame because Mnk community...well rather...the dps community not Bard/Mch and probably soon dancer, Are very quiet and don't look at the forums much.
At least in NA.
So stuff like this hardly get noticed.

I should actually say the melee community in general never really throws a fit about things as much as the casters and physical range. Its probably why SE never knows what to do with melee jobs.
Then when we do, it gets as little replies as these. They tend to complain in places where SE will never see, like discord and reddit.

Pretty much have to bet on the JP forums to suggest good things.

[SpeckledBurd]

I feel for you.
Its just a shame because Mnk community...well rather...the dps community not Bard/Mch and probably soon dancer, Are very quiet and don't look at the forums much.
At least in NA.
So stuff like this hardly get noticed.

I should actually say the melee community in general never really throws a fit about things as much as the casters and physical range. Its probably why SE never knows what to do with melee jobs.
Then when we do, it gets as little replies as these. They tend to complain in places where SE will never see, like discord and reddit.

Pretty much have to bet on the JP forums to suggest good things.

They have acknowledged it. For example they acknowledged how unpopular the Slowdown on Riddle of Fire was during a Q&A in like, 4.1 and said if we hated it they'll change it. They even acknowledged it during the Famitsu Q&A:

Q: In the end, Greased Lightning IV wasn't added in Stormblood.

Yoshida: We did test it, of course... and when we tried bringing up the skill speed as much as we could, we found that it was too fast for MNK's current system and basically unplayable. At the time, we were confident in how complete MNK was at a job, so we went the route of burst damage at the cost of speed, and made it so that there wouldn't be any extreme variance in how it's played. However, it turned out that that wasn't fun for the players who enjoyed MNK.

Q: That's the impression you got from Stormblood, then.

Yoshida: When you're comfortable with the fast speed, then it feels stressful to have to slow down, no matter how much of a DPS increase it is. Even if we do something with the players in mind, if they don't enjoy it, then it's the wrong choice.

They keep acknowledging it. They just don't do anything about it and it feels like they're continuing to pay lipservice to how much we hate something while never actually solving the problem.

So it's actually worse than stuff like this getting noticed. It's getting noticed, and then summarily ignored while they act like it isn't. It would be like if they acknowledged the outcry to Wanderer's Minuet having cast times and then didn't do anything about it while talking it up like they did.

I've ranted on the balance discord regarding Monk and agree with everything you've said. It feels as though the devs keep catering to bad monks that can't keep GL up. Which keeps the job in the stale limbo state as opposed to rewarding good play. Then again. SE caused this problem with TK where some players spam it on cooldown, blissfully unaware it is a dps loss to do so. Maybe we'll get decent changes halfway through the expansion; though I wish these problems that have persisted for years now weren't still prevalent.

As time goes on Tornado Kick in particular becomes a bigger and bigger tumor on Monks kit. It never did enough damage in Heavensward to justify it's use outside of a Niche that very rarely came up or as a .1% execute. They reduce its cooldown to nothing and it becomes an even worse trap for new players to fall into. Meanwhile, continued design trends like Riddle of Earth (still arguably the worst designed skill in the game regardless of how it takes some niche use from Tornado Kick) and Anantman reduce it's already small Niche to near non-existence. The only time it’s ever seen consistent use was a total accident on the devs part and, IMO, kinda janky.

Yet in spite of all this it's one of the most satisfying to see skills in Monks entire kit to see. It's animation is gorgeous, and the devs are aware of that because they use the animation for it every time they can.

[reyre]

Yet in spite of all this it's one of the most satisfying to see skills in Monks entire kit to see. It's animation is gorgeous, and the devs are aware of that because they use the animation for it every time they can.

Oddly enough i have never liked how TK looks, since i saw it at HW. Honestly it felt and still does feel bland AF it really makes me think that they have no clue on how or what to make out of MNK, gameplay wise and animation wise. I mean for what it should be a "HUGE" (lol) bump in dps in exchange of the core of mnk (GL), it looks like half of demo animation mixed with a pvp skill animation (somersault, i think is called?).
Its the same thing with meditation the animation is he exact same as Arm of the destroyer, the only 2 differences is the orange/yellow/red-ish aura on meditation and the direction of the face (in Arm the character model is looking up, in meditation is looking foward) it really feels cheap, rushed and not thought out at all.

[Powercow]

I agree with your post. I'd like to add 2 more little tidbits though, both regarding Deep Meditation and one with Brotherhood.

1: 70% chance on crit is awful. It's not that it's too low, it may average out to be the exact number we need but it's going to *FEEL* awful. Now when you use Bootshine or get a couple of crits in a row it's not "oh good I got a chakra!" it's now "damn it I didn't get a chakra..." It may simply be a perception thing but I know for sure I'm going to notice when I don't get chakra stacks a whole hell of a lot more than I do now. Buff it to 100% and nerf TFC and Enlightenment appropriately. Any RNG chance above 50% shouldn't be a thing in these games because it feels like you lose when it doesn't happen, versus winning when it does. It'll also give monks more buttons to push organically, helping them feel like a faster job.

Funnily enough this reminds me of SWTOR beta, where Vanguards had a 70% chance on ability use to get a stack that stacked to 5 times to unleash a super strong attack... huh. Weird.

2: They said they wanted to reduce the interdependency of jobs in Shadowbringers -- for example, Bard no longer essentially requires a Dragoon to function, as there's no more piercing debuff and their DoT procs aren't based on crit chance. This is good, now a bard isn't attached at the hip to a Dragoon or, to an extent, scholar. In fact, none of the DPS really require the others... except monk. Monk is still based off crits, which means a monk requires the even-nerfed Battle Litany and Chain Strategem to get the most procs, not to mention the still-present requirement that Monks be paired with as many physical DPS as possible to get use out of Brotherhood. Oh sure, Dancer requires another DPS to get the most of their skills too, but Dancer can pick any DPS (or, hell, if needed a tank or healer though that's not optimal) and they themselves won't change. This isn't even necessarily a problem that Brotherhood only boosts physical damage for the raid; a little variety in buffs is nice. The problem is that Monk alone requires certain raid compositions to function at its peak due to Brotherhood still only working off weapon skills.

If Brotherhood was changed to "X% chance when a party member executes weapon skill or magick attack" it would function a lot better, and there's even a new precedent since that's how Dancer's espirit works. Fixing Deep Meditation could be as easy as making it a flat 30% chance on weaponskill use. Currently chakras being crit-based feels interesting because of Internal Release, which didn't just result in bigger numbers but also more buttons due to more chakras. A flat percentage chance would probably go unnoticed by most players, and would mean Monk isn't as tied to Dragoon or Scholar.