Dragoon, Monk and Design Philosophy Discrepancy

[Mythicalbrit]

I got DRG to 80 acouple days ago and anyone else feel like the design philosophies on DRG and MNK are worlds apart? DRG has had and has kept a BUNCH of OGCDs and yet MNK lost some and looking at it I feel like its cus a ton of stuff that DRG has are potency + build up/utilisation or are a reward for playing into the mechanics of the class.
Spineshatter Dive & Dragonfire Dive are both potency + possible gap closer. Jump gives access to Mirage Dive which in turn gives access to Life of the Dragon. Geirskogul is a potency + aoe move only useable in blood of the dragon and therefore is a reward for keeping the state up. (even though its brain dead to keep up compared to initial implementation back in HW)
Blood of the dragon is a reward of using your Jumps + Mirage Dives which in turn gives access to Nastrond an upgraded Geirskogul and Stardiver which is potency + gap closer + aoe both of which are the benefits of utilising the mechanics the class pushes you to interact with.

Now looking at MNK relative skills to this discussion are Steel Peak, Howling fist and Wind Tackle. Steel Peak was a pure potency skill once upon a time it also had a stun tied to it but even then considering the design of a large portion of fights making things stun immune it was largely in part just a potency OGCD instead of the removal of the skill it could have been changed to give chakra or a stack of GL that way it flows into one of the central mechanics of the class but instead it was removed. Howling Fist was a potency + aoe OGCD and yet you may be going "doesn't that make it basically Geirskogul" while it functions basically the same, the difference between the two is that Geirskogul is gained due to keeping the LotD state up and therefore Howling fist wasn't a reward nor did it interact with any of the jobs central mechanics and for those reasons imo was deemed unnecessary.
(which causes me to worry for elixir field next expansion)

Wind Tackle was removed along with Fire and Earth Tackle, due to the loss of the Tackle Mastery trait. Fire Tackle being a straight potency increase and Earth tackle being a shorter ranged knock back that found little application. Wind Tackle on the other hand gave a stack of GL upon the use of its second instance, meaning that it was not only potency and a gap closer like its counterparts but also fed into a central theme & mechanic of the class GL. Which makes it very odd that even with the implementation of charges making the skill redundant in its approach that Shoulder Tackle did not receive the self same application.

All in All I just find the design choices made with MNK in mind seem to be far more limited, uninteresting, and afraid of risk/balance than the approach taken for DRG making it so each Expansion the DRG as a job genuinely advances and evolves in some aspect as MNK either stagnants or straight up declines, the SB TK combo while being difficult for many being one of the first times the job has genuinely flowed through a lot of its skills in pursuit of an interesting outcome beyond simple GL upkeep.

[KanameYuuki]

Yeah, that's why enough is enough, we all assumed SB would have been our expansion, but then we assumed ShB would bring at least something and here we are.

Not just DRG design philosophy, take any job and you can see how they at least have changed or evolved, like say WAR got stronger versions of their abilities, NIN got evolved jutsu, SCH now has Seraph, etc. They took what makes all their jobs iconic and are expanding on it, or heck just plain awesome looking stuff: DRK living shadow, DRG new jumps, NIN clone, what's even distinctive about MNK? you can't even say speed thanks to RoF stupid slow debuff.

But like you have mention MNK numbers are perfectly fine so they just don't want to fix what isn't broken, it is really a shame, I wish at least they would upgrade the special effects on some of our skills and finally give us something that looks spectacular or breath taking, that when you see it on a Job Trailer it makes you want to main it like it was for every other class but MNK. I would love to have a stand on our shoulders for GL4 or RoF, right now you can't tell at all visually if your character has GL4 or just GL3.

But how can they evolve a class that doesn't even have a full set of basic tools, where is our ranged attack and disengage / backwards jump.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

You're absolutely right, the monk kit next to no synergy anymore. The best synergy we had was internal release and deep meditation, and RoF (despite my dislike of the slowdown) along with Brotherhood for a nice flow of TFC if rng was good, but at least every other cycle IR was up also which made it even more reliable, despite still being RNG. There's no real reward for anything anymore other than potency boosts on positionals, which every melee job has, and of course it was dragoon that gets a new skill in the form of raiden thrust for adhering to positional requirements, you'd think the job with the most positionals would have that sort of trait as it's kind of Monk's thing to always be in positon. I think it would be an interesting concept if Monk got a new GCD rotation for maintaining positionals.

For example, meeting the requirements for Opo-opo form attacks upgrades Raptor form attacks, and they upgrade coeurl attacks etc... successfully landing all 3 form attack positionals could enable either a chakra stack or another new attack. That would help true north synergize with our positional requirements as it does for raiden thrust on dragoon. Of course this would be high risk high reward, if you miss then you don't get the bonuses, but if you land them you are rewarded. I'd also like to see synergy between our chakra and GL through our oGCDs. TFC could interact as a OGCD combo starter (think GNB and continuation), we use TFC which could grant 'Six Sided Star Ready (as an ogcd)', once 6SS gets used it could grant 'Tornado Kick Ready', that would end the oGCD rotation. This rotation could stem from gaining our 5 chakras which would be reliant on positionals rather than RNG. BH could just be a raid 5% damage for everyone instead of physical only on a 3min CD. RoF would just be a straight 15-20% damage buff with no slowdown attached. And I would streamline GL maintenance skills. Form Shift would just be a GCD perfect balance which enables one weaponskill regardless of form so that we don't have to do busy work mashing form shift to get into the right form as well as refresh the current GL stack. Perfect Balance should just be 60s, no one likes dropping stacks; it's punishing enough as it is, let alone having PB at 2 mins. As a reward for keeping GL up, keeping with the flow of speed it could enable 100 fists; a 100 potency, ten fold attack every minute.

They originally intended Monk to play like a fighter with combos, but I feel like we don't really have that right now. My proposed changes would reward positionals as well as enable a combo system for oGCDs once TFC is ready, granting us synergy with the chakra system. I think it would feel a lot more fun to play than current Monk at least and feel more high risk high reward.

[SpeckledBurd]

Dragoon, Black Mage, Ninja, Bard... really any Job you can look at in the game at the moment have seen more additions and improvements to their kits than Monk has, and when the playerbase has said they didn't like a direction of the job the devs have always reversed course on that and fixed it in the next expansion.

Except for Monk. Monk has exclusively lost skills and the only new skills we gain are for the exact same purpose and can only be used during extremely niche circumstances. Our "gauge" is a hack-job of a downtime damage loss mitigation skill that we can only use when it's completely full, and it basically can't be used during a real fight until 8 levels after you get it, and you don't even have an AOE option for 20 levels after you get it. Every single one of our complaints in Stormblood was ignored, even though Yoshi himself said on stream that Stormblood was a poor evolution for Monk and not a single one of those poorly received changes were walked back or changed.

There's a reason so many people are negatively responding to Monk in polls, why there's so many threads popping up and complaining about the job here, and why Monk has the least amount of clears in all content currently in Shadowbringers and indeed, why it had the second least clears in Stormblood behind Machinist, the literally broken job. The devs need to give the job some serious attention, and I frankly don't have any confidence in that at this point even if they say they're going to look at it, because they've now proven that even if they say they'll do something about it, they won't.

[KanameYuuki]

Every single one of our complaints in Stormblood was ignored, even though Yoshi himself said on stream that Stormblood was a poor evolution for Monk and not a single one of those poorly received changes were walked back or changed.

I do wonder if this was actually a case of translation error, and that Yoshi thought the community didn't like the direction of TK rotation Monk and not just the general feel of the class, at this point I wouldn't be surprised.

[SpeckledBurd]

I do wonder if this was actually a case of translation error, and that Yoshi thought the community didn't like the direction of TK rotation Monk and not just the general feel of the class, at this point I wouldn't be surprised.

Some of it might be. At the best of times, I think the Tornado Kick rotation could have been described as divisive. I myself wasn't a fan of it, but I did on some level appreciate that it existed because it allowed Monk to use a button that had been basically pointless since implementation. That said, Yoshi did mention why people disliked Riddle of Fire's slow specifically during an interview with Famitsu before Shadowbringers.

Q: Approaching the players' ideals, then.

Yoshida: I think MNK is the best example. MNK was one of the poster jobs for Stormblood, and many players predicted that it would definitely get Greased Lightning IV. But back then, we were reflecting on how jobs were overall too difficult to play in Heavensward and the 3.X series, so addressing that became the priority.

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. We simply adjust each job in the direction that we think the players will want. So, for 5.0, while we did have a general concept, we also reviewed each job one by one, asking "Is this job okay like this?" and balancing them within their role.

Q: So, you checked that each job would have elements that make it feel good to play.

Yoshida: Yes. For MNK, first we decided to implement Greased Lightning IV, and that means that if it happens to fall off for some reason, it'll take some time to ramp back up to your maximum potential. That would decrease your total damage output drastically, so we made sure to prepare ways to maintain the buff. For example, if the boss leaves the stage, then we want to change the job design in a way where you can adapt to it by using a certain ability right before the boss jumps--even if it means breaking your rotation--so that you can be back at full speed when the boss comes back. However, now that we've implemented what the players wanted, there's a chance that it will become too fast later on. It's fine for Shadowbringers launch, but when Patch 5.4 rolls around, you'll have a lot more skill speed on your equipment, so it'll become faster regardless of what the players want. Good luck with that. *laughs*

So we have a case of them knowing that something is broadly unpopular with a Job, knowing why it's broadly unpopular, and even knowing that Riddle of Fire slowing it down still even with Greased Lightning 4 would be unpleasant for the players, and them just electing not to do anything about it. And depressingly, this is in direct contradiction of their stated goal of moving jobs towards players ideals of them.

This is bad form on them and it utterly kills any confidence I'd have in them to fix Monk even when they're saying they're looking at it, because they now have a track record of just electing not to fix it when they know we the players have a problem.

[KanameYuuki]

Damn, so they really knew, I just don't get it, what is it about Monk that they are so lost on the class.

then we want to change the job design in a way where you can adapt to it by using a certain ability right before the boss jumps--even if it means breaking your rotation--so that you can be back at full speed when the boss comes back.

They were aware 6SS is clumsy in its current state, and talking about that, Am I the only one sick and tired of "bEfOrE ThE BoSs jUmPs"? most of the bosses don't call that and just go "peace out", so even with oGCD TK you are probably never going to get the timing right.