MNK feels dismal to play and it's not anything that can be fixed with a simple patch.

[MasyMasy]

To preface and give a disclaimer about my experience with the class, I've played monk since ARR, as my secondary until Stormblood, when I made it my main after I was dissatisfied with the state of Samurai, where I cleared all savage fights on monk with an average 82nd percentile and made it halfway on Weapon's Refrain until my group disbanded. Monk's iteration in Shadowbringers however, made me drop the class entirely.

I've put a lot of time into explaining my dissatisfaction with the class to my friends, but I've always known nothing will change unless I make this post in desperation that the developers will see my distaste for the direction they're taking my favorite class in the game. With all my complaints for the class, I've taken note of four glaring issues I have with the current state of Monk.

1. The skill design is antithetical.

The design of Six-sided Star and Tornado Kick perfectly emphasize this. One keeps your stacks at the cost of a slow down, and the other dumps your stacks entirely. While I understand that these have two similar uses in different circumstances, they are similar skills that directly contradict each other.

Greased Lightning IV and Riddle of Fire. Do you want us to go fast or do you want us to slow down? The slow on RoF while necessary in Stormblood's iteration of Monk to ensure double weaving in a burst window has been completely invalidated by the removal of all the skills that we used during that window.

2. The class has not evolved since its inception except for one happy little accident.

It's really obvious with the Monk changes in Shadowbringers that SE either thinks Monk is perfect of they have no idea what to do with the class. I happen to think it's the latter because Monk is far from perfect and all the skills we have gotten since Heavensward, save Form Shift, Forbidden Chakra, and Brotherhood have not added much at all to the class. Monk's only true evolution where the game was shaken up was with a happy little accident in 4.2 where they added the ability to gain a stack from Wind Tackle, resulting in an unintended complete overhaul of how the class was optimally played. For many, this was too much at one time, for others it was the most fun they've ever had with Monk. But with Shadowbringers Monk has devolved back into the 2.0 rotation, with even less buttons to push.

3. It is the victim of needless skill pruning.

Monk was hit HARD with the skill prunes this patch, for seemingly no reason. Wind Tackle? Gone. Internal Release? Gone. Steel Peak? Gone. Howling Fist? Gone. Perfect Balance? Not gone, but nerfed to two minutes. For what reason? Is it too much to allow a class revolving around Greased Lightning a way to generate it quickly? Was it too hard to press one button on cooldown?

4. The class feels archaic.

This is the biggest problem I perceive Monk to have. The entire class is built around Greased Lightning. A buff that shows its age. Other simliar maintenance buffs such as Blood of the Dragon, Enochian, and Huton have gotten better with age.QoL changes have effectively made them into one button that you hit once, maybe twice a fight. Greased Lightning however takes even longer to generate and has gotten even more punishing to lose, It's so much of a problem that it's had FOUR whole skills dedicated to maintaining it. With Shadowbringers it's gotten glaringly obvious that it's time for Greased Lightning to change.

With changes to other previous crit-proc based jobs in 5.0 Monk remains the only class to maintain crit buffs. It even lost Internal Release making this feel even more like a kick in the face.

The fist stances serve no purpose and have only ever seen stance dancing for a brief moment with the changes to the class in 4.2. Poisons were removed from Ninja with Heavensward for comparison.

Proposal:

Ideally Monk needs a total overhaul akin to Machinist. Greased Lightning as it is feels dismal compared to all the other maintenance buffs in the game and actions that preserve/extend greased lightning eat up a ton of action slots we could get for actual job evolution. Rework Greased Lightning to be a one and done button, giving it traits at the levels it gets a new stack at to maintain the feeling of a full stack.

Alternatively if Greased Lightning is to remain in the game as a stacking buff. The payout for maintaining this buff needs to be more impactful, and the reramp significantly reduced. Change Tornado Kick to be more like WHM's Secret of the Lily, every predetermined interval you're at max Greased Lightning grants a Tornado Kick.

Add a reasonable amount of damage dealing OGCDs and cement monk as the melee with more OGCDs to press than the others. This would justify the 30% slow that remains on Riddle of Fire as well as giving Monk a proper identity.

Rework the Deep Meditation trait so that it's not crit dependent bootshine guarantees a stack. All other weaponskills have a flat 50% chance to proc a stack.

I have a really hard time believing that the developers know what they're doing with Monk, much less believe that they play the class outside of playtesting it at all. In an interview at the media tour Yoshida told an influencer that he had the most fun designing Monk. It's disheartening to believe such a statement, when every other job I've leveled to 80, (SAM, NIN, BLM, MCH, DRK, and DRG) build on top of their kit and evolve with the time feeling even better to play than they did before. While Monk is left behind in the dust, improving nothing from its time in ARR. It's my hope that 6.0 will give me a Monk I can love again, because I certainly can't love this one.

[KanameYuuki]

The class doesn't even have a full basic set of tools, where is our disengage and ranged skill (granted barely anyone uses it but still they have them, even just for basic fates luring a single monster instead of the whole instance).

Some may argue and be happy that we finally got our Raptor AoE and Chakra AoE, well yeah, that's literally the bare minimum, every single class got a full AoE rotation and a Single target / AoE resource spender.

Let's take a look at MNK state.

-Stances, SE went all the way to remove these, on Ninja? Gone. Cleric Stance? you will never be missed. Tank stances? just make it an on and off switch that has nothing to do with damage / defense or healing.

-SE decided to remove jobs synergy, while not at the same point, you really want to have a Dancer / Scholar / Dragoon with you so you can use of chakra more often.

-SE decided to remove RNG from AST and reduce crit requirements on Bard, yet they decided to keep Chakra tied to RNG on RNG, and they even doubled down on deep meditation II, why not at least make it 100% on every single crit.

-You unlock your gauges on jobs alongside their respective spender, yet Deep Meditation is until lv 62, you can just ignore Forbidden Chakra for 8 whole levels and a full expansion if you have only bought HW.

-Lore wise Chakra should be 7 then 14, but they only gave us 5, this means that either you have your skill and use it right away or you will be missing on a possible overflow, no leeway unlike the rest on a 100 limit, with 7 we could keep spending 5 at a time making sure to some space for reserves.

-RoF slow debuff... why... at least there was a reason for SB, you removed pacification from Warrior, why can't you remove this debuff from us.

-The biggest, long running joke and insult must be TK specially with that 10s CD, seriously SE? I think we are all at least somewhat pleased with 6SS when it works, why didn't they just rework TK to be 6SS instead, and on that note, why on earth that skill is tied to GCD on cast? I can't even.


And now let's look BLM, the one big boss mains, since Monk was supposed to be its melee counterpart, until Samurai introduction that is, it must be just as neglected right?

-An unmovable turret, lets give them a rush to a teammate every 10s, and you know what, lets give them 3 no cast spells every 60s

-Ley Lines use lost due to repositioning, lets give them between the line on a 3 seconds CD.

-Keeping and maintaining ice / fire stacks and Enochian is too much work, several CD decreases on transpose and Enochian.

-Lets go one step further on an expansion where several resources are now tied to combat only (AST seals, AF Scholar and Summoner, etc.) now they don't even need to open with a Blizzard 3 + 4, just press that Umbral soul to your heart content, its even instant cast.

Hardcore players aren't pleased, Casual players like me aren't pleased, JP and western players aren't pleased, how anyone approved this is beyond me.

[JinTaeJin]

Yes, I completely with everything you have explained. I've been playing monk since 2.0 no other class gives me the same satisfaction of playing aside from samurai which still doesn't compare for me but its the only thing I have interest playing currently. I've bared with monk through everything but now I literally cannot play monk anymore it is FLIPPING terrible and it hurts because I love monk so much. I literally cannot fathom what the hell the devs were thinking when they made these changes to the monk. Monk is a complete slug now. Like who approved these changes as if they are deliberately trying to change what the monk was originally intended for.

[Brownondorf]

as someone that is gonna level up everything to max, you bet i'm not gonna bother with monk until last... the more i read about it the more i'm disgusted by what it's become, and i was a monk main heavensward...

[Physic]

as someone that is gonna level up everything to max, you bet i'm not gonna bother with monk until last... the more i read about it the more i'm disgusted by what it's become, and i was a monk main heavensward...

well, it's not that monk is garbage, it's just kind of boring and archaic now, compared to other classes, or compared to its SB version (imo)

[Bayke]

After clearing the normal mode raids and seeing just how much uptime these encounters have i feel the 5.0 changes werent even created for the raid content aswell...almost all of monks 5.0 kit is useless on high uptime dummy like encounters. Basically get to use GL4 and new meditation trait, boring.

[silverdragontyr]

It's not just lack of skills making it feel boring. The GL management requirement is worse than ever. Especially noticeable in Eden raids and Innocence Ex. The timer is incredibly short in the grand scheme of things, takes 5-6 seconds to get to refresh if not in the right stance, and the tools you do have to refresh the timer require you to be either close to the boss, or not move at all in fights that it is simply not practical.

Monk unfortunately needs a full rework at this point.

[Kolsykol]

Anatman having a cooldown at all is a mystery to me.
And Six-sided star and Tornado Kick feels completely useless 99% of the time.
Six-sided star could give you a buy that allows you to use Tornado Kick without losing your GL stacks, maybe then it'd be useful.

Or they could make it something that you build up to by keeping up your GL stacks and an ogcd.
Sorta like Xenoglossy for BLM but an ogcd since they pruned the others...
I just don't understand why they're so insistent on slowing MNK down all of the time <_<...

[shinkin]

Only got into Monk in ShB so I can't really say a lot, I like the class but there are definitely things that are really irritating, im still learning but I agree that having Greased Lightning be such a major facet of the job makes the decision to have Riddle of Fire slow you down a peculiar one.


The absolute biggest peeve I have is with Greased Lightning. It's pretty much impossible to maintain in dungeons unless you want to risk dying every pull while the tank dawdles around waiting to do something until after you lose your stacks

[Drayos]

Disclaimer, what im about to say, isnt me saying Monks are fine.

i think this alittle over-exaggerative, Monks current condition isnt THAT bad, i did expect More, but it isnt horrific, i still can Enjoy monk, even with its current Qwerks, i do actually like the New Six Star and the Anataman, i think their awesome abilities in theory, alittle wonky to play around with, but cool nonetheless.

the only fix i really want is to TK.

In all honesty, i'd like to see TK Changed while i can think of ideas and have presented them, they'd change Monk on a Fundamental level, so for the posts sake of (you dont want a Rework) I'd say a Easy fix would realistically lie in directly changing TK.

My solution would likely be, Change TK onto a Standard Ability but one with 3 Charges, Each Charge on a 1 minute CD, Then allow Successful Combos and Positionals to reduce the CD of TK by 10Seconds. this would Not alter the way the monk currently plays in the Slightest only add to it by rewarding the Monk by being able to continously be able to pull off Combos correctly.

My final fix would be Remove Riddle Fist of Fire and Fist of Wind, Past idly using a passive buff to damage % while under 3 GL and Above 3GL requiring Fist of Wind this doesnt do anything for gameplay. It actually just doesnt fit no longer, with ALOT less OGCDs we just dont have the tools to maximise a Slower GCD anymore. so just remove them from the game.