Either throw Tornado Kick away next expac...or FIX IT

[Sqwall]

2.0 - One of if not THE simple DPS to play. Simple rotation while being one of the most situational aware DPS in the game. I played this at 50 and did most of the Binding Coil with it. It's lack of variety ultimately made me change to other DPS.

3.0 - MNK has some of the most underwhelming skills added to it's repertoire. Meditate, chakra felt gimmicky, and Tornado Kick PENALIZED you for getting all your stacks popping internal release, and ultimately gimping you until your stacks returned. Form shift wasn't really helpful if you were about to lose your GL timer, and served as a primer for starting a fight rather then keeping your stacks up. I liked MNK less this expansion.

4.0 - MNK basically lost it's identity with the class by giving you SITUATIONAL riddles. Seriously, though riddle of earth....come on. Riddle of fire....DPS is slowed to a crawl. Tornado Kick still not used...taken off hot bar entirely. Brotherhood didn't proc enough to make up for the 5% party damage. And....tackle mastery....FFS what were they thinking with this one. This expansion basically made MNK encouraged not to actually DPS. Riddle of Earth you say? Go face tank that AOE for a damage reduction buff. What? Your good at avoiding AOE? Well then I suppose you could always remove it off your hotbar...which I did. I HATED MNK during SB. Shelved it at 70. It wasn't even fun.

5.0 - Anatman WTF is this skill used for. In a job where moving and doing damage at blinding fast speed, where does a skill where I stand still make any sense? *Bash head on keyboard* SSS changes your weaponskill recast to nearly 5 seconds. -.- oh and what's that has LESS potency then Tornado Kick? Did I miss something here or did we revert backwards with a level 80 skill. LEVEL 80! That means TORNADO KICK is BETTER then SSS. *face palm*

5.05 - SE wakes up from 6 year nap and realizes. "Hmmm it's really hard to keep stacks of GL on a job that requires you to have stacks of GL to be a relevant DPS."
-Form Shift = God send for perma stacks
-Riddle of Fire = Beast Mode at normal speed
-Riddle of Earth = Positional what? + more GL resets.
-Meditation = One shot fight primer
.........................................................................6 YEARS FOR THIS!!!!! 6 YEARS for actual good QOL fixes. What took so long for all of this?

Now. 5.1 upgrades - Asking a lot I know.
Tornado Kick - change to only usable in fists of wind only (keeping with the theme wind, tornado....clever IK) Use 2 GL stacks and change the recast timer to 45 seconds. Change potency to 350.

SSS - change to only usable in Fist of Fire + Riddle of Fire. Make Recast 90 seconds. Remove STUPID skill recast for all other skills coinciding. 450 Potency and always critical hits from behind and locks MNK in position until finished. (synergies with Earths Reply really well)

[VanceKenyon]

Honestly, just turn TK into a normal oGCD that does decent damage on a reasonable cooldown and no longer interacts with GL stacks at all (or make it only usable at 3+ stacks or something, but don't have it remove stacks). Monk could really, really use another oGCD anyway and I just don't see them fixing TK to be a fun skill with it removing stacks.

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, just turn TK into a normal oGCD that does decent damage on a reasonable cooldown and no longer interacts with GL stacks at all (or make it only usable at 3+ stacks or something, but don't have it remove stacks). Monk could really, really use another oGCD anyway and I just don't see them fixing TK to be a fun skill with it removing stacks.

Please no. Later-SB Monk had an almost perfect way of putting it to use. We need only borrow the best from that.

[Videra]

Please no. Later-SB Monk had an almost perfect way of putting it to use. We need only borrow the best from that.

For some reason, people like to ignore that the TK opener and rotation existed in Stormblood.

[Kabooa]

For some reason, people like to ignore that the TK opener and rotation existed in Stormblood.

I was actually really enjoying it as a scrub monk. It gave a real sense of natural progression from basic (Sit in fire, hit buttons) to advanced (Fist Swapping, GCD alignment, tackle placement).

Having this mini-burst rotation with Tornado Kick / Riddle of Wind and working around RoF windows gave Monk a lot of variety that you wouldn't guess just looking at a tool tip screen.

I wasn't a good monk, mind you, but there was clear feedback in when I wasn't doing it right and when I nailed it perfectly.

[waterboytkd]

After playing some PvP, it was neat to see TK have some actual use (because you could rebuild GL very fast with 3 wind tackles).

So it got me thinking: what if Anatman was changed entirely to say "Gain a stack of GL for each stack of GL lost in the last 5 seconds." So you could TK + Anatman, effectively giving TK a 60s cooldown, but you could still TK in the niche moment of a boss kill?

Honestly, though, TK, Anatman, and 6SS all need a massive rework of some kind. Form Shift change was perfect, but obviated those 3 skills (well, obviated the latter 2; TK is just anathema to the monk's entire concept).

Also, if we never lose GL stacks, what purpose does Perfect Balance serve outside of an opener? A Dragon Kick-Bootshine spam window? I guess. But people have suggested turning TK or 6SS into an oGCD that requires us to be at max stacks of GL for x amount of time to use, and I've liked those ideas. But what if it instead required gaining x stacks of GL while we were already at max stacks, instead of requiring time? This would also give PB another use: quickly building those stacks.

I know my post is kind of "all over the place", but I'm just spit-balling ideas out there. In the end, what I'd like to see is TK changed to lower potency, higher recast, but it builds a stack of GL instead of consuming them, so you use it in opener to ramp up to 4, then on cd as oGCD damage. With that, I'd like 6SS to change to an attack that requires us building x stacks of GL while already at max (meaning TK also helps build towards that). Then Anatman should change entirely to be some kind of Chakra ability, since that needs more support (and honestly, deep meditation II should also change to 100% chance on crits, since RNG on top of RNG is pretty grim).

EDIT: The last change to monk I'd like to see after that is the Fists get removed. Stances are bad design, especially since it's always one stance that's best. Maybe turn them into passive traits, but tone down the numbers? If we need another button to press, could always make another ability called Riddle of Wind (since, without stances, the current trait "Riddle of Wind" could be just changed to "Enhanced Grease Lightning III").

[Shurrikhan]

I was actually really enjoying it as a scrub monk. It gave a real sense of natural progression from basic (Sit in fire, hit buttons) to advanced (Fist Swapping, GCD alignment, tackle placement).

Having this mini-burst rotation with Tornado Kick / Riddle of Wind and working around RoF windows gave Monk a lot of variety that you wouldn't guess just looking at a tool tip screen.

I wasn't a good monk, mind you, but there was clear feedback in when I wasn't doing it right and when I nailed it perfectly.

This. The RoW-(PB)-TK stuff just added so much more to the job that even many players who can play damn near perfectly having only read the tooltips and having done some theory-crafting prior to play would feel impressed and a bit surprised.

TK is just anathema to the monk's entire concept.

Seriously, how? Monk's entire concept, when seen from decent levels of play, was never just "Hit things really fast-like". Not in ARR, where it was built around potency-slipping and clip-minimization. Not in HW, where it was around ARR's stuff plus greater window management and further downtime preemption. And certainly not in SB, where it was about exploiting all the skills you had before with situational value and then maximizing rotations with their inclusion. It capitalized on everything we had before, largely because of TK being so central. Yes, it clipped painfully for those with latency due to applying GL on Riddle of Wind instead of Wind Tackle and requiring FoW to use Wind Tackle, but those QoL issues and a potency bug aside, it was a pretty brilliant design choice.

[waterboytkd]

Seriously, how? Monk's entire concept, when seen from decent levels of play, was never just "Hit things really fast-like". Not in ARR, where it was built around potency-slipping and clip-minimization. Not in HW, where it was around ARR's stuff plus greater window management and further downtime preemption. And certainly not in SB, where it was about exploiting all the skills you had before with situational value and then maximizing rotations with their inclusion. It capitalized on everything we had before, largely because of TK being so central. Yes, it clipped painfully for those with latency due to applying GL on Riddle of Wind instead of Wind Tackle and requiring FoW to use Wind Tackle, but those QoL issues and a potency bug aside, it was a pretty brilliant design choice.

The concept of the monk is "get buffs up, don't let them fall". Greased Lightning's design is not one of "this is a resource to spend." It was only after patch 4.2 (right?) that this concept even came up with Riddle of Wind. And, if I'm not mistaken, that was an *accident*. SE did not intend for the TK opener/burst window, where you TK and quickly rebuild stacks.

Now, I'm not saying that was a bad design. In fact, from everything I've read, monk mains thought it was fantastic. And I'll admit now, I'm still relatively new to the game (only about 5 months), and I'm not even a monk main, so I definitely defer to that judgment.

But SE culling it in 5.0 sends the clear signal that it wasn't design intent. TK is back to being super niche. The focus of the monk is, again, get GL up to max and keep it up--it's not a resource to be spent. I'm not saying it's the superior design, but it is the design they seem to be going for. And with the new Form Shift, the three "GL management" skills TK, 6SS, and Anatman (outside of being used in an opener, which I would be dollars to donuts, is not intended by SE) seem obviated.

[Silver-Strider]

Idk wtf OP is talking about in terms of ARR/HW MNK as that was the peak of MNK playstyle for me. Keeping track of Touch of Death and Fracture to mininalize clipping Demolish early was by far the best time I've ever had with MNK and would gladly trade away pretty much everything we've gotten from SB and ShB to have that back (minus Form Shift refreshing GL, that I will fight you tooth and nail to keep).

[Caduagm]

If they change tornado kick to a no-penalty ogcd, then they should change all base potencies, since the buff to RoF put MNK on pair with BLM rDPS (if not more). Thus, imho, this is unlikely to happen until 6.0