People should be concerned seeing the recent monk buffs

[Jasmyne]

Disclaimer: I'm a normie, the aspects of games that I enjoy is creativity and job identity even at the 'slight' cost of balance. I played all through 2.0 but quit after HW after what they did to my favorite job bard, and returned at the end of SB. Also this is simply an opinion post and in no way am I claiming "facts"

That being said, I believe people should be really concerned with SE's mindset after seeing what they just did with monk (and previously most other jobs). Historically monk has always been a mid-high skill cap job that was easy to learn but hard to master with its very unique play style. That's not to say it didn't have it's problems (for example the meditation change that's 2 years late) but the initial direction of the job had great potential...

Now it's almost impossible to drop greased lightning, and 75% of the time you get to ignore positionals which was the main part of its identity. (I never liked positionals personally, but I would NEVER demand it change because lots of people DO like it.) The job, in one single patch, has basically become a job that was difficult and unique, to a job that practically plays itself. It's really sad to see.

I've never had an issue with varying difficulties with jobs, in fact I think people have a much higher sense of accomplishment if they get good playing a difficult job, but the homogenization and "dumbing down" of originally unique classes is kind of frustrating and I think will end up losing them subs from the normies like me (who I feel they're trying to appeal to) as opposed to gaining them.

[Hezzlocks]

I've not really played any melee dps much so I don't know how well they've ever played in endgame, but I will note that with the bosses we've been getting lately, like Leviathan, Titan Savage, the add phase on Titania, the final Amaurot boss and the final MSQ boss, it's probably a good thing that positionals are becoming much easier to ignore.

But hey what do I know. I only ever play ranged, healing and tanking.

[Drayos]

Disclaimer: I'm a normie, the aspects of games that I enjoy is creativity and job identity even at the 'slight' cost of balance. I played all through 2.0 but quit after HW after what they did to my favorite job bard, and returned at the end of SB. Also this is simply an opinion post and in no way am I claiming "facts"

That being said, I believe people should be really concerned with SE's mindset after seeing what they just did with monk (and previously most other jobs). Historically monk has always been a mid-high skill cap job that was easy to learn but hard to master with its very unique play style. That's not to say it didn't have it's problems (for example the meditation change that's 2 years late) but the initial direction of the job had great potential...

Now it's almost impossible to drop greased lightning, and 75% of the time you get to ignore positionals which was the main part of its identity. (I never liked positionals personally, but I would NEVER demand it change because lots of people DO like it.) The job, in one single patch, has basically become a job that was difficult and unique, to a job that practically plays itself. It's really sad to see.

I've never had an issue with varying difficulties with jobs, in fact I think people have a much higher sense of accomplishment if they get good playing a difficult job, but the homogenization and "dumbing down" of originally unique classes is kind of frustrating and I think will end up losing them subs from the normies like me (who I feel they're trying to appeal to) as opposed to gaining them.

I think the major thing is everyone’s been asking for this to happen to monk since GL introduction.

While it’s true in some ways, look at the most popular jobs, they are never the complicated ones. And given what they did to ninja.. I wouldn’t be too worried,

The community were the ones asking for this to happen to monks realistically

[ADVSS]

Well I think OP has a good point in regards of the direction the game is heading overall, even if slowly. Personally it isnt just the recent changes to monk, its actually been put around a lot of things in regards to combat. To a degree I have to agree, but then again it might just be better the way theyre taking the game, i dont know at this point.

[Jasmyne]

I think the major thing is everyone’s been asking for this to happen to monk since GL introduction.

While it’s true in some ways, look at the most popular jobs, they are never the complicated ones. And given what they did to ninja.. I wouldn’t be too worried,

The community were the ones asking for this to happen to monks realistically

I agree partially... some people were asking for this yes, but I wouldn't necessarily call them "the community". The few Monk mains that I know, while frustrated with some of monks previous clunky features, never actually asked for directionals to be removed or a permanent greased lightning, all they want is a functional fluid experience but with the same play style that got the to love the job in the first place. In my opinion the people asking for that are people who aren't willing to put in the work to bring out a jobs potential with time and skill, the same people who wanna be able to play all classes on a whim because they get bored of their mains.

Like I said before I don't like directionals, but my solution is to play another job that I do like. I'd never demand that every job change to fit my preferences. It may be selfish of me to say but IMO if people wanna play another job, they should "get good" at said job, and SE should focus on polishing classes instead of constantly fundamentally changing them.

[Ibkee]

I'm not sure I follow, OP. Why should the changes to MNK, a perennially overlooked and previously largely unplayed class, be worrying to the rest of us?

Those who enjoy it will enjoy it, those who don't will move on. Not every job needs to be left with glaring problems that make it feel unfun, just to maintain some manufactured idea of identity. Similarly, not every job has become easier or had it's flaws removed or addressed, some (looking at you SMN) have become more complex and challenging than ever

So for those of us who haven't touched ShB MNK, like you and me OP, let's just let the many MNKs finally loving their class to do so. There's nothing to be concerned about with that.

[ReiMakoto]

I've not really played any melee dps much so I don't know how well they've ever played in endgame, but I will note that with the bosses we've been getting lately, like Leviathan, Titan Savage, the add phase on Titania, the final Amaurot boss and the final MSQ boss, it's probably a good thing that positionals are becoming much easier to ignore.

But hey what do I know. I only ever play ranged, healing and tanking.

Those bosses you mentioned dont have positionals anyway, bosses where you cant move around them like that just let you hit them from anywhere and it counts as a correct positional

[Jasmyne]

I'm not sure I follow, OP. Why should the changes to MNK, a perennially overlooked and previously largely unplayed class, be worrying to the rest of us?

Those who enjoy it will enjoy it, those who don't will move on. Not every job needs to be left with glaring problems that make it feel unfun, just to maintain some manufactured idea of identity. Similarly, not every job has become easier or had it's flaws removed or addressed, some (looking at you SMN) have become more complex and challenging than ever

So for those of us who haven't touched ShB MNK, like you and me OP, let's just let the many MNKs finally loving their class to do so. There's nothing to be concerned about with that.

First of all, "some manufactured idea of identity" what? This is a video game, everything about it is manufactured, that's kind of SE's job is to manufacture an identity for their video game if they want people to continue playing it. Would you rather they removed the name of every job and called it "Tank 1, tank 2, tank 3 and tank 4"? Identity is kind of paramount to everything, otherwise people would have nothing to relate to.

Secondly, I never said that a job should be "left with glaring problems", clearly all issues should be addressed...

Finally, to address your question, the best way to follow someone's point is to try and put yourself in their shoes, you can do that by asking yourself a few questions. Imagine if SE looked at your favorite job, took the function that made your job difficult and engaging (monks positionals and maintaining greased lightning) and completely negated the difficulty on that function without adding any new level of difficulty to it. Would you be happy to say "Well that's okay, lets just allow those who enjoy my favorite job to finally do so."? Would you be okay with just simply moving on to the next job before SE gets their hands on THAT job too and removes the difficulty level? Will you keep doing that until all jobs are easy? It should be "worrying to the rest of us" because if you think it won't happen to you, then you haven't been paying attention.

It's not the first time they have done this, and if people keep ignoring it then it will keep happening. See Warrior, Scholar, Ninja, Dark knight, now monk. All the new jobs that has been released since SB were introduced incredibly easy and have stayed that way, no offense to the Red mage, Sam, Gnb and dancer mains... but your jobs are easy lol. However Gnb does have a neat concept and I'm hopeful that they will keep working on it.

[Aomine1992]

This is a case of being careful what we complain about. Not you OP but I’ve seen countless threads about loosing GL while boss is gone so anataman, also complaints about to many positional lost when the boss wants to spin every where so riddle of earth. RoF should not slow MNK down which now is changed which I think this change was a great thing for MNK the others may have been overkill especially a third true north.

This is like what happened with healers, people complained about non dps healers so SE started snatching skills obviously that was not a successful endeavor since healers still need to you know dps. Or the complaint about healing with SCHs which in turn had their whole class dps gutted. So these changes aren’t the direction SE is going these are 75% the communities fault for always complaining about something but I understand your concerns

[Marc-Vigar]

MNK is fine except for Tornado Kick being useless and Rockbreaker being a cone area skill instead of circular.