Monk Changes

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

Ive made a QoL adjustment to my Op. For those of you that dont wish to skim through my ramblings.

[Ramura_Sono]

Okay so it's not perfect, but that doesn't mean it needs anything, really. Monk has gotten enough attention and at this point the devs should not spare it a single second of thought. Other classes have problems, too. Heck, my favorite class got literally nothing from levels 70 - 80 except a couple situational skills

You mean the same thing Monk has gotten. EVERY. SINGLE. EXPANSION?

Monk is arguably in need of a rework more than any other job. The core rotation is strong. Everything else is poorly thought out. When a change to 1 skill (Formshift, which was changed to work how people thought it was going to back in HW) negates 3 expansions worth of skills the Job needs a rethink.

[Powercow]

You mean the same thing Monk has gotten. EVERY. SINGLE. EXPANSION?

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

[Kabooa]

I miss the Tornado kick from later Stormblood.

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

Your comment is literally dripping with sarcasm. Glad to see others share my viewpoint.

[Deithwen]

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

Gotta love this comment honestly, nice sarcasm, and you're totally right !

[SpeckledBurd]

Okay so it's not perfect, but that doesn't mean it needs anything, really. Monk has gotten enough attention and at this point the devs should not spare it a single second of thought. Other classes have problems, too. Heck, my favorite class got literally nothing from levels 70 - 80 except a couple situational skills (one of which you'd actually prefer not to use at all unless necessary, and the other of questionable value when the RDM is skilled). It's not until lvl80 that we got an actual useful skill and that's just something they tacked onto the end of verflare/holy. We even lost impact which is a big deal and makes us slaves to RNG.

The point is that no job is perfect except maybe black mage, almost every job has flaws or issues with their rotations, and Monk should be right down at the bottom of the priority list while square goes about the business of correcting this game's terrible job balance.

Saying that one job should be at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of having its problems addressed is unnecessarily spiteful and depending on how wide you set the window for "attention" Monk has basically seen the least, and by your other criteria Monk would be one of the jobs most in need of quality of life.

Monk may have seen a bit of attention in 5.05, but player complaints on how its skills worked and played were largely ignored since Heavensward in favor of complaints people had for Summoner/Ninja/other jobs. This was when Monk was the absolute worst job in the game mind you, with comparable damage to Ninja and less than Dragoon at the beginning of the expansion that only became marginally better than Dragoon by the end, on top of being the only job without any aggro control, the strictest job mechanic to work around for Mechanics, the worst TP burn (a problem Ninja had fixed immediately mind), and no means of buffing the party at all. Stormblood's complaints were similarly, acknowledged on streams at the beginning of the expansion, and then ignored. When they actually did change Monk at all, the devs accidentally created a new rotation that was divisive among the community and absolutely not what they intended to. And they went about fixing it in Shadowbringers by undoing the best quality of life the job had ever seen (PB at 60 seconds) instead of changing Tornado Kick to be something other than overly situational. If you set the window for "attention" wide enough, it becomes obvious that the condition Monk is in now, both in how its overperforming and the state of its kit is a direct result of developer inattention more than anything.

Situational skills? You're talking to the job that is the undisputed champ of them and has been since Heavensward. Forbidden Chakra was a situational disengage skill and because the design of it wasn't changed when it became a Gauge system, it's currently the only gauge that has absolutely no overhead between being useable and capping your resource. Our capstone skill in Heavensward Tornado Kick, was only ever useful in a rotation because of developer oversight. Riddle of Earth was so situational that making Form Shift work the way it always should have required it to gain an entirely new effect (and it's activation requirement is still stupid and gets blocked by shields). Anatman's janky secondary purpose is now it's only purpose, and Six Sided Star, another ultimate ability, while not quite as useless as Tornado Kick, is still something who's use we want to minimize during a fight.

And as for skills Monk has lost the job is a veritable graveyard of skills that we once used rotationally that we don't have anymore. Touch of Death, Howling Fist, Fracture, Internal Release, and Steel Peak are all gone and Monk hasn't seen anything to replace them because we've gotten nothing but situational nonsense.

What's "unique" about Monk's problems and flaws is that many of them have existed for multiple expansions, and they've never been addressed because the "attention" you say Monk has been lavished with is something that literally never happens with the job. Instead they've been allowed to fester and created a paradoxical interplay where the Jobs' currently managing to perform very highly despite having the single worst put together kit in the game, and funnily enough, because of its kit being so poorly put together, if the devs nerf it in the wrong manner then it'll be possible to pull off some other Jank to partially make up the damage elsewhere.

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

Saying that one job should be at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of having its problems addressed is unnecessarily spiteful and but depending on how wide you set the window for "attention" Monk has basically seen the least, and by your other criteria Monk would be one of the jobs most in need of quality of life.

Monk may have seen a bit of attention in 5.05, but player complaints on how its skills worked and played were largely ignored since Heavensward in favor of complaints people had for Summoner/Ninja/other jobs. This was when Monk was the absolute worst job in the game mind you, with comparable damage to Ninja and less than Dragoon at the beginning of the expansion that only became marginally better than Dragoon by the end, on top of being the only job without any aggro control, the strictest job mechanic to work around for Mechanics, the worst TP burn (a problem Ninja had fixed immediately mind), and no means of buffing the party at all. Stormblood's complaints were similarly, acknowledged on streams at the beginning of the expansion, and then ignored. When they actually did change Monk at all, the devs accidentally created a new rotation that was divisive among the community and absolutely not what they intended to. And they went about fixing it in Shadowbringers by undoing the best quality of life the job had ever seen (PB at 60 seconds) instead of changing Tornado Kick to be something other than overly situational. If you set the window for "attention" wide enough, it becomes obvious that the condition Monk is in now, both in how its overperforming and the state of its kit is a direct result of developer inattention more than anything.

Situational skills? You're talking to the job that is the undisputed champ of them and has been since Heavensward. Forbidden Chakra was a situational disengage skill and because the design of it wasn't changed when it became a Gauge system, it's currently the only gauge that has absolutely no overhead between being useable and capping your resource. Our capstone skill in Heavensward Tornado Kick, was only ever useful in a rotation because of developer oversight. Riddle of Earth was so situational that making Form Shift work the way it always should have required it to gain an entirely new effect (and it's activation requirement is still stupid and gets blocked by shields). Anatman's janky secondary purpose is now it's only purpose, and Six Sided Star, another ultimate ability, while not quite as useless as Tornado Kick, is still something who's use we want to minimize during a fight.

And as for skills Monk has lost the job is a veritable graveyard of skills that we once used rotationally that we don't have anymore. Touch of Death, Howling Fist, Fracture, Internal Release, and Steel Peak are all gone and Monk hasn't seen anything to replace them because we've gotten nothing but situational nonsense.

What's "unique" about Monk's problems and flaws is that many of them have existed for multiple expansions, and they've never been addressed because the "attention" you say Monk has been lavished with is something that literally never happens with the job. Instead they've been allowed to fester and created a paradoxical interplay where the Jobs' currently managing to perform very highly despite having the single worst put together kit in the game, and funnily enough, because of its kit being so poorly put together, if the devs nerf it in the wrong manner then it'll be possible to pull off some other Jank to partially make up the damage elsewhere.

I appriciate the details, and i agree, though i would add that not only did they remove howling fist, but they the reskined the skill, made it situationally tied to our chakra, and now have it compete with final chakra.

[Mahrze]

Hey now, Monk got a damage up cooldown... I mean, they also lost their other damage up cooldown so... you know. At least the damage up cooldown doesn't have some vaguely interesting cost associated with it anymore...? And it has no interaction with Monk's bonus chakras on crits, so that's... interesting too?

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

But you know what, Monk got a new skill to use in their opener to get a free stack of Greased Lightning, and all it cost was the skill they had... to get a free stack... of greased lightning...

I'm noticing a pattern here. Ah screw it, "just give monks 5% more DPS and the rest of the community will shout down any claims that Monk needs something new or interesting!" That seems to be the go-to plan.

Perhaps this can be said of a lot of jobs in ShB, So as a MNK main since early ARR and the first class I chose welcome our new brothers of the "taken but given back reskinned" order.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

BUT! They also got another oGCD attack to use! A line AoE attack, how cool is that!? And to free up button space they... removed the line AoE attack monks have had since literally before Monk was a thing in 1.0. At least this one is more cumbersome because it competes with another oGCD for Chakras. Wait, is that a good thing?

This bit stood out for me, due to the fact that Dragoon kept Dragonfire Dive AND gained Stardiver, exactly the same AoE except higher potency. Stardiver can only be used under its resource (LoTD), same as Enlightenment. So, why was Howling Fist removed? Because we got Elixir Field? By that logic Stardiver should have replaced DFD if they were trying to streamline jobs equally. Just seems like they wanted to cuck monk some more.