Monk Role needs Changes

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

Alright people, this is going to be a bit of a rant, but please, i would really like for someone to listen and give me feedback.

For those of you that do not wish to read through my detailed thoughts skip to the bottom for the outline of my proposal.

( and no this is not a troll, this is someone truely concerned with the class as it stands. It doesnt matter if the class is high on the dps, it is still disfunctional in its own ways)

Ive been playing monk hardcore sense the Heavensward expansion, ive enjoyed the class soooo much, so this is why i would like to put my frustration out into the public. With the changes done to the monk in this new expansion( ShadowBringer ), the monk's role in the content of the game(i.e. raids, dungeons, engame content in general) is sliding into jeopardy, further than prior.

Use to be, the monk was a question of worth. It didnt bring anything to the raid group, other than high dps(if the player was good, and ontop of their rotation) and the skill mantra(lets face it though, mantra isnt all that impactfull....period.

Sense the nurf to it awhile back, it sees little use other than a cursory activation for no real reason other than just to use it), and with Brotherhood( its just a replicated effect for the raid that other classes can do, and lets face it, monks only use it for the selfish reason of charging chakra faster...in which case, even in that reguard, it seems to have been reduced in effect).

In Stoormsblood, brotherhood would turbo chakra gain, to the point where u would get the 5 before the skill even came off cooldown to use again, but now it doesnt really have much effect at all. Ive had intances where the brotherhood effect was applied to my group, and during the entirety of the duration, i didnt get a single chakra charge, even with the new enhanced meditation trait.

Moveing on from that, lets talk about the monks other skills. Before ShadowBringers, we only had one dead skill( i say dead, but really its use was just really limited, mainly just used in pvp), and that was "one ilm punch".

But now, because of changes to the skills, be they cooldown timers (perfectbalance) or just utter changes (shoulderTackle). Its made our one true opener rotation unuseable, to include the major reasoning to use the said opener, the skill "tornadoKick".

With the current skill line up, tornado kick is pointless, if u wanna try to use it u would preferably be in "fist of Fire" stance so that u dont need to stack 4 greased lightning inorder to use it, but even then. Sense we dont have wind tackle anymore to charge greasedlightning plus riddle of the wind, we cant do our opener to use tornadokick, and if we perfect balance, well........its cooldown is obsured now, double what it used to be.

HOWE COME THE MONK GOT THE SHORT END OF THE STICK HERE

Samurai is being shown sooooo much love, their skill that is similar to perfectbalance got buffed rediculouly, cutting its cooldown massivly. What im trying to say here, is give the monk the same treatment, or even just revert the nurf, give us back the tackle effects, charging greased lightning with wind tack, dealing more damage with fire tackle, and earth tackle: change its effect to some kind of defensive effect, like a stun effect.

Also, the riddle of Fire and Earth, i really like what was done with them, especially with riddle of fire. Removing the skill speed slow down on it was amazing. The monk is supposed to be a " balls to the wall" skill speed monster, and something that slows them down has no synergy with their skill kit.

That actually leads me to the level 80 skill: " six point star".....................What where they thinking when they created this skill?????? unless im COMPLETELY overlooking something, no monk worth their salt would ever consent to using this skill, ever.

It goes completly against the grain of how the monk functions, causeing the global cooldown to be converted to its cooldown which is double the normal cooldown of your skills, and its potency is not even high enough to grudgingly argue to use it cause any 2 other skill will be stronge by far, and allow you to continue ur combos, than this one skill.

And its a level 80 Skill, lvl 80. Levels are suppose to ba a way to display a pc's proficency at its job, so why would such a low impact, and completly un-synergistic skill be at the current penical of the job's skill tree????? It is the most useless skill that has ever been released for the monk. EVER.

Back to the Riddles. I liked what was done with earth and fire, i disliked that wind was removed and swaped to a cop-out to give us grease lightning 4. You should never have limited the monk to that, ever.

Instead, you should have just inserted the greasedlightning 4 trait, and left riddle of wind as a skill, and add a new trait for the fist of fire, earth, and wind... uping their potency as it were. With fist of fire, uping its damage increase, fist of wind on top of its movement speed, give it an effect to increase skill speed, with fist of earth, increase its defense buff and give it a defense effect something like nullifying knockbacks( an effect like this would go on cooldown when triggered sepparate from the fist of earth cooldown, like give it a debuffer icon on ur name with a timer to show when it is useable again.)

What you could do with the riddles, is tie the element tackles into their effects, whenever the riddle is activated, the tackle gets the additional effect of the riddle, to include every riddle active at the time of the tackle use.

So if u have a riddle of fire active, the tackle would have higher potency, if wind was active the tackle would generate greasedlightning, if earth was active the tackle would stun its target.

If all riddles were active, it would have all of their effects, so it would have higher potency, generat greasedlightning, and stun, or if only some were active...... it would have the effects of whichever riddle was active.

This would make tornado kick relavent again. effectivly giving the monk back its balls to the wall opener.PLEASE?????

The next skill id like to talk about it anatman, the meditation thing that generates greasedlightning similar to how samurai generate its resourse<tenki?> by standing still......and doing nothing......but u had to initiate the fight first.....and then do nothing for its duration.........................this goes back to what i said about the monk being a "balls to the wall" class......this skill is inherantly horrible, and i would never condone the use of it.

We have perfect balance, all be it at a horrible cooldown as of the moment, but it will generate our greasedlightning faster and allow you to deal damage at the same time.

If you try the argument of "what about downtime during the fight", well, we have form shift for that( and i really love what they did with formshift, if makes traversing dungeons much smoother, without having to generate grasedlightning constantly at every encounter, it really shows the mastery of the class, but one thing id like to say, change it so that its a trait that the monk gets at a higher lvl, say 60+ level, so that its like a obtained mastery of the skill formshift. i think that would be some good flavor), but like i said with formshif and perfect balance, anatman is utterly useless.

Now i know that was a lot to go through, but id like to talk about the monk itself now. Through the different job quests for the monk, it went through alot of lore, and different potential feature.

With this being the SHADOWBRINGERS expansion, there was one particular feature i wanted you to touch on SOOOOOOOOO much, and that was the fist of shadow.

I was so excited when it was brought up in the stormsblood expansion, i was like ooooohhhhhhh, we're going to learn the dark side of the monk.....but we didnt......and then shadowbringers was announced, and i was like.....OOOOOOOHHHHHHHH here it come, dark side monk......but it didnt.

You litterally had the perfect opportunity to do the fist of shadows monk style, but failed miserably.

That being said, here is what i really wanted to see with this expansion...pertaining to monk.

Obviously greasedlightning 4, thats just a given

Next: I want to go into the shadow sect of the monk, introduce the "DARK CHAKRA" with the light chakra. You could use the same chakra gadge, just alter the orbs so that they make a yin-yang symbol in each orb. That being flavor to show your pc's aspirations of balance.ill go deeper into this in a second.

With this you would obviously have new skills.

What i propose is this:
Have a new form: just like how we have opo opo, raptor, and couril forms, introduce a new form and trait.

NEW FORM: Dragon(whatever name really, just something suitable) with a new trait that has demolish ans snap punch enter into dragon form instead of opo opo form.

With that being said:

NEW Attack skills: 2 of them. Both requiring dragon form to use, and to keep with the style of the class mastery gooing, both will generate greasedlightning.

With the lose of the critical chance buff, monk used to have, i would absolutly make this the opportunity to add the crit buff to one of these 2 skills.

Set it so that the player has to manage it just like it would twin-snakes, using it every so often to keep it applied. The other skill could just be a damage skill, slightly higher potency than true strike.

Both of these skills need to use positionals aswell, so make the cri increaser be from the side and the damager be from the back, to keep in line with the other skills and keep u shifting back and forth.

Both of these skills having dark aligned sfx's for the motions of the skills as they are used.

An additional effect to both of these would be that crits from these would generate shadow chakra. Any crit, no chance of it happening, 100% of the times these skills crit apply shadow chakra.

This leads me to the next 3 skills:

Sense Howling fist was replaced with the chakra skill enlightenment, this gave the chakra gadge 2 skills to use, one a single target and the other a line AoE skill.

The Shadow chakra will have 2 skills as well, u could set it up to be either a party buff: with a single buff for yourself like how final chakra is a single target attack or a party wide buff like how enlightenment is a AoE attack.

OOORRRRRRR: u can have the 2 skills deal damage to the enemies in the same fasion, 1 for single target, 1 for AoE..... but have them cause a detrimental efect(i.e. a damage down debuff or a potent damage over time(DOT) effect).

But the reason why i said 3 skills is cause of the last one:

SKILL #3: askill that uses both the light and shadow chakra. It needs to be a kick attack, cause the monks strongest attacks are kicks. Call it something like (TRUE BALANCE), but it needs to be high potency ideally single target, and apply somekind of debuff maybe(blunt resist down?????).

Just throw out anatman and six sided star, they are worthless.

These are the 5 skills id like to see moving forward, they are true to the monks role and they are inspired by the monks lore and story quests, and i would greatly desire to see this implimented.

The monk is rather clunky at the moment and i havnt heard anyone make mention of it, or a desire to fix it.

As it stands now, it just feels like the monk got the shaft with this expansion, with someone incharge just tossing some skills at the monk as an after thought, not really knowing what it would do to the job, but also not really caring either.

With these implementated, i feel that the monk would raise backinto the ranks of the other classes as a fun job for other players to play, not just the very few hard core monk players that are just playing it cause they are loyal to the class, this would give the monk REAL endgame presence, not just as a after thought.

OUTLINE

Skills added:

Dragon form skill 1: potency 160. Potency 180 from the back. Grants internal release buff(critical chance increase 10%) critical hits generate 1 dark chakra. Grants greasedlightning.

Dragon form skill 2: potency 230. 250 potency when done from the side, critical hits generate 1 dark chakra. Grants greasedlightning.

Dark chakra skill 1 : single target,low damage strike, high potency DoT

Dark chakra skill 2: ground AoE DoT

Equilibrium: delivers an attack with a potency of 500. Can only be executed while under the effects of fifth chakra and have 5 dark chakra. All chakra are closed upon execution.

Riddle of Wind: reduce weaponskill cast time and recast time and auto attack delay by 20%
Maybe allow a free cast of tornado kick aswell(was a suggestion someone else had.

Traits added

Enhanced Greased Lightning III: allow the stacking of a forth greased lightning

Yin and Yang: adds shadow chakra to the chakra gauge.
Demolish and snap punch now change form to dragon.

Enhanced fist of earth: gains passive effect: nullifies most knockback and sraw in effects. 60second cool down when passive effect is triggered

Enhanced fist of wind: reduce weaponskill cast time and recast time and auto attack delay by 10%

Elemental tackle: shoulder tackle becomes elemental tackle during the effects of riddle of wind, riddle of fire, and riddle of earth. Granted additional effects while under the effects of a riddle. Effects stack.
Riddle of earth--> causes a stun
Riddle of fire--> increase potency by 5%
Riddle of wind--> grants greased lightning

Revert form shift buff and instead make the buff into a trait to reflect mastery over the fighting forms. Obtained in the 70s range

Masterful Form: form shift refreshes gl when changing from couril or dragon to opo opo form


Skills Removed

Anatman, six sided star, riddle of wind trait





Please listen SE.

Thank you for reading this if you came this far, i do greatly appriciate it, and hope to see some feed back.

Please and thank you.

The best comment ive seen to reflect another players opinion on the true state of the monk.

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.

[Noctisnine]

I agree with some of these but honestly you are loosing your time here because monk had some of those problems for ages and they have done 0 to change it, dragoon and samurai have a vastly superior kit and they are much more fun to play then monk. So the more they buff samurai the less monks you will see...

[Makeda]

Monk isn’t getting much attention right now because it’s tied for top DPS with BLM. SAM is getting attention because it’s the lowest melee DPS even though it’s supposed to be top.

I can’t speak to the changes in your rotation... I am just noting that given how the class is performing better than it’s supposed to, it will likely get a nerf. But not until after they fix classes that are a LOT more broken...

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

I grudgingly agree with both of your replys, honestly. The changes done to the monk have nullified the 70-80 skills. I dont count enlightenment cause its just the howling fist skill reskined and tagged to the chakras ehile removing howling fist to begin with. The fact that other classes are hurting too is unfortunate, but understandable. But what i disagree with is that players (to include people i talk with in person) seem to adhere to the premise thar sense ots dps is high there is no reason to give it attention, other than nerfs. The utter disregard is heart breaking.

I appreciate the comments.

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

I agree with some of these but honestly you are loosing your time here because monk had some of those problems for ages and they have done 0 to change it, dragoon and samurai have a vastly superior kit and they are much more fun to play then monk. So the more they buff samurai the less monks you will see...

Id love to get your detailed opinion about my idea, sense u seem to still appreciate the monk as a class. What do you agree/disagree with. How could the idea be improved? What would you think would be a good idea to push the monks problem into the light and try to really push for a change?

[MsQi]

It's ok to have abilities that are not part of the "rotation". A good RPG has tons of them. Situational should be the rule, not the exception. You learn abilities to deal with situations. Learning abilities is part of personal progression which has been greatly damaged already. One Ilm Punch made perfect sense for a monk. It should be retuned in some form, even if it's just an additional stun. Abilities should not just show up and disappear because of patches, they should be learned on the journey or transformed through experience. Like so many games before they are treating classes/jobs are a series of mechanics and designing the game around tight balance. It's the e-sport mentality that should be foreign to the genre.

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

I really like the way you think, ive held this same side of an arguement with a friend of mine. " introduce enough skills as u progress, not to use them all but to use what you want to use in order to make your play style unique, instead of being limited to the same set of skills all the time. Eventually enough skills are released that people would acknowledge that u cant use them all and set up different rotataiins for different situations, giveing more complexity and depth the the role, and a deeper identity to the class.

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

It's ok to have abilities that are not part of the "rotation". A good RPG has tons of them. Situational should be the rule, not the exception. You learn abilities to deal with situations. Learning abilities is part of personal progression which has been greatly damaged already. One Ilm Punch made perfect sense for a monk. It should be retuned in some form, even if it's just an additional stun. Abilities should not just show up and disappear because of patches, they should be learned on the journey or transformed through experience. Like so many games before they are treating classes/jobs are a series of mechanics and designing the game around tight balance. It's the e-sport mentality that should be foreign to the genre.

But unfortunately the monk actually has dead skills, none situational, anatman, six sided star and tornado kick have all been routed out due to changes in this expansion. Tornado kick due to how the riddles and shoulder tackle changed and anatman and six sided star due to the buff to form shift and the presence of perfect balance

[Rivxkobe]

HOWE COME THE MONK GOT THE SHORT END OF THE STICK HERE

Samurai is being shown sooooo much love

LMAO. Are you kidding?

You state you aren't a troll but then you come here with... this?

Monk was crazy buffed in 5.05. Its the second best DPS right now, after BLM, and there is no reason right now to take a SAM over a MNK (or DRG for the matter). Doesn't matter if it has "dead skills". It's ridiculously OP right now.

Just... lmao

[Sonya_Nillefrant]

LMAO. Are you kidding?

You state you aren't a troll but then you come here with... this?

Monk was crazy buffed in 5.05. Its the second best DPS right now, after BLM, and there is no reason right now to take a SAM over a MNK (or DRG for the matter).

Just... lmao

I can see you have no bias to this topic...but i digress. The only thing monk got was a quality of life change to form shift, which coincidentally cause anatman and six sided star to be completly obsolete, and the skill speed down off of riddle of fire, and a damage nerf to fist of fire( i think, could be wrong on this one). Altogether a slight buff, but only to skill speed and thats only while riddle of fire is active. Whatever crazy buff ur talking about is nonexistent. It was a band aid on a problem the devs seem to know nothing about.