Monk Role needs Changes

[Melichoir]

Gonna try to snip at things that I dont think are quite right...

( 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.

Monk is currently one of the highest DPS classes in the game and provides a bit of light utility while doing it. It is not in jeopardy IMO. Its currently in a better position than it was in SB. This doesnt mean its perfect or that there cant be improvements, but your position here starts off slightly hyperbolic. As a point - sometimes being high dps is all a class needs. It's not perfect, but its not completely dysfunctional.

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.

Generally, if it didnt have utility, it wasnt worth bringing. Sam had this issue. IIRC, it was better to bring DRG and NIN for their utility, than it was to bring Monk/Sam. DRG more so if you had a bard.

Mantra is aoe convalescence. It is situational but saying its not impactful is silly. Coordinating with healers on when best to pop it to ease their healing is what youre supposed to do in Savage/EX. It's not gonna be make ro break of a skill, but it is useful.

... 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.

Ive never experienced this issue. I will always get 1 full stack with BH in an 8 man, if not more. Maybe Im an outlier, but ive never had issue with BH in this regards. The 5% damage buff does matter. Again, its not gonna make or break but it adds up.

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.

Whats our "One True Opener"? Like for reals, every class gets a new optimized opener when an xpac comes out. Monk is no exception to this. Beyond that, TK is even more situational skill now, and its always been clunky due to how it eats GL stacks. You essentially nerf yourself so you can do a hard hit. It's not typically useful unless youre gonna lose GL regardless (like cutscene in E1S). Simply said, its a bit situational when youre gonna use it. I dunno how to fix the skill, but the reason its a problem is because it uses up GL. Thats almost been the case for the entirety of the skill. It was semi fixed with wind tackle changes so that building GL stacks after using TK was easier and it was a dps gain in that regards.

PB is now better used to do a burst window with leaden fist. Which is why its on a longer CD now. Thats fine. Its a repurposed skill.

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.

Because the stance tackles were clunky and not used to often comparatively. Youd almost always do Fire Tackle until the Wind tackle change.

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.

SSS is a bit of a problem. It is situational as well. The GCD is to punishing for what it is. It is better to use this to keep your GL stacks if you cant use anatman or if you mess up and need to refresh it before a drop off and dont have the final stance. It's a bit underwhelming, but not the worst skill ever conceived. It could use a rework skill wise.

Back to the Riddles....(snipped).....wall opener.PLEASE?????

So the feeling I get is you just want SB monk back. Personally I dont. After the windtackle changes, I wasnt a fan of playing monk. I thought it became to convoluted at that point. Thats my personal feelings of course. However, more to addressing balance, these changes would make monks a 'must take' class. It would be too good at that point. Even in SB, you couldnt have all the riddles active. Switching out of stance would end the effect IIRC. This doesnt even address certain aspects. You cant stun most bosses, so that greatly mitigates the point of Earth Tackle for that purpose. Having GL stack faster doesnt mean youll be using TK more often necessarily. Depending how it maths out, getting to GL4 might be better than wasting it on an attack. It simply comes back to the fact that TK is clunky with how it eats GL stacks. You want to buff so many skills and add abilities just to use TK. At that point, the problem is probably with TK, not the class.

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.

Anatman is part of the monk opener currently because (timed right) it generates GL faster by using it than not. As in, FoF> Meditation> FS>FS>FS>TN>ST>Demo>Anatman (or close to that). Youll end up with two GLs in the the course of 1 GCD. Admittedly it feels clunky but to me thats more an issue with the simple fact you cant even rotate with it. I think that limitation is silly AF.

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.

Better to use PB for leaden fist spam.

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.

Anatman is pretty useful for certain aspects of fights. Rather than spamming FS, you can just go to a spot, pop anatman and sit there with max GL timer, Max GL, and in the form of your choosing. Its not a terrible skill, and Id honestly rather use it than spamming FS.

Now i know....(snipped)..pertaining to monk

Lore stuff is always fun, and yeah they couldve gone into that more, but since we changed from the class specific quests to roll, it probably wont be explored ever. Sucks.

Snip (Class proposals)

While I think some of this would be interesting, this would amount to a class rework, and monk in its current state is fine. There are other classes that need more addressing than monk currently. I think most of your critiques are based on misunderstandings + nostalgia for SB monk. You might have prefered SB monk. Thats fine, but I think youre not understanding some of the newer skills, and you're remember older monk layouts in a better light than they were. Im all for making classes more fun and interesting, but I dont think Monk is that bad off as you believe it to be.