Thread: The current monk was the result of a series of bad decisions, and 5.1 made it worse

Anatman or however it's spelled and leaden fist I hate with a passion. Because of those two moves our rotation has changed to some monster I can't get a grip on. HW monk I feel was the best honestly. The opener was sound and easy to learn and didn't make me use server ticks. It's why I left the class because of those two skills.

This is a good post. I like this. SE, please do something!

I disagree that Six sided star and Tornado kick are good abilities. If this was Heavensward, I'd agree. Six sided star as a downtime tool competes with the chakra system during short downtime and can either be a gain or a loss depending on how many chakras are left at the end of a fight. Its other intended purpose of extending GL is made completely redundant with the quality of life added to Form Shift. The way it's used is more or less the same as Tornado Kick, just before a very long downtime. Tornado Kick was also decent - in HW. Every job had to manage their gauge in some way. Enochian, BotD and GL were all strict timers and needed optimal performance to get the most out of them. TK was a good addition to negate the loss of GL3 back then, but now its usage is also very small, one to two times per fight: E1S - 3 times (before adds, after adds, boss death). E2S - 1 time (boss death). E3S - 2-3 times (Mael 1 and 2, but these are insanely risky and the changes to anatman butcher this optimization, and on boss death). E4S - 2-3 uses (end of P1, good server tick for anatman on Orogenesis, and boss death).

considering the devs went out of their way to get rid of execute moves, why the hell does MNK still have to deal with TK as more or less an execute move? Taking away the extreme risky scenarios this raid tier in E3S and E4S you'd see TK once or twice a fight. The developers love to take stuff away from MNK and the stuff we do get is always so niche or given in such a way that it's clunky to deal with - RoE, Tackle mastery, RoF in SB come to mind, and for ShB we have Anatman, which relies on the server tick and was further massacred by being placed on the GCD forcing it to see as many uses now as TK since that's the only time it will ever get used because Form Shift completely overshadows it everywhere else. They should have reworked Anatman to grant all stacks of greased lightning, change the animation slightly to reflect a burst of lightning shooting onto the MNK or something and take it away from the channeling effect. At this point, Anatman freezing forms and GL is redundant due to form shift (might i add as well the fact we have to stand still to gain our GL stacks is also dumbfounded) the only point of Anatman is to gain one stack in the opener and rebuild stacks in really long downtime. 2 of which in this game now are cutscenes so anatman can't be used there :think:

"But then if Anatman granted full stacks people could use Tornado Kick!!" Yes, and that's why the devs should balance around the whole kit of MNK and actually plan out proper rotations around set intervals instead of forcing us to play the same way we have since ARR. Also, get rid of the whole fist system! the only reason the TK rotation in SB was hated was because of the amount of double weaves needed to get in and out of the fist stances. Without the stances, it would have actually felt very fluid.

Agree with every point. Leaden Fist especially is the problem. What they did was dump massive potency into this one skill instead of spreading things out evenly across the board.
If Leaden fist potency was reduced, we'd be more willing to not use PB as a dps tool and THAT would solve the Anatman opener issue, not sticking Anatman on the GCD which only made everything worse. I can't believe they didn't see this coming, this obviously was a change made by someone who doesn't understand Monk. The level of oversight in this change is massive.

I'd post a beating a dead horse meme gif but I don't want to get banned.

The devs aren't listening. I'm sorry to be so pessimistic but it's true. The bandaid slap QOL changes at the start of Shadowbringers were probably the best we'll get.

I can kind of understand why they deleted some of our oGCDs because they felt it'd be too much with GL4 (even though it isn't and I'm sad they're gone, but I can understand the reasoning behind it).

For the GL3 vs GL4 bit, I just don't know why they wanted to tie GL4 to FoW. It didn't make sense whatsoever. They could've just changed FoW to be a haste buff while FoF retained as the damage buff stance and balanced them in such a way that while under raid buffs you wanna be in FoF and outside of raid buffs be in FoW so they saw equal use without being niche.

As for the Leaden Fist thing. I do agree that because Leaden Fist exists, PB is more efficient as a dps window instead of a resource gain window, but I don't fault Leaden Fist for it tbh and if you think about it, PB was sort of a damage CD in SB. We used it with RoW to spam TKs as often as possible throughout the fight. That aside, I fault the poor implementation of Anatman for the issues caused. If Anatman was an oGCD (maybe with charges) that just gave a GL stack no one would have an issue with PB being a CD for Leaden Fist spam because Anatman wouldn't be clunky and people wouldn't have to rely on server ticks or 3rd party programs. The idea to give us a skill to generate GL during downtime was a good thought, but the way they chose to implement it is what has led us to where we are today where you have PB vs Anatman opener (comfortable vs optimal).

For RoE and potency changes, I agree. I like RoE because it gives us mitigation for incoming damage which makes the healers appreciate us even though we're mostly using it to not have to deal with potentially missing positionals for 30 seconds (I personally liked the challenge of having to know exactly how a boss was gonna move and adjust accordingly to not miss any positionals, but I can't deny that RoE is nice). For potency, it would be nice, but at the same time I like that it leaves room for small optimizations like double true. I remember hearing from my group's DNC that back during turn 13 MNKs used to do 2 boots between every DK to try to push DPS as much as possible (which was scary cause the INT down would drop for like 1 second). So I don't mind the potencies being where they are, I think leaving room for optimizations like this is good from a design aspect (especially when SE seems hellbent on dictating how MNKs play the job, and if we play outside of that they nerf/remove things rather than reaching a compromise).

It feels like 90% of our concern, both long-term and short-term, has been devoted to Leaden Fist. Much like Warrior and Inner Release, it feels like there's just too little else going on, and whatever effort there is to spend elsewhere is disproportionately scarce of reward.

I like that PB can be used as a DPS CD; I just think it's that bit too much. I like that Dragon Kick is still useful; I just think it's quite a bit too much.

I'd honestly almost rather Dragon-Boot was merely dps-nuetral against Bootshine spam outside of damage windows, but those damage windows were more frequent, giving us more positional freedom but only within aware play, with other functions and features stepping into the spotlight instead.

I'd also like to see stances get some actual choice and oomph. Each should have some way of increasing damage over the others situationally or macrorotationally. Wind, for instance, should generate further Attack Speed so it can be traded against Fire when there are few or no oGCDs to spent. In balance, limit their swaps so we're not constantly changing per BS/Demolish, such as via charges (with refreshes on certain further procs), and give a further effect upon activation. If we want to make to allow for some real macrorotational fun around them, we can have a more granular charge-up rather than just straight charges, such that a fully charged Fists of Earth swap could generate up to an extra 30% eHP (consumed with damage thus absorbed), a fully charged Fists of Fire might instantly grant full Chakra, and a fully charged Fists of Wind might copy your attacks at reduced damage for your next few GCDs. Or, have swaps take a chunk out of those effects so it's not worth swapping constantly, but there are no technical lock-outs to swapping?

Meanwhile, why limit effects like Reply of Earth to a cooldown instead of something worth swapping around? What if instead Reply of Earth instead had variable duration based on damage absorbed, stackable up to 30 seconds rather than merely overriding, but was attached instead to Fists of Earth, so we could freely weave it in before any damage taken to benefit from its guaranteed positionals? Heck, if you want to make Fists of Earth truly interesting, have the damage absorbed grant increased base potency, not stackable with the positional bonus. Not only would it allow you to ignore positionals on all but Bootshine, but could actually outcompete Fists of Fire or Fists of Wind briefly after absorbing heavy raid damage, especially on/via Bootshine.

And while we're at it, why not an actually decent take on the elemental tackles to give us more to weave our macrorotation around?

Whatever it may be, let it just give us some more choice and nuance to play around rather than just Leaden Fist and a ton of redundant scrap left over from its collision with the toolkit.

Originally Posted by Lagomorph

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I can see where you're coming from. The skills you mentioned are not doing damage though. How do you think SAM would feel if its capstone ability was barely used - oh wait...

Hallowed being used once or twice a fight is nice though it serves its purpose as a capstone ability enabling invincibility. It's OP in every sense. I think i'm partly salty that SAMs cried about Shoha being niche and it was changed by 1 patch cycle. MNKs have been asking for TK to be more useful since its inception and new tools have further devalued TK as an option. Considering the evolution other jobs have had since ARR until now we are the only job that hasn't had a change in its base rotation (excluding the happy accident from 4.2+).

If stardiver could only be used once or twice a fight and resulted in a dps loss unless the boss were to jump do you think DRGs would be happy about their capstone ability? The point is MNK always gets the niche skills damaging or utility wise. Others may get niche utility but generally their damaging skills are used rotationally. Also regarding Tornado Kick, using it on the GCD the boss jumps will usually end in the damage not registering because the damage is tied to animation. This resulted in TK > 6SS being more optimal to ensure TKs damage went out. With the changes to anatman this now forces a 4.89s wait (at BiS) before we can even channel anatman again. Essentially forcing up to 7.89s wait until to get a GL stack. Prior to the change we were guaranteed a stack in the recast of 6SS. People have asked for TK to deal it's damage upfront instead of waiting for the animation to play out for 4 years. But once again, just another problem never addressed.