Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[EpicOverlord85]

Something that I don't think has been touched on yet is PB's cooldown. 120 seconds seems a bit excessive when you consider skills like Kassatsu and Meikyo/Ikkishoten. Thoughts?

EDIT: Especially since this is the ONLY other way to ramp up quickly. I think we've already covered why TK's design is bad, so I'll leave that sleeping dog alone.

During SB I thought they had nailed PB finally when they dropped the CD down to 60 seconds. Hell it even made Tornado Kick viable.

[EpicOverlord85]

Unfortunately, there's little that can be said at this point that I haven't already said ad nauseum in this thread or in other threads. Monk feedback has been ignored for so long that it feels like providing it is a waste of time to many players.


The unfortunate thing is Perfect Balance's cooldown actually was 60 seconds between 4.2 and 5.0. They nerfed it because people were using it for the Tornado Kick rotation, so rather than adjusting Tornado Kick, an underused skill that people want to use, they decided to make Monk miserable to play in dungeons on launch by utterly shredding our ability to recover stacks and creating more problems instead of solving them.

Salt Aside, Perfect Balance is currently plagued by a problematic design where it's supposed to be our Blood of the Dragon/Enochian skill that grants us our buffs, but the actual way it functions makes it more like Meikyo Shisui in practice. Tornado Kick is obviously at direct odds with the design of it as a buff granting skill, but the new Leaden Fist buff really breaks PB as being used as something other than a pure utility skill. Before DK granting Leaden Fist was a thing, using PB to do GCDs out of order was a small potency gain at best because our weaponskills didn't really fluctuate too much around their average. You could spam True Strikes for a little extra damage but you'd have to refresh your buffs and lose a Crit Bootshine, so as gains went it was small. Leaden Fist Bootshine sits so far out of the normal average of Monk's weaponskills that using Perfect Balance to get more is a huge gain. Given their history with the job, I'd be surprised if this is intentional on the devs part rather than a total accident. The only way to fix it is to change Tornado Kick fundamentally so there's no incentive to burn stacks and to either rework Leaden Bootshine or rework Perfect Balance.

This is just another example of the many reasons Monk is in need of a rework.

God I hate leaden fist, just give me my blunt resistance debuff back

[Mahrze]

God I hate leaden fist, just give me my blunt resistance debuff back

I don't necessarily hate it. But like with Raiden Thrust for DRG, the question still remains: "Why tho?"

[Shurrikhan]

I don't necessarily hate it. But like with Raiden Thrust for DRG, the question still remains: "Why tho?"

As least Raiden Thrust is a sexy kind of doubled positional reward.

Leaden Fist is just... "Welp, that was a 1/4th of my damage to have been dealt over the last 6 GCDs from which my tank just needlessly spun away my auto-crit. Good thing I'll be immune to positioning again for my next 4..."

It hold so much more damage per GCD than any other skill save Demolish, so much greater a percentage of overall damage than any other skill, and so much more positional-based damage than all other skills combined, that it feels painfully awkward.

[EpicOverlord85]

I don't necessarily hate it. But like with Raiden Thrust for DRG, the question still remains: "Why tho?"

Exactly my feelings on the matter.

[Mahrze]

Exactly my feelings on the matter.

Leaden fist and Raiden Thrust feel to me like Refulgent Arrow felt for me with BRD back in 4.0. Albeit Leaden fist is not as strict as Raiden Thrust for the proc itself.

[3ureka]

On the off-chance that Square does use fflogs as a metric to gauge monk participation in content (I don't think they could/would officially say so with their stance on 3rd party programs), the changes I think most of us would like to see will take longer than a few weeks to implement.

Edit: But I'm down for even an announcement that they'll take another look at monk.

[Powercow]

Edit: But I'm down for even an announcement that they'll take another look at monk.

The last time we got an announcement that Monk was going to get looked at, Anatman was put on the GCD. The time before that, we lost everything that made the Tornado Kick rotation. The only thing I'd have to look forward to in regards to an announcement for Monk changes is a morbid curiosity on what else they could possibly do to it.

[SpeckledBurd]

On the off-chance that Square does use fflogs as a metric to gauge monk participation in content (I don't think they could/would officially say so with their stance on 3rd party programs), the changes I think most of us would like to see will take longer than a few weeks to implement.

Edit: But I'm down for even an announcement that they'll take another look at monk.

They wouldn't need to, they have their own metrics on exactly how many people are playing what job within a time frame. FFlogs has just been mentioned because it's one of the only metrics for tracking job use the players have.

As for how long they've known, that's anyone's guess. I'd speculate that Monk would have seen an abrupt drop in plays immediately after 5.1 when it was no longer the strongest DPS, but the devs really should have something in the pipeline in terms of Monk revisions after the launch reception was abysmal to say the least.

[Age_of_Oblivion]

Class would benefit hugely from a fourth stance in the mix imo. Or more, even. I like the core idea - fluid stance changes with positionals around the boss. But I’ve been levelling it lately and I gotta say... it’s kind of a bummer realizing that the class basically doesn’t change after you pick up Dragon Kick. You get a few tools for maintaining GL stacks, you get... an absurd amount of abilities poured into making Forbidden Chakra a thing (seriously why does this skill exist before Deep Meditation), and you get some niche ways to damage a boss before a phase transition or a big movement. There is so much more you can do here! Extend the stance dance, give branching options that change your fist stance, maybe even define an endpoint like Despair on Black Mage.