Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[RyuDragnier]

Doubtless since that would infringe on Dragoon's position as the middle ground DPS/rDPS job. If anything, I suspect Anatman just gives you Chakra. Either a guaranteed amount or works similar to Mediate from Samurai.

I kinda wish it'd reset the cooldowns of certain oGCDs or lower them a bit, but I understand how insanely crazy that'd be. But if Fists of Earth and Riddle of Earth is gone, I suspect it'll be replacing Earth's Reply as the "ignore positionals for 30s" buff.

[SpeckledBurd]

So on the one hand, the new changes don't look any worse than the current Monk iteration. That isn't exactly a positive but it isn't a negative either. We can finally use Tornado Kick in a developer mandated way instead of abusing their oversight to do it, which is a positive.

For the most part though, as a rework this really doesn't fix many of the problems that people have with the job. It won't get completely screwed by Down for the Count transitions and it's recovery from them and Death will be improved, but otherwise the problems people have with it still seem to be present. IE:

The Fist Stances are still there and unchanged from their base design of set the one with the highest DPS and forget it forever.

RNG Chakras are still there and frankly nobody likes them.

You can still only use Chakra when capped which is at extreme odds with RNG Chakra. Even if they proc on every crit there needs to be some overhead if players don't want to lose Chakra.

Brotherhood in the same vein seems to still be RNG based which, as mentioned, people very much dislike, and which works very poorly with the current Chakra implementation.

6SS is still an extremely lackluster Capstone and more in line with an ability you should get at about level 46. Adding 5 seconds of sprint to it really doesn't fix Monk's major mobility problem.

Speaking of, Monk's mobility is now slightly worse because we're going to be sitting in Fists of Fire near full time again.

As for things we don't know but I'm really not confident in the answer to:

What does Anatman even do at this point? It's current implementation is truly worhtless and it won't work with out Greased Lightning. If they keep it as it was and it just prolongs your current stance then it's utterly worthless (which might be the case since it's still on the GCD). Otherwise I have no idea what else it might be unless they've turned it into a Riddle of Earth that no longer requires a hit to proc (since RoE wasn't on Yoshi's Bar), and at that point they may as well just remove all of the positionals from Monk.

Does Brotherhood still only proc on Weaponskills? Much of the problem with this skill is that it's party comp dependency is a double whammy of disappointment. It doesn't just only benefit physical party members but also makes Monk feel bad outside of a Full 8-man party with a single caster.

Overall for something called a "rework" it's really pretty lackluster and it seems more like they're wiping the table clean so they can make the actual changes in 6.0. That isn't a problem in and of itself, but messaging it as being a Rework when it's more like a pre-rework cleanup that they're letting us use is pretty disappointing.

[Controller]

Yeah form what we were shown they seemed to not fixed anything. The fact anatman is still there along with the fist stances makes me worried. They atleast made TK useful tho so there is still hope. The fact that TK doesn't steal stacks anymore and is now a normal OGCD makes me happy. We can now TK to the best of them and be tougher then leather, unlike ninjas we don't chuckle.. we rather flex our TKs.

[Ramura_Sono]

So that LL huh? My thoughts on the changes:

Tornado Kick - pretty much turned into Steel Peak.

Form Shift - gives "Formless Fist" which allows you to use any move without having to cycle forms, cool QoL I guess, no more screwed up openers in casual content because the tank is impatient and pulls immediately.

Six Sided Star - The same, except it now gives a speed boost. ...OK? I'm not sure why they did this, but if I had to guess it's probably because we're defaulting back to Fists of Fire now so we don't have the passive speed boost from Fists of Wind. It apparently has a "very high potency" but I'll wager it's still worth 2 weaponskills like it is now. We'll see how this changes once we have the potencies.

Perfect Balance - I really enjoy this change, no more skill speed melding hell.

Anatman probably just exists to freeze the timer for Formless Fist if I had to guess. It'll probably still be useless no matter what change they give it though to be honest. At least we no longer have that disgusting opener to worry about.

I need time to mull over these changes but I'm disappointed that this was apparently worth waiting until 5.4 for? Was figuring out the potency changes really that hard?

The worst part is they wanted us to wait until 6.0 for this.

[SpeckledBurd]

The worst part is they wanted us to wait until 6.0 for this.

No matter how you swing it, for something they’d called a rework what they showed is profoundly disappointing. Altering Greased Lightning in this way by simply eliminating it is unnecessarily heavy handed when Monk’s issue with mid fight cutscenes could be solved by giving Monk a 30 second cooldown to build GL to maximum and the Tornado Kick change. That way Monk's recovery is equivalent to other jobs and that recovery isn't automatically a DPS gain to burn for more damage. What’s worse is it seems our many other issues with the job such as RNG chakra, Fist Stances, lack of mobility, and the excess of lackluster niche actions haven’t been addressed.

However, whether this was what they intended for 6.0 or if this is them throwing together something they can call a rework beforehand to try and placate our three expansions worth of built up frustration is still a mystery and we won’t know for a few months yet. If it’s a stalling tactic, then they still ultimately made us wait until 6.0 for changes which frankly should be expected but still reflects very poorly on the devs since many of these issues date back to Heavensward.

If this is actually what they were going to deliver in 6.0 though and nothing else is heading down the pipe then I imagine this thread will reach 200 pages.

[Sqwall]

No matter how you swing it, for something they’d called a rework what they showed is profoundly disappointing. Altering Greased Lightning in this way and eliminating it is unnecessarily heavy handed when Monk’s issue with mid fight cutscenes could be solved by giving Monk a 30 second cooldown to build GL to maximum and the Tornado Kick change. What’s worse is it seems our many other issues with the job such as RNG chakra, Fist Stances, and lackluster niche actions haven’t been addressed.

However, whether this was what they intended for 6.0 or if this is them throwing together something they can call a rework beforehand is still a mystery and we won’t know for a few months yet. If it’s a stalling tactic, then they still ultimately made us wait until 6.0 for changes which frankly should be expected.

If this is actually what they were going to deliver in 6.0 though then I imagine this thread will reach 200 pages.

I agree with you here. While the changes fix the GL headaches and endgame content not being held back class restrictions (which was never something they looked at anyway). It does raise some concerns in the regard of 6.0 onward. What is the end result with this heavy handed change? While I welcome this change to release monk from the shackles of GL, I do wonder how the job will evolve from this. Mostly which skills will be removed, implemented, replaced, reworked. More importantly what do they want Monk to ultimately be with these changes prior to an expansion.

I agree that there is MORE to come in 6.0 and we will see something to the likes of MCH or DRK, a complete new direction of the job that has yet to be announced. I like the changes for 5.4 and is finally a new direction for monk, but remain optimistic (while skeptical) leading into 6.0 launch as we will more then likely see another major change. Skeptically is moderate due to the fact that monk has always been ignored every expansion and changed later in every expansions downhill trend.

My belief is that SE had the roadmap for 6.0 monk laid out back near the end of 4.0, and community backlash is ruining that roadmap. Which is why 5.0 monk was so lackluster and the cost is so high with monk as all the work prior is effectively being thrown out and needed to start over.

I agree this is the tip of the iceberg for monk and 6.0 launch will really start to see the ultimate NEW direction for monk. All that said I'm already getting my monk ready for 5.4 and testing it out to see what the new monk can really do.

[silverdragontyr]

It certainly feels like a not fully thought or implemented idea. A bandaid rather than a transplant. The fist stances still being there/being the same as a disappointment. If SSS keeps its long gcd it will remain a niche ability. Anataman has to be useful in some way. They can't be that dense. Either way it keeps Mnk with around half a dozen skills that are either very niche or downright useless in most play. With what Yoshi said saying "because this isn't an expansion no new skills right now" I almost have to wonder if this is indeed not the full rework and a better one will come next expansion. It just feels too shallow right now.

That said Mnk will likely see a 10-20% power boost with TK being oGCD with no further restrictions, PB being stacked and not needing a coeurl skill to maintain GL. Also opener will almost certainly be Formless > Dragon Kick > Leaden Bootshine now. We'll be strong, we'll just continue using the same six skills with 2 oGCD thrown in every 30-60 seconds.

[MartaDemireux]

It certainly feels like a not fully thought or implemented idea. A bandaid rather than a transplant.

That's because this is a bandaid. It's a really big one but not a total complete rework. It will be further adjusted at 6.0 and this is somewhat of a hint at the direction they may take. It's most likely that this is the direction 6.0 was going to take MNK in already but they're having to implement it early with the abilities currently available. Job adjustments and reworks are likely already fully thought and planned out this close to a new expansion- potentially even in balance testing phases.

If they removed the fist stances without being able to add in new abilities to replace them, they'd probably get a lot of flack. New abilities are a selling point for expansions, so it's likely that SE PR won't let them implement new abilities early. Kind of like how around this point in SBs life they said WHM was getting fixed to be competitive with other healers but all they could really do at the time was adjust the effects of current abilities - namely massively boost Assize potency. But when ShB came out we saw WHM's entire job gauge reworked and the addition of Misery which helps to lessen the impact of lost DPS from GCD heals which basically mirrored their SB patch goal.

[Irisdina_Wiloh]

One thing that only really popped into my head today, that I'm actually really happy about is how these changes will affect the opener for Monk. No longer will we have to deal with building up GL during the opener and being punished for having a higher ping. This is going to be such a nice change and will ensure consistency for opening and re-opening, making it much easier to align yourself with other party member's raid buffs. I'm guessing this means going forward there will finally be just one opener again, with possibly minor variations to adjust for party comp.

As for this being dubbed a bandaid, it's a frustrating position to be in. We were told this was going to be a big rework for monk, and I guess that isn't untrue but if they're once again doing as little as they can so that they can save it for 6.0, it's a bit of a smack in the face to us. How many times are we going to have to relearn new openers and work around jank in our kit before they finally rework the job properly, rather than making small changes, over and over again causing us to have to readjust to certain things. If 6.0 is another let down for monk, then what happens next? I am nervous to find out where we end up.

[Duskane]

if Drk lost there own effect in there own expansion i doubt monks will ever return