Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Ramura_Sono]

And shouldn't have to wait 'til 6.0 or later to get it.

[meTYE]

Can you go more in depth?

[SpeckledBurd]

Can you go more in depth?

Not the OP but sure.

In spite of being the best performing melee before everything else was brought up to par, Monk is basically the worst designed job in the game at this point by a huge margin. There's multiple redundant, overly niche or useless skills in the kit, there are many of the problems that the players have had with it dating back to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward that have gone unaddressed despite there being numerous complaints about them, and when the devs said that they were listening to our feedback moving forward into Shadowbringers they flat out lied to us and fixed none of the problems they introduced in Stormblood while also doubling down on either them or some of the previously mentioned problems in the jobs design. It's kit also, in spite of its many problems, is lacking in a number of ways compared to other melee jobs or even jobs as a whole. It lacks any sort of Damage neutral movement skill like Hissatsu: Gyoten, Shikuchi, and Elusive jump or a true ranged poke. It's Gauge isn't fleshed out in the slightest and indeed, is actually just a conversion of a downtime loss mitigation skill from Heavensward that was lazily given a gauge with little thought to how it impacted the effectiveness of the original skill or how the original design would impact it as a gauge rather than fully converting it into a true system.

If you want some more granular examples of this here's a few.

The Fist Stances: The big problem with them is that there's only ever been one stance you'd want to use as a DPS. In ARR through Stormblood that was fire because it boosted your damage the most. In Shadowbringers its Wind because it gives you access to GL4 which also just boosts your damage the most. In Stormblood they made an appeal to making them useful with Tackle Mastery which was so poorly thought out that it was a meme (lol Earth Tackle), and it only gained any use in 4.2 with Tackle Stacks which resulted in a rotation that the devs didn't want us using so much they nerfed Perfect Balance in Shadowbringers. In Shadowbringers they tried it again with Enhanced Fists of Fire and new Riddle of Wind, the two stances are incredibly close in damage to the point where Fire can occasionally be slipped into in a few edge cases the most common of which is the first 3 GCDs of a fight and the final GCD, but 99% of the time you want to be in Wind. Its an entire system they could remove and basically nothing about the job would change. This is something they flat out fixed on Ninja by removing Kiss of the Wasp/Viper as skills and just folding that damage into a trait, but on Monk it's persisted for two expansions.

Another problem that has gone unfixed is Stormblood RNG and how it makes Monk extremely comp dependent in terms of performance. Monk is still Crit RNG Dependent/Physical Comp Dependent which was maligned in Stormblood. Without a Dragoon and a Scholar providing Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem, Monk can't perform at its best. Unlucky RNG over the course of the fight also produces exponentially less damage than if you'd have good crit RNG. Similarly Brotherhood is a major contributor of potency in Monks burst phase, but its RNG only procs off of physical weaponskills. If there's more than one caster in the party, or you're even just in a 4-Man, Monk gets less procs and does less damage over the course of a fight, and because the procs are still RNG you'll occasionally get extremely unsatisfying Riddle of Fire burst phases where you barely get one Forbidden Chakra or don't get one at all. As with Ninja and Kiss of the Wasp/Viper, this was something the devs fixed on other jobs. Bard moved away from Crit RNG and comp dependence in Shadowbringers to its benefit. Monks design however is left behind.

As for useless or overly Niche actions, Monk has Tornado Kick and its most recent capstone skill Six Sided Star which fit in the exact same niche of "Thing I want to do when disengaging". The worse of these is Tornado Kick, which in costing Monk all of its stacks makes its use case so high it gets used all of twice in the Eden series outside of as a boss Execute making it about as useful as Shoha originally was. However like most other problems with Monk that have parallels in other jobs, the other job gets the fix and Monk has the skill sitting around for so long unchanged that the devs are willing to Break the jobs ability to function rather than fix the problem. When the ability to regain stacks let Monk use TK rotationally at the end of Stormblood, the devs undid the best quality of life they'd ever given it by doubling PBs cast time and removing tackle stacks which made Monk abysmal to level or even play in a dungeon in Shadowbringers until the Form Shift change. Six Sided Star is marginally better, being good for Short disengages, but its inherently at odds with the existing skill Meditate that existed for the exact same reason.

And in spite of all of these useless actions or outright bloat, Monk is still the least mobile of the Melee because our only movement skill has damage tied up in it. It's a mess of accumulated bad design and unfixed problems that are clearly solvable because other jobs have received fixes for similar or identical problems in the past. The devs know there's problems with it considering they admitted that Stormblood Monk's design was a failure in the lead up to Shadowbringers, but either they completely misread what the playerbase wanted, they're too married to their own concept of what the job is, or they're so self-sure that ARR Monk is the gold standard of a job despite how the game design has shifted since 2.0 that they're unwilling to fix things that needed fixing. Whatever the case is, what we have now isn't satisfying for the majority of players and the 5.05 changes were only a stopgap towards placating us that was immediately undone by them making Anatman worse. Supposedly the Japanese playerbase is being fairly vocal about this as well, so maybe we'll see change but who knows.

In terms of a rework on the level of something like Machinist I don't think that's necessary. The foundation of the class, Greased Lightning, its basic GCD loop, and Form-Based Combos, aren't broken in the way that Heat was in Stormblood for Machinist. But it hasn't gotten anything that's actually satisfying to use as a skill since Elixir Field, it's largely just unsatisfying replacements for stuff they strip from us at low levels or terrible utility skills. I'd say pretty much every skill it has past level 54 needs some serious examination and quite a few ARR skills as well.

[P0W3RK1D]

In spite of being the best performing melee before everything else was brought up to par, Monk is basically the worst designed job in the game at this point by a huge margin. There's multiple redundant, overly niche or useless skills in the kit, there are many of the problems that the players have had with it dating back to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward that have gone unaddressed despite there being numerous complaints about them, and when the devs said that they were listening to our feedback moving forward into Shadowbringers

Healers: "First time?"

[Powercow]

Everything Speckled said was true, but I want to focus on one little detail plaguing Monk job design: we have nothing new.

Let's look at Monk's main mechanic: Greased Lightning. Monk is all about GL, keeping it up and wailing away at the enemy. Monk also used to be all about positionals but that's been nerfed into being barely noticeable for the most part. Monk has not one, not two, not three, not four, but *FIVE* damned abilities all tied to the expenditure or maintenance of GL outside of a normal combo, which combined with the longer GL duration means we have tons of leeway on that anyway. We have:

1 - Tornado Kick, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
2 - Six Sided Star, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
3 - Riddle of Earth, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
4 - Anatman, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
5 - Form Shift, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.

And these. Are all. Monk. Has gotten. Since. ARR. Outside of an oGCD with Elixir Field all the way back in HW and an AoE second step in our basic combo, everything monk has now was present in ARR, just under a different name.

1-The Forbidden Chakra, the single-target oGCD? You mean Steel Peak? Oh wait that was removed.
2-Enlightenment, the line-AoE oGCD? You mean Howling Fist? Oh wait that was removed. (Also since this shares Chakra with TFC it means it never sees use in single-target situations, so we actually lost an oGCD for most fights.)
3-Tornado Kick being used as an execute (instead of a Greased Lightning spending mechanic)? You mean Mercy Stroke? Oh wait, that was removed.
4-Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, the DPS-boosting cooldowns? You mean Blood for Blood and Internal Release? Oh wait, those were removed. At least Brotherhood buffs allies slightly, even if it is janky as all hell.
5-[SKILL NOT FOUND], you mean Touch of Death or Fracture? Oh wait we never even got something to replace those. I'm not even going to mention Invigorate or Impulse Drive being useful.

Monk hasn't evolved, if anything it's more basic than at launch.

I liked having to watch my TP on longer fights, knowing when I'd have a chance to rest and restore some, timing Invigorate so I didn't waste any. I liked being able to delay my combo slightly with Fracture and ToD so I could line up a Rockbreaker to come out right when the adds did.

The most clever I ever felt in FFXIV was back during T9, when Nael would jump away sometimes. If you timed a Coeurl stance move just before he jumped, you'd have *just* enough time to do another combo and keep all 3 stacks of GL. This meant that the optimal way to maximize DPS was to actually *not* hit your button for a couple of seconds to line this up. It felt great to do, like I was really drawing every drop I could from the class mechanics. Now if a boss jumps away I have all the options in the world, none of which really matter because Form Shifting 3 times is always the easiest and least costly thing you can possibly do.

I also miss positionals being absolutely painful if you missed them, you had to get super greedy and coordinate with the tanks to turn bosses slightly sometimes to help you out. Now? Well if somehow both charges of True North are on cooldown I also have Riddle of Earth, which *thank heavens* I don't have to think if I might need it to keep my GL stacks and I can just mash it whenever. And if all of those aren't available, oh well, positionals (with the exception of Bootshine, look forward to that being made brain-dead soon too!) aren't as big of a loss anyway these days. Back in ARR if you were going to miss a positional you'd want to use Fracture or even Rockbreaker on single target, assuming your TP could handle it... is the Bard likely to sing a TP song soon? How's the warrior doing, when's Invigorate coming back up, is the boss almost dead, am I going to have a lengthy break to restore TP? LOL NVM I CAN JUST HIT SNAP PUNCH WHO CARES LOL

Now you can argue these mechanics weren't great. They certainly weren't always handled well, like TP during Heavensward was kinda butts. But monk has had *nothing* to replace any of them. Everyone* else has something new. Sure they might have had stuff removed from time to time, and the new thing isn't always super exciting, but damn it it's *something.*

*Does not include Red Mages. I feel bad for them too but at least they only have one expansion cycle to stagnate.

[SpeckledBurd]

Everything Speckled said was true, but I want to focus on one little detail plaguing Monk job design: we have nothing new.

Let's look at Monk's main mechanic: Greased Lightning. Monk is all about GL, keeping it up and wailing away at the enemy. Monk also used to be all about positionals but that's been nerfed into being barely noticeable for the most part. Monk has not one, not two, not three, not four, but *FIVE* damned abilities all tied to the expenditure or maintenance of GL outside of a normal combo, which combined with the longer GL duration means we have tons of leeway on that anyway. We have:

1 - Tornado Kick, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
2 - Six Sided Star, which is used as a farewell gift to bosses if we need to disengage.
3 - Riddle of Earth, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
4 - Anatman, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.
5 - Form Shift, which is used if we need to maintain stacks on a boss who we can't target during a phase transition, etc.


And these. Are all. Monk. Has gotten. Since. ARR. Outside of an oGCD with Elixir Field all the way back in HW and an AoE second step in our basic combo, everything monk has now was present in ARR, just under a different name.

1-The Forbidden Chakra, the single-target oGCD? You mean Steel Peak? Oh wait that was removed.
2-Enlightenment, the line-AoE oGCD? You mean Howling Fist? Oh wait that was removed. (Also since this shares Chakra with TFC it means it never sees use in single-target situations, so we actually lost an oGCD for most fights.)
3-Tornado Kick being used as an execute (instead of a Greased Lightning spending mechanic)? You mean Mercy Stroke? Oh wait, that was removed.
4-Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, the DPS-boosting cooldowns? You mean Blood for Blood and Internal Release? Oh wait, those were removed. At least Brotherhood buffs allies slightly, even if it is janky as all hell.
5-[SKILL NOT FOUND], you mean Touch of Death or Fracture? Oh wait we never even got something to replace those. I'm not even going to mention Invigorate or Impulse Drive being useful.

Monk hasn't evolved, if anything it's more basic than at launch.

I liked having to watch my TP on longer fights, knowing when I'd have a chance to rest and restore some, timing Invigorate so I didn't waste any. I liked being able to delay my combo slightly with Fracture and ToD so I could line up a Rockbreaker to come out right when the adds did.

The most clever I ever felt in FFXIV was back during T9, when Nael would jump away sometimes. If you timed a Coeurl stance move just before he jumped, you'd have *just* enough time to do another combo and keep all 3 stacks of GL. This meant that the optimal way to maximize DPS was to actually *not* hit your button for a couple of seconds to line this up. It felt great to do, like I was really drawing every drop I could from the class mechanics. Now if a boss jumps away I have all the options in the world, none of which really matter because Form Shifting 3 times is always the easiest and least costly thing you can possibly do.

I also miss positionals being absolutely painful if you missed them, you had to get super greedy and coordinate with the tanks to turn bosses slightly sometimes to help you out. Now? Well if somehow both charges of True North are on cooldown I also have Riddle of Earth, which *thank heavens* I don't have to think if I might need it to keep my GL stacks and I can just mash it whenever. And if all of those aren't available, oh well, positionals (with the exception of Bootshine, look forward to that being made brain-dead soon too!) aren't as big of a loss anyway these days. Back in ARR if you were going to miss a positional you'd want to use Fracture or even Rockbreaker on single target, assuming your TP could handle it... is the Bard likely to sing a TP song soon? How's the warrior doing, when's Invigorate coming back up, is the boss almost dead, am I going to have a lengthy break to restore TP? LOL NVM I CAN JUST HIT SNAP PUNCH WHO CARES LOL

Now you can argue these mechanics weren't great. They certainly weren't always handled well, like TP during Heavensward was kinda butts. But monk has had *nothing* to replace any of them. Everyone* else has something new. Sure they might have had stuff removed from time to time, and the new thing isn't always super exciting, but damn it it's *something.*

*Does not include Red Mages. I feel bad for them too but at least they only have one expansion cycle to stagnate.

I agree with your first points completely. Five skills that act as "Button to hit after the boss disengages to maintain stacks" is way too many, and the fact that Form Shift didn't gain the effect it got in 5.05 in Stormblood when Black Mage could upkeep Enochian with nothing but Transpose was absurd. The devs adding another one of those skills in Anatman (and arguably two since Six Sided Star has that effect also) was insulting when Black Mage got something as good as Umbral Soul. The trend of Monk losing low level skills and either getting nothing to replace them or only to have something otherwise identical added back to the top end is a problem as well. I was a big fan of Fracture buffering, especially with a high skill speed build.

TP though, I'm indifferent to its loss. There wasn't any additional thought that went into managing it other than "Hit Invigorate at 600 then eventually go dry" while BLM never ran out and Summoner was seemingly MP Neutral at least. Positionals being a pain in the ass is something of a double edged swords, it severely undercuts an aspect of Monks gameplay, but its an aspect of its gameplay that also severely penalized Monk if certain fight mechanics locked you into placed. I'd have preferred if they'd just kept the Damage penalty toned down, but then they made Bootshine's positional the single worst one to miss by an enormous margin.

I also wouldn't say that the other jobs got anything to replace those mechanics so much as they just had their existing mechanics iterated on. Dragoon has Jump as its defining characteristic, so it gets Blood of the Dragon to boost their power and give them a buff to keep in Heavensward, and in Stormblood using those jumps during BotD allows it to enter Life of the Dragon, incentivizing the good play through hitting Jumps on cooldown and promoting upkeep of BotD. Black Mage casts spells, so it gets Enochian to give them more powerful spells incentivizing Enochian upkeep in Heavensward, and in Stormblood Upkeep is further rewarded for doing so with Foul. Further, both jobs get useful, powerful tools to keep those buffs up such as Umbral Soul or enhanced BotD allowing a full refresh. That's good iterative design on existing mechanics, rewarding good play with satisfying skillls.

Monk has never had that good iterative design. It's had Greased Lightning, forms, and many positionals from the beginning which basically made Monk a more complete job than the other in ARR, but while other jobs changed and were iterated on Monk wasn't. We've never gotten further incentive to keep GL like a Foul or a Life of the Dragon. It's only gotten weak skills for GL upkeep that are at odds with each other that were practically designed to inevitably leave situations where upkeep is impossible (Until 5.05 happened and someone on the dev team actually played Monk once). We have satisfying looking skills in Tornado Kick and Six Sided Star, but their use cases basically make them Noob traps to lure people into trying to use them even though they're damage losses outside of narrow circumstances. Satisfying Design for skills like Tornado Kick and Six Sided Star would be gaining effects that let us use the former after upkeeping GL for 45 seconds and the later after hitting a certain number of positionals. The same philosophy should be applied to Deep Meditation, by refreshing Greased Lightning with a Coeurl Form skill it should open a Chakra, rewarding good play rather than leaving us with a bunch of skills that see no use 99% of the time.

Healers: "First time?"

Cute, but Monk had to put up with this nonsense since before the beginning of Stormblood, where as I recall most of the healers were relatively happy except for White Mage and Lilies as they were initially designed. Save the snark until you've kept your problems for a full expansion, let alone nearly 3 years.

[Oxdarock]

Snip

Oh wow. After my latest theorycrafting venture and realizing that Anatman is even more god awful than I originally thought, I've pretty much jumped on the ship of MNK needing a rework. Didn't think I'd see a post that broke down everything wrong with it though, of which I can agree to every point. Since this has been so thoroughly explained, I can skip straight to fixes that would help the class in my opinion.

1. Double the number of chakra stacks you can generate while keeping the number needed for FC and Enlighten 5.
Crit and comp dependance aside (which is a valid point, though it's never bothered me that much), I feel like this is an even bigger issue with Chakra: there's no way to deal with overcap. Sure it may look different, but chakra is essentially the same as any other gauge mechanic and every other class that has this (which is basically all of them except DRG and AST) has a way to deal with this, but MNK does not. The closest comparison would be BRD, but they have plenty of space to use sudden procs in MB and also can use PP in WM so long as they have 1 stack. MNK meanwhile, is all or nothing, which means they can't hold it for too long or risk losing a possible usage overall.

2. Fix Anatman.
Seriously. Please fix this move, SE. It's terrible. Sure, it was pretty bad when introduced due to the reliance on server tick, but as of 5.1, now it's a move you have no reason to use at all unless you use the Anatman opener (or a particularly long boss disconnect where you can stand still for 12 seconds). I'd much rather have this be a two-charge ability that you can use between CDs and just gives just 1 GL stack instantly (since 5.05 Form Shift means there's no reason to ever lose GL stacks unless you fall asleep on the controller or don't read the tooltip). Making it a 30 CD would be icing on the cake.

3. Make adjustments to Tornado Kick
It's actually pretty silly that TK uses up all of your GL stacks when you can have up to four, even though it only needed three for two expansions. Either it needs to only require three stacks to use (which still would require Anatman to be fixed in order to be used frequently mid-rotation) or it needs to do extra damage at 4 stacks to make up for the GCD and auto-attack you'd miss while building GL stacks back up again.

4. Adjust Six-Sided Star.
It's not particularly a bad skill. Just underwhelming since it's so situational. Only way I can see it being used in the regular rotation is if it's damaged was doubled and it either had a CD or was only available after a certain period in GL (which is kind of the same thing, but still makes it flexible for other uses). It should also generate a chakra stack or two on use since it prevents you from doing so with Meditate during a short disconnect.

5. Buff Fists of Earth
As both FoF and FoW were buffed in ShB, they both have frequent use even if you stay in one a majority of the time while FoE has almost no use whatsoever. However, for the life of me, I can’t really figure out a decent way to approach this. Only two ideas that come to me are to either pair it with Anatman somehow, doubling the GL gain and/or the potency of the next GCD (mind you, Anatman would need to give an instant GL stack) or make it so that TK doesn’t use any GL stacks while under it.

Anyway, that’s my take on a MNK rework.

[Eloah]

I don't know all of the details, since I definitely don't main Monk, but they are in a decent spot at the moment. The wierd Riddle system is gone, and they finally gave you abilities to maintain Greased Lighting. Especially with Form Shift, I've been suggesting for years it get the change it got, mostly so it wasn't another wasted ability. My thoughts were heard, lol.

[Windwalker]

I can agree monk needs a rework, or atleast make a few skills more useful, for example TK... sucks such a cool ability removes almost all your dps and turns you into a turtle... The need to switch between fire and wind have only added more to think off while playing the job, lots of buffs and debuffs to keep an eye on. Its alot harder to play than DRG. Tornado Kick should be changed into a cooldown ability same as Elixir Field, would make it more useful while preventing us from losing all our dps.

[Kabooa]

I think you might want to give more specific examples of what you want instead of just a list of what you didn't like.