Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Kabooa]

Then cut out Anatman, Six-Sided Star, and Riddle of Earth in their current forms, and maybe make them into something different.

Most of these suggestions don't actually alter current monk's gameplay. For example, Six Sided Star as just "Steel Peak but stronger" is just another bog standard "Use on cooldown, prioritize in burst window" OGCD. These get cut. It's not just Monk, this tends to happen across the board (I don't agree with it - I miss the shoulder ram animation - but thems the breaks)

On a personal level, I don't think the 50 and under Kit needs much work. Maybe a little number tuning (There's a pretty good analysis on Leaden Fist somewhere around here), but the FFF RRR weaponskills don't need much tweaking.

Moving forward, my own preference would be making Chakra and Greased Lightning play off each other more. An optional avenue would be having Fist/Riddles play into it somehow.

For example, lets take Anantman and Six Sided Star and create a very basic play between the two.

Six Sided Star
Weaponskill
2.5 Recast (standard)
Effect: Deals "X" potency (Slightly less than the average of the mainline combo). Grants 1 Chakra.

Anantman
Ability
45s recast
Cost: 5 Chakra
Effect: Grants Greased Lightning IV.

From these two changes we have a few implications.

Tornado Kick can be used now. Anantman allows one to TK at anytime it's up and maintain Greased Lightning - Provided the Boss isn't about to jump.
If a Monk needs to delay a GCD in the main combo, Six Sided Star allows this while also serving as some Chakra management.

To me these are good changes to the Monk's baseline kit. They start building a base of prioritization of Chakra and Greased Lightning, from which one could extrapolate more of the kit with that end-goal in mind, which does allow us to bring back bog standard OGCDs by building them around this concept.

Steel Peak, which becomes Forbidden Chakra with 5 Chakra.
Howling Fist, which becomes Enlightenment with 5 Chakra.

One of these have an independent CD from their Chakra variant.
One of these shares the CD with their Chakra variant, but gains significantly more strength.

With that, we have created a basic resource conflict with the Chakra skills, between the two chakra skills and Tornado kick (through Anantman).

[wereotter]

Most of these suggestions don't actually alter current monk's gameplay. For example, Six Sided Star as just "Steel Peak but stronger" is just another bog standard "Use on cooldown, prioritize in burst window" OGCD. These get cut. It's not just Monk, this tends to happen across the board (I don't agree with it - I miss the shoulder ram animation - but thems the breaks)

You're right, my suggestions aren't exactly ground breaking for how to improve the job, but then for me, I see monk's biggest problem as the fact that the job is and for many years has been, over bloated with useless skills, many of which survive the skill purges in Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

I am with you in that I would like to see the two resources of the job play into each other. I don't have a lot of ideas for this, but there could be something like a skill that turns all your chakra stacks into greased lighting, making skills that dump your greased lightning stack more viable to use.

They could also change up the monk numbers (this would be a nightmare to balance) in such a way that every stack of GL you get increases your speed but decreases your damage until you reach all four stacks and then burn them all for a big attack.

These might not be the best solutions, but I do think that most people agree that it would be nice for the job to gain something new to its core rotation which has been unchanged since ARR, and I think some adjustments to either how greased lightning or the chakra system works might be just the way to spice things up.