Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

The job suffer from "we don't know what to do on this expansion with this..." there a chance where this job might get adjustment in 5.2 or 5.3. Worse case it be at on next expansion like always.

At this point my position is that "Wait until Next expansion" isn't good enough after being told that for all of Stormblood. That's way too long to wait to be satisfied in a job.

As for MNK - I don't think rework in the sense SE seems to understand it as would be good. MNK(or any job for that matter imo) shouldn't get turned 180 from it's fundamental mechanics/identity like MCH/DRK got - SE should instead look at what worked before(like TK rotation) and what never freaking works(aka Fist stances, seriously) and make changes based on that instead of reinventing it into pretty much an entirely new job.

This is a reasonable concern. The reason Stormblood Monk was such a flop is that the devs didn't know what to do and so they just started making changes that people didn't like (they admitted this, but also they didn't fix any of the problems until 5.05 because of course not and even then some of the problems still exist such as RNG). Shadowbringers ended up being worse because while they did identify one thing we wanted in GL4, they pretty much missed the mark on the things we didn't want and kept adding those things such as greater RNG reliance and more upkeep stuff. By the same measure they missed out on what we didn't like or think worked on Monk and decided to keep the Fist Stances for a second expansion in a row other than.

As for the TK rotation, it's hard to say that it actually "worked" when it was extremely divisive at the time it existed in terms of how much people liked it. I certainly didn't like it, even if it was effective at doing a lot of damage, however that could change depending on how they decide to implement it. The problem is that Greased Lightning isn't designed as a resource to be spent, its something built to be maintained and we now have Formshift as a powerful tool to allow us to do so. If they altered Anatman as was suggested on the last page to just instantly grant full stacks of GL, TK could be used routinely and probably feel better than it did in Stormblood IMO but I don't know if thats the direction they'd go with it instead of making it build a charge like Foul/Xenoglossy.

Machinist is also rather odd to mention as an example of a rework that shouldn't be followed, as its largely been received very well even if there are still some quirks to it that need fixing in terms of its latency issues. That said, I also don't think its a good path to follow in this instance. Machinist in Stormblood was broken foundationally, Monk's foundations in Greased Lightning and Forms are fine and should remain intact. It's largely how they've built things around it that's the problem in the context of a changing game.

[Satarn]

As for the TK rotation, it's hard to say that it actually "worked" when it was extremely divisive at the time it existed in terms of how much people liked it. I certainly didn't like it, even if it was effective at doing a lot of damage, however that could change depending on how they decide to implement it. The problem is that Greased Lightning isn't designed as a resource to be spent, its something built to be maintained and we now have Formshift as a powerful tool to allow us to do so. If they altered Anatman as was suggested on the last page to just instantly grant full stacks of GL, TK could be used routinely and probably feel better than it did in Stormblood IMO but I don't know if thats the direction they'd go with it instead of making it build a charge like Foul/Xenoglossy.

Whether you liked TK or not is a matter of taste I suppose. What I mean by saying that it worked, is that it's accomplished several things:
- Adding an interaction with MNK's core mechanic - GS - which capitalized on its unique quality of being a buff that has to be build up with stacks.
- Added more synergy between several skills in the job's kit(TK, PB, Coeurl gcds, Wind Tackle, IR and RoF).
- Made a pretty niche skill(TK) a regular part of MNK's rotation.
- Made up a significant portion of the job's dps.
- It also did not really affect the GS maintenance mechanic during downtime/disengagements, so it could work perfectly well alongside current Form Shift and SSS.

Basically, it was not just something they tacked on that turned out to just be some niche skill that sees use only a couple times per fight. Which is insanely ironic, as they didn't even add it on purpose.

As for GS not being designed as a resource to be spent - TK rotation was not SE's design either. The point is that just because something was not originally designed for a certain purpose, does not mean that it should never evolve for it if there's potential to make it work.

The one clear issue with TK was the need to weave 4 skills just to get a single GS stack from RoW, which was obviously a result of it being unintended and could be easily fixed by tying that GS stack to a dedicated ability instead of the fist mechanics SE so illogically clings to.

I don't like the idea of making TK another Xenoglossy for 2 reasons: one is obviously that it's kind of lame to just grab a mechanic from BLM and slap it on MNK, other is that it doesn't interact in any way with what makes GS unique - which is the stack building. Neither does adding a skill which instantly grants you full stacks, as then you just make GS a "single button application" buff like anything else.

Machinist is also rather odd to mention as an example of a rework that shouldn't be followed, as its largely been received very well

MCH rework might've been well received, but it is a good example of one that's been so radical, that it might've as well been a new job honestly. Not a single mechanic from HW/SB MCH has been kept intact - heck, even aesthetics have mostly been changed - and I think that's a terrible direction to take with any job, unless there's really nothing enjoyable about it at all.

That and also I think it's been reduced to something utterly dull, but that part's obviously subjective given its popularity.

[Shurrikhan]

As for the TK rotation, it's hard to say that it actually "worked" when it was extremely divisive at the time it existed in terms of how much people liked it. I certainly didn't like it, even if it was effective at doing a lot of damage, however that could change depending on how they decide to implement it.

That's kind of the point, though. Why didn't they just reduce its potency slightly as to be less obligatory and remove the need to triple-weave instead of removing Monk's quickened ramp-up skill just to get rid of something some Monks didn't like having the issues that came with it?

There was no for such a drastic gutting -- only to actually correctly tune, for once, what they already had: one rotational option against another. Instead, what replaced it left us with an incohesive mess of redundancies, some of which would have actually made sense if and almost only if TK was still permitted to be a part of play. And each band-aid to cover up that massive error has only deepened that issue further.

[SpeckledBurd]

Whether you liked TK or not is a matter of taste I suppose. What I mean by saying that it worked, is that it's accomplished several things:
- Adding an interaction with MNK's core mechanic - GS - which capitalized on its unique quality of being a buff that has to be build up with stacks.
- Added more synergy between several skills in the job's kit(TK, PB, Coeurl gcds, Wind Tackle, IR and RoF).
- Made a pretty niche skill(TK) a regular part of MNK's rotation.
- Made up a significant portion of the job's dps.
- It also did not really affect the GS maintenance mechanic during downtime/disengagements, so it could work perfectly well alongside current Form Shift and SSS.

Basically, it was not just something they tacked on that turned out to just be some niche skill that sees use only a couple times per fight. Which is insanely ironic, as they didn't even add it on purpose.

As for GS not being designed as a resource to be spent - TK rotation was not SE's design either. The point is that just because something was not originally designed for a certain purpose, does not mean that it should never evolve for it if there's potential to make it work.

The one clear issue with TK was the need to weave 4 skills just to get a single GS stack from RoW, which was obviously a result of it being unintended and could be easily fixed by tying that GS stack to a dedicated ability instead of the fist mechanics SE so illogically clings to.

I don't like the idea of making TK another Xenoglossy for 2 reasons: one is obviously that it's kind of lame to just grab a mechanic from BLM and slap it on MNK, other is that it doesn't interact in any way with what makes GS unique - which is the stack building. Neither does adding a skill which instantly grants you full stacks, as then you just make GS a "single button application" buff like anything else.

Those are all fair points, and indeed they're reasons I at least appreciated the existence of the TK rotation in Stormblood even if I personally found it jarring to use.

However there was another issue with the TK rotation for people that you're forgetting, using TK drops Greased Lightning which has a very tangible feeling on your gameplay. That feeling of losing your stacks has been ingrained into Monk to be awful and tantamount to failure of playing the job correctly. I'd actually say it is the single most awful buff to lose in the game because of it, and it was arguably a biggerer big reason that the TK rotation didn't feel good to use for many than having to do four weaves for one oGCD. This is the primary reason why I and many others fundamentally disagree with the idea of Greased Lightning being a resource to spend rather than a buff to be maintained: losing Greased Lightning is a terrible feeling pretty much by design, and any use of Greased Lightning as a resource is going to cause that to occur regularly.

Further, Greased Lightning 4 being the principal addition to Shadowbringers' Monk exacerbates the feeling of losing your stacks, and therefor that particular unpleasant aspect of the TK rotation in two ways. First is that the haste you're losing is stronger than before ,so you end up feeling even slower relative to what you lost in Stormblood. Secondly is that the manner in which we build Greased Lightning is still slow, it will now always take additional time to build back towards our baseline. There's a couple of ways to avoid that problem but none of them are particularly good. Introduce a "Restore GL to full" button via Anatman/some revision to Perfect Balance does it but it has the problems you mentioned, or they completely decouple the haste from GL and have it just be persistent while Greased Lightning would just be a damage buff which I don't particularly see as a good solution either.

TK as Xenoglossy was just an off the cuff suggestion that struck me as simple to implement while avoiding the very real problem of "Using Greased Lightning and going to Zero feels bad", I'd certainly be open to other ideas for it, be it by gaining some resource from refreshing Greased Lightning or possibly by hitting positionals properly.

MCH rework might've been well received, but it is a good example of one that's been so radical, that it might've as well been a new job honestly. Not a single mechanic from HW/SB MCH has been kept intact - heck, even aesthetics have mostly been changed - and I think that's a terrible direction to take with any job, unless there's really nothing enjoyable about it at all.

That and also I think it's been reduced to something utterly dull, but that part's obviously subjective given its popularity.

To be quite honest, an argument could be made that that was the case with regard to Machinist at the end of Stormblood. However I think it would be off topic for this particular thread, and since I'd say we're both in agreement that a 5.0 Machinist style rework isn't what we'd want for Monk since the foundations of Monk as a job aren't as broken as Heat was, so we can drop this particular tangent.

[Satarn]

However there was another issue with the TK rotation for people that you're forgetting, using TK drops Greased Lightning which has a very tangible feeling on your gameplay. That feeling of losing your stacks has been ingrained into Monk to be awful and tantamount to failure of playing the job correctly. I'd actually say it is the single most awful buff to lose in the game because of it, and it was arguably a biggerer big reason that the TK rotation didn't feel good to use for many than having to do four weaves for one oGCD. This is the primary reason why I and many others fundamentally disagree with the idea of Greased Lightning being a resource to spend rather than a buff to be maintained: losing Greased Lightning is a terrible feeling pretty much by design, and any use of Greased Lightning as a resource is going to cause that to occur regularly.

Further, Greased Lightning 4 being the principal addition to Shadowbringers' Monk exacerbates the feeling of losing your stacks, and therefor that particular unpleasant aspect of the TK rotation in two ways.

I think that's where the matter of taste part really comes into play. I do understand why some people could not like dropping GS, as it's kind of similar to the now removed slow-down on RoF, which was widely disliked(by me as well). I felt however that with PB and RoW, rebuilding GS was fast enough that it didn't feel bad and even thematically was kind of like the MNK taking a quick breather-break after their burst window, before going right back to GS3 speed. I don't really get the part where it felt like "doing something wrong", since you were intentionally dropping those stacks at points when you could regain them quickly.

You are absolutely right that GS4 would be a concern if TK rotation was to make a return of course. Either TK cost would need to be just 3 stacks rather than all of them(although that'd be kind of awkward I guess) or the regain mechanics would need to account for an extra stack - perhaps by making the new RoW replacement a double tap skill like it's predecessor, but with a stack on each hit this time.

However, I'm not really sure if GS4 was even a good addition in the first place tbf. I feel like a higher number of abilities in SB at a slightly higher gcd length, did a better job at making the job feel fast and active as ogcds always have lower input gaps between them than any gcd. Not to say that the speed buff isn't important - they both play parts in making jobs feel fast-paced - but at gcd below 2 seconds weaving becomes an issue, hence why SE pruned MNK's ogcds in SHB which ironically makes the job feel slower.

All that said, it's just pointless rambling at the end of the day. I highly doubt SE would go back on big job changes and "admit their mistake"(not referring to TK or GS4 specifically, just MNK design in general), we'll probably just get another bunch of completely new alterations in 6.0. I'm honestly just insanely jaded and fed up with the design direction in SHB at this point.