Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

Case in point Touch of Death and Fracture (Fracture technically being Marauder's but Monk almost had more use of it than Warrior in Heavensward) were uncombo'd dots, so they got removed in Stormblood along with Phlebotomize and Scourge. On other jobs they were just a part of your rotation that you'd use in a set order without any divergence. For all intents and purposes skills like Scourge and Phlebotomize may as well have been combo'd. However Touch of Death and Fracture were different because of the free flowing style of Form Based Combos, they gave Monk a certain fluidity and freedom to weave weaponskills in between its combos that other jobs lacked and in contributed to the feeling of playing a martial artist. In terms of gameplay they were also useful tools for manipulating your GCD to make sure you could end on a Coeurl form hit so you'd have max stacks for a jump as well. Though all things being unequal when it comes to Monk, Warrior, Dragoon and Ninja have also all gained new skills they actually get to use on a regular basis to replace their uncombo’d DOTs.

This. So much this. Fracture was effectively just a position-less skill you could use at disproportionate TP cost for its potency advantage because half its value was just in being position-less -- usable as often as every 18 seconds depending on the number of fillers per odd/even Demolish (similar to filler counts per TG on Samurai and odd/even minutes on Ninja). ToD was as small a potency bonus as it was largely so you could use it for flexibility. How the devs could fail to see how badly their removal (heck, we previously had Impulse Drive, too, if we really needed position-less filler) would affect Monk positional flexibility is baffling. Modular control and positions were the basis for our job back then.

The GL timer being as tight as it was back then made it so even the seemingly subtle tools could have tremendous impact, rather than tools needing to be obtusely significant to notice any impact. If you didn't know how to control your rotation during T9, you'd lose GL far more often than you ought. That interdependence and flexibility just made it all feel right; difficult, perhaps, but fitting -- especially in the fights that gave it the most challenge.

The HW model was close to perfection in terms of general rotation. Had Meditation just been a bit stronger so it could be used situationally to align your rotation... *chef's kiss*. (Of course, other melee job's ranged skills would need to be buffed in turn to make up for MNK's being the not only stronger in ppgcd but also not breaking rotations, or the buff to Meditation would have to be limited to when in melee range of an enemy.)

If TK was less cumbersome, I'd throw in a fluid, likely single-step Riddle of Wind and the one-minute PB atop it for a bit more macrorotational variance, give more reason to change between stances macrorotationally, and maybe use a different take on Deep Meditation for a bit more spice over the levels since, but still, that rotation was a work of art, especially at extremely high speeds.

[Ramura_Sono]

Devs are biased against monk and any ignorance they have with regards to the job is willful and malicious.

[SpeckledBurd]

Devs are biased against monk and any ignorance they have with regards to the job is willful and malicious.

Eh, I don't think they're biased *against* Monk even if it frequently feels like they are biased towards certain jobs when it comes to how much effort they put into new actions/traits (like Black Mage consistently getting amazing additions). The problem with Monk is the devs have admitted to being clueless as to how to progress Monk, but in spite of this when they make a misstep like they did in Stormblood and now Shadowbringers, they're aggressively slow when it comes to actually implementing any of that feedback. We complained about Stormblood Monk from the get go and we got hand ringing but no action about it even on Shadowbringers Launch. The overwhelming design of Shadowbringers action is "GL Upkeep Skill, More Fist Stance stuff when you'll only want to use one stance, and taking out low end skill to put them on higher levels but worse!" which were all complaints about Stormblood Monk. When they finally did implement a small amount of the feedback we gave them... they turned around and ruined it by making what had just become a useless action even more useless for many of its intended use cases and only made it unpleasant for its unintended use case.

Compare to Samurai, who got Shoha changed in a single patch after player's complained.

[3ureka]

Part 1.

I read through the thread and have been checking up on it whenever there's a new reply. Below are some thoughts that I've been adding to incrementally while at work. Sorry if this is a bit disorganized.

What would you all like to see in terms of *new* skills?
- The stances, as they are now, are one and done for the most part. Once you build up your GL stacks, you can stay in wind and forget about it. To that effect, what do you all think about getting rid of the *stances* entirely? Vestiges of the stances can remain in the form of Riddles - Earth, Fire, and a new one for Wind (maybe a reskin of Internal Release?)
- I think other ways to spend our chakra would be great. Currently, we only have The Forbidden Chakra and Enlightenment. Might’ve been mentioned in this thread, but I think if we could consume chakras to generate GL stacks, that would re-introduce the viability of TK (similar flavor to SAM’s Hagakure and NIN’s Meisui).
- On the topic of chakras, I think, if we removed the stances, we could replace those “skills” with one that tie in the light/dark chakras mentioned in the job quest.
- This is just a stab in the dark, but consider something like this: reduce the number of chakras stored to 4; GL 4 is now a trait. Introduce a skill that consumes 4 chakras for GL 4 (could convert a lesser amount too, e.g. 2 chakras for 2 GL stacks). Tie a Light/Dark chakra generation depending on whether you used True Strike, Demolish or Rock Breaker; True Strike would grant a Light Chakra. Demolish and Rock Breaker would grant a Dark Chakra. To borrow a little from RDM (of which I only have superficial knowledge), if we have more Light chakras stored, then at 3L, 1D, we can consume them all for a buff (as to what that buff does, idk). On the opposite end, if we have 3D / 1L, maybe just make the chakra consumption an ogcd skill with moderate potency? (That way in AOE rotations, you’ll have that ogcd to prevent over-capping; candidate for bringing back Howling Fist?) And if we have 2D/2L, then we can use TFC / Enlightenment

What would you like to stay?
- I think most monks would agree that greased lightning and the progression of forms (Opo-opo > Coeurl > Raptor) should stay
- With MCH being the only class I play that I know got a rework, I don’t know if there were any changes made to the story of its job quests. To that end, I think it’d be best for all parties (players and devs) if we kept chakra; reason being, the time spent trying to design/implement another resource could be better spent in other aspects of the job imo.

[3ureka]

Part 2

What are some pain points of the job for you?
- Double rng gating of chakra was the sole reason I quit in Stormblood. It’s made better now with the trait that boosts the chance to 80%, but double rng is double rng. I think it’d be much more palatable if it were locked behind just a single gate (I still don’t think that it fits thematically with a monk, but it’s something I’d settle for)


Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of augmenting the tackles based on what stance you were in (back in Stormblood) because you’d mainly only ever be in one stance; if you tried to switch stances > tackle > try to switch back, you’d run into clipping issues (and I think there was and still is? a cd to swap stances too) In terms of design, I’ve seen across MCH (reassemble), SAM (kaiten), and DRG (life surge) all have an ogcd skill that buffs one *weapon*skill. I’m not saying that MNKs necessary *have* to have a similar weapon skill buff, but historically speaking, the design philosophy suggests that weapon skills are typically the ones to be augmented by a singular buff.

[SpeckledBurd]

- The stances, as they are now, are one and done for the most part. Once you build up your GL stacks, you can stay in wind and forget about it. To that effect, what do you all think about getting rid of the *stances* entirely? Vestiges of the stances can remain in the form of Riddles - Earth, Fire, and a new one for Wind (maybe a reskin of Internal Release?)

Remove them. They've had three attempts at making the Fist Stances something other than two stances you never use and one stance you stay in all the time. The Riddles are fine as cooldowns, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see Earth go now that 5.05 Form Shift fills its original function better than it ever did.

- I think other ways to spend our chakra would be great. Currently, we only have The Forbidden Chakra and Enlightenment. Might’ve been mentioned in this thread, but I think if we could consume chakras to generate GL stacks, that would re-introduce the viability of TK (similar flavor to SAM’s Hagakure and NIN’s Meisui).

I think a bigger consideration for Chakra should be reworking how we build chakras, making it so it isn't unusable unless its capped, and changing the levels you earn gauge actions at so they actually make sense. Enlightenment for example is a skill that on any other DPS would be earned in the 50-64 range. The only reason it isn't on Monk is because the devs practically ignored Monk's gauge in Stormblood. Then they had so few ideas for Monk in Shadowbringers that they would have had a hole in its leveling curve if they'd done what they should have and made it a level 58 skill to replace Purification.

Tying Chakra more into the Lore of Light/Dark Chakras strikes me as needlessly convoluted and a unnecessary. It needs to be reworked so we have overhead between being able to use our skills before we cap, IE, Forbidden Chakra/Enlightenment still Cost 5 Chakra to use but we can store up to 7/10/14. Really any overhead above our current Zero would be appreciated. Further we should build it in a manner that doesn't involve RNG, Monk is about consistency of output and the RNG aspects of Brotherhood and Deep Meditation have grated for a while. In fact just removing the RNG aspect makes the overflow problem non-existent, but having that overhead invites the opportunity to build new skills that will use more Gauge and have greater effects. I'd suggest Deep Meditation now just build Chakras on a Greased Lightning Refresh and that Brotherhood just grants you a 3 Stack Buff on you that lets you use a Chakra Free Forbidden Chakras (about what you get ideally with a standard 8 Man Comp) instead of having any of the manyfold problems that exist with it as it exists.

In terms of new skills I want... new Weaponskills and Abilities that we actually get to use as part of our rotation. One of the things that's made Monk players the angriest going from expansion to expansion is how we're constantly losing skills and getting nothing in return for them. The best we get is something close to similar skills that are worse in the leveling curve like Riddle of Fire replacing Blood For Blood but with an effect everyone hates, or Enlightenment replacing Howling Fist but we can't use it in Single Target. Monk is the only job that hasn't had a new rotational Weaponskill added to it since A Realm Reborn. Give us a replacement for the stuff we've lost, a Weaponskill with 30 second recast separate from the GCD like Shadowfang or Sonic Break that hits obscenely hard and feels good to use instead of an "Ultimate" skill like Six Sided Star that's just utility we get to touch maybe once or twice a fight. The reason this ends up feeling like a pseudo rework is that a lot of this stuff needs to be added into the low levels instead of into 80-90, because as it is Monk is absolutely barren down there and there's so many things that need removing and replacing that it'll create the worst leveling curve imaginable should they make the changes they need to.

Completely agree. Niche skills are too niche.

Also, what would you say to a 1.5 gcd? I feel like that's as low as SE would comfortably go.

As Shurrikhan said, it would be too low for the pace of this game (and it's Netcode) if it were sustained. If they put something like that on Monk it would make the most sense as a relatively short Duration Cooldown you could pop for like 10 seconds of insane speed, but even then its really going to make it painful to play at higher pings as we've seen with new Wildfire/Overheat on Machinist.

[Shurrikhan]

Devs are biased against monk and any ignorance they have with regards to the job is willful and malicious.

I think they just bias towards whatever jobs seem easiest to handle, fix, or placate. Due to short-sighted advancements, bar one incidental goldmine (for half, mercury for the other) that's bit them just as badly, Monk has ended up as none of those things.

This is, after all, the team that seems to have only four tools: the potency syringe, excessive bandaging, the embalmer's hook, and the sledgehammer.