Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Gorondu]

I would like Form Shift to always reset Grease Lightning outside of combat. Would lessen that endless stomping in dungeons by quite a bit. 20 instead of 16 seconds grease lightning would also be welcome. Thank you

[3ureka]

If you're not constantly stomping, you're doing monk wrong hahah

But yeah, it would definitely be nice to have a less mind-numbing way to keep that up. At the same time, at least we *do* have a way to keep our stacks unlike DRG which loses everything. NIN's can always Huton > Hide, and SAM can just sit back.

[Mahrze]

If you're not constantly stomping, you're doing monk wrong hahah

But yeah, it would definitely be nice to have a less mind-numbing way to keep that up. At the same time, at least we *do* have a way to keep our stacks unlike DRG which loses everything. NIN's can always Huton > Hide, and SAM can just sit back.

They changed the blood of the dragon buff to have a 25s CD and the buff lasts 30s. At end game, you can never lose it and its only a button press every 25s rather than every 2-3s.


https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/dragoon/

[3ureka]

Oooh. F. My bad! I'll be the first to say that I'm guilty of maxing it and not touching the job after that lol. At least for the earlier levels, DRG can potentially lose all of their buffs if they don't hit anything in the next 25 seconds (I feel like they could probably move that lvl 78 trait that buffs BoTD to 30s down to be accessible earlier on); whereas monks get Form Shift at 52, which, for most cases, unlocks 100% uptime of GL stacks.

[Mahrze]

Oooh. F. My bad! I'll be the first to say that I'm guilty of maxing it and not touching the job after that lol. At least for the earlier levels, DRG can potentially lose all of their buffs if they don't hit anything in the next 25 seconds (I feel like they could probably move that lvl 78 trait that buffs BoTD to 30s down to be accessible earlier on); whereas monks get Form Shift at 52, which, for most cases, unlocks 100% uptime of GL stacks.

Yeah but the change to form shit was a direct skill change. the trait to BotD already was a thing in 5.0 launch. Form Shift's current iteration was one of the many "noticeable" flaws when they make bandaid changes to abilities that change the leveling experience. I don't disagree with your reaosning, but its more of the bandaid fix always trickles down to make things "OP" in earlier levels because everything is balanced for end game only.

A similar example of things that don't make sense after you ponder them is the second step of aoe combos for Tanks. DRK and GNB generate resource by default, but PLD and WAR don't until 20/30+ lvls respectively.

[3ureka]

Ahh. Yeah, I came into ShB kind of late after my hiatus from SB and noticed the changes to Form Shift; not the most elegant buff but a huge quality of life upgrade nonetheless.

I can't speak for PLD, but I've been leveling my WAR the past few days and I thought they introduced the generation and spending of Beast Gauge at a pretty decent pace. We get Inner Beast at 35 and then our second step of aoe at 40. Maybe because DRK and GNB come out of the box at a higher level, Square didn't think twice about baking in resource generation to their 2nd aoe step?

On an unrelated note, I've been getting back into monk to take it into savage content, and it feels just like I remember it. And while I can appreciate the purpose of the niche skills like Tornado Kick, Anatman, and Six-sided Star, I feel like as a whole, there's a lack of cohesion. Seeing as I'm not at the point where I've optimized every skill for every encounter, I could easily be misunderstanding these skills' use cases, but for the other melee DPS classes, I found myself interacting with every skill fairly often. I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe it's because of the frequency (or lack thereof) with these niche skills that leaves me wanting something more.

[Mahrze]

I can't speak for PLD, but I've been leveling my WAR the past few days and I thought they introduced the generation and spending of Beast Gauge at a pretty decent pace. We get Inner Beast at 35 and then our second step of aoe at 40. Maybe because DRK and GNB come out of the box at a higher level, Square didn't think twice about baking in resource generation to their 2nd aoe step?

PLD's trait is only MP but WARs trait is about generating beast gauge from the second step until lvl 74. when mythril tempest at lvl 40 and Steel cyclone at lvl 45. So the only times you'll be able to do a "3 step aoe" before lvl 74 is using infuriate every min or so or doing ST attacks and using the AoE as a finisher every 2-3 cycles.


Back on topic tho. MNK is a job that has always had abilities that really feel niche, even after "fair amount of optimizing" and its worse when as others pointed out. We lost oGCD weaving in favor of gating abilities behind a resource. GL is treated still like some sort of "the one buff to end all buffs" when it has a horrible design for both ramp up and usage with the ability it gates. Overall, every expac, MNK gets 5 abilities and only 2 really get added to its general kit, its an afterthought that the community scrambles to min/max numbers just to see how they can make use of most of the abilities we get.