Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[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.

[3ureka]

@echo78:
Maybe I’m letting nostalgia get the better of me, but the current state of monk doesn’t feel *bad* to play (I missed whatever happened with monk at 5.0). Deep Meditation II alleviates *some* of the pain from double ring gating; it doesn’t solve the root of the problem by any stretch, but at least it’s not SB bad. At the time, monk definitely felt good in HW, but where other classes seemed to get more interesting ways to generate/spend resource (subjective I know, but bear with me), monk kind of just stayed the same; while this doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, I think SE missed the mark with how they’ve handled monk past 3.0.

Consider SAM, which generates kenki (via traits and positionals) and sen. For kenki, they’ve got a _myriad_ of ways to spend it: Kaiten, Gyoten, Yaten, Seigan, Shinten, Kyuten, Guren, Senei. And then there’s sen, which can be used 3 different ways. Comparing that to monks just TFC and Enlightenment is laughable. Not to mention Meditation Stacks for Shoha.

Consider NIN, which has Huton, which I think is comparable to GL stacks; taking ~18s to ramp up under FoF vs using a mudra combination which is on a 20 cd. For all intents and purposes, we can imagine Ninki to be like a 2-stack-max charka gauge since all the spenders cost a discrete 50 gauge (it’s just that the generation of Ninki is more granular, so they break it up into that 0-100 bar); even then there’s 3 ways to spend it.

I agree, they “dumbed down” / took away a lot of things from monk (although to be fair, a lot of jobs had their skills pruned/consolidated/outright removed in SB and again in ShB). As I was writing this reply, I thought what makes monk special? You can see traces of it in SAM and NIN. Both SAM and NIN can reach similar GCD timers to Monk with Shifu and Huton. So in that regard, monk’s identity as a weapon skill slinging class is stripped away. At this point, I’d reckon it’d be impossible to *remove* the Shifu and Huton buffs from SAM and NIN; better to give MNK something new that makes them feel more unique.

*I’ve deliberately left out talking on behalf of DRG because I don’t have a lot of experience with the class.

@Mahrze:
Ahh. I haven't taken a real close look at when tanks unlock their "3 step aoe" (which I imagine is like DRK's Unleash > Stalwart > Quietus?) Anyway, I just understood it as par for the course. And yeah, for all the time it takes to ramp up, I'm still surprised that a skill like Tornado Kick exists. I really do hope Square breathes something new into monk, although how that'll look like I don't know.

[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.

[Malmstrom]

On the Fists buff, I thought I read somewhere that because of the way damage is calculated that Fire still ends up being stronger than Wind.


How about just do away with it altogether and come up with something else? Make a 4th GL stack a trait at whatever level it is now for FoW, because honestly Fists of X needs to go the way of Ninja poisons.

[SpeckledBurd]

On the Fists buff, I thought I read somewhere that because of the way damage is calculated that Fire still ends up being stronger than Wind.


How about just do away with it altogether and come up with something else? Make a 4th GL stack a trait at whatever level it is now for FoW, because honestly Fists of X needs to go the way of Ninja poisons.

Correct, because damage buffs are multiplicative Fists of Wind/GL4 is a flat 1.4x modifier on your potencies, while Fists of Fire is a 1.43x modifier. GL4 ends up being stronger over the course of the fight in spite of Fists of Fire's higher multiplier because of how it buffs auto-attacks to be absurdly strong on Monk compared to other jobs.

The Fist Stances going away is something people thought would happen going into Stormblood and instead we got 4.0 Tackle Mastery, which was more an appeal at the Fist Stances doing something than actually making them useful. I can only assume the reason there's two traits is because the devs were still terrified of GL4 being too fast for players, so they left in Fists of Fire to give people a choice between playstyles. But it’s just an illusion of choice in the exact same way Tackle Mastery was. People will always choose the option that does the most damage in this game, so the only time you'll ever use Fists of Fire is winding up to GL4 or for the last GCD of a fight. It's another piece of evidence that the devs don't know how people will play this game and that they had no vision as to what they wanted Shadowbringers Monk to be, so we of the same even though much of that was stuff we disliked as they patted themselves on the back about how well they'd done.

But I digress, At this point since the devs have proven that they aren't going to do anything worthwhile with the Fist Stances, I would happily see them go and have those traits remade into something else.

[Oxdarock]

On the Fists buff, I thought I read somewhere that because of the way damage is calculated that Fire still ends up being stronger than Wind.


How about just do away with it altogether and come up with something else? Make a 4th GL stack a trait at whatever level it is now for FoW, because honestly Fists of X needs to go the way of Ninja poisons.

It does slightly, but the haste buff from Wind and GL4 makes it a dps increase over the long run because:
-you get more GCDs and auto-attacks out of it.
-you're able to fit 11 GCDs within RoF
-you're able to fit in 6 GCDs within PB.

As for removing fists, yeah, that would make things easier and simpler, but I've always felt that knowing which fist to switch to in a given moment was one of those things that rewarded playing the class well, even if the damage increase was only minor.

[ForteNightshade]

Correct, because damage buffs are multiplicative Fists of Wind/GL4 is a flat 1.4x modifier on your potencies, while Fists of Fire is a 1.43x modifier. GL4 ends up being stronger over the course of the fight regardless because of how it buffs auto-attacks to be absurdly strong on Monk compared to other jobs.

The Fist Stances going away is something people thought would happen going into Stormblood and instead we got 4.0 Tackle Mastery, which was more an appeal at the Fist Stances doing something than actually making them useful. I can only assume the reason there's two traits is because the devs were still terrified of GL4 being too fast for players, so they left in Fists of Fire to give people a choice between playstyles. But it’s a false choice in the exact same way Tackle Mastery was. People will always choose the option that does the most damage in this game. Really it’s more telling to me that the devs continue to have no idea how people play this game, and its further evidence that the devs had no vision on what Shadowbringers Monk actually would be. It’s just removing the Fist Stances would actually involving changing Monk and they're deathly afraid of that to the point that it's the least played job in the game.

The irony is they lack this same fear when it comes to Machinist. It really does go to show how completely out-of-sync the dev team seems to be at times.

[Oxdarock]

The Fist Stances going away is something people thought would happen going into Stormblood and instead we got 4.0 Tackle Mastery, which was more an appeal at the Fist Stances doing something than actually making them useful. I can only assume the reason there's two traits is because the devs were still terrified of GL4 being too fast for players, so they left in Fists of Fire to give people a choice between playstyles. But it’s a false choice in the exact same way Tackle Mastery was. People will always choose the option that does the most damage in this game. Really it’s more telling to me that the devs continue to have no idea how people play this game, and its further evidence that the devs had no vision on what Shadowbringers Monk actually would be. It’s just removing the Fist Stances would actually involving changing Monk and they're deathly afraid of that to the point that it's the least played job in the game.

Yeah, they're very out of touch with the class. You'd need to reach GL5 or 6 before the class becomes overwhelmingly fast for players, which it wouldn't. It'd actually be busted AF, lol. And what Fortnightshade pointed out was something I didn't even consider. Why can't MNKs be as fast as Hypercharge MCH? Lol! XD

[SpeckledBurd]

The irony is they lack this same fear when it comes to Machinist. It really does go to show how completely out-of-sync the dev team seems to be at times.

I think they had that fear on some level, but Stormblood Machinist was so mechanically broken and unpleasant to play that it probably would have been harder to make anything of it that people would like than it would be to rebuild it. Even if they'd failed to make it as popular as it is, they'd have been hard pressed to make something worse, and even then they at least made a good faith effort of cleaning up their mess.

They are definitely out of touch with the Monk playerbase, you don't need to look much further than how proud they were of Shadowbringers Monk compared to how poorly it was received on Launch, or indeed how its currently the least played job in all content other than Ultimate, which is prone to sampling bias because it caters to such a small population of the playerbase. There was almost a glimpse that they might have gotten a clue in 5.05, but 5.1 just making Anatman a new addition to our gigantic useless action pile cinched it. They might make us eat our words in the next live letter and bring sweeping changes to Monk and make Anatman have a use, fix the fist stances, and even make Tornado Kick be something we use, but I wouldn't count on it. It'll probably be nothing again and we'll be left to rot till the next expansion as usual.

[Malmstrom]

Yeah, they're very out of touch with the class. You'd need to reach GL5 or 6 before the class becomes overwhelmingly fast for players, which it wouldn't. It'd actually be busted AF, lol. And what Fortnightshade pointed out was something I didn't even consider. Why can't MNKs be as fast as Hypercharge MCH? Lol! XD

I would break my hand if GL5+ was implemented.

And I would love every second of it.