Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[3ureka]

snip

In regards to introducing TFC before Deep Meditation, I think that might've been more of an archaic design choice. My immediate thought goes to NIN and Trick Attack, and how that was (for all intents and purposes) locked until you learned Suiton. I'm just speculating, but I imagine the reason for delaying the introduction of Deep Meditation and Suiton so late is due to the story tied with both jobs. Well, tbh, I don't remember the exact details of Deep Meditation and if there was even a big deal about it in MNK's story (it's been literal years since then); NIN's story is more fresh in my mind (capped it this expansion).

[Mahrze]

In regards to introducing TFC before Deep Meditation, I think that might've been more of an archaic design choice. My immediate thought goes to NIN and Trick Attack, and how that was (for all intents and purposes) locked until you learned Suiton. I'm just speculating, but I imagine the reason for delaying the introduction of Deep Meditation and Suiton so late is due to the story tied with both jobs. Well, tbh, I don't remember the exact details of Deep Meditation and if there was even a big deal about it in MNK's story (it's been literal years since then); NIN's story is more fresh in my mind (capped it this expansion).

Chakra's are as early as ARR job quests iirc. It the whole reason Widargelt offers to "train you". Cuz he wants another MNK to help him open his chakras. But most of this ends up moot since they don't really bother to design things around the leveling curve. All is about the end game.

Edit: yeah, just checked the ff wiki for the mnk xiv story. It is since then. Lvl 60 job quest gives ytou the title "of the 14th Chakra". Its the one people keep using as a cornerstone on how MNK has 5 available chakras as a gameplay but we somehow have unlocked all 14 and don't have it as a resource and what not.

[3ureka]

Chakra's are as early as ARR job quests iirc. It the whole reason Widargelt offers to "train you". Cuz he wants another MNK to help him open his chakras. But most of this ends up moot since they don't really bother to design things around the leveling curve. All is about the end game.

Yeah. I think Square would have to rewrite quite a few things if they wanted all the jobs to feel good while leveling to cap.

Also, thoughts on something like this for monk?:
So, since we're heavily positional focused, how would you feel about getting a buff for hitting all the positionals for a full cycle of opo-opo > raptor > coeurl? Once you've attained the buff, every weaponskill afterward will be treated similarly to DRG's Raiden Thrust, where they'll get a nice little potency boost. However, this buff will fall off as soon as you miss your first positional, which will (literally) keep us on our toes. I think with the tools they gave us in Riddle of Earth and 2 stacks of True North, this might be viable.

[SpeckledBurd]

In regards to introducing TFC before Deep Meditation, I think that might've been more of an archaic design choice. My immediate thought goes to NIN and Trick Attack, and how that was (for all intents and purposes) locked until you learned Suiton. I'm just speculating, but I imagine the reason for delaying the introduction of Deep Meditation and Suiton so late is due to the story tied with both jobs. Well, tbh, I don't remember the exact details of Deep Meditation and if there was even a big deal about it in MNK's story (it's been literal years since then); NIN's story is more fresh in my mind (capped it this expansion).

Meditation and The Forbidden Chakra aren't really tied to the story, the Heavensward skills only tied in loosely with the skills you were learning and didn't really correlate that well, and the Stormblood skills didn't really have a story tie in except for Brotherhood. The reason we have TFC so much earlier than Deep Meditation is that its original design isn't a gauge skill, it's a downtime damage loss mitigation skill. In Heavensward when the boss would jump for like 30 seconds, you'd hammer Meditation and come back with The Forbidden Chakra to make up for the fact that you probably lost your stacks(though granted you still do that, but in Heavensward that was its only use).

The disparity in levels between them is a result of Deep Meditation coming later in Stormblood where their big draw was that they were giving every job a gauge and performing an action rework to revise the jobs. In Monk's case, it really didn't get either of those (And honestly still hasn't lol). They gave Chakra a gauge, but they didn't actually change the system for it at all. They just tacked on an effect at higher levels that let it build in combat while leaving it as it was at low levels and also not really doing anything to make it a system, you'll notice we don't get Enlightenment until Level 74 which is about ten levels after pretty much every other DPS job gets an AOE use for their Gauge. If they'd given Monk more than 10 minutes of development time going from Stormblood to Shadowbringers and actually addressed player concerns, we'd get an AOE Chakra dump at like level 58 when we previously got purification (which was sort of that in Stormblood in that it was only good for AOE, but its 2 minute cooldown kept it from being a true dump) or they'd have changed Tornado Kick to a gauge dump so it would have an actual use.

[3ureka]

Damn. Yeah, now that you mention it, it's starting to come back to me. We definitely got the short end of the stick for the job story (among other things).

Reminds me. When 4.0 dropped, I changed my search info to: "The only expansion monks got in SB was a gaping bumhole"; I've since updated it, but maybe I need to go change it back haha