Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[3ureka]

The problem with that is…

Ahh. In that case, Monks should be further rewarded to keep up their GL stacks outside of the bonuses from each stack, right? Or to borrow your words, they need a system of engagement in place? Maybe to take a page out of SAM’s book, we could grant buffs similar to Leaden Fist from executing other weapon skills. To really lean into the forms, they could have a “continuation” of Leaden Fist so that if you land it with the correct positional, you get increased potency (or some other effect) for doing the next positional correctly and so on; e.g. upon a successful Leaden Fist, you get Leaden Kick which would buff your next Raptor weapon skill like extend the duration of Twin Snakes (in prep for a PB usage) or a potency boost to True Strike (incentive to hit Twin > True > True within RoF & BH).

Dragoon is a decent comparison to Monk in terms of gameplay but I don't think they share a lot of pains...

Yeah, you’re right about both GL being more analogous to Blood of the Dragon and how it’s more of an end than a means. While the proposal above doesn’t necessarily eliminate how GL is more of a means, I think locking certain skills behind max stacks of GL might help alleviate that issue. On the topic of BLM’s Enochian(?), someone on The Balance proposed giving a free cast of TK if you can keep max stacks of GL for 30 seconds (or so). I think that’s a great idea and seems like an easy solution to just tack on to the current iteration of TK.

Monk has neither of these things…

Ahh. Had to look up the Sabin reference. While I think that’d be really cool (was a big fan of pad games, so combo inputs is right up my alley), I fear that the implementation would be too a bit difficult; one way I could see it working is if they attached a “combo input” to a weapon skill based on the positional (would definitely throw off all the muscle memory, though). SSS is certainly underwhelming, although I’ve lately been a little more appreciative of its niche use cases; still, the infrequency of use is painful, and I’d rather see it be incorporated into our regular rotation (same can be said about Anatman). As for TK… it was a mistake haha. Unless they can give us a free cast of it somehow, I don’t see how we’ll ever use this skill outside of a long disconnect or kill.

I think this may have been lightly touched on or buried earlier in the thread, but what if they turned each Fist stance into an amalgamation of Lance Charge and Kaiten? That is, each becomes an oGCD that buffs the next weapon skill with a different effect; e.g. FoF makes the next weapon skill hit 10% harder, FoW grants 1 (or 2?) stack of chakra, FoE grants ??? This plus make GL4 a trait. I’m not particularly attached to the Fist Stances, but I imagine reusing assets to focus on a more cohesive kit seems like a better use of the developers’ time.