Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Ramura_Sono]

When you've made it clear that the mother devs won't hear you, what good do your moans and self-pity do?

At the least the speculation allows us to refine our understanding of what we do and don't like about the existing kit and what we would and would not like about future kits so we can give more precise feedback early on, rather than providing an overly broad response that can be retailored to whatever narrative or opinion the devs prefer to acknowledge.

And what good does speculation and precise feedback do when the Devs have shown time and time again that they'll willingly ignore complaints anyway? "We hate the slow on RoF" is pretty precise feedback that the devs received at the beginning and happily ignored throughout the entirety of Stormblood.

Precise feedback gets ignored, and a broader response gets retailored to whatever the devs want so let's not pretend that refining our understanding of what we like and don't like about the current or future kits will result in any sort of significant or meaningful design changes or decisions from the devs. It certainly hasn't before.

[Shurrikhan]

And what good does speculation and precise feedback do when the Devs have shown time and time again that they'll willingly ignore complaints anyway?

Then why make this thread at all? Seriously? There are plenty of other threads that more directly amount to "Monk is dead" for people to visit. There is no need for another group therapy thread on the subject.

If you're just trying to take a piss on anyone and any job still left with some hope, then... all the power to you, I guess? But that's the only thing this all-is-hopeless-so-let's-despair-together-and-ridicule-any-new-ideas mindset in going to uniquely provide.

I for one believe Monk needs a complete rework. That it may have to wait until 6.0 sucks hard, but that doesn't mean I'm going to call anyone and everyone who sources ideas for down the line naive nor try to force an entirely reactive ('there is obviously zero willingness to change until the change has already happened -- despite that it obviously has to occur prior for those changes to have been made at all...') point of view on everyone else.

Why shut down discussion on reworks in your own thread requesting... a complete rework?

[Ramura_Sono]

Why shut down discussion on reworks in your own thread requesting... a complete rework?

Your response was basically telling the people who feel their feedback is meaningless that its the fault of players providing overly broad feedback. Which is simply untrue. Telling them to rehash the feedback they feel has been consistently ignored isn't exactly gonna get them to start spewing more out.

The main issues with Monk are easily broken down into three broad areas.

1. A stagnant and uninteresting rotation.
2. An overabundance of overly situational and underutilized skills.
3. A lack of mobility options.

Which can all of course be broken down more precisely. Both broad feedback and precise feedback can and should be taken into account with any rework. Likewise, identifying precise parts of a kit that just don't truly add anything to the job - locking effects behind fist stances didin't resolve the issue of stances themselves being bloat or asinine activation requirements such as RoE needing to take HP damage to proc it's effect and determining how and if they should be changed and reworked to fit not only within the resolution of broader Job issues, but within the mantra and broader design of the game itself.

Solving precise issues (we want to use SSS/TK more) within broader issues (We have too many situational skills) can be part of a resolution for other issues as well (we use SSS / TK more, This has resulted in our rotation changing) rather than hyper focusing on some precise issue and resolution without thought towards how the result fits into the overall job design which is arguably how we've ended up at the state we are.

Suggesting reworks that add needless complexity in an attempt to justify bloat skills, or that involve a reworking of core game mechanics themselves don't exactly foster discussion when one is ignoring the mantra of "the removal of overly situational and niche skills" and is just more of the same thing we've disliked from precious iterations of monk. The other is just trying to speculate a rework outside of the games core design. It took TWO years to get RoF changed. That's changing two numbers on one skill. That's changing and testing one job. A rework that changes the way the game works at it's core requires testing every job, changing numbers on every job. A rework requiring such things exists far outside the realm of possibility, and thus discussion, for many players.


Having sensible additions to our kit ( rewards for landing positionals or maintaining our maintenance buff ) end up as part of other jobs, neither of which revolved around them as part of their core class mechanic/identity, and then having the idea of monk getting the same thing shot down because homogeneity is somehow bad on top of seeing issues we've suffered with for literally years both get acquired by and resolved for other jobs in a matter of months has understandably made many monk players jaded.

As far as the "woe is me our feedback is futile" goes, at this point it's probably a more effective vehicle for change to let the devs know just how great our disappointment and how little our trust and faith in them is. If an entire community essentially feels their feedback doesn't matter, you've made a big misstep as a developer.

[SpeckledBurd]

When Touch of Death was removed in the great DoT purge of Stormblood they really should have added in 2 "formless" weaponskills that could be intermixed into the core rotation. Instead Monkmostly ended up with a bunch ogcds which were "enhanced" versions of existing ogcds.

Not even that, we lost more oGCDs than anything and we haven't gotten anything to replace them. Enlightenment is the "same" as elixir field nominally but it lacks any use in single target. This is also somewhat of an extension of a point I made earlier in the thread about how certain changes that are made to Monk as part of broad changes in design like the removal of Solo-Dots which had a different interaction with Monk's kit or the removal of Dragon Kick because physical aspected resistance debuffs were removed even though Monk was the only job to benefit from that. The original whole of Monk in 2.X and 3.X worked because it had these aspects, without these aspects, Monk is extremely barebones.

Your response was basically telling the people who feel their feedback is meaningless that its the fault of players providing overly broad feedback. Which is simply untrue. Telling them to rehash the feedback they feel has been consistently ignored isn't exactly gonna get them to start spewing more out.

The main issues with Monk are easily broken down into three broad areas.

1. A stagnant and uninteresting rotation.
2. An overabundance of overly situational and underutilized skills.
3. A lack of mobility options.

I'd also say that the double layered RNG that you can't fire of early on a gauge with no overhead and the Full-Party Physical composition dependence to Monk are issues people have with the job as well. Double layered RNG and the gauge have the same issues we've outlined repeatedly for almost three years now, and Monk is still reliant on Scholar/Dragoon for Crit Buffs to fuel that RNG and a Physical Heavy composition beside that to get Chakra procs in Brotherhood (which can still be a total wash even with a favorable comp and is pretty much always a disappointing phase in 4-man's or Solo duties because of your lack of a full party.)