Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

I didn't think they would put anything about Monk in the Full Notes if they didn't mention it in the live letter or the preliminary notes, so no new disappointment for me. Just the same disappointment I've felt for nearly five years now.

I'm not a MNK main, however, I will say that there are aspects about MNK I like: the feeling of a freeform rotation, the ease of maintaining the buff with the right skills, the sheer feeling of power behind the moves, however I can admit there are some aspects that could use polish.

Personally, I actually don't mind Tornado Kick being the way it is, but I think Perfect Balance should be brought back down to 60s to compensate. In addition, Tornado Kick could get additional damage for each GL stack currently held by MNK.

As a part of its basic effect, a Chakra gate opens each time a GL stack is gained/refreshed. This makes Forbidden Chakra a more consistent thing, even at the HW level where it's introduced with no other real way to use it.

A movement option like DRG's Elusive Jump. Honestly, I'm surprised Six-Sided Star isn't a backflip of some kind because it seemingly intended use is for disengaging bosses. Combining this with Shoulder Tackle allows for rapid movement across the battlefield to keep uptime on the boss.

Earthen Fists, at lower levels, could help maintain GL stacks while not in combat, since the damage reduction is rather "meh" in most instances.

Personally, I want to see Howling Fist back. I don't know why it was removed.

Bringing down PB's cooldown wouldn't actually give us more Tornado Kicks is the thing, it's better used getting more Leaden Bootshines. TK just exists to act as a niche action for an event that never really happened all that much to begin with but which happens even less now.

I like the idea of the Chakra stack gain every time you refresh Stacks. It fits with how we want the job to feel and how the job is actually played.

A free movement skill is something we've needed for years and the double stack of Shoulder Tackle doesn't give us that, we still need to use it for damage and have no recourse for movement otherwise.

I'd just move Form Shift down to like, level 15 or so to teach you the importance of upkeeping Greased Lightning early and to make the 1-52 leveling experience less completely awful.

They removed Howling Fist because they were worried Greased Lightning IV would make us too fast or something. Of course like most other aspects of Shadowbringers Monk they were completely wrong about that too and I'd love to see it come back as well. It being gone creates another problem where low level Monk is one of the most bare bones jobs in the game.

Twin Snakes and Leaden Fist should definitely be on the job UI, but that would require them to put some development resources towards Monk so of course it isn't.

[Shurrikhan]

Twin Snakes and Leaden Fist should definitely be on the job UI, but that would require them to put some development resources towards Monk so of course it isn't.

Honestly, it felt easier to track everything when Chakra were not on the job UI, as my damage CDs, potion, rotational buffs, and chakra count could all be viewed together. Unless they go the full mile and allow all buffs we'd want to track to be shown prettily on the job UI, I'd just as soon prefer almost none are.

I'd prefer to only need to look at one area to track everything.

I like the idea of the Chakra stack gain every time you refresh Stacks. It fits with how we want the job to feel and how the job is actually played.

Do we really want to add an extra 74 single-target or 44 AoE raw potency per Couerl skill though? That would make Deep Meditation an absurd damage boost. Even if we had Chakra go to 7 for the same potency or removed the RNG portion entirely (moving the strength from Bootshine, especially any potential double-Boot rotations, to Coeurl skills), it'd still be right up there with Lance Mastery, given the huge difference between raw and relative potency on MNK.

[SpeckledBurd]

Honestly, it felt easier to track everything when Chakra were not on the job UI, as my damage CDs, potion, rotational buffs, and chakra count could all be viewed together. Unless they go the full mile and allow all buffs we'd want to track to be shown prettily on the job UI, I'd just as soon prefer almost none are.

I'd prefer to only need to look at one area to track everything.

I agree, but that sorta gets back to Monk's job gauge being poorly implemented to begin with and still being very poor in actually consolidating information we need on it like its supposed to. The current design of Leaden Fist being something that is gained and spent as you cycle through Opo-opo moves puts it in a random spot on your buff list relative to all of the shields, regens and other buffs that are going out, which makes it especially hard to keep track of and therefore would be very beneficial to have a gauge element. Twin Snakes is a little easier because you should have close to 100% uptime on it, but it should be on the gauge as well for consistency.

I don't have a problem with form buffs because that's intuitive, but they really should have all of the pertinent information, including Twin Snakes, Leaden Bootshine, and even the current Form in Monk's gauge considering that was the entire point of it rather than making that info separate.

Edit: It occurs to me that of all the elements to be added to the gauge in Shadowbringers it was the Fist Stances of all things that they put into it, which is pretty much the most pointless change they could make.

Do we really want to add an extra 74 single-target or 44 AoE raw potency per Couerl skill though? That would make Deep Meditation an absurd damage boost. Even if we had Chakra go to 7 for the same potency or removed the RNG portion entirely (moving the strength from Bootshine, especially any potential double-Boot rotations, to Coeurl skills), it'd still be right up there with Lance Mastery, given the huge difference between raw and relative potency on MNK.

I mean obviously numbers would need to be changed, that should be a given. No one here is complaining because Monk is weak, and frankly that's not what people have been complaining about since Heavensward, and in Heavensward the weakness was largely because of Monk design failure anyway (TP burn, no aggro control, etc.). The RNG aspect just isn't well liked, and the double RNG aspect is what makes it outright hated, so yes the desire is to remove the RNG portion entirely in favor of consistent throughput of damage because that's what the majority of people want on this job. From there fixing the numbers is something the devs can figure out.

[Shurrikhan]

I agree, but that sorta gets back to Monk's job gauge being poorly implemented to begin with and still being very poor in actually consolidating information we need on it like its supposed to. The current design of Leaden Fist being something that is gained and spent as you cycle through Opo-opo moves puts it in a random spot on your buff list relative to all of the shields, regens and other buffs that are going out, which makes it especially hard to keep track of and therefore would be very beneficial to have a gauge element. Twin Snakes is a little easier because you should have close to 100% uptime on it, but it should be on the gauge as well for consistency.

I see, and that's fair. I've never thought of it being a problem that the buff moves around on my status bar, but I probably have my icons a lot smaller than most people, so I'm always seeing them in the same glance regardless of whether they're the first or sixth buff. I could see why others would be annoyed by the movement, though.

I mean obviously numbers would need to be changed, that should be a given. No one here is complaining because Monk is weak, and frankly that's not what people have been complaining about since Heavensward. The RNG aspect just isn't well liked, and the double RNG aspect is what makes it outright hated, so yes the desire is to remove the RNG portion entirely in favor of consistent throughput of damage because that's what the majority of people want on this job. From there fixing the numbers is something the devs can figure out.

My concern was more that so much power is being placed into Coeurl skills only, and only after a certain, fairly late level, leading to an even less cohesive leveling experience on a job already with arguably... the worst leveling experience bar perhaps DRK.

[Mahrze]

I see, and that's fair. I've never thought of it being a problem that the buff moves around on my status bar, but I probably have my icons a lot smaller than most people, so I'm always seeing them in the same glance regardless of whether they're the first or sixth buff. I could see why others would be annoyed by the movement, though.

I think its more that it speaks how most of the job gauges barring maybe BLM don't really show the resources that are available for each job. Its a design flaw and MNKs "job ui" is the least informative. Not saying Job UIs should display every little buff. But something like the MNK UI is definitely lacking by contrast.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

My concern was more that so much power is being placed into Coeurl skills only, and only after a certain, fairly late level, leading to an even less cohesive leveling experience on a job already with arguably... the worst leveling experience bar perhaps DRK.

We're currently at this point with the Opo-opo form, see: Bootshine under Leaden Fist. All MNK's power is frontloaded into Bootshine. The difference between LF Bootshine and every other stanced GCD is around 1200~dps.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/rVNqB...-done&source=8

If we look at this log, Bootshine accounts for 1.7m worth of damage, while Demo (including the upfront damage) and Snap are 1.2m and 1.06m worth of damage respectively. That's a huge 500k worth of damage over Demo and over 700k worth of damage over Snap punch. Looking at other jobs in the party, no other job has this huge discrepancy of damage between its skills. It just seems like the devs had no intuitive way to make DK relevant, so instead gave a huge buff to Bootshine through DK. This then makes Bootshine the worst skill to miss a positional on as it's 150 potency gone (the equivalent of missing 7~ positionals). I just fail to find the rationality behind frontloading an ability like that instead of spreading that potency elsewhere and making DK more interesting or at least have relevance with the MNK aesthetic, such as why is a kicking move giving us a fist buff? Do we scrape our hands along to ground to harden them up while performing dragon kick or something? It feels like MNK is still actually just a PGL with some minor MNK-esque skills, most of which are relatively niche or locked behind RNG.

One could argue that SAM has so much DPS front loaded into Midare Setsugekka, but that skill has no positional attached to it and so will always, barring crits etc.. be consistent in damage and it adds to the SAM aesthetic. Leaden Fist is just a tacked on buff that doesn't really make any sense. Bootshine was never this huge hitting skill before. In fact Snap Punch, TK and Demo were all the top leaders back in SB and the damage was more evenly spaced out among the kit as you can see here:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/gCnYx...-done&source=3

Leaden Fist is more or less the whole reason we had the Janky Anatman openers because PB was better suited to spamming DK and BS because of the huge damage increase it gives. I think the devs missed the mark with MNK this expansion. Not just in aesthetic, but also in how the job has become centered around Leaden Fist for damage. All stance combos were within 5% total damage of each other, now it's shot up to over 10% because of LF.

[Shurrikhan]

We're currently at this point with the Opo-opo form, see: Bootshine under Leaden Fist. All MNK's power is frontloaded into Bootshine. The difference between LF Bootshine and every other stanced GCD is around 1200~dps.

I've made no claim that we didn't already have that problem. I just don't think doubling down on the problem will somehow make it better, or at the least, no worse. I'd rather just fix the problem directly, as I've been pushing for since my Monk hit 80, some couple weeks into playing ShB -- either greatly nerf Dragon Kick's effect until its consequent positional bonus doesn't so exceed that of other skills and LF-Bootshine's total output doesn't so steeply outperform any other otherwise-proper use of a GCD, or change the effect completely.

The failure to tune Monk's skills against each other has cost us variance in rotations, ability to mitigate or bypass would-be lost positionals through preemptive rotation, a fair bit of fluidity, and so much more. Taken in sum, it's damn near gutted the whole feel of being a Monk, especially over its time spent leveling.

I'd gladly give up Form Shift GL refreshes, Leaden Fist burst, and Riddle of Earth's positional nullification if it just meant having back a proper internal balance and a bit more fluidity and responsiveness throughout gameplay.

[Ultimatecalibur]

If we look at this log, Bootshine accounts for 1.7m worth of damage, while Demo (including the upfront damage) and Snap are 1.2m and 1.06m worth of damage respectively. That's a huge 500k worth of damage over Demo and over 700k worth of damage over Snap punch.

Just going by Total damage dealt by each doesn't actually tell the whole truth. You need to also look at the number of hits with each ability and the average damage of each form's gcds.

Bootshine dealt 39.5k per hit on average with 45 hits, Dragonkick dealt 20.3k per hit on average with 48 hits, Demolish dealt 45.2k per hit on average with 30 hits and Snap Punch dealt 21.3k per hit on average with 50 hits. On average the Opo-Opo gcds dealt about 29.6k per hit with 93 hits and the Coeurl gcds dealt 30.26 with 80 hits. For additional comparison, Twin Snakes dealt an average of 15.8k per hit with 39 hits and True Strike dealt 23.9k per hit with 38 giving Raptor form an average of 19.79k per hit with 77 hits.

Please note: I originally attempted to do the math to support you premise that Bootshine was doing to much damage even though I saw a flaw in your argument (You were comparing Bootshine to Demolish and Snap Punch individually rather than comparing the average form damage of Dragon->Boot and Demo->Snap->Snap) but it turned out to favor the idea that both forms are actually dealing fairly balanced damage. Heck the math even shows that the new rotation is more evenly distributed on average than the StB rotation which heavily favored Coeurl form moves.

Looking at other jobs in the party, no other job has this huge discrepancy of damage between its skills.

Paladin has a bigger discrepancy if you look at Atonement alone being one of the dominant sources of damage followed by Goring Blade and forget that Atonement needs the Royal Authority combo. In the end The 5 gcd Holy Spirit+Confietor string ends up having the highest average damage once you factor in that Atonementx3 is actual a 6 gcd string.

The Leadened Fist buff actually ends up evening out the monks damage distribution even if Bootshine does become a spike.

It just seems like the devs had no intuitive way to make DK relevant, so instead gave a huge buff to Bootshine through DK. This then makes Bootshine the worst skill to miss a positional on as it's 150 potency gone (the equivalent of missing 7~ positionals).

Missing the positional on Bootshine isn't as bad as you make it out to be because a Crit still has a chance to occur even without a positional. In theory you could miss every Bootshine positional and still do the same damage as someone who hit every positional. It is still bad but closer to missing 4 other positionals rather than 7.

I just fail to find the rationality behind frontloading an ability like that instead of spreading that potency elsewhere and making DK more interesting or at least have relevance with the MNK aesthetic, such as why is a kicking move giving us a fist buff? Do we scrape our hands along to ground to harden them up while performing dragon kick or something? It feels like MNK is still actually just a PGL with some minor MNK-esque skills, most of which are relatively niche or locked behind RNG.

I think their intent was to maintain the single target benefit when converting Dragonkick's single target blunt resist down debuff into a damage buff while maintaining the alternating between Dragonkick and Bootshine portion of the rotation. In the grand scheme of things Bootshine and Dragonkick end up averaging into a 250 potency attack with about a 66% crit rate if all positionals are hit.

[Ramura_Sono]

Missing the positional on Bootshine isn't as bad as you make it out to be because a Crit still has a chance to occur even without a positional. In theory you could miss every Bootshine positional and still do the same damage as someone who hit every positional. It is still bad but closer to missing 4 other positionals rather than 7.

Missing the guaranteed crit on bootshine is worse, because we go from a flat 70% chance to generate a chakra down to around 20%. Bootshine has far more hidden potency because of it's interaction with Deep Meditation.
As far as Dragonkick is concerned, it's effect should have been something along the lines of "increases positional potency by (some arbitrary number or %)". A short timer is all that's needed to maintain the alternating betwixt Dragonkick and Boothsine within the rotation.