Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Ultimatecalibur]

Lately I've been thinking about how to fix the Monk and one thing I realized is that Perfect Balance might be the cause of a fair amount of design problems. Perfect Balance forces all Form based weaponskills to be unique buttons which prevents them from adding more Form abilities as they want to limit the amount of button bloat.

If Perfect Balance was removed and replaced with another method of quick Gl generation they could do something like the following with their ability to change weaponskills and abilities based on buffs:

• Bootshine (No Form/Opo-opo Form) - default action tied to the button.
  • Twin Snakes (Raptor Form) - Bootshine would turn into this when Raptor Form is active.
  • New Skill (Coeurl Form) - Bootshine would turn into this when Coeurl Form is active. Could possibly have increased potency when you have more than X open Chakra.
• True Strike (Raptor Form) - default action tied to the button.
  • Demolish (Coeurl Form) - True Strike would turn into this when Coeurl Form is active.
  • New Skill (Opo-opo Form) - True Strike would turn into this when Opo-opo Form is active. I'd imagine it getting the Leaden Fist bonus (i.e. +150 potency) and do some like always opening a Chakra if you have less than say 3 (in addition to Deep Meditation's Chakra gains from Crits).
• Snap Punch (Coeurl Form) - default action tied to the button
  • Dragon Kick (Opo-opo Form) - Snap Punch would turn into this when Opo-opo form is active.
  • New Skill (Raptor Form) - Sap Punch would turn into this when Raptor Form is active. Potency could increase when you have less than X Chakra open.

Add in a Formless Weaponskill on say a 10s cooldown and you could have a rotation with 10 different weaponskills on only 4 buttons.

[Seto_Mimyho]

snip

Or... Hear me out. What if they just changed GL from being the most unresourse like resource to exist in this game into not being something else. I don't understand people's obsession with trying to change the main rotation of the job by introducing new GCDs into the mix. When the single best course of action is reworking how GL interacts with the kit or just simply remove it entirely and just make it a passive trait.

At current we have a bunch of abilities that manipulate GL in some shape or form.

Perfect Balance - level 50, Most used for DK + BS spam during rotation or quick restack after say e8s cutscene/openers.

Form Shift- level 52, the best GL maintenance tool we've EVER gotten for downtime management also used to get into Coerul form for the opener.

Tornado Kick- level 60 (Capstone of HW), The Boon and Bane of MNK at times; designed for when you 100% without a shadow of doubt can't keep your stacks. (savior of SB MNK, rip)

Riddle of Earth - level 64, Get hit to keep GL stacks. Okay in SB, but now it's used to pepega our way through positionals.

Anatman - level 78, The most somewhat okay, but really not tool recently given. Standing in place and generating stacks, which is nice, but requires you to stand in place and do nothing during it... Also on the GCD cause, they didn't like early optimization attempts.

Six Sided Star - Level 80 (Capstone of ShB) - Weird disconnect tool worth approximately 2 GCDs worth of time that can't be used in rotation but is situationally okay at saving your stacks if you mess up a PB window / forget to Formshift.

These 6 abilities interact/manipulate GL in some capacity in extremely niche ways that could just be solved with 1 button press. We lose out on so many awesome potential abilities cause, SE keeps trying to give us tools to mitigate downtime that we have nothing outside our standard 6 GCDS and a handful of oGCDs during uptime.

It would also help tremendously if SE would let MNK evolve and change from expac to expac instead of living in ARR but with fewer oGCDs and 5% faster.

[Xau]

snip

in me opinion, one way to change GL is by making what once the timer reach 0, instead of droping to no gl, it only removes one stack of gl

[Eliadil]

Or... Hear me out. What if they just changed GL from being the most unresourse like resource to exist in this game into not being something else. I don't understand people's obsession with trying to change the main rotation of the job by introducing new GCDs into the mix. When the single best course of action is reworking how GL interacts with the kit or just simply remove it entirely and just make it a passive trait.

This is a good reasoning tbh, most of these skills, especially Tornado Kick or Six Sided Star could have an additionnal effect attached to them to be considered "worthwhile". I talked on another post how Tornado Kick would be much better if it ended RoF instead of GL stacks when RoF is active. And Six Sided Stars is kinda useless seeing how we got Anatman anyway who does the same job but better. So it would need another design entirely right now in order to be interesting, and you could just merge its current effect with Anatman.

Because right now when the boss is about to disengage, peoples use Six Sided Stars into... Tornado Kick ? Like... That doesn't make any sense. GL management wasn't that easy at the beginning of ShB sure, but with the post-expac buffs, their 80 skill is almost useless in most situations and is imo one of the thing that needs the most attention.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Or... Hear me out. What if they just changed GL from being the most unresourse like resource to exist in this game into not being something else. I don't understand people's obsession with trying to change the main rotation of the job by introducing new GCDs into the mix. When the single best course of action is reworking how GL interacts with the kit or just simply remove it entirely and just make it a passive trait.

Fixing GL will not fix all the problems the Monk has. There is also:

• a Calcified (nearly Fossilized) core gcd rotation that lacks the flexiblity that the original Form based Combo system implied when compared to the 1-2-3/4 system of every other melee class/job
• 3 Elemental Fist stances that tend to end up having 1 useful stance and 2 stances with limited use even in optimization.
• secondary resource that the monk has no direct control over generating unless they are not currently engaging a target (they are then unable to utilize the resource until they reengage with a target),
• (as you point out) a bunch of niche abilities with overlapping purposes of which their usefulness is more determined by fight timing than by how they interact with the job's rotation.

A rework needs to fix all 5 problems and removing GL/turning it into a passive trait just won't do that.

These 6 abilities interact/manipulate GL in some capacity in extremely niche ways that could just be solved with 1 button press. We lose out on so many awesome potential abilities cause, SE keeps trying to give us tools to mitigate downtime that we have nothing outside our standard 6 GCDS and a handful of oGCDs during uptime.

Perfect Balance was the original quick GL generator cooldown with additional open access to the Monk's two utility abilities (Rockbreaker for AoE silence and One-Ilm Punch for buff stripping). Reducing it from a 4 minutes cooldown, to a 3 and later 2 minute cooldown made it vastly more usable but the fact it makes all weaponskills usable no matter form requirements ends up forcing button bloat when adding new weaponskills.

Form Shift has been probably one of the most cheered Monk additions even when its primary purpose was to let the Monk start fights/phases with DK->TwS->Demolish. The StB additional ability to maintain GL made it even more useful. Only real problem with it now is that it requires 3 gcds to refresh GL.

Tornado Kick had a very niche position from the start. In some fights it never needed to be used while other fights you needed to use it regularly and you needed to know the exact times and hp%s to properly use it. It has a 10s cooldown and little reason to use it that often.

Riddle of Earth's original implementation is perhaps one of the best examples of why stance locking abilities is a bad idea. It required pushing 3 ogcd buttons to extend GL and sacrificing damage dealt to reduce damage received isn't a trade most players will happily make. ShB's addition of the ability to ignore positionals for 30s every minute might be overkill for making the ability useful.

Anatman is a flavorful ability (standstill and charge up) that fits the job fantasy but suffers from FFXIV's fight design that either wants you moving when not hitting a target or is doing a cinematic cutscene. High end fights don't really want you sitting still doing nothing for the 12s to 14s needed to charge up. Anatman was also made a gcd action because SE didn't want to require player to use a server tick tracker to play the job optimally/near-optimally.

Six-sided Star is a good example of an unintuitive and seemingly unnecessary ability that doesn't really fit. How is this even a capstone ability?

It would also help tremendously if SE would let MNK evolve and change from expac to expac instead of living in ARR but with fewer oGCDs and 5% faster.

The rotation isn't even really living in ARR. In ARR you could intermix Touch of Death and Fracture to realign your rotation if it was desyncing.

[Seto_Mimyho]

snip

1. Gonna disagree here, While it's true the GCD rotation is archaic it's not as bad as you might think it is.
Rotation wise we have 2 branches of skills; Damage + Buffs/Debuffs.
Damage: Bootshine, True Strikes, Snap Punch
Buff / Debuff: Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Demolish

We have 2 rotations in use at current; Standard of Alternate Twin + True & Double True Strike.
So a rotation could look like this: (assuming mid-fight with all stacks of GL) DK ->Twin->Demo ->BS ->True ->Snap ->DK ->Twin ->Snap ->BS ->True ->Demo
or
DK ->Twin ->Demo ->BS ->True ->Snap->DK ->True ->Snap ->BS ->Twin -> Demo
Looking at other classes

• NIN follows your 1-2-3/4 rotation
• SAM goes by 1-2-1-3-4-1-5-6
• DRG is 1-2-3-4-5-1-6-7-5-4 and can not deviate in the slightest without breaking combo.
• meanwhile MNK could follow 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-6-4-5-3 or 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-5-6-4-2-3

2. Agreeance here, but it's not that bad just bloats buttons that could be fixed by making them traits or just combine all into one
3. I do wish that Chakras weren't as RNG as they are, but they're not detrimentally holding the class back
4. As said, They interact with Greased Lightning, if they didn't have that caveat they could be fleshed out and used more freely (Mainly TK + SSS)

I do appreciate you reiterating the abilities I listed, but you got some things wrong with them. Mainly:

• PB's CDs were 4 minutes to 3min to 1min up to the current 2min. And optimally speaking while it may open all your buttons, you're only going to be using it to spam Dragon Kick and Bootshine with 1 Coeurl move / RoE to refresh GL.
• Form shift didn't get the GL refresh until Shadowbringers, not Stormblood. (assuming StB is Stormblood).
• TK is a weird one, while necessary in some places, it never got its chance to shine as it did during patches 4.25 to 4.55. The Tornado Kick Rotation was one of the single most accidentally amazing things to come from Stormblood MNK thanks to Wind Tackle + 1m PB.
• RoE never needed 3 oGCDs to activate you'd just hit it and it'd shift you into FoE and then only needing 1 press to go back to FoF. But back in SB, this was one of the only ways to keep GL during long disconnects if you didn't use TK cause you knew you can keep your stacks and PB was on CD.
• Anatman is just bad even if thematically it would make sense. Why does it have the caveat of needing to stand still to maintain GL when every other class has ONE button they push to maintain their class buff. it being on the GCD doesn't help either since it just makes it clunky to use.
• SSS is a, "I fucked up Perfect Balance and need to quickly fix my stacks." Button or a Finisher button along with TK

And MNK is stuck in ARR, with or without ToD / Fracture. Your core rotation doesn't change at all from Level 50 and you don't have the oGCDs to fill up space like other classes do or the intuitive gauges as they do.

[Ultimatecalibur]

1. Gonna disagree here, While it's true the GCD rotation is archaic it's not as bad as you might think it is.
Rotation wise we have 2 branches of skills; Damage + Buffs/Debuffs.
Damage: Bootshine, True Strikes, Snap Punch
Buff / Debuff: Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Demolish

Which is actual a degradation from the original Weaponskill lineup in ARR.

The forms each originally had (disregarding AoE) in ARR:
Sustained effects (i.e. Buffs/Debuffs/DoTs) - Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes and Demolish
Pure Damage - Bootshine, True Strike and Snap Punch
Utility - Arm of the Destroyer (Silence), One-ilm-Punch (Debuff Removal)

We have 2 rotations in use at current; Standard of Alternate Twin + True & Double True Strike.
So a rotation could look like this: (assuming mid-fight with all stacks of GL) DK ->Twin->Demo ->BS ->True ->Snap ->DK ->Twin ->Snap ->BS ->True ->Demo
or
DK ->Twin ->Demo ->BS ->True ->Snap->DK ->True ->Snap ->BS ->Twin -> Demo

Which pretty much existed that way since ARR (Double True was theoretical based on SkS, but unnecessary because of the inclusion of Touch of Death and Fracture), but then again the ARR version was more flexible based on needs of the fight. That mid-fight rotation might end up looked more like this based on the fight.

DK/AotD ->Twin/OiP ->Demo ->BS/AotD ->True/OiP ->Snap ->DK/AtoD ->ToD ->Twin/OiP ->Snap ->BS/AotD ->True/OiP ->Demo

And this was completely based on the current needs of the fight (few fights took advantage of this flexibility).

Looking at other classes

• NIN follows your 1-2-3/4 rotation
• SAM goes by 1-2-1-3-4-1-5-6
• DRG is 1-2-3-4-5-1-6-7-5-4 and can not deviate in the slightest without breaking combo.
• meanwhile MNK could follow 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-6-4-5-3 or 1-2-3-4-5-6-1-5-6-4-2-3

You are completely missing what I meant by the 1-2-3/4 combo system. Dark Knight, Dragoon, Gunbreaker, Ninja, Paladin, Samurai, Warrior, Machinist and Red Mage all used variations of the same combo system for their melee attacks. Weaponskill 1 combos into Weaponskill 2 which can combos into Weaponskill 3 or 4. Samurai and Dragoon might have the split occur during the second weaponskills in the combo and Dragoon might have also extended it to 5 weaponskills per combo but they are still using the same combo rules as the other 7 jobs on that list.

Monk has had a unique combo system where weaponskills 1/4/7 can all combo into weaponskills 2/5/8 which can all combo into weaponskills 3/6/9 which combo back into weaponskills 1/4/7 and you can temporarily interrupt the combo with other non-form based weaponskills without breaking the combo.

In theory the ShB Monk weaponskill rotation should have looked something like this as it evolved from ARR through HW and StB into ShB:

DK -> TwS -> DM -> BS/NewSkill1 -> TrS/NewSkill2 -> SnP/NewSkill3 -> DK -> NS4(No Form) -> TwS -> SnP/NS3 -> BS/NS1 -> TrS/NS2 -> DM -> etc. with the choices between BS or NS1, TrS or NS2, and SnP or NS3 being based on the current situation as that gcd comes up.

Perfect Balance's requirement that all form weaponskills must have their own buttons prevents this as there would be 10 individual single target weaponskill buttons which is far to bloated to be acceptable. If Perfect Balance was removed or replaced they could compress 9 form weaponskill into just 3 buttons with the systems that allow them to change the action a button performs based on currently active buffs.

2. Agreeance here, but it's not that bad just bloats buttons that could be fixed by making them traits or just combine all into one

Still that means they are a problem that needs to be reworked or removed.

3. I do wish that Chakras weren't as RNG as they are, but they're not detrimentally holding the class back

Yes, they are. If Chakra generation was more consistent there would be fewer complaints about the lack of ogcd actions. Currently, if you had a 30% chance to crit you are looking at about one use of Forbidden Chakra every 17 gcds (roughly 27 to 34 seconds). If chakra generation was closer to 5 Chakra every 10 to 12 gcds those complaints would likely be non-existent.

4. As said, They interact with Greased Lightning, if they didn't have that caveat they could be fleshed out and used more freely (Mainly TK + SSS)

Turning TK into a normal damage ogcd on a 30s cooldown would likely make it more useful but very boring.

I do appreciate you reiterating the abilities I listed, but you got some things wrong with them. Mainly:

• PB's CDs were 4 minutes to 3min to 1min up to the current 2min. And optimally speaking while it may open all your buttons, you're only going to be using it to spam Dragon Kick and Bootshine with 1 Coeurl move / RoE to refresh GL.

Seems my point went over your head

[*] Anatman is just bad even if thematically it would make sense. Why does it have the caveat of needing to stand still to maintain GL when every other class has ONE button they push to maintain their class buff. it being on the GCD doesn't help either since it just makes it clunky to use.

It is an ability more designed for pre-3.5 fights where there would be 15 to 30s worth of downtime to recover TP/MP in Extreme/Savage fights.

[quote][*] SSS is a, "I fucked up Perfect Balance and need to quickly fix my stacks." Button or a Finisher button along with TK[/LIST]Which are completely unintuitive, niche and possibly unnecessary uses of a capstone ability. Even if SSS didn't interact with GL it would still be a niche ability that doesn't fit in the rotation. No other job has a disengage weaponskill and none need one. At first glance I thought the purpose was to create a space to use Meditation to generate Chakra, but that can't happen because Meditation is tied to the gcd.

And MNK is stuck in ARR, with or without ToD / Fracture. Your core rotation doesn't change at all from Level 50 and you don't have the oGCDs to fill up space like other classes do or the intuitive gauges as they do.

Which is why I would want a rework to add 3 Form-based Weaponskills that interact with Chakra, and it turns out Perfect Balance is one of the major barriers to adding additional form-based weaponskills.

[Shurrikhan]

...

The odd part is these aren't even new ideas. As soon as 1.2 came out, people noted that "These 'combos' aren't even pretending to be combos. They merely create non-choices, enforcing bloat."

ARR came around and people noted much the same, with the exception of Monk, who, at the time, was spamming Impulse Drive during what open time it could because DoT damage didn't scale with Greased Lightning. It at least, in its "weird, eclectic" kit, had a sense of skills which independently synergize to create a series of sensible actions as one among multiple choices. But even it faced an obvious dilemma: Do we continue to waste two-thirds of our native weaponskills in any given GCD, or do we change how PB and/or GL works?

Given that everyone was okay locking out an increasingly high percentage of native weaponskills on any other class, though, what little part of the Monk community was pondering it before quickly lost interest. After all, it's good and well to have a worse designed job -- it's something to share job pride in simultaneously with self-pity -- but we couldn't have improvement in one job revealing fundamental waste in the others...

And by now? To even think of following such efficient or intelligent design as... not wasting most of one's weaponskills or allowing for multiple routes of rotation... is downright heretical.

"Given that I can't use either set of these 5 DRG skills without the skills immediately prior, why am I using up 10 keys to do what amount to at best two possible decisions?" --> 'He's trying to take away our complexity!!" --> Torches.
"Alternatively, couldn't we have skills that offer actual underlying advantages that other skills can play off of rather than arbitrarily defined sequences?" --> "Elitest!" --> Torches.

So, will we finally get an answer from the class formerly with the best combo system that might lead us to more interesting combos across the game once the devs realize they've basically exhausted their ideas for any positive change to Monk? Or will that whole section of changes be shut down anyways because it might push too much precedence they don't want to deal with? /shrug

[Seto_Mimyho]

... with the choices between BS or NS1, TrS or NS2, and SnP or NS3 being based on the current situation as that gcd comes up.

So what you're saying is, Designing niche GCDs to be used based on SPECIFIC situations they aren't applicable everywhere when we already have a bunch of Specific situational abilities currently in our kit. As Shurrikhan said,

These 'combos' aren't even pretending to be combos. They merely create non-choices, enforcing bloat."

Also, you seem to have forgotten our AOE rotation which could constitute 7/8/9 so you'd be proposing us having a fourth rotation of 10/11/12 Which is useless bloat and possibly confusing to people.

Yes, they are. If Chakra generation was more consistent there would be fewer complaints about the lack of good actions. Currently, if you had a 30% chance to crit you are looking at about one use of Forbidden Chakra every 17 gcds (roughly 27 to 34 seconds). If chakra generation was closer to 5 Chakra every 10 to 12 gcds those complaints would likely be non-existent.

Okay, Let's look at this shall we. Leading into Shadowbringers we lost quite a few abilities for seemingly nothing in return.

• Internal Release - oGCD that increased out crit chances which inadvertently lead to more Chakras
• Howling Fist - Line AOE oGCD. Got Replaced by Enlightenment a Line AOE oGCD based around Chakras. Making it useless in ST and only worth it in Multi-target.
• Steel Peak - 40s hit for free Damage button. Button Bloat but still an oGCD we lost
• One Ilm Punch - Stun GCD, kind of useless in almost ever thing outside Niche instances.
• Wind, Fire, Earth Tackle - Old Tackle Mastery got replaced and is now just a gutted Wind Tackle.
• Purification - our Reject of an enmity dump, costed Chakras to restore TP (when invigorate did it better)

Then they Nerfed PB from being a 1 Minute CD to a 2 Minute CD and due to GL4 made TK once again not worth it to use outside very niche situations. We lost a ton of abilities from Stormblood to Shadowbringers and no amount of Chakra generation will be able to fill this gap unless it was 1 Chakra per weaponskill. If they allowed us to overflow on Chakras then that'd be great. Such as being able to hold seven chakras, like our job quests, say we have, but only spend 5 at a time.

Anyways, as much as we'd like to go back and forth over the specifics of what we think is wrong with MNK, almost everything has been said by a multitude of people before us. You might see PB as the main issue, while I and others see GL as the main issue. I don't think I'll be able to convince you but I'm just going to try to get my point across with this. GL is single-handedly the worst designed static buff in this game. Without it, the MNK is useless and does no damage and upon getting it you never want to drop it, and losing it means death without dying.

[Shurrikhan]

As Shurrikhan said,

I also said that

[Monk's original take on 'combos'] at least, in its "weird, eclectic" kit, had a sense of skills which independently synergize to create a series of sensible actions as one among multiple choices.

The "non-choices" were in reference to, well, literally all the other uses of "combos" in this game.

That's not to say that the 3x3 grid Monk has, is, or ever will be a combo system, but at least the SkS breakpoints capable of varying between consistent double-True, double-Boot with split Frac/ToD per Demo, and alternating double-True with paired Frac/ToD per Demo, or ID spam prior to those, offered multiple choices of rotation with enough target-specificity to feel like the skills had individual use and particular synergies rather than just being parts of the same decision repeated ad nauseum.

Imo, you can consider a combo system as being one in which the individual parts feel like individual parts (i.e. they are modular) with specific contextual purpose or opportunities (synergies). If those synergies do not allow for choice, at the very least across varying speeds and levels of forced downtime, it's not a combo system, but rather tends towards bloat.