Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

....

This. Well, not all parts were as necessary, but some were sorely missed the moment they were removed.

I loved leveling Monk in 1.x. It just felt so damn versatile. You could tag-team. You could suppress to aid your tank. You could snap-tank, yourself. You could actually main-tank some fights, even.

And then ARR came around and it was stupidly fun there too.

In early ARR, Monk was distinctly eclectic. It's original spam skill was... Impulse Drive, of all things.

By late ARR, it was all about modular control (so you could get Demolish off just as the boss would be jumping away, as to use the delayed GL-refresh to let it last until the boss's return). Fracture and Touch of Death provided that, with potentially Impulse Drive or Haymaker in a pinch. That modularity allowed almost any SkS tier to work itself out. (Haymaker was painfully lackluster, but at least quite TP-efficient. It ended up being slotted by every Bowmage in HW in fights with gaze mechanics as to make use of the auto-dodge for a TP-efficient instant cast strike.)

Fracture and ToD's removal in StB left one of Monk's core mechanics, adjusting when you'd hit Coeurl or Opo-opo or Raptor, dead in the water. I honestly didn't think they could do anything more gutting until, well, they killed off GL itself via the Form Shift changes.

Heck, back then the passive eHP gap between tanks and melee was small enough that Monk could tank dungeons in a pinch, albeit at cost to everyone else's positionals. It looked gimmicky as hell, since you had to stand almost perfectly centered in the target's hitbox to get your positionals off before they could turn, but hey, I never had to wait for a tank replacement. Even in Pharos. The only issue was the lacking tank's worth of damage and another melee having to Provoke in from time to time.

HW extended Demolish's timer, allowing for better 2-3 target damage without exhausting TP and allowing for some really fun rotational breakpoints at high SkS. Sadly it was reverted in StB.

Though little was ever made of it in PvE, until StB we also had the ability to rip buffs off targets via One-Ilm Punch. Mob enraged for triple damage on their next attack (an already triple-damage special attack)? Rip it; now it doesn't matter that we failed to kill the mob in time. In PvP, the enemy Summoner pops Trance? Just eat it. Enochian? Sorry, mate. (Now, the latter's probably exactly why it was turned into a no-DR stun instead, but still... it was funny.)

We had a fun macrorotational oGCD flow across Elixir Field, Howling Fist, Steel Peak, and Shoulder Tackle.

Internal Release, you original damage CD (alongside cross-classed Blood for Blood) synergized well with Deep Meditation. Naturally, they simply moved that skill's effects over to Dancer, because who'd want to be able to synergize with their own mechanics... right?

I would seriously love to return to basically late StB Monk with just some further polish:

• GL stacks fall off one at a time.
• A well-tuned version of SsS and a replacement for Fracture, by which to provide modular control again.
• Chakra via Deep Meditation no longer RNG. Instead, you make potency-based progress towards the next point of Chakra.
• Meditate made passive. You continuously generate Chakra progress (at roughly twice your average ppgcd) while your GCD is refreshed/unused (i.e. during downtime). Thus the button can always just be The Forbidden Chakra.
• The Forbidden Chakra adjusted to consume all available Chakra, at 75 potency per point. Be sure to use it before downtime periods in which you might overcap, but otherwise bank it for Internal Release/Riddle of Fire and don't let it get it in the way of the rotational oGCDs.
• Stances revised to be more impactful and more than just FoF used (even outside of TK rotation).
• A more impactful Riddle of Earth. Or just trim it and work that part into the above.
• Riddle of Fire's slow removed. I actually liked it, because it made me happier about my SkS tier whereby I could perfectly sync both the normal and slowed-down pace to my debuffs, but I'm in the minority.

[Xau]

Though little was ever made of it in PvE, until StB we also had the ability to rip buffs off targets via One-Ilm Punch. Mob enraged for triple damage on their next attack (an already triple-damage special attack)? Rip it; now it doesn't matter that we failed to kill the mob in time. In PvP, the enemy Summoner pops Trance? Just eat it. Enochian? Sorry, mate. (Now, the latter's probably exactly why it was turned into a no-DR stun instead, but still... it was funny.)

one ilm punch was a one trick skill, its use was almost sorely for removing stoneskin on enemies on arr and hw, since it hardly affected anything else, and i mean, it was capable to remove other stuff, but dmg buffs were not one of those things what one ilm punch was capable to remove
and i mean, if one ilm punch was capable to do what you mentioned, the comunity could not have called one ilm punch a useless skill, and neither the dev team make a quest mention it as joke in a quest

[wereotter]

one ilm punch was a one trick skill, its use was almost sorely for removing stoneskin on enemies, since it hardly affected anything else, and i mean, it was capable to remove other stuff, but dmg buffs were not one of those things what one ilm punch was capable to remove

You could actually, I remember using it in The Antitower to take the berserk buff off some of the enemies in there back in the day.

But yes, it was a pretty useless skill. Which isn't to say they couldn't bring it back as part of a high damage combo. I had suggested it could work similar to the gunbreaker high damage combo, could work into tornado kick then six sided star

[Kabooa]

one ilm punch was a one trick skill, its use was almost sorely for removing stoneskin on enemies on arr and hw, since it hardly affected anything else, and i mean, it was capable to remove other stuff, but dmg buffs were not one of those things what one ilm punch was capable to remove
and i mean, if one ilm punch was capable to do what you mentioned, the comunity could not have called one ilm punch a useless skill, and neither the dev team make a quest mention it as joke in a quest

This is partly because you can't have required skills and only give them to one particular job in a game that doesn't have the party slots to have them all.

There's a reason so many things end up in the role menu.

[Shurrikhan]

one ilm punch was a one trick skill, its use was almost sorely for removing stoneskin on enemies on arr and hw, since it hardly affected anything else, and i mean, it was capable to remove other stuff, but dmg buffs were not one of those things what one ilm punch was capable to remove

King's Might in Amdapor Keep. Berserk in Antitower. Enrage off Gigas mobs. I'm sure there are a few more I'm missing. I don't think it worked on bosses, else it might have been useful on the oliphant in Dusk Vigil and the dino boss in the 53 dungeon. But, boss vs. non-boss was the only distinction. Any buff could be removed from a typical mob.

Again, "little was ever made of it in PvE." But that's only because they never bothered to give the vast majority of mobs any (meaningful) buffs, not because the skill itself was fundamentally flawed. It's just a matter of having removed the same skill from Archer in 1.18 (and I could have sworn one other class had it, too), such that it ran the risk of being required or unimpactful.

Heck, if they wanted it to be impactful without breaking fights, they could have just turned it into a (modified) buff-steal instead of a buff-purge.

[Sqwall]

Why is this even an argument? One Ilm Punch...really? OK...

One Ilm punch was taken off my hotbar in ARR after I realized how awful it was potency wise. It's benefits did not outweigh it's usefulness. Which is why it was also removed from the game. The fact that it took 6-7 years is beyond me.

Same goes for Rage of Halone str debuff, or shield swipe pacification, or Blind from flash. None of these affected bosses. There were a VERY select few that you could pacify and I don't think any of them you could blind with flash.

Flash and Shield Swipe were removed, and the str debuff from Halone was taken away.
I brought this up YEARS ago for paladin.

This was the same issue with one ilm punch. I don't need a skill that is used as a party favor to pigeon hole the class. Lord of the Rings online attempted to do this by giving a debuff skill to every class, but not all classes debuffed the same way. I fell into the column where I had THE best debuff skill in the game as. It was fast and it struck 3 times, which allowed to remove 3 stacks of buffs from a raid boss. Guess what...it was removed next expansion.

The only way this would work is if you give a "One Ilm Punch" skill to everyone and make it work exactly the same. i.e. leg sweep, kick.

This is why I never used one ilm punch as it wasn't WORTH using for me. This also goes for TK during trash pulls. I really only use TK during e5 with anatman and thats about it. Now the question is remove TK or rework it to actually be useful.

[Shurrikhan]

....

[OIP] Again, I'm not saying OIP was some great skill concept, just that they never even tried to make anything of it, which is a little disheartening for any mechanic.

[Flash] I could of sworn there was an r/ffxiv post that went into detail on Blind, noting that it actually worked on most bosses, but was just less noticeable because Blind would reduce Accuracy stat, which bosses had a higher value of. Though, of course, what little chance you increased of a boss missing was worth a whole lot more than your average mob. So, its chance reduction was less noticeable, but each miss caused was worth way more. In general, it was probably worth about as much as Featherfoot cross-classed, or a bit more depending on (anti)synergies with your other forms of protection via or against RNG (Awareness, Dark Dance, Dark Arts - Dark Dance, Featherfoot, Raw Intuition, Shelltron, Bulwark, etc.).

[RoH] I'm glad the STR debuff was removed from PLD and the INT debuff from MNK, but not because either was useless. They were effectively 10% physical or magical damage down, respectively. It was based on dull maintenance, but over a whole fight they were no trivial utility.

[SSw] Shield Swipe, likewise, probably would have been just fine, and definitely fitting for PLD, if it had just not effective accelerated the auto-attack that would follow the special it cancelled and if Shield Swipe was oGCD without such a long cooldown. It didn't inflict a DR category that'd be useful to anyone else, but allowed the PLD to ignore certain movement requirements by, well, removing the need to move ('silencing' the incoming physical AoE or preventing the next 5 seconds' of tankbusters). It, too, was lackluster, not fundamentally flawed.

[TK] I'd rather keep it, but that'd require that the mechanic it's based on (GL) isn't a mere pretense (i.e. a once-per-instance prelude to normal combat). Even reworking GL, I'd rather TK play a part in that rather than being yet another skill aborted as if that were all that could be done... after having been intentionally gutted.

[Sqwall]

[SSw] Shield Swipe, likewise, probably would have been just fine, and definitely fitting for PLD, if it had just not effective accelerated the auto-attack that would follow the special it cancelled and if Shield Swipe was oGCD without such a long cooldown. It didn't inflict a DR category that'd be useful to anyone else, but allowed the PLD to ignore certain movement requirements by, well, removing the need to move ('silencing' the incoming physical AoE or preventing the next 5 seconds' of tankbusters). It, too, was lackluster, not fundamentally flawed.

[TK] I'd rather keep it, but that'd require that the mechanic it's based on (GL) isn't a mere pretense (i.e. a once-per-instance prelude to normal combat). Even reworking GL, I'd rather TK play a part in that rather than being yet another skill aborted as if that were all that could be done... after having been intentionally gutted.

Shield Swipe for Paladins was hit or miss. I was flamed for stating this back in Stormblood that it was terrible skill. The natives hung me out to dry say "your mad about free dps?" "Pacifying a mob is bad?". And I 'm glad you mentioned that it was more useful as an interrupt, but a very poor interrupt. I usually held onto Shield swipe rather then using it for that reason. Using it as DPS seemed to undermine it's interrupt feature. I stated: "That shield swipes usefulness is rather low compared to shield bash or other role actions. I wouldn't be surprised if it get's axed in future expansions." Man did I get flamed...but I knew that as a skill it wasn't really needed given it's Cooldown and pacify utility not working on all bosses.

And it then it got cut in ShB. Nobody cried.

Same goes for TK, but this is a harder nut to crack. While I don't think it should be removed, but I wouldn't but it past SE to just gut an already gutted Job until the natives are happy with the design. DRK, WAR, MCH, AST, PLD, BRD are all good examples about SE just gutting jobs to make them "work". I have a strong feeling we are going to lose some "key" monk skills in 5.4 and there will be people upset, just like WAR mains were coming out of StormB.

If we want Monk to play like the other melee DPS we are going to have to sacrifice some skills to bring it up to equal footing with DRG, NIN, SAM playstyle. Monk is by far the most unique job to play next to SMN. But unlike SMN, is simply awful to play due to GL holding it back. This is what turns new players off to the job if it's a turd to play, and prevents new subs for SE. Each and every single job should "feel" smooth and engaging to play in their own way otherwise new players won't like the class they chose, and be less interested in the game. Hopefully they pick up another job and move on, but there are those that refuse to play BRD, DRK, WAR, SCH, due to the grass being greener effect. Now they are mostly bitter having the best of what made the job torn from them.

[Shurrikhan]

If we want Monk to play like the other melee DPS

That's just it, though. I don't want it to play like the other melee DPS, save in that two of the other melee DPS are just straight up more polished than it. I want MNK have to least the quality that SAM and DRG enjoy, but I don't want it to play like anything but Monk.

I already lost any enjoyable rotation from Ninja and only just got back SAM with the Higakure revisions. I don't want to lose another interesting DPS to the core-mechanics-sacrificing NIN/MCH-style "rehauls". (That's not to say that those rehauls were outright bad, only that they had zero need to sacrifice most of the things they ultimately gutted, save that Ammo itself existed as a mechanic, alongside skills that could "waste" ammo -- which those unable to optimize didn't like.)

Take Shield Swipe by way of example. Not crying over the lack of a half-assed implementation of a mechanic (having a flexible reserve skill that aided allied positioning or stack mechanics, could at least postpone spike damage, and yet wouldn't get in the way of other forms of CC) doesn't mean people wouldn't like that mechanic full-stop. It just means it never fully saw the light of day and no one missed what they'd only ever seen through narrow slits in a garbage heap.

DRK, WAR, MCH, AST, PLD, BRD are all good examples about SE just gutting jobs to make them "work".

And most of them have been horribly controversial precisely because they were gutted more than was needed to make them work. DRK did not need to become more nearly a "WAR-clone" to be a competitive choice. AST did not need to lose its time-space mechanics just to be balanceable. Arguably, it just needed to feel less pidgeon-holed into "pOp aLL thE tHinGs iN tHe CelOpp wIndoW", predominantly a playflow issue.

...On the other hand, PLD's only really lost Bulwark, which was far from pivotal. It hasn't been gutted. [I take this back. See edit.]

And Bard? That one's changes are harder to define. While I personally hugely regret the removal of actual song mechanics, and would have preferred core systems revisions instead, most would likely say little has actually been taken away from the core experience (how it rotates and Bard's place in optimal play). The devs just went back to trying--and rarely if ever quite succeeding--to balance physical ranged around their hypermobility and, with StB, ease of play, rather than reining that hypermobility back in. At this point I just regret that they won't consistently provide ways for Phys. Ranged to increase raid damage through mobility mechanics (e.g. letting them bait stuff for melee in E7S, as to spare melee those 2 GCDs of uptime) and therefore make PhyRanged swing between being either overpowered or underpowered.

Each and every single job should "feel" smooth and engaging to play in their own way

And that's going to be the crucial thing. The reason I get cynical is because we've been told, implicitly if not explicitly, that the two were mutually exclusive far more often than they actually have been.

Because of that, I'd rather see them try harder to maintain uniqueness, even if it takes longer to get the most intuitive, most effective design, than gut large portions and replace them only with something "smooth" but empty. That assumes, though, that the devs are capable of thinking about those core mechanics in terms of their gameplay loops and player decisions to be made accordingly, rather than just the surface level mechanic or code.


EDIT (due to daily post cap):

Paladin has changed greatly in the way that it used to gain oath with blocking, to just gaining oath with auto attacks.

Ahh, I see. You're totally right in that regard; I just saw it as a Role-wide change rather than a Paladin specific one. I should have guessed you may have meant that, though, given that you also included WAR and DRK. Completely my bad. And, yes, I would likewise have preferred to see both Oaths remain, just without so high a swap-cost. For instance, if Shield Oath generated a brief mitigation window or absorption value or Sword Oath generated a brief, compensatory period of increased Attack Speed, or if they were both turned into oGCDs with the Oath Gauge itself becoming more prevalent, I would have loved that. As I spent 95+% of my boss-time in Sword Oath and 85+% of AoE pulls in Shield, the mechanic had very little impact on me in StB, and thus little from its implementation was lost in ShB, but I would have loved to see it become more impactful, rather than less, through finally getting a proper implementation. And gods yes, the Shield Oath - Wings synergy was so fun.

All you have said below, save for a couple nit-picks, I'm right there with you on. Heck, I'd probably go further. I mean, I've been asking to be able to use my shield as more of a paired weapon, and for more reason to stance-dance (outside of mere eHP concerns) since ARR, so...

[Ultimatecalibur]

one ilm punch was a one trick skill, its use was almost sorely for removing stoneskin on enemies on arr and hw, since it hardly affected anything else, and i mean, it was capable to remove other stuff, but dmg buffs were not one of those things what one ilm punch was capable to remove
and i mean, if one ilm punch was capable to do what you mentioned, the comunity could not have called one ilm punch a useless skill, and neither the dev team make a quest mention it as joke in a quest

We actually do not know how many ARR and HW buffs are removable (and how many StB and ShB might have) because the only way to know which ones are removable was using One-ilm punch (and now using Blue's Eerie Soundwave and the Dispel Logos Action). Cleansable debuffs and actions that can be Silenced/Interrupted had similar problems before the UI was altered so that they could be identifiable. I wonder how many enemy buffs would suddenly have an identifier if enemy buffs got the same treatment.