Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

The history for monk shows otherwise. It has always seemed to me the devs want monk to be something completely different from all the other classes. Now while I like the fact that each job needs and should feel different to play, and that's what makes people identify with a particular class.

I'd actually say that going from ARR into Heavensward they introduced mechanics onto other jobs that were basically differently flavored Greased Lightning in Blood of the Dragon, Enochian, and they elevated Huton to that by giving Ninja Armor Crush. In terms of the pressures the jobs were subject to and how strict timers were, BotD, Enochian and Greased Lightning were all fairly similar. Recovery was uneven between them, with Monk having a significantly longer cooldown on Perfect Balance than Enochian or Blood of the Dragon but the ability to slowly rebuild stacks when it was on CD, while a Dragoon or a Black Mage losing their respective buff would be out of luck for until the minute it took for the BotD/Enochian to come off cooldown. Monk still ended up getting the short end of the stick in terms of fight design because being able to recover from losing your buff every 60 seconds gives more flexibility for forced disengages than only being able to recovery at max speed every 3 minutes.

The problem was, moving into Stormblood they alleviated all of those pressures on Black Mage and Dragoon by making their buffs much harder to lose over the course of a rotation. On top of that both Black Mage and Dragoon both gained a means of instantly refreshing those buffs with a button press (Spamming Transpose or hitting BotD again respectively). They also lost their significant penalty for letting it fall off, as Enochian and Blood of the Dragon both had their cooldowns reduced to 30 seconds so if they dropped they wouldn't go more than a few GCDS before they'd get it back. However Monk didn't get that same treatment, it's tool for refreshing Greased Lightning was Riddle of Earth, which was utterly worthless in a ton of situations (including the situation of a Scholar Critting their Adlo because shields block it's activation) or would require some scummy play to activate like taking a hit that would give you a vuln stack. Shadowbringers ended up being more offensive due to the devs being willing to completely eliminate the difficulty of upkeeping buffs that were by all rights direct equivalents to Greased Lightning on other jobs while Monk still hadn't even caught up to buff upkeep levels other jobs had in Stormblood despite receiving a new skill for it (and possibly two from an internal development perspective from how they talked about 6SS in the media tour). And obviously we saw how that went. Anatman's history is well known and Six Sided Star for all that it's useful as a disengage tool was still redundant with other parts of the kit even if it was better so it was always doomed to make people mad.

I'm not convinced this all happened because they wanted Monk to be different. Instead I think it's because they convinced themselves that Monk was already complete and so they utterly failed to implement the lessons they learned on other jobs that had mechanics that nearly directly copied Greased Lightning in development. Had Form Shift refreshed Greased Lightning in 4.0 and Riddle of Earth didn't exist, Monk would have been at parity with Black Mage as far as buff upkeep went and there wouldn't be two expansions worth of excess GL upkeep buttons for people to mad about.

This is also why I feel like the goal of the upcoming rework is just completely missing the mark. They've said that the goal is to eliminate the stress of upkeeping Greased Lightning... but there's no issue with that now. Monk has achieved parity with Black Mage and Dragoon in 5.3 by letting you upkeep it with one button. The problems we have lie elsewhere in the kit. Monk needs an actual recovery skill for Greased Lightning because right now it doesn't have one, Anatman is terrible for building more than one stack and useless otherwise, and they accidentally turned Perfect Balance into a Meikyo Shisui like damage cooldown with Leaden Bootshine. There's too many skills/traits that just do nothing at all like Tornado Kick and the Fist Stances. The lack of new skills we actually get to use rotationally has made people frustrated for two expansions now. Meanwhile there's things the players actively hate like RNG Chakra which should have been fixed but haven't. Greased Lightning is only tangentially related to that. The only reason I can feel somewhat good about the upcoming rework is that turning Greased Lightning into a trait forces them to change most of the things that are actually problems so they might end up fixing some of these problems on accident. It also prevents them from making at least one of the stupid mistakes they made multiple times from happening again by making new skills to refresh Greased Lightning impossible.

[Sqwall]

This is also why I feel like the goal of the upcoming rework is just completely missing the mark. They've said that the goal is to eliminate the stress of upkeeping Greased Lightning... but there's no issue with that now. Monk has achieved parity with Black Mage and Dragoon in 5.3 by letting you upkeep it with one button. The problems we have lie elsewhere in the kit. Monk needs an actual recovery skill for Greased Lightning because right now it doesn't have one, Anatman is terrible for building more than one stack and useless otherwise, and they accidentally turned Perfect Balance into a Meikyo Shisui like damage cooldown with Leaden Bootshine. There's too many skills/traits that just do nothing at all like Tornado Kick and the Fist Stances. The lack of new skills we actually get to use rotationally has made people frustrated for two expansions now. Meanwhile there's things the players actively hate like RNG Chakra which should have been fixed but haven't. Greased Lightning is only tangentially related to that. The only reason I can feel somewhat good about the upcoming rework is that turning Greased Lightning into a trait forces them to change most of the things that are actually problems so they might end up fixing some of these problems on accident. It also prevents them from making at least one of the stupid mistakes they made multiple times from happening again by making new skills to refresh Greased Lightning impossible.

This is the single most important thing to be said about monk in 7 years. Monk IS being changed, and we don't know what to. However, I think that we can all agree what we have now....sucks. The job could be SOOO much more, and I simply don't understand some of the comments on this thread that consider monk is perfect. You're lying to yourself if you think it's perfect, and your only hurting others by claiming this.

SE is going to change monk, it's coming, weather we like it or not. We mustn't get caught up in the idea monk works for every situation, because it does not. This quote sums up EVERYTHING I have been pushing for, and truer words have never been spoken about monk.

Thank you SpeckledBurd. This is one of the most heated, longest, most posts, single topic threads I have ever seen. And it keeps going due to the fact gamers/players want monk to change and for the better. We would not be posting this if we didn't feel so strongly about it.

[wereotter]

snip. (post regarding other jobs getting GL lite mechanics)

I would point out that Monk was, to a degree, the forerunner to a lot of the resource stacks we see on other jobs now, but its suffers from being implemented early. In Heavensward, monks got the chakra mechanic, which usually was just one or two uses was all in a fight because the only way to get them back then was to actually press the meditate button. Chakras then feel a lot like the test run for ninki, black/white mana, kenki, esprit, battery & heat, and all the other resources other jobs build up and spend. I don't know if this is a direct relation to how it was created in the first place, or just a refusal to evolve it, but while it was something new at the time, it's now the worst one of all the options since it can't over-cap. Every other job needs 50/80 of the 100 available to actually use their big skill where monk has a max stack of 5 and needs all 5 to use its skill.

I'll agree with you, though. I HATE having chakra stacks buried under layers of RNG. Not only is there a chance that I'll get a critical hit, but then it's still just a chance that the critical hit will actually give me a chakra stack. This was an even bigger slap in the face last expansion where bards had a similar mechanic, but every critical dot tick gave them a repertoire stack

[SpeckledBurd]

I would point out that Monk was, to a degree, the forerunner to a lot of the resource stacks we see on other jobs now, but its suffers from being implemented early. In Heavensward, monks got the chakra mechanic, which usually was just one or two uses was all in a fight because the only way to get them back then was to actually press the meditate button. Chakras then feel a lot like the test run for ninki, black/white mana, kenki, esprit, battery & heat, and all the other resources other jobs build up and spend. I don't know if this is a direct relation to how it was created in the first place, or just a refusal to evolve it, but while it was something new at the time, it's now the worst one of all the options since it can't over-cap. Every other job needs 50/80 of the 100 available to actually use their big skill where monk has a max stack of 5 and needs all 5 to use its skill.

I'll agree with you, though. I HATE having chakra stacks buried under layers of RNG. Not only is there a chance that I'll get a critical hit, but then it's still just a chance that the critical hit will actually give me a chakra stack. This was an even bigger slap in the face last expansion where bards had a similar mechanic, but every critical dot tick gave them a repertoire stack

I'd actually point at Warrior's ARR/HW Wrath/Abandon Stacks as the prototype for most gauges rather than Chakra. Pretty much the entire baseline was there, they actively built in combat and you could spend them on a Single Target or AOE potency dump. It's much more similar to the gauges we see on many jobs.

The point of Chakra in Heavensward was fairly clear. It really wasn't a system to begin with, you never hit it in combat because it was always worse to use it over an actual weaponskill, it was just a downtime loss mitigation tool so Monk could have a big hit after losing it's stacks and coming back. It's more of a precursor to Samurai's Meditation or Dancer's Improvisation than it is towards actual job mechanics. The fact that it had Purification attached to it is more an aspect of Purification's terrible design than it is that they conceptualized Chakra as a system IMO. Most of its problems as a gauge now can be laid at it originally being a downtime mitigation skill that was lackadasically hacked into a Gauge while still trying to cling to it's roots as mitigating downtime loss which ultimately made it unsatisfying as a gauge skill and worse for downtime.

[wereotter]

I'd actually point at Warrior's ARR/HW Wrath/Abandon Stacks as the prototype for most gauges rather than Chakra. Pretty much the entire baseline was there, they actively built in combat and you could spend them on a Single Target or AOE potency dump. It's much more similar to the gauges we see on many jobs.

The point of Chakra in Heavensward was fairly clear. It really wasn't a system to begin with, you never hit it in combat because it was always worse to use it over an actual weaponskill, it was just a downtime loss mitigation tool so Monk could have a big hit after losing it's stacks and coming back. It's more of a precursor to Samurai's Meditation or Dancer's Improvisation than it is towards actual job mechanics. The fact that it had Purification attached to it is more an aspect of Purification's terrible design than it is that they conceptualized Chakra as a system IMO. Most of its problems as a gauge now can be laid at it originally being a downtime mitigation skill that was lackadasically hacked into a Gauge while still trying to cling to it's roots as mitigating downtime loss which ultimately made it unsatisfying as a gauge skill and worse for downtime.

I never played Warrior in ARR and wasn't familiar with the job then... but I can see how that was an even earlier start to the system. Though I thought wrath stacks in ARR just provided potency buffs? I feel like I never saw warriors drop it in combat, but maybe I'm remembering incorrectly.

But it does feel like Monk ends up being the testing ground for job mechanics that get polished when moved to other jobs while monk keeps the klunky unrefined version. Greased Lightning and Chakras being the start, the Riddle of Earth being more the precursor to Improvisation and Meditation (although monk also got Anatman for that same type of situation)

[SpeckledBurd]

I never played Warrior in ARR and wasn't familiar with the job then... but I can see how that was an even earlier start to the system. Though I thought wrath stacks in ARR just provided potency buffs? I feel like I never saw warriors drop it in combat, but maybe I'm remembering incorrectly.

But it does feel like Monk ends up being the testing ground for job mechanics that get polished when moved to other jobs while monk keeps the klunky unrefined version. Greased Lightning and Chakras being the start, the Riddle of Earth being more the precursor to Improvisation and Meditation (although monk also got Anatman for that same type of situation)

Warrior stacks were always spent on Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone. In ARR it was common for people to sit on them because they gave a 10% increase to Parry and it was before the average mentality for players shifted toward doing as much damage as possible.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Warrior stacks were always spent on Inner Beast and Steel Cyclone. In ARR it was common for people to sit on them because they gave a 10% increase to Parry and it was before the average mentality for players shifted toward doing as much damage as possible.

The original effect was a 2% crit rate buff per stack (10% at 5 stacks). This was changed to a +2% parry per stack in HW with Abandon stacks giving +2% crit rate per stack. Even when Wrath/Abandon stacks were a dps buff losing them all from using Inner Beast/Fell Cleave or a phase transition wasn't a major dps loss.

GL on the other hand started out as some like a ~30% damage loss if it dropped, creeped up to ~33% a loss in HW and SB and is now something like a 43% damage loss if dropped. I suspect losing GL wouldn't have been such a meme if GL had been something like +5% crit rate 5% increase in speed per stack rather than a 7% to 10% flat damage boost per stack in addition to the speed increase.