Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Sqwall]

I don't want the development team getting the wrong idea with SSS thinking that it's what MNK needed, and that it needs more skills like it. Because it sure as heck doesn't. Yes, I know no one from the dev team reads these threads, but it has me paranoid nonetheless.

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.

Monk however is a chore to play.

That being said monk has never really kept up with the other jobs playstyles. I look at all the jobs (with the exception of bard) having evolved leaps and bounds over Monk. Where some if not most jobs have skills that are replaced with traits that give you improved skills with flashy new animations.

Monk got a baked turd for 3 expansions and players were told "Just use the same skills you have been using...it'll be fine!" *as we are shooed away like a child* All the while we are given "new" skills that are just plain...useless and pretty much relegated to hotbar trash. For crying out loud One Ilm Punch hung on for a LONG time before it finally got the boot. I took that crap off my hotbar 5 min after I was "awarded" the skill.

Could we have gotten something in the vein of traited skill replacements?

Dragon Kick is upgraded with a trait to grant 1 chackra with a new flashy animation. Sure!

Demolish is upgraded with a trait to allow using Tornado Kick without using GL. Tornado Kick cooldown increased to 30 seconds. Why not!

These are ideas SE doesn't want to implement to monk as they don't want to spend the time to make the job cool and FUN to play. I say this because they spent the last 7 years believing it was fine...yet here we are soon with a complete revamp of monk.

[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.

[Gameovers]

Am I the only one happy about GL being a thing I don't have to worry about anymore? I feel like I'm the only one who's more on the happy side monk's getting a major overhaul. To put it another way I have faith in the team that they won't fuck it up. I mean, Mch, and ninja play awesome now so 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

[Powercow]

Am I the only one happy about GL being a thing I don't have to worry about anymore?

Was Greased Lightning really such a chore to keep up? You have like, 4 different ways of maintaining it. Honestly you could mash random keys next to a boss and probably keep it up more often than not.

I feel like I'm the only one who's more on the happy side monk's getting a major overhaul. To put it another way I have faith in the team that they won't fuck it up. I mean, Mch, and ninja play awesome now so 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

This is the third time monk has gotten a rework since the start of Stormblood, and the previous 2 times just made the job worse. Could they have learned what made Monk fun and make it a super-fun and engaging job? Sure. But if they could do that, they would have done it one of the previous times. Frankly, the GL change was done so that Monks wouldn't feel stressed out about keeping it up, and the fact this was their big reveal for the rework shows they are wildly off on their assumptions about why people don't like Monk's gameplay.

[Gameovers]

Was Greased Lightning really such a chore to keep up? You have like, 4 different ways of maintaining it. Honestly you could mash random keys next to a boss and probably keep it up more often than not.

This is the third time monk has gotten a rework since the start of Stormblood, and the previous 2 times just made the job worse. Could they have learned what made Monk fun and make it a super-fun and engaging job? Sure. But if they could do that, they would have done it one of the previous times. Frankly, the GL change was done so that Monks wouldn't feel stressed out about keeping it up, and the fact this was their big reveal for the rework shows they are wildly off on their assumptions about why people don't like Monk's gameplay.

GL was a pain due to fights not being designed with monk in mind. Yes we gotten tools to fix that but it being in the background just sounds loads better. And those wasn't reworks, those were them either adding or taking away something. Anaman needs and hopefully goes, TK needs to be useful or go, and RNG needs to be cut from the job. Those I think are the bigger issues, GL being in the background is just a plus in my book. But the other issues are the bigger ones I hope get either fixed so the job flows or just taken out.

[Powercow]

GL was a pain due to fights not being designed with monk in mind. Yes we gotten tools to fix that but it being in the background just sounds loads better. And those wasn't reworks, those were them either adding or taking away something. Anaman needs and hopefully goes, TK needs to be useful or go, and RNG needs to be cut from the job. Those I think are the bigger issues, GL being in the background is just a plus in my book. But the other issues are the bigger ones I hope get either fixed so the job flows or just taken out.

I mean, they used the same terminology before Stormblood and again before Shadowbringers. And yes, the reworks then were them just gutting stuff out of the job and calling it a day. That's fully what I expect this rework to be too. At best they'll throw us a bone and turn TK into Steel Peak.

[VentVanitas]

Am I the only one happy about GL being a thing I don't have to worry about anymore? I feel like I'm the only one who's more on the happy side monk's getting a major overhaul. To put it another way I have faith in the team that they won't fuck it up. I mean, Mch, and ninja play awesome now so 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

History suggests that the 5.4 rework will be a disaster. The only time SE has done a good rework for the job was when they did it by complete accident. But at least someone will be happy with it. I envy your faith, I really do.

I'm genuinely anxious that the rework will just make MNK the exact same job, but no Greased Lightning. But what of Anatman and Tornado Kick, the two moves that would be literally be broken without GL to work off of? I'm sure SE will find some backwards way to make them useless again, even with the golden opportunity to fundamentally change them. (By all means, if SE proves me wrong and makes those two skills into something substantial come December I'll gladly eat my words)

I apologise if it seems like I'm just doomsaying but Powercow is right. If SE thinks that GL was what needed to be changed after making it baby easy to keep then they still don't know why the job is struggling to outdo BLU with player numbers. The only good I can think to take from the rework is that maybe, just maybe, that by no longer having GL will force SE to make something that isn't pointless maintenance skills for future patches.