Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[kujoestars]

SE, why do you hate monks so much?

[inhaledcorn]

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.

Edit: I would also like to see the Twin Snakes buff timer added to the Job UI, as well as an indicator if the Leaden Fists buff is active.

[3ureka]

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.

Edit: I would also like to see the Twin Snakes buff timer added to the Job UI, as well as an indicator if the Leaden Fists buff is active.

If they don't change the atrocious double rng gate of how chakras are currently generated, I think adding one for gaining/refreshing a GL stack would be a great idea!

[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.

[Malmstrom]

I think the real problem with monk isn't that they could potentially end up being too fast...

...it is that they are not currently fast enough.

GL 5+, LET'S GO. I WANT TO BREAK MY HAND TRYING TO PLAY MONK.

[HiraBranford]

playing with monk i feel like i'm playing with pugilist, not monk, after level 50, monk rotation doesn't change or evolve, we only get elixir field and TFC after level 62 with deep meditation, comparing to the impact of other jobs like dragoon with stardiver, samurai with midare setsugekka, ninja with Hyosho Ranryu and even warrior with fell cleave, that even with visual effects turned off I can tell when they use these skills by sound, the closest to these skills we have is TFC which has minimal visual and sound impact compared to them, of course I disregard SSS and tornado kick because they have extremely limited and niche uses and yet I don't think it has much impact.

[Imshail]

Absolutely love losing my stacks during long cutscenes and have to do completely crappy reopeners because of them

[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.