Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

What you're proposing is to "fix" Monk's core GCD loop, one of the few parts of the job that doesn't need fixing, for basically no satisfying end. You're adding new weaponskills to the rotation, but in a way that's going to be broadly un-intuitive to most players with the only goal being mitigating the RNG of Deep Meditation/Chakra. Deep Meditation and RNG Chakra are both aspects of the job most players think need to be completely removed rather than something we need a bunch more niche skills to mitigate.

It frankly doesn't sound fun to play or even satisfying. It just seems like more Niche weaponskills on a job that has way too many of those specifically to avoid fixing a bigger problem.

[Mikey_R]

You want to add more RNG onto a job where one of the biggest complaints about it is the RNG.

Going back to your previous post, where you suggest these new skills activate a chakra upon use, that's fine in theory, but then comes the balancing. Make them too weak, and they won't be worth using over the normal rotation (taking into account the potency worth of a single chakra), make them too strong and, when you get to 3 chakras, you will again be at the mercy of RNG to get you your last 2 chakras, meanwhile doing less DPS because of bad RNG. Making them equal seems to be the best solution, but then, what's the point apart from slightly quicker chakra generation for the first 3 stacks, which could range from 3 GCDs to 6 GCDs depending on how your buffs line up. Fine in theory, in practice, not so sure.

If you want to push more damage onto Raptor and Coeurl, then you need to take the damage away from somewhere else. It would be better of the damage was taken from Leaden Bootshine and distributed across the other abilities, at least, in my opinion.

[Shurrikhan]

...

Is Chakra, short of having a ton more, and more interesting, mechanics added to it, even worth redesigning our weaponskills around, though? While, in principle, I'd like to see more weaponskills, this 1-2, 3-4, or 5 Chakra 'check and pop' arrangement somehow looks less interesting, even, than what we have now.

[Ruiknao]

The RNG on Chakra has been pretty bad, not to mention the amount of possible overcapping that can happen during Brotherhood. But, I think there’s a couple of things they can do to fix that or at least reduce its issues without needing new actions.

Starting with Deep Meditation, I think there’s three different ways they can change it, two with some RNG, and one with no RNG. They could either:

1) Make a critical hit always generate a Chakra, making Bootshine a consistent Chakra builder, and change Dragon Kick’s effect to increase crit and direct hit rate (maybe 5%?).

2) Make it so that every weaponskill (except Form Shift) has a 30% chance of generating a Chakra, regardless if it crits or not. Bootshine’s effect can then be changed to opening a Chakra if the positional is met. Then Dragon Kick’s effect can still give Leaden Fist, but the potency could be reduced to 250 while that 50 potency can go into other weaponskills.

3) Have a couerl action (Snap Punch, Demolish, or Rockbreaker) open a Chakra while the player has the maximum amount of GL stacks. With that, Bootshine and Dragon Kick can keep their current effects, but still reduce the potency of Leaden Fist Bootshine to 250 with the other 50 potency going into other actions.

I think either one of these options could work, but what I would also like to suggest is:

- Increasing the cap of Chakra stacks from 5 to 7 (or 10 which I’d prefer, but other people have mentioned 7 for lore reasons) to reduce the possibility of overcapping.

- Changing the effect of ‘Meditative Brotherhood’ to work similarly to DRK’s Blood Weapon. So, instead of having a chance of other players giving you Chakra if they use weaponskills, only you will build Chakra each time you land a weaponskill while still upping everyone’s physical damage.

- Adding the effect of gradually building Chakra to Anatman while it’s channeled, giving MNKs a way to build Chakra in their downtime while giving Anatman a reason to be used.

I personally think regardless of what changes are done to the Chakra system, I feel that Meditation might be the reason why there’s a double-layer of RNG to it, as it’s a GCD that gives you a Chakra stack at the cost of doing nothing. If people want Chakra to be more of a resource that passively builds up while in combat, I think Meditation will have to be reworked, or even removed, but those are just my thoughts.

[wereotter]

....

The problem with this is it's still a bandaid on a bad system. I don't think any monks really enjoy the RNG aspects of the job. Yes this is mitigated by having bootshine always being a critical hit.... but I think more people just want to to have that aspect of the job removed entirely.

I do think it would be good to create some minor fixes for the job if they're not going to overhaul it entirely, and I do think that base that we should have more chakras to bank. Monk is literally the only job that has to use their gague at exactly 100%; dark knight, warrior, ninja all have a buffer where they can build more resources than they need to have to use their move, and 10 is probably the easiest to implement (and if they're worried about extra damage in the opener, maybe chakras 6-10 can only be opened in combat)

Potential issue I can see with the 100% critical hit opening a chakra means that perfect balance is now used on cooldown to do 5 bootshines and then execute a forbidden chakra. And while I like that since it's reminiscent of the tornado kick rotation in Stormblood.... I can't see the developers being okay with that kind of DPS increase.

[Vyrerus]

PB is already used, situationally, to do as many Leaden Fisted Bootshines as possible as a big DPS increase heh.

As for Monk needing a big rework... Uhhh... without changing the core of the job I don't think that will go anywhere. If anything, I guess they could rework it back to a 1.0 style Monk, where each of the Fist Stances provided some sort of damage boost or advantage over the enemy. In the case of modern FFXIV, we'd want it to be damage boosts or damage phases. Fire could be a GCD spike phase, Wind an oGCD rapid fire phase, and Earth would be the default standard phase, keep the built in mitigation just for kicks. I guess this would make it like a melee equivalent of Bard almost. /shrug I enjoyed it when I raided Edens 1~4 Savage on it. Started playing it back in Second Coil.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

A MNK rework could be broken down into what really needs to change to make the job more enticing to the players again. For most players, newcomers and all, MNK is a fast paced but overwhelming job because of:

- Constant positionals. All of which are from the same base combo string since level 50. No new animations, nothing. It gets boring. The loss of Touch of Death and Fracture can really be felt these days during our base rotation.

- Low buff timer on Greased Lightning, making it seem daunting.

- 2 fold RNG tied to Chakras

- FoF & FoW giving the same damage % increase (yes, I know FoF is technically 43% damage and FoW is 40% but faster under buffs). Honestly I've seen too many MNKs stay in FoF, I get that some players may not like "too much speed" but why is MNK the only job with this strange choice? MCHs don't get the luxury of picking a slower paced GCD on Heat Blast...

- Too many niche skills! The highest points of leveling a job imo is checking out all of the awesome stuff you get and then being able to use it. It gives the sense that the job is evolving and that it's getting stronger. MNK really doesn't get that and is actually abysmal to level until you can get Form Shift. Tack on to that, when you are fully leveled you now have to try and figure out nuanced min-max ways to use 6SS, TK and Anatman AND gain chakra during downtime all the while feeling bad that you just had your power AND speed completely gutted.

- Greased Lightning simply doesn't feel good to maintain as it once did. Maintaining GL3 in ARR and HW actually felt good, why? Because the payoff was that you were top of the DPS (until you factored in the ridiculously overpowered buffs the other jobs gave), but in terms of adjusted DPS. MNK was at the top with BLM and Greased Lightning felt an actual mechanic to allow that kind of DPS. The small timer, the big damage % increase, it was all worth it. All MNK needed back then was a 120s Perfect Balance instead of 180s and it would have been perfect for that Era. These days though? It doesn't feel rewarding, it's a ball ache. On top of the GL timer I've gotta get my chakras up, pay attention to how long a phase transition is, can I tornado kick? is there enough time for anatman? Should I 6SS or just meditate? Now I've gotta spam form shift for 10 years to make sure GL doesn't fall off... Etc... MNK has become a spam fest in downtime. That's really not fun imo.

My proposal:

If they want MNK to be engaging; Keep Greased Lightning, but make the haste a passive trait that is gained each time you unlock a new level of GL, keep GL purely damage based. If GL is going to be this low timer buff, don't make the punishment of losing it be so big. It could simply decrease one level. That would be fine, losing 20% haste + 40% damage is insanely punishing and the supposed reward for upkeep is 'being on par with everyone else, except BLM, SMN and SAM'. Reward me for keeping up this huge buff please Square! Free Tornado Kick? Yes please, just something, anything.

Remove the niche skills, make MNK more accessible to players. I don't need Form Shift, Anatman, Perfect Balance, 6SS, RoE and TK all to do something with Greased Lightning, whether it takes it away, extends it, keeps it, grants it, refreshes it etc... I just need a way to get it and maintain it. If we go the route of having a skill that expends it, just have it remove one stack, not the entire buff.

Remove Fist stances. Everyone says "yeah but what if we just made it so that this stance does this, and this one does this?". Unless they make them like BRD songs which you cycle between there will never be a valid choice, and to be honest I'm tired of the fist stances. They tried and failed in SB, they barely bothered to try in ShB and tacked on GL4 to Wind to make it relevant, but in doing so made Fire completely irrelevant outside of 0.1% of situations. Just remove them.

Add back one or two non positional and non-form GCDs. Heck, rework Six Sided Star to be one. Make it like Air Anchor or Drill, a big hit that doesn't require a positional with a CD attached but it's on the GCD and doesn't double your GCD... There needs to be a way to buffer our positional attacks for when we can't hit it. RoE is okay but it takes out any engagement in even trying to hit the positionals.

Add some more oGCDs and new animations to our core rotation. As someone that played MNK for 6 years, seeing some new animations used frequently as part of a rotation would actually be very refreshing. I love TK and 6SS but, seeing them once or twice a fight is kind of disappointing.

Lastly, rework chakra. Allow it to have an overflow and give it a consistent way of being built, for example positionals and an oGCD could give some.

These are just my ideas though.

[Kolsykol]

I generally don't mind positionals.
...

Until I fight against a boss where everyone is stacked and there are a billion spell effects going off at the same time constantly xD...
I know that I can turn them off, but it's not something that I tend to think about until it's too late and I want them on otherwise.
Sometimes I feel like I can't see where the boss is turned because I can't see the circle lol, I know that I can look at the boss and all that but sometimes the boss is very slender or smaller and it doesn't register as quickly as the ring and makes me second guess.

Just something I noticed just now when I did my daily trial, the whole fight I felt like I couldn't see shiet and it made the fight feel very awkward and confusing.
Especially with how the playstyle is much faster too.

[FoxCh40s]

Look guys, I know you love discussing this stuff, but if theyve ignored you for legit nearly 7 years now, I have absolutely no clue why they would start listening to you now.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

Look guys, I know you love discussing this stuff, but if theyve ignored you for legit nearly 7 years now, I have absolutely no clue why they would start listening to you now.

So, accept mediocrity and never strive for something greater. This really is a dumb post and has 0 contribution. While they may ignore us most of the time, there has been a few things that have changed over the years for the better: Brotherhood affecting the MNK that used it, Slowdown from RoF removed, Form Shift refreshing stacks, RoE doing something useful, reduction on PB cooldown. They might not be gameplay changing, but they DID listen on these few instances.

You really think any change comes about in regards to anything, not just in-game but in life by just being quiet? You're naive to suggest that giving up will help.