Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[IruruCece]

The news that Greased Lightning is essentially going away makes me even less interested in returning to current Monk, lol

I want to be hopeful. Because so many of the new tools SE gave us in ShB were based around maintaining GL, this change alone is probably the first time the dev team has forced themselves to take a hard look at the entire toolkit of the job, and they might actually do some interesting things with it. Unfortunately, my expectations at this point are pretty much rock bottom.

Ideally, this would be the perfect opportunity to finally and utterly remove the elemental stances from the game and replace them with OGCDs we've lost over the years. In practice, I think what we can expect is an extreme streamlining of the job, which might make it "feel" better to play at the cost of some of its identity. I've started playing Machinist more, and I have a blast with it, but I've heard people with far more experience with the job from its introduction complain that the job's identity took a hit with ShB, making it almost too simple and straightforward to play.

My worry is that they go ham in de-emphasizing positionals in order to cater to players that bounced off the job years ago and never came back to it. One of my favorite parts of the current monk "feel" is the need to be mobile in order to get the best performance out of every strike. Even though I've had fun with other jobs in the game, no melee DPS had that same "dance" next to the mob, and it would be disappointing to see it go away for me.

[Kolsykol]

I really doubt they'll de-emphasize positionals, the positionals were already '' nerfed '' in the sense that the damage difference is fairly small at this point so messing one up isn't even the end of the world. And every other melee has them too.
What I am thinking is that they might keep the timer but simply make it more like the BLM system where we keep the timer up and then we can use Tornado Kick or SSS much like BLM uses Xenoglossy.
That way you'd still have to maintain a timer, but the building up of GL charges would just be replaced by it.

[Sqwall]

In practice, I think what we can expect is an extreme streamlining of the job, which might make it "feel" better to play at the cost of some of its identity. I've started playing Machinist more, and I have a blast with it, but I've heard people with far more experience with the job from its introduction complain that the job's identity took a hit with ShB, making it almost too simple and straightforward to play.

I think at some point something has to give. Monk for years has been holding onto so much of the ARR skills and GCD rotation. ShB for me was the final nail in the coffin for monk truly progressing with it's evolution (or lack there of). I think most if not all monk main's could say the single most crucial addition to the job was 5.01 letting Form Shift reset the GL timer. This was a one off addition to the the overwhelming disappointment from the players that main monk. I was one of them.

I'm glad you mentioned switching to MCH and that some veteran MCH players not liking the simplifying of the class. I for one thoroughly ENJOY MCH now! I think the dev team had amazing foresight with MCH and avoiding another Monk situation. Besides the whole 1.5 GCD ping rotation issue with Heat Blast. MCH is pretty much a SOLID range DPS now, and yes there were things I will miss from it. But if we can play our class better with out all the RNG holding us back, so be it. LOL the RNG with our 1-2-3 rotation was stupid anyway.

Back to Monk: Prior to the Form Shift change monk was more of the same of what made it annoying to play. Losing your stacks was so punishing, and if Perfect Balance was on CD you were getting your stacks the slowest way possible. Simply awful! The dev team listening to the community was the first step, and I truly believe they thought that this is what we were looking forward to. IF I was looking for more of the same thing from what stormblood offered, which I wasn't. Stormblood turned me off of Monk completely, and shelved it. When they fixed Wind Tackle, Riddle of Fire, and the timer durations. THEN I got back into Monk, but it seems ShB took that light bulb and said " They just want to keep there stacks up!.... OH OK....give them more of that!" NOOOOO! NOOOO! NOOOO! Give us evolution, improvement, synergy, and FUN!

I am 100% on board with making Monk fun to play! Yes I can play Monk fine now, but I need to have a new controller every year due to JUST keeping my GL stacks up. This is absurd. And this is why I say something has to give, chackra is fine (despite x2 RNG gated), positional's are fine albeit slightly annoying, brotherhood is joke with a mage heavy group, anataman...*sigh*, Tornado Kick a capstone skill...what are you doing on my hotbar?! *removes and toss in the bin next to one ilm punch*, SSS a capstone skill has it's uses but is counter intuitive to the class. Something has to give.

[VentVanitas]

In practice, I think what we can expect is an extreme streamlining of the job, which might make it "feel" better to play at the cost of some of its identity. I've started playing Machinist more, and I have a blast with it, but I've heard people with far more experience with the job from its introduction complain that the job's identity took a hit with ShB, making it almost too simple and straightforward to play.

My worry is that they go ham in de-emphasizing positionals in order to cater to players that bounced off the job years ago and never came back to it. One of my favorite parts of the current monk "feel" is the need to be mobile in order to get the best performance out of every strike. Even though I've had fun with other jobs in the game, no melee DPS had that same "dance" next to the mob, and it would be disappointing to see it go away for me.

I'm gonna play devil's advocate and say that Bootshine's positional is really the only one that matters at this point anyway, most of our damage hinges on getting as many Leaden Bootshines out as possible. Not only that, but we have so much positional mitigation that I don't think much would change if some positionals were removed or not. Not that I'm saying that I want them gone, preferably I want all of them to stay and I am very confident that they're going to.

Can't remove identity from a job that doesn't have any in the first place as I like to say.

[IruruCece]

I'm gonna play devil's advocate and say that Bootshine's positional is really the only one that matters at this point anyway, most of our damage hinges on getting as many Leaden Bootshines out as possible. Not only that, but we have so much positional mitigation that I don't think much would change if some positionals were removed or not. Not that I'm saying that I want them gone, preferably I want all of them to stay and I am very confident that they're going to.

Can't remove identity from a job that doesn't have any in the first place as I like to say.

See, I disagree strongly with the idea that Monk doesn't have an identity, because it absolutely does as the game's fastest melee attacker. Unfortunately, it also currently has the single most punishing self-buff to lose in the game right now that is also one of, if not the most demanding to maintain. Positionals were absolutely part of that identity, especially as we entered Shadowbringers with more positional requirements than other melee jobs.

Monks. Have. Six.

All six of our primary weaponskills come with a positional requirement. Nobody else has to deal with that. SAMs could argue that missing their positionals is worse for them due to the lost Kenki. Dragoons can complain about their THREE positional requirement buttons. Ninjas have their three. I don't care. Monks have six.

Yes, SE did put most of the potency increase for landing a positional on Bootshine, while making it so that missing our positionals on our other buttons could be considered "negligible" if you're not interested in getting the absolute most of of the job. Yes, SE did provide us with two extremely potent ways to ignore them entirely, allowing for absurd amounts of uptime even under the nastiest swaths of AoE markers surrounding a boss. Both of those decisions were huge mistakes. This, in addition to much of our new kit focused on helping maintain Greased Lightning to the exclusion of nearly everything else, ultimately contributed to the job's currently underplayed state.

Yes, Monks can and do bring the damage to this day. But the job now revolves around Hittin' Them Bootshines to the exclusion of making the rest of our kit actually interesting to play with, and that sucks a bag of rocks. I would love to hear an explanation from the devs on why they have consistently left the job to rot between expansions and only now have finally gotten around to addressing a core design flaw with the job dating back to 2.0, but I feel like the answer would be incredibly disillusioning at best.

[Sqwall]

Yes, Monks can and do bring the damage to this day. But the job now revolves around Hittin' Them Bootshines to the exclusion of making the rest of our kit actually interesting to play with, and that sucks a bag of rocks. I would love to hear an explanation from the devs on why they have consistently left the job to rot between expansions and only now have finally gotten around to addressing a core design flaw with the job dating back to 2.0, but I feel like the answer would be incredibly disillusioning at best.

I totally agree with this, and I think it doesn't necessarily fall on the shoulders of the devs. I want to place the concern on the meta requirements of the endgame content that the players wanted out of the job. In this case keeping GL up easier. If SE wanted the job to evolve out of the end game content, which it has. Then this is what we got based off of the player feedback from endgame. Form Shift update is a perfect morsel to tide us over until SE can collect more data on where to go next, and they have.

The CRUX of all of this is GL being the smoking gun they needed to prove that the class needs to change. I'm betting that the job/class devs are looking at every endgame content encounter and collecting the data on how many times they lose GL, or comparing what other classes do with the moments of respite during phases. I think it boils down to the fact that they are asking a lot of Monks during an encounter. It's kind of crazy to think about how many buttons I push just when I play monk during and not during combat. SE isn't trying to destroy the identity of monk per-say, they are trying to peel back some of the layers to reveal what was already there the whole time. The meta for monk has just spiraled out of control due to player feedback. 5.01 was a drastic course correction, and I'm pretty sure Yoshi-P had an executive decision in basically saying politely to the team involved in a very boss like tone: "No more. Start over from the basics"

[xxvaynxx]

cut

Honestly I don't even care for the reasoning why they left mnk in the dirt in terms of gameplay for so long at this point.
I just hope what ever they're doing makes mnk fun to play again and less of a bootshine/GL bot.

To this day, mnk is still the least played melee, only really picking up in Delta because how broken it was at the time.
People didn't play it because it was a fun job and even still with how strong it was. Samurai was still close behind
(though samurai will always be popular no matter how crap it is, since its a newbie bait job. A Samurai/Katana welding job will ALWAYS be popular. Either due to Anime, weeb cultural,or just a love of Japanese esthetic..or they just the sword looks cool)

With GL just being a passive trait, its honestly hard to think about. Since that's been mnk thing since well...since the job first came out. I'm hoping they do something unique with it or the gauge will be about as useless as Plds old gauge, just showing you have chakra.

Some people said maybe they'll make it like Eno and though I can see it. Wouldn't that still make monk a slave to GL still in a way? because though they're not dropping it as in losing the power of speed and damage boost, they lose possibly using TK or SSS(if they decide to make TK or SSS the reward of upkeeping GL) thus making mnk still having to play as if it the GL mech never changed.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

Some people said maybe they'll make it like Eno and though I can see it. Wouldn't that still make monk a slave to GL still in a way? because though they're not dropping it as in losing the power of speed and damage boost, they lose possibly using TK or SSS(if they decide to make TK or SSS the reward of upkeeping GL) thus making mnk still having to play as if it the GL mech never changed.

There's a difference between being a slight hinderance and... holy sh*t my speed and power have dropped significantly, I can't even use my 78 skill to get stacks back because of this frickin' cutscene bullsh*t, so now I have to use PB to get stacks back when I could have used that for extra damage, all the while hitting like a wet noodle because no stacks to begin with. I think I'd take missing a TK over losing everything else.

Further, I would feel as though we'd be on more equal ground in comparison to how other jobs with timers handle cutscene downtime. MNK currently loses 20% haste, 50% damage (Twin drops off too). BLM loses 15% damage from enochian but is able to reapply asap. DRG loses possibly a stardiver/eyes, but at least is able to get back to BotD asap. NIN loses 15% haste, costing them 1 ninjutsu- a small price to pay for what is gained.

MNK is just royally screwed moreso than any other job for cutscene transitions. Even in general gameplay there is no reward for maintaining GL other than just being on par with the other melee. I agree with Sqwall, something had to give at some point and I think GL was the right call, many of us were saying before that GL is one of the biggest offenders in MNK gameplay from expansion to expansion because it's constantly being viewed as 'that job that has tight timers which people can't keep up for whatever reason', so every expansion there are new ways to maintain it, all while feeling bad to use.

[Sqwall]

Some people said maybe they'll make it like Eno and though I can see it. Wouldn't that still make monk a slave to GL still in a way? because though they're not dropping it as in losing the power of speed and damage boost, they lose possibly using TK or SSS(if they decide to make TK or SSS the reward of upkeeping GL) thus making mnk still having to play as if it the GL mech never changed.

The point of all of this is acknowledging the evolution of monk has gotten way off course. Simply making GL the same as the other classes abilities in the game (Enoch BLM) is the very reason people are complaining. Pulling identity from another to give to Monk is wrong, it has to be it's own thing. Which is where we come into THE problem. How do we make a new identity to a job that has been around since the beginning? Honestly, it requires broad strokes to an existing painting, step back evaluate, more broad strokes, step back, simpler strokes. (Not the exact process, but you get the idea). As I have said before, SE acknowledged the fact the Monk is rubbish, and fixing is going to cost a lot of time and capital. At the end of the day it's a business, and they have to make money just like any other business.

Yoshi-P is a very intelligent person, an executive, a producer, and a director. I would be very bold in assuming that he has quite a bit of faith in his team to make the right decisions for the game, and I'm sure like any large company has morning meetings to touch on EVERYTHING going on with the teams involved. You can bet your bottom dollar that Monk has been the thorn in his side all the way back in Heavensward during those meetings. With 5.01 course correction you can CLEARLY see this is an executive decision to give Monk what they have been asking for for years! And I'm positive EVERY single monk main looked at the patch notes and went "HUH!?...NO WAY!...FORM SHIFT I LOVE YOU!...RIDDLE OF FIRE ZOMGS!!"

That's because this is the beginning of the largest change Monk has ever seen, and we had to get it in small amounts so as not to break the class or the game. 5.3 will be the next phase (correct me if I'm wrong), but Form Shift no longer requires opo-opo to start, and basically puts you in raptor right off the bat...NICE! And then some adjustment to Perfect Balance, now what we don't know until the patch notes next week, to speculate it's to get us ready for 5.4 and a drastic change to Perfect Balance. IF we are getting away from GL as a resource and a more a static trait. Then Perfect Balance must follow some rule outside of GL, and can't follow something another class already has. My guess...for every chackra gained you receive an additional chackra while perfect balance is active 30 sec cooldown.

[Sora_Oathkeeper]

snip

The MNK identity has slowly been eclipsed as every other melee has ended up pulling from it. In ARR MNK could be summed up as fast paced, constant positionals, high risk high reward with GL and selfish.

NIN released and MNK was no longer the fast DPS, NIN had the same speed as MNK but also had many oGCDs added throughout the expansions adding to it's fast paced nature. By SB NIN dwarfed MNK as the fast paced job.

Every Melee has positionals, they aren't unique to MNK but the constant positionals IS unique, and still is and that is being kept as far as we know.

ARR and HW(to a degree) MNK used to be high risk high reward, we were rewarded with being top of DPS alongside BLM. The high DPS was moved over to SAM and we were left with High risk no reward.

And naturally due to the above, SAM stole the selfish nature of MNK and we were shoehorned with an annoying raid buff.

VentVanitas is right, you can't remove and identity from a job that has none. MNK has lost most of its identity over the years to other jobs- apart from constant positionals and just job aesthetics.