Monk rework suggestion.

[NealSnow]

So most people who have played monk to 80 know there\\'s a few issues with monk, the biggest since arr the 3 stances, and the others tornado kick and six sided star.

These all have the problem of being very situational but I brainstormed a fix to the stances and tornado kick. Six sided star I haven\\'t yet. The riddle of skills also becoming an upgraded version of the buff generally the same as their current version.

The stances:
Rework them into limited duration buffs and have monks have to alternative between them like bards songs, which means you also can\\'t stack them.

Fists of earth: when following directional requirements all basic attacks are crits (note just crits, not direct crits) for 8(?) seconds. 90(?) CD. Riddle of earth: duration increased to 10s, CD reduced by 10s

Fists of wind: increase attack speed by 5% for 15 seconds. 60s CD. Riddle of wind: replaces the 5% speed boost with a 4th stack of graded lightning, increased duration to 20s.

Fists of fire: increase attack damage by 15% for 10s 80s CD Riddle of fire: increases damage by 25%, increased duration to 15s

Now I haven\\'t done math for these changes so adjustments would be nessicary ofc. As for tornado kick?

Tornado kick: delivers an attack with a potency of 300. 45s oGCD. If used with at least 3 greased lightning stacks, increase damage to 350 potency and a direct crit. Damage boosted to 380 if used with 4 greased lightning stacks.

Now not everyone feels monk needs changed at all so I do expect blowback, especially as there are people who liked reload mech with rng. But I\\'m open and wanna hear what your ideas are or if you\\'d just tweak mine. I love theorycrafting skills so if you have any ideas I\\'d love to read em.

[NealSnow]

Huh... somehow all the ' changed to double //... sorry about that

[AngelCheese77]

Monk was reworked a few times within the last patch or 5.0

[AncientCrystal]

Monk was reworked a few times within the last patch or 5.0

No it hasn't. People are talking about COMPLETE REWORK of the job's skills and abilities, akin to what they did with NIN. I for one support it because the job plays like crap and the devs havn't done a good job with it at all.

[Malmstrom]

Monk was reworked a few times within the last patch or 5.0

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- *breathe* -HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Mahrze]

Monk was reworked a few times within the last patch or 5.0

I-I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[xxvaynxx]

I don't like your suggestions.
Mainly because you want GL4 as a CD if I'm reading that right.
The main reason most people play monk is for speed, why would you make that extra 5% a CD.
You're just making button bloat too.

Imo the fist are fine, just change six sided star, anatman and Tk...maybe give back steel peak and HF too just nerf the damage.

Leave monks speed alone as GL4 and its speed was the only saving grace mnk had in a LONG time since HW...for me anyway.

[Psytic]

What if they just got rid of grease lightening and the MNK ability was a passive that makes their GCD 1.5 permanently or what ever it is at GL4 then they balanced all the ability dmg around it so now you use Tornado kick etc. in the main rotation and do the positionals. I played Mnk to 74 and gave up what annoyed me was trying to keep grease lightening up I find it to be an annoying mechanic.

[Kenky]

I played Mnk to 74 and gave up what annoyed me was trying to keep grease lightening up I find it to be an annoying mechanic.

Sorry. But how is GL hard to keep up? You legit don't need to do anything but complete a combo. You don't even need to do the positionals, just hit the target. Sure, out of combat runs will make you lose it and Anatman was an ATTEMPT at trying to solve the downtime in fights. (Sustaining your GL stacks, but locking you in place. Not even allowed to move the camera. Though that fails in Dungeons, it's okay in trials)

Infact, the 16 seconds you have to hit -three- buttons is pretty forgiving. Not to mention if you Fist-Swap (Fire until GL3, then Wind for the 4th), you won't really be able to lose them unless your tank is moving at the speed of a snail.

FoF increases damage, FoW increases movement speed per stack. So full GL means you're faster than a NIN.

EDIT: Personally, I think MNK is in an "Okay" place where it is now. Certainly could use a bit of a tune-up, but at the same time. With the 5.1 rework, it has gone from a tedious chore to level. To actually fun to play (for some people, myself included).
Just wish the damage-gap between Monk and Samurai wasn't so huge. I get that Monk is more-so for the team support (Brotherhood, Mantra, etc) but it still feels weak when comparing them to other DPS. Plenty of people just want to brute-force their way through content and the only way to do that is to hit harder than you get hit. That's not a good mentality. Not in Shadowbringers.

If you have to ask "Why Shadowbringers?" it's simple. A small group of adds can kill your entire group if you're not paying attention. Several mobs in every dungeon has a heavy-hitter that has no wind-up or tellegraph. So your Tank goes from full health to "where'smyhp?!" panic in under a GCD.

[SpeckledBurd]

Now not everyone feels monk needs changed at all so I do expect blowback, especially as there are people who liked reload mech with rng. But I\\'m open and wanna hear what your ideas are or if you\\'d just tweak mine. I love theorycrafting skills so if you have any ideas I\\'d love to read em.

I think its more that while there's a strong consensus that Shadowbringers Monk is arguably the worst version of the job to date due to evolving poorly in Stormblood and instead of having those missteps corrected in Shadowbringers many of them were doubled down upon. There's also quite a few ideas on how people would adjust it. But the fact of the matter is that Monk in 5.0 wasn't well received, and while the 5.05 changes made it less miserable in dungeons (and also the most powerful Melee due to other jobs being underpowered more than anything) it's still not in a place that the players are enjoying. Case in point, now that every other job has seen a buff and Monk is no longer marginally overpowered, it's currently the least played job in all content other than TEA by the metrics available to the players.

That doesn't suggest player contentment.

I don't like your suggestions.
Mainly because you want GL4 as a CD if I'm reading that right.
The main reason most people play monk is for speed, why would you make that extra 5% a CD.
You're just making button bloat too.

Imo the fist are fine, just change six sided star, anatman and Tk...maybe give back steel peak and HF too just nerf the damage.

Leave monks speed alone as GL4 and its speed was the only saving grace mnk had in a LONG time since HW...for me anyway.

I disagree that the Fist stances are fine. They're pointless bloat skills that you could honestly remove or convert into traits and it wouldn't change anything about how the job plays because you just set one stance and forget them. By all rights they should have been removed or turned into traits like Kiss of the Wasp/Viper were during the Stormblood action rework because they've had that problem since 2.0.

As for suggestions I'd suggest keeping the jobs core the same. GL4 and 3-Stage Form combos are fine concepts on their own, but everything that's been added to it, or many changes that have been made systemically have been a detriment to how the job feels. To fix some the problems with the job as I see them at the moment, here is what I would propose.


1. Turn the Fist Stances into traits, because they basically are anyway. Replace at least one of them with some sort of Mobility action that doesn't have damage attached to it. Honestly turning Fists of Fire into a weaker damage buff cooldown as OP suggested that upgrades into Riddle of Fire eventually would give the job some of the engagement that it's now sorely lacking at lower levels, but it could just as soon vanish.

2. Convert Tornado Kick into our Chakra AOE skill at 220 potency to all enemies nearby us. It would be the same potency as Enlightenment, but it gives TK an actual use and it allows us to actually have an AOE use for our gauge at a reasonable period instead of 10 levels later than most jobs. Right now as a button it is worse than another Niche addition to our kit, it actively makes the devs terrified of making our ability to recover Stacks decent because we might use it for a damage gain which is what made the job so miserable to play at launch.

3. Return Howling Fist as it was in Stormblood (60 second Cooldown, moderate AOE damage) at low levels. Have it upgrade to Enlightenment when we normally get it. This gives us a CD at low levels which we now entirely lack and actually makes it feel like there's a gain of strength at later levels instead of regaining what they ripped out of our kit.

4. Fundamentally change how Chakra is built so we gain it at a steady pace, such as whenever we refresh Greased Lightning and cut the RNG. This was the biggest complaint about the job after Riddle of Fire slowing us in Stormblood so naturally they doubled down on it instead of fixing it this expansion and we don't like it any more now than we did two years ago. Currently for Monk to perform at its best it needs a Scholar, a Dragoon, and a Dancer as its partner to receive their crit buffs. The literally fixed this for Bard this expansion, but chose not to for Monk because reasons.

5. Change Brotherhood so it's no longer Physical party member dependent and lacks RNG. A major point of the design for Shadowbringers was to reduce party synergies but Monk is still held in a strangle hold by crit dependence and Physical party members dependence. Potentially just have it grant Monk a stack of 3-4 of a buff that will give it a free Forbidden Chakra allowing every RoF period to be consistent rather than having to pray that we get procs, or have it proc off spells (and Ninjutsu) as well.

6. While Six Sided Star isn't useless, it's pretty underwhelming as a level 80 skill. It's good for short disengages but for such a cool animation I'd like to actually be able to use it more. I'd suggest making it a reward for Upkeeping GL/Refreshing it X number of times so we're rewarded for good play.

7. Anatman's only good point was that it was better than Riddle of Earth on Launch, but with the 5.05 changes this skill is really only good for gaining Greased Lightning stacks after a long phase but only when you can't hit the boss which makes it good for literally like two fights total. It needs an entirely new effect, be it into an upgrade to Formshift somehow to make it less spammy, or just a skill to grant full Greased Lightning immediately.