Monk - Quality of Life Change

[SpeckledBurd]

Yes, SSS and TK have uses, but they aren't even good at their own niches because of how specific and overall meaningless they are to the kit. They are capstone skills, they should be apart of the main rotation like a lot of others are and especially because MNK is so visually boring without being able to use them. There is no point to having them interact with GL anymore because all we need is Form Shift. I seriously have no idea why anyone would bother with keeping those ridiculous caveats and restrictions to skills when NO OTHER class has them for their own. It's a stupid idea and it needs to die.

It may be just a quick band-aid fix that won't solve anything in the long run (which is the intention of the OP as they're supposed to be minor changes to tide us over until a proper rework), but it's leagues better than what we have to put up with now with it's 6 weaponskill monotony every 2 minutes or so. Having independent GCDs on cooldowns gives us a buffer to move into positionals. It's why many MNK players are still sore about the removal of Touch of Death/Fracture.

I am aware that current Brotherhood is one of the few skills that actually adheres to Monk lore/canon in how it functions. But there are better ways to achieve that than by making MNK so dependent on specific team comps and RNG. By all means, I would like a skill that has both lore consistency and good play feel. But being at a disadvantage by default when other party members aren't is bad game design, especially when other jobs don't deal with this problem as much as MNK does. I hate not having full capability of the job just because of both luck and not having DNC, or DRG, or SCH in the party. Those are things outside of most players control. It's why SE has taken efforts to tone down synergy between jobs.

On Tornado Kick, it's not just that Form Shift makes the skill irrelevant either, it's that by every indication the devs don't want us to use it with its current effect. On top of Form Shift we have Riddle of Earth and Anatman which were both means of upkeeping it, plus they nerfed Perfect Balance knocking our recovery back to near Heavensward levels of bad because we... were using Tornado Kick. By all rights they've gone to more effort to keep us from using Tornado Kick to dump our stacks than it probably would have taken to give it a different effect.

Six Sided Star meanwhile is also just totally redundant. We already had a skill for making up the damage on short disengages, it was called Meditation. There didn't need to be a second one, especially when the rest of the kit was so lacking.

[Ramura_Sono]

It's not that they can't think of it, as much as they can't make up their minds, because they're an entire team and not one person.
They also have to play test it all to make sure it all works as intended, and is still balanced, and they have more people to find flaws in these ideas where one person acting on their own can easily overlook them.

Except they've literally said that they don't know what to do with monk. It's never been a case of them being unable to make up their minds because they have a plethora of ideas for the job.
Also "play test it all"? They arguably don't play test monk at all. Skill canceling in ARR, TFC clipping with GL3 in HW, TK Rotation in SB, Combos not receiving the timer increase because of forms. If they have an entire team testing, they sure do a piss poor job of it.

[Noctisnine]

I love it, would be very interesting if SE takes a look and learn something, cause monk is the least played job right now. Not rewarding having to do so many positionals on a job with 1.90 gcd. It should get the same treatment as Sam and Blm.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Yo, that is your first post? Holy moly, the changes are absolutely LIT my dear! I love every bit of it.

I assume that if you take inspiration from Drill + Air Anchor that TK and Six-Sided Star (one of them) will have an interesting effect tied to it like Air Anchors +20Battery? If so, love every bit of it.

Especially that Anatman change, OH MY GOD I've been wanting that ever since they got rid of Wind Tackle (as much as ppl didn't like elemental tackles, Wind Tackle or current PvP Shoulder Tackle was / is a boon).

[Yani-Madara]

I'm still leveling Monk but I want to add something.

Leaden Fist should either change Bootshine's icon (Like DRG's) or add the yellow lines that pop up on other jobs when an attack is ready.

Example: Enpi on Sam and Firestarter on BLM

Some points are good but I disagree on making Tornado and SSS gcd, Monk is already a GCD fest that needs more oGCD options.

[Vendalwind]

Generally i like it.

I personally also want to see changes to fist stances so they operate as phases, but many people disagree with me on that as ive seen in the past.

There would need to be number tweaks if six sided star was to be used so frequently.

And i dont like the perfect balance change. I primarily play nin (havent played monk in end game since arr) for a very long time ive hoped skill speed would be viable on ninja. But for many reasons its not. When bunshin was teased because it was duration based i thought some sks would finally have its day. But then they nerfed it. And then they made it last only a specific number of hits. I jave other complaints about the current ninja, but on the subject of monk I personally actually like that having a certain amount of SkS not only changes your rotation but enables you to better use your cooldowns.

So i agree with everything except making perfect balance charge based like bunshin.

I do have monk at 80 and do hope to return to the class someday.

[IruruCece]

I disagree strongly with removing positionals, on monk and on any melee DPS. They aren't what keeps players away from any job, and monk was underplayed next to other DPS even when positionals were more of a thing across multiple melee jobs (and had other problems next to other DPS at the time). I recognize, however, that I appear to be in the minority on this.

I suggest getting rid of all the methods Monk (and melee in general) has to ignore positionals instead. It strikes me as incredibly odd that SE left Monk in a state where it MUST engage with the bosses beyond just sitting still and hammering globals, but then gave us MULTIPLE skills that let us ignore than particular mechanic for an extended period of time. It really is an either or at this point, SE should either kill off positionals as a concept (and make the game less interesting IMO), or provide better feedback to players so they know they've landed a proper positional, up to increasing the "reward" for doing so.

KILL. ELEMENTAL. FISTS. These buttons are little more than rotting wisdom teeth on the kit of the job, and have been so since Heavensward. SE has constantly used the excuse of button bloat for nixing off multiple skills that players have actually used in their rotations on the regular, but has somehow managed to leave elemental fists more or less as is: buttons that we hit before a fight, that we switch once we get to a certain part of our opener, and then sit on for its particular buff for the duration. In HW and SB, it was Fire. In ShB, it's Wind. Functionally, SE has tweaked these fists, particularly in regards to our GL4, but practically, players just sit in the same damned fist for 10 minutes until the boss dies. You want button bloat gone? There's three right there. Maybe give us ONE of the actually useful OGCDs we lost between SB and ShB.

[Alahaji]

When we talk optimization, what does the mean? People are still clearing content with mnk as is so its not the damage output. If its for the feel of the class then that's a matter of opinion, not technical difficulties. I've played monk since ARR and whats kept me coming back to the class is the positionals and the frantic feel of the class. Dying sucks and is difficult to come back from (though you can still clear savage with a couple wipes under your belt) so what I do is not die. Having more to lose in a death makes the game more exciting for me. There are other classes melee classes that aren't positional heavy so people who don't like pos have options. Making the positional heavy class like the other melee classes is removing options for people who already like the play style. My opinion is the same for the final chakra.

[FLeet229]

I disagree strongly with removing positionals, on monk and on any melee DPS. They aren't what keeps players away from any job, and monk was underplayed next to other DPS even when positionals were more of a thing across multiple melee jobs (and had other problems next to other DPS at the time). I recognize, however, that I appear to be in the minority on this.

Sorry if there was a confusion, but what I meant by raptor form GCDs, is that True Strike and Twin Snake would have no positional requirements. Opo-Opo form and Coeurl form GCDs still should have positional requirements. It does not give you a buff or anything that lets you ignore positional completely.

Right now, if you have a flawless rotation, you only have to swap positional every 2-3 GCD. Now if you make a mistake in your rotation (say you used Demolish instead of Snap punch) or you come off a downtime and have to refresh Twin Snake instead of using True strike, it screws up the positional so that you have to switch positional every GCD. This is also true if you are one of the hardcore monks that use double True Strike rotation.

If you remove positional requirements from raptor form, that negates the need to swap positional every GCD and you will be able to stay in flank/rear for at least 2 GCD, in all the situations above. You can test it yourself right now by ignoring positional for Twin Snake and True strike.

You could achieve the same result from removing positional from any of the one form and keeping it for the remaining 2. I think raptor form is the best to remove positional since the form bonus for opo-opo is a crit for bootshine and that makes it harder to tweak, and coeurl form has Demolish and Snap Punch that gets used in 1:2 ratio.



Oh and I agree with scrapping elemental fists. I just left them out because removing them is more of a rework than a tweak and requires shifting around what levels you would learn certain abilities. Also it would mess around with lower level-synced content. My goal here was to tweak the abilities so that they are simple enough and could possibly be implemented before the next expansion.