Make Monk great again! 5.4 Monk doesn´t feel like Monk anymore...

[ItMe]

Class identities will inevitably change over time and that's something we're just going to have to accept.

[pinkbubblegum]

I'm going to give my perspective, as some one who's leveling all classes simultaneously, but for me I honestly disliked doing dungeons as a Monk and Black Mage... I'd end up levelling them last. I'm not at max level though but for me, Greased Lightning always felt so artificial of a mechanic. You get it to full at the start of a dungeon by form spam thanks to the skill that lets you use any weaponskill, after that point, spend your time on a (arguably) strict rotation bc you need to never drop it.

On the occasion you clear a mob, you then STILL need to pay attention and use Form Shift when other classes can just do w/e in between pulls.

Things like these just made it sooo not fun. I mean it totally depends on a person but I hate rigidity when I'm playing a class and for me, Monk and Black Mage are the two that used to fit that definition the most lol. Now with the new Monk changes, it's so much more fun to play bc you're not limited by having to monitor GL anymore, lifting restrictions on what weaponskills you want to use (Which arguably isn't much bc now I just end up spamming Leaden damage with that weaponskill resitriction lift skill but w/e lol)

[ValStormbreaker]

new monk aint perfect but its a good base to improve upon for next expansion.

People have been saying this every single expansion thus far, and every single expansion we get two baby steps forward and two giant leaps backward, with job fixes being largely band-aid updates and needed reworks taking a backseat to Gold Saucer updates and fishing content. Monk mains have never, in the history of the game, had a decently-playable job throughout the story, and we only tend to get the mother of all band-aid patches after all the primary story is all said and done.

So, you can think that all you want, but as the saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,"... except for those of us keeping count, it's more like five or six times now already, so the trust that "next time they'll get it right for sure" is dismally low. This isn't our first rodeo, after all.

I've also come to learn that lots of people who claim to have been MNKs back in 2.0 or 2.1 are full of it, since I've asked them what MNK was like back then, and their answer seems to just be like level-synced MNK in Labyrinth. They don't seem to remember the god-awful primitive and slow combat in 2.x, horrible moves nobody liked such as Featherfoot and Haymaker, how PB was on a 3-minute cooldown in a time when a party wipe wouldn't reset your cooldowns so you had to sit and wait for a few minutes before attempting the next pull, or how you were a White Mage's babysitter because Blunt Resistance Down helped the healers regen MP off of their auto-attacks back when they didn't have better MP management tools and auto-attacks were a more major part of the combat loop as things were that slow and lacking back then. It's just something people claim to bandwagon onto popular sentiments and demand the simplification of MNK since they don't like weaving oGCDs and would rather the job be dumbed down than endure a learning curve.

What's more offensive to me than the state of MNK is a lot of the stuff SURROUNDING the MNK updates and the live letter. From how abruptly the MNK demonstration was cut off to spend absurd amounts of time on Triple Triad, to Yoshi-P admitting he doesn't really know how to play the job, to none of the changes not brought up in the LL being anything of note in spite of us being told there was more, to even the elemental fists being noticeably absent from the patch notes, etc... it feels like they didn't even start working on it until the night before the live letter and then went "screw it" for the remaining stuff they didn't cover. So much for being told that it would be so expensive and take two more months to do, and that they worked hard to maintain the busy feeling of the job, when it feels like it was rushed out in an afternoon at the 11th hour and it's actually LESS busy because we have even fewer buttons to push now.

[ValStormbreaker]

Meanwhile, Blue Mage gets the Suzaku kick (DRG gets to have Stardiver, but MNKs can't have nice things) and the raid gear doesn't even resemble Eden's features. I think the art director has some kind of complex about pirates, because we keep getting pirate attire and eyepatches when it's not remotely appropriate. I think they know it looks stupid on MNK because they use SAM in all the marketing images. *sigh* my kingdom for a Saint Seiya crossover... Alphascape had significantly more visually appropriate raid and tome gear IMHO.

As for Tornado Kick being useful... I think that's the biggest bait-and-switch ever. You could swap it out for Steel Peak or any other random oGCD and you wouldn't know the difference mid-rotation. TK used to be something you had to work for, and following one up with a recovery rotation to wind up a second volley was a maneuver which felt rewarding to pull off. As much as people didn't want to hear it, I have said elsewhere on the forums that in 5.0, before Anatman was forced onto the GCD as an anti-automation method, you could actually still do this if you cranked the speed high enough, and the adjustments needed to make it worth dropping your stacks to pull off were as simple as a minor buff to TK and shaving two seconds off its recast time. Now, it can be any [insert skill name here] ability with a 45-second cooldown timer, so it's not special anymore.

[IruruCece]

I think the thing that bothers me most about MNK discourse is that it simultaneously is accused of being easy, braindead, and it was never actually difficult to maintain GL, and in the same discussion other people will whine about how much of a hassle it was to maintain GL, how annoying the positionals are, how it was too hard to do any of the openers from HW all the way up until the patch just before 5.4.

I'm convinced that both SE and the people who didn't like monk before this patch are unified in their lack of understanding what they wanted the job to actually be.

Maybe 6.0 they can also remove the positionals, two combo paths and their associated buttons, and finally give MNK the MCH treatment people who weren't actually interested in playing the job until now are apparently looking for.

[ValStormbreaker]

I'm going to give my perspective, as some one who's leveling all classes simultaneously, but for me...

You don't have the perspective of what it was like before post-launch Shadowbringers. The job didn't used to be like that in dungeons in past expansions, so I can't honor your point of view as it actually lacks perspective more than anything. Also, the rotation hasn't actually changed, so the change hasn't actually fixed that as you claim, but furthermore, Monk has always been extremely flexible, so it sounds like your perspective is coming from someone who doesn't understand how the job actually works and how many ways there were to adjust on the fly.

GL management gave an excuse to remain engaged, keep your GCDs rolling, and look for opportunities to get creative to maintain uptime with respect to fight mechanics. Again, it doesn't seem like you really understand how the job works, and that's the entire problem... rather than you learning and understanding, you're making assumptions in spite of understanding. When changes are made to cater to players like yourself, who in all likelihood aren't going to seriously main the job in any endgame content, the rest of us who WERE interested in doing so get shafted in the process. This is the price of accessibility, and it's often not worth the cost. Pleasing players who are not likely to stick with the job in the long term often comes at the cost of making the job clumsy and problematic for the people who wish to main it.

The same goes for Black Mage, which is not only not so rigid at all, and has even greater flexibility than it did back in SB due to a lot of instant casts it didn't have before. It's also not an immobile turret as many bad players claim; it is highly mobile, but just uses unorthodox mobility through multiple kinds of teleports, triple-casting, swiftcast and slide casting, but because of how dumbed down the game has gotten, a lot of players have learned they can get away with not making use of these tools and staying put. That's not necessarily the best way to play the job, just what people have learned they can get away with.

If you truly hate rigidity, and you're going to call Black Mage and Monk the worst offenders as a Paladin main at level 58... you fall into the category of someone who shouldn't be listened to because you aren't experienced enough to know what you're talking about. Get to max level and unlock your entire kit first, and then learn how the jobs work before you judge them. This isn't a game where you learn as you go, you have to unlock your entire toolbox worth of tools and then figure out how they all work together before you can assess how fun or flexible their kits are. Black Mage was atrocious to level, but incredibly fun at max level, so the leveling experience is not truly indicative of what the jobs will be like later.

Judging a job based on an incomplete set of tools is like judging a book by its cover.

[ValStormbreaker]

On the occasion you clear a mob, you then STILL need to pay attention and use Form Shift when other classes can just do w/e in between pulls.

So you're beating on paying attention now? All players are expected to pay attention, regardless of job choice. Like I said, Form Shift wasn't like this until well after SHB launched. It was a new thing as a band-aid patch for a problem removing part of our SB kit caused. I kept saying the simple solution would be to give us PvP's Axe Kick, so we could drop our stacks while running down corridors, and then when the tank pulls the next trash mob we hit one button to go from zero stacks to full in an instant. In single-target situations it would give us back the instant GL stack we lost from Wind Tackle's removal. None of this was part of the job's identity even in 5.0, it was a new thing introduced later as a workaround for bad design decisions after people complained, instead of a true solution to the problem. We didn't like it either, but those of us who played the job in endgame understood there were better ways of dealing with the problem without resorting to this.

Not to mention though, no, other jobs don't just do "whatever," and people still need to pay attention. But again... the level 58 experience isn't exactly representative to what the game will feel like when you're caught up, so this is a very ignorant assessment of a game you don't fully understand. If paying attention is something you're not keen on doing, just wait until you have to deal with tankswaps and tankbusters as a regular par-for-the-course expectation of gameplay, and how much other players will hate you for trying to YOLO through a fight and get carried while you get everyone else killed.

[pinkbubblegum]

Again, it doesn't seem like you really understand how the job works, and that's the entire problem... rather than you learning and understanding, you're making assumptions in spite of understanding. When changes are made to cater to players like yourself, who in all likelihood aren't going to seriously main the job in any endgame content, the rest of us who WERE interested in doing so get shafted in the process. This is the price of accessibility, and it's often not worth the cost. Pleasing players who are not likely to stick with the job in the long term often comes at the cost of making the job clumsy and problematic for the people who wish to main it.

The same goes for Black Mage, which is not only not so rigid at all, and has even greater flexibility than it did back in SB due to a lot of instant casts it didn't have before. It's also not an immobile turret as many bad players claim; it is highly mobile, but just uses unorthodox mobility through multiple kinds of teleports, triple-casting, swiftcast and slide casting, but because of how dumbed down the game has gotten, a lot of players have learned they can get away with not making use of these tools and staying put. That's not necessarily the best way to play the job, just what people have learned they can get away with.

If you truly hate rigidity, and you're going to call Black Mage and Monk the worst offenders as a Paladin main at level 58... you fall into the category of someone who shouldn't be listened to because you aren't experienced enough to know what you're talking about. Get to max level and unlock your entire kit first, and then learn how the jobs work before you judge them. This isn't a game where you learn as you go, you have to unlock your entire toolbox worth of tools and then figure out how they all work together before you can assess how fun or flexible their kits are. Black Mage was atrocious to level, but incredibly fun at max level, so the leveling experience is not truly indicative of what the jobs will be like later.

Judging a job based on an incomplete set of tools is like judging a book by its cover.

Haha I get it, you hate the changes and are taking it out on me for being under-leveled and not being qualified for this discussion but the thread exists asking who were these changes made for and why and I'm just popping in here to say most likely they were for people like me, and I like them xD

But as much as it sucks, a devs are not required to cater to those in the 99th percentile of a job or whatever :P

[Duskane]

Blue mage is notorious for having spells that would be better on other classes
SMN,MCH,MNK etc etc

[ValStormbreaker]

Haha I get it, you hate the changes and are taking it out on me for being under-leveled and not being qualified for this discussion but the thread exists asking who were these changes made for and why and I'm just popping in here to say most likely they were for people like me, and I like them xD

But as much as it sucks, a devs are not required to cater to those in the 99th percentile of a job or whatever :P

You miss the point, though. You don't even know what the full kit plays like, so you're judging something by an incomplete set of tools. Ergo, you don't understand what you're talking about, since you don't have that perspective. So why should you, someone who doesn't even have the job leveled to max, be someone who should be catered to?

See, now you're giving me crap because of a veiled accusation of elitism. When did I ever say anything about 99th percentile of a job? I'm just talking about the basics of how it functions once you level it all the way up and catch up to current content. You're what, two expansions behind? You don't even know what the full kit looks like. THAT is why nothing you have to say should be listened to. You're just asking for the game to bend over backward based on something you don't completely understand. This isn't about not being a top-parser or anything, it's just the basics of not even having your full toolset unlocked and making a judgment of something that's impossible for you to fully comprehend until you are able to experience it for yourself. Like I said, plenty of jobs are atrocious to level - BLM being an example - but are dramatically different once you have the full kit unlocked. You don't even know that yet, because it's impossible for you to.

You made declarative statements about two jobs which may be your impressions NOW, but if you spent more time getting them both maxed out and getting caught up on all your job quests and skill unlocks, you'd reflect back on your statements right here and now and realize how wrong you were. You're just not there yet, so it's impossible for you to know that when you're too new. Your attitude, however, is incredibly entitled and ignorant, and you're trying to sideswipe what I'm saying with the "everyone who points out I don't know what I'm talking about must be elitist" line that is all too common in this community, when the reality is simply that it's impossible for you to know what the level 80 versions of the jobs look like, with all their skills fully unlocked, when your main job is a level 58 tank and you have no clue what the game will expect from you later. That's why it's easy to go after your previous statement about willfully not wanting to pay attention, because apparently that's too much of a bother for you.

But as much as it sucks to hear the truth, the devs aren't required to cater to those who don't even bother paying attention to playing the game because paying attention is too much of a bother.