Monk has too many Positionals

[Ariel_Valmont]

Monk is hot topic...

Removing GL is like like BLM crying about how it’s too hard to keep enochian up and they constantly lose it to cut scenes.

Any BLM knows it is integral, GL was integral, and was as easy to keep up as enochian.

[wereotter]

Removing GL is like like BLM crying about how it’s too hard to keep enochian up and they constantly lose it to cut scenes.

Any BLM knows it is integral, GL was integral, and was as easy to keep up as enochian.

It's close, but this isn't entirely accurate. Enochian has a duration of 30 seconds, making it closer to Blood of the Dragon than Greased Lightning. Greased Lightning had a duration of only 16 seconds and until a recent patch, prior to its transition to a trait, couldn't be maintained with Form Shift, making Enochian not only much more likely to be maintained through boss transitions or cutscenes, but also has for several years been able to be maintained through Transpose and Umbral Soul.

Additionally the punishment for losing Enochian wasn't as severe as the punishment for losing Greased Lightning. They both dropped you 15% damage, but the monk also lost 20% attack speed, and while Enochian could be reapplied with the press of a single button, the best option a monk had for recovering Greased Lightning was using Perfect Balance, and if that was on cooldown for any reason, it would take 10-12 GCDs in order to get it back up to full again.

[Saefinn]

I know you Monk mains out there will likely flame me for wanting to see it changed, but for ease of access for everyone shouldn't it be?

I'm gonna say "no". The problem is this game attracts people of varying levels of skill and interest, for some simpler forms of gameplay are better for others more complicated forms of play are better.

We accommodate the former in all jobs we fail to accommodate the latter. This is exactly what they've done to healers and tanks in this game where you had jobs that were technical like DRK and AST and used to have more engaging DPS rotations like SCH. As somebody who loved SCH, DRK and AST as they used to be, it's a mentality I can't get behind. I am an advocate for different jobs to represent different difficulties of play. The advantage of having multiple jobs for each role is that you can accommodate more playstyles. SAM I feel exists as a simpler MNK alternative, as an example. Heck they have just made MNK simpler by removing Greased Lightning.

The view I've always had is: if a job doesn't fit your needs try a different job. I can understand changing things if they are broken and complaining if a job has changed so you enjoy it less, but is a job you play.

MNK's positionals to me is a part of the fun. And I've lately picked it up again after its fixes and I think it would be sad to lose positionals on it. I just practice against a training dummy to get used to my positionals and rotations.


From an accessibility point of view, I have a new player in my FC who is currently learning to play MNK, they're new to MMO's too and MNK is their first melee and they struggle at some solo instances in the game and are still learning much of it. They have not felt MNK inaccessible, it has confused them at first but they just wanted to learn to get better at it and not change the job because they enjoy playing it. I sat with them a couple of days ago to help them get into the flow of it against a training dummy and it helped. The game is VERY forgiving, you can screw up your positionals until you get them right long before you get to a point where it's important.

I feel if anything the better solution if accessibility is a concern, the emphasis should be on better tools to learn than making things easier.

[Garet]

I'm gonna say "no". The problem is this game attracts people of varying levels of skill and interest, for some simpler forms of gameplay are better for others more complicated forms of play are better.

We accommodate the former in all jobs we fail to accommodate the latter. This is exactly what they've done to healers and tanks in this game where you had jobs that were technical like DRK and AST and used to have more engaging DPS rotations like SCH. As somebody who loved SCH, DRK and AST as they used to be, it's a mentality I can't get behind. I am an advocate for different jobs to represent different difficulties of play. The advantage of having multiple jobs for each role is that you can accommodate more playstyles. SAM I feel exists as a simpler MNK alternative, as an example. Heck they have just made MNK simpler by removing Greased Lightning.

The view I've always had is: if a job doesn't fit your needs try a different job. I can understand changing things if they are broken and complaining if a job has changed so you enjoy it less, but is a job you play.

MNK's positionals to me is a part of the fun. And I've lately picked it up again after its fixes and I think it would be sad to lose positionals on it. I just practice against a training dummy to get used to my positionals and rotations.


From an accessibility point of view, I have a new player in my FC who is currently learning to play MNK, they're new to MMO's too and MNK is their first melee and they struggle at some solo instances in the game and are still learning much of it. They have not felt MNK inaccessible, it has confused them at first but they just wanted to learn to get better at it and not change the job because they enjoy playing it. I sat with them a couple of days ago to help them get into the flow of it against a training dummy and it helped. The game is VERY forgiving, you can screw up your positionals until you get them right long before you get to a point where it's important.

I feel if anything the better solution if accessibility is a concern, the emphasis should be on better tools to learn than making things easier.

I think a balance is good where it can be accessed by a lot but at the same time not making it too easy or too similar to other jobs. I agree that aside from having multiple jobs to choose from, having variety to choose what suits u more is good. Like if this one jobs seems to hard for you then there is other jobs with different styles that might be more suited.

I also think positionals suits monk since it feels like we are dancing around the enemy while hitting them which is fun. I like that GL became a trait though.

[Saefinn]

I think a balance is good where it can be accessed by a lot but at the same time not making it too easy or too similar to other jobs. I agree that aside from having multiple jobs to choose from, having variety to choose what suits u more is good. Like if this one jobs seems to hard for you then there is other jobs with different styles that might be more suited.

I also think positionals suits monk since it feels like we are dancing around the enemy while hitting them which is fun. I like that GL became a trait though.

Oh yes, I love variety too. And the thing is, if one job is too hard, learning another might help you on the path to that other job. Even that said, there's so much wiggle room in this game to learn things that I don't see a requirement for people to be efficient until much later.

I too like that GL is a trait now, it removes one of the biggest annoyances that had me side more with SAM and is now probably making MNK more attractive to me, yet I also get why it is missed, although it was something broken on MNK I can get the desire for a fix that keeps GL.

[IruruCece]

The problem with it being "something" that was "broken" on Monk is more that this problem has been building literally since 2.0, alongside of MULTIPLE other problems with the job's kit, coupled with SE's growing tendency to break up boss fights with extensive cutscenes that also affected other buffs and mechanics on other jobs negatively.

They had multiple opportunities to do something about it, and did NOTHING to change how GL works at any point in time until Shadowbringers, and the best they could come up with was just to remove it. They could have offered some means to ramp it down incrementally, so that missing a refresh didn't take the whole dang thing away. They could have offered us something that made it REWARDING to maintain over an extended period of time, similar to Enochian (and it wouldn't even be the first time they've taken design cues from other jobs). They could have made it another resource that interacted with our kit beyond the self-buff to our speed and power. They could made Anatman a full GL refresh on a long cooldown (but allow us to shorten that cooldown for successful combo-initiated refreshes of GL). People have been throwing around suggestions on how to change GL for the better for years, and none of it reached SE, ever??? None of those ideas are my own, they probably aren't even close to the best ideas people have thrown around for it!

They didn't do anything but give up, on a job and a mechanic they've continually screwed up with every expansion, as a means to appease a shrinking number of Monk players that have been begging that something, anything be done, all in service to another set of players who didn't even like playing Monk in the first place, in raids or dungeons. It's frustrating to me that this is supposed to be considered a "good start" when they turned Anatman into a Twin Snakes refresh, of all the bloody insipid decisions they could have possibly made! This is supposed to be a "good start" when once again we're sitting in one elemental fist forever and we don't even have a legitimate reason to switch off of it. Even the start of ShB managed to half-heartedly offer Monk a reason to switch from Fire to Wind!

But hey, at least we can use our former capstone skill in the middle of an awkward burst phase.

If Black Mage players were more vocal about losing Enochian to cutscenes/boss disengages, SE would have shut the servers down to hotfix it in 24 hours or less. Meanwhile, they've left Monk to languish for years simply because it could still do damage in spite of their best efforts to clamp down on what harder working and better players than myself have tried to extract out of this confused mess of a kit, and I expect nothing better from them at this point. Fortunately, there's other jobs to play, and I do play them, but everything surrounding how Monk has been "fixed" from Heavensward to Stormblood and now Shadowbringers really ticks me off.

[ssunny2008]

GL

It´s nothing new that i was a fan of the prepatch MNK. But i really never had such issues with GL especially with the given tools from each expansion. E8s was the latest fight with a cutszene and no safespot. But i never felt like i was behind in damage or something, just because i lost GL. PB was up after that cutszene anyway. I wouldn´t even say that MNK´s kit had so much issues lately. "Useless" or rare used tools for the endgame yes, but overall? The actual button spamming especially with a bad connection i´ve for some reasons imo, is way more cancer and straight up dumb to play.
And i really can´t accept the opinion about that from players, who never used the given tools properly, never improved or just run braindead dungeons 24/7. Those who brought us to the point where "maining a class" isn´t that much fun and unique anymore.

They should bring GL back in favor of fists of wind and a "smoother" opener. Just give us "1 safestack" for the rest of the fight to bring GL instant on 4 stacks. You´ll get this stack for 30s infight or when GL has 4 stacks the first time and you just won´t lose it via cutszene (or death?), so nobody could cry about any circumstances. Revamp Anatman as the active button and things are solved.
Otherwise, just get ride of those annoying cutszenes. They still haven´t learned anything from lvl50 castrum obviously.

I don´t know if we get anything new or old with Endwalker. But i can´t see anything good yet with the obvious healer changes and a new melee class. Tanking got straight up boring and the new tier is a joke too. Why do we even need an OT, for that one tankbuster?
All what i expect are some damage buffs from existing skills or 2 new dumb off gcd´s on any classes. The boss / dungeon qualities seems to go downwards with each expansion too. And if they touch the positionals in any way, well... good bye MNK, was fun while it lasted.

People have been throwing around suggestions on how to change GL for the better for years, and none of it reached SE, ever???

I would actually call, that they just pretty much ignore a lot of forums / posts or just take care about headlines, whatever. They´re not even able to implement a weekend support, why should they care about the stuff here?

[SpeckledBurd]

-Snip Long-

The difference between Enochian and old Greased Lightning is that Enochian actually had a means of recovering it if it fell off, without tradeoffs and on a short cooldown. The only time Monk had something close to that was Stormblood and the devs didn't like that we were Tornado Kicking so they killed Monk's recovery instead of changing Tornado Kick. The solution has always been simple, make GL recovery good and relegated to one action, clean up our upkeep actions so we only had one, change Tornado Kick to something else, and give us some reward for very basic upkeep or something else to strive for.

As for why people would consider nuking GL a good start, I'd say there's a couple of reasons.

The first is that there functionally no difference in removing Greased Lightning and actually giving the job decent recovery. Upkeep was already brainless thanks to the formshift change in 5.05 (further improved in 5.3). That on its own already killed the biggest way that GL required you to play since you no longer had to aggressively chase the boss to keep it up, and it was also a grim necessity because the upkeep tools had wouldn't have been capable of dealing with how they often design untargetable phases in fights these days (or really for most of Stormblood either). The 5.4 changes didn't change how Monk played from moment to moment at all, it just removed a bunch of points of annoyance that would have just as much been fixed if they'd given us a 30 second Greased Lightning recovery button like Enochian or BotD has.

The second reason I'd say it's a good start is that I basically didn't trust the devs to develop Greased Lightning anymore. They have repeatedly proven themselves incapable of doing it properly and repeatedly made the same mistakes. This game has had three expansions and half of the skills we have received have either been designed for edgecases that rarely come up, have been GL upkeep skills that were guaranteed to fail at their job, or have missed obvious developments on core concepts like changing Tornado Kick into a cooldown we'd earn for properly upkeeping GL for X amount of time (something I have advocated for since the beginning of Stormblood). Watching the developers fail repeatedly to expand on these core concepts has left me jaded. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Any potential that jobs have in their mechanics is meaningless if it isn't manifested, and Monk is the story of there being a ton of potential of which none is manifested. I would have loved to see them actually make something good of Greased Lightning, but at least by it not existing they can't create a bunch of worthless skills for the fourth expansion in a row. This is also the reason I want the fist stances to die, there's plenty that could be done with them, but I don't trust them to not remake Tackle Mastery for the third consecutive expansion.

The third is that calling it "a good start" doesn't actually mean that 5.4 is good. I'd almost say it's a really patronizing way of saying "For something you called a rework this is pretty awful actually". I can at least see how this will force job development to focus on different concepts or new concepts in the future and prevent the devs from falling into the same pitfalls they have repeatedly fallen into for the last three expansions. I'd also say the job also can't stay like this because as it is, because playing the job right now is miserable. The burst phase feels terrible. Chakra feels terrible. Chakra is under developed. New Riddle of Earth feels terrible. Six sided Star is lack luster as a capstone and should be at like level 40. The jobs movement kit is easily the worst of the Melee. The fist stances are still terrible and shouldn't exist. Just about every action the job has lacks impact. If Monk stays the same in 6.0 and there aren't more major changes then the devs are going to continue getting essays from me about how awful this job is for a fourth expansion in a row and the essay I already have about why the Monk playerbase doesn't trust them will get a new paragraph or two.

As for Anatman refreshing Twin Snakes being insultingly bad, yeah it is. However the skill was conceptually terrible from the get go and it's been insultingly bad this entire expansion. In the context of it being something the devs had to throw together to placate a furious Monk playerbase at the end of an expansion after screwing up catastrophically for the third expansion in a row while they save any new skill ideas for releasing in the next one for PR purposes? It's about what you can expect.

[Garet]

Oh yes, I love variety too. And the thing is, if one job is too hard, learning another might help you on the path to that other job. Even that said, there's so much wiggle room in this game to learn things that I don't see a requirement for people to be efficient until much later.

I too like that GL is a trait now, it removes one of the biggest annoyances that had me side more with SAM and is now probably making MNK more attractive to me, yet I also get why it is missed, although it was something broken on MNK I can get the desire for a fix that keeps GL.

This is off-topic but I see that you have most jobs at 80. Am currently undecided which to main since loving most jobs haha. I just returned to game from heavensward so mostly have only lvl 60 jobs. I am choosing between monk or dragoon at the moment, which do u find more fun at lvl 80?

[Saefinn]

This is off-topic but I see that you have most jobs at 80. Am currently undecided which to main since loving most jobs haha. I just returned to game from heavensward so mostly have only lvl 60 jobs. I am choosing between monk or dragoon at the moment, which do u find more fun at lvl 80?

Funnily enough, I've been struggling to settle on a melee job to play myself. I am the kind of player who tries to pick a focus for each role, because I like to mix it up sometimes for variety. And melee DPS is the only one I've struggled with this time around, because I like all of them and none stand out above the others. So I can understand the difficulty of choice.

DRG is in a better place design-wise from what I understand, but I'm disadvantaged from the perspective of optimised play, because I've not tried to perfect my rotations on either. But I am aware that there are still bigger MNK problems from that perspective, but not as bad as pre 5.4.

But in terms of fun? I like MNK's aesthetic as I used to do martial arts I have a bias (especially as I feel MNK gamifies some concepts, that makes me like it more) and I like the heavier focus on nailing positionals and how your rotation can be reactionary, in that you can change your rotation halfway though, EG: if you're in your AoE rotation and you're down to 1 enemy you don't have to make your next move an AoE. Or if you open from the rear and AoE moves you to the flank, you can follow with an attack to the flank. So that's something that feels better to me. Every other job either has me finish a specific rotation or start a new one, MNK lets me adapt it.


And I like MNK's AoE rotation, because it flows and all-but-1 of my abilities don't need me to target anything. Coming from a DNC background it's a preference, because I can spam a little more mindlessly rather than re-target when my targeted enemy dies and I don't have to think about where I'm facing except for Enlightenment.

But I think DRG is flashier and has some cooler abilities, it's always satisfying to use the jumps & dives IMO and it feels quite bouncy to play. Whilst it's not as heavy on positions, it will still reward you for them, especially in that doing them successfully will allow you to use Raiden Thrust when you learn it. So you get something noticeable out of doing it right. And it's AoE rotation still flows well and is consistent, so I have no complaints about it.

A couple more comparisons: I think DRG gets the better level 80 capstone. It's cool looking, it's ripped straight from the Niddhogg fight and you build up to it.

MNK's is not as satisfying and is a DPS loss unless you use it when enemy dies or just before a phase transition.

But Brotherhood is a lot less effort than Dragonsight. Dragonsight requires you to be close to who you used it on, Brotherhood buffs everybody. So that could be appealing or it might be considered an inconvenience (depends on your perspective). Plus you need to target a person, Brotherhood you set & forget.

DRG's gameplay gets an evolution between 60 and 80 whereas MNK at 80 is barely different to what it is like to play at 60. So if you have MNK at 60, you've got a pretty good idea of what it's going to be like maxed out. DRG will flesh out what you with Blood of the Dragon between 60 and 80, which offers a new dynamic to your rotation.

So if you've got them both to 60, it's probably a good place to start comparing how they feel in testing them out.