How is monk after the rework?

[Bhearil]

People have issues with jobs become more and more "slam you head against the keyboard and perform decently". Might be useful for people with very heavy motor issues, but the rest will get bored to death.

One thing is to lower the skill floor or simply fix the convoluted mess some jobs have as rotation so players dont get overwhelmed at the start and another to make it so braindead that you can still play at a decent level with one hand while watching netflix on the other screen and eating with the other. Plus the skill celing was lowered as hell and the skill expression has been severily reduced. People like their efforts to be rewarded and being noticeable if you play a job to a high level compared to the average player.

Not mentioning jobs becoming too similar between each other almost becoming skins instead of jobs (for now affects healers and tanks mostly, fingers crossed that they fix it for Endwalker)

[Shurrikhan]

People have issues with jobs become more and more "slam you head against the keyboard and perform decently". Might be useful for people with very heavy motor issues, but the rest will get bored to death

Not mentioning jobs becoming too similar between each other almost becoming skins instead of jobs

Tbf, if accessibility were built more around motor issues, we'd get less button-bloat that amount to non-decisions (see DRG combos) and a more cohesive kit that requires less hand-splaying across 28+ keys to reach even mediocre depth.

XIV's accessibility, in that vein/degree, has been increasingly built towards less physical impairments, and sadly only from the top down (relative difficulty decreases and trimmed mechanics) rather than from the bottom up (in-game learning systems, including even just a reasonable difficult curve in place of our current short plateau of ill-defined edges).

[Bhearil]

Tbf, if accessibility were built more around motor issues, we'd get less button-bloat that amount to non-decisions (see DRG combos) and a more cohesive kit that requires less hand-splaying across 28+ keys to reach even mediocre depth.

XIV's accessibility, in that vein/degree, has been increasingly built towards less physical impairments, and sadly only from the top down (relative difficulty decreases and trimmed mechanics) rather than from the bottom up (in-game learning systems, including even just a reasonable difficult curve in place of our current short plateau of ill-defined edges).

Blame on that the obsession that Yoshi-P has that pressing a combo in the correct order adds "depth" and shows "skill"

Is kinda blatant on characters that literally have one combo yet they have free bloat for that nonsense like RDM melee combo or DRK, or most if not all of Aoe combos.

In any case we have reached the point where you can spam a single targer/aoe combo while ignoring the rest of your kit and still perform at a decent level as long as you press the glowing keys

[Shurrikhan]

Blame on that the obsession that Yoshi-P has that pressing a combo in the correct order adds "depth" and shows "skill"

And yet he'd never force that trash on his own job...

Though, admittedly, he did let BLM be saddled with Xenoglossy in a game where you'd pretty much never take focus damage on a single target over at least 56% greater total damage; until such time as focus damage is actually a meaningful and pervasive mechanic over total, that's just bloat in that the capacity and flair/flavor could have as easily been done by a trait to change Flare's damage and appearance when no other enemies are in range. (Despair, at a mere ~10% damage loss at 2 targets relative to Flare is at least the most understandable of the lot, but still begs the question of why XIV bothers with AoE/ST choice distinction if their content so rarely ever makes it pertinent.)

To be fair, I'd rather the focus damage be made pertinent than lose the choices, but as it stands any difficulty of that sort seems completely out of vision for (or, the design philosophy of) 99+% of XIV's combat.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like an overarching problem with the game's job design is that most of them run on rotations rather than a priority system. As in the sequence of buttons you press is largely set in stone, and any deviation from the optimal sequence will cause you to lose DPS.
That's why jobs can start to feel boring - not because they lack interesting mechanics, but because the way you have to interact with said mechanics is so static.

IMO the game needs more procs across the board. Not every job has to be as RNG-heavy as Dancer, say, but having a degree of unpredictability in your job's kit can help your brain stay engaged a lot more than just rattling off a strict minute-long rotation.

Even systemically predictable job/class playflow can still have far more depth than we have. XIV's, after all, isn't only predictable, but all too often linear and invariably shallow, and with incredibly little external variance with which to interact (except, perhaps, in healing a sh*tshow).

With no strategic choices to be made, procs can only force peripheral response to incredibly basic cues; one can be fully zoned out and still manage them just fine. In such a system, no amount of procs will actually generate meaningful decision-making; it just takes you further out of future moments and sense of aligning with CDs, etc., in favor of keeping your status bar or scrolling combat text's buff feed always in view, arguably a loss for what few jobs do have pertinent banking elements, like Samurai's Iaijutsu or DRG's Stardiver. For the unknown to actually create meaningful interaction, there needs to be some sense of stakes or claim, of momentum/synergy and gamble -- an expectation of what's to come, a plan to best meet it, and its hedges for alternate outcomes or a deliberate all-in lack thereof -- that precedes the unknown.

There have to be not only allowance but also payoff for approaching a fight in different ways that would capitalize upon different circumstances, be they internal (such as in procs) or external (a boss using a random skill or randomly starting into one of multiple possible phases).

[Big-Isaac]

I feel like an overarching problem with the game's job design is that most of them run on rotations rather than a priority system. As in the sequence of buttons you press is largely set in stone, and any deviation from the optimal sequence will cause you to lose DPS.
That's why jobs can start to feel boring - not because they lack interesting mechanics, but because the way you have to interact with said mechanics is so static.

IMO the game needs more procs across the board. Not every job has to be as RNG-heavy as Dancer, say, but having a degree of unpredictability in your job's kit can help your brain stay engaged a lot more than just rattling off a strict minute-long rotation.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think until Shadowbringers I've ever felt like there's anything fundamentally wrong with Monk; I'd merely wished they had a tiny bit more polish done.

In ARR, I had wanted to see...

• GL to fall off one stack at a time,
• GL to grant movement speed equal to its Attack Power buff,
  
  
• PB's cooldown reduced a bit (e.g., to 2 minutes, down from its then 3 minutes),
• the Fists stances made more significant, such as by having Fire inflict an Ignite-style (ramping) DoT from damage dealt, Earth generate damage absorption from damage dealt, and Wind to also further bump Attack Speed (making it favorable for rotational realignment between oGCDs and DoTs, but otherwise used over Fire only for bonus mobility),
  
  
• and for TP and MP ticks to each be reduced by 20% but then to tick at a rate equal to one's GCD (net neutral baseline, but mostly negating the resource inefficiency of Skill/Spell Speed).

In HW, I had wanted to see...

• GL to instead remain at a 10s timer (but to, again, fall off one stack at a time) and retain the Demolish-animation-exploit by which to effectively extend it to almost 12s only with proper timing (those who kept GL up in T9 will likely remember this),
• PB's cooldown reduced a bit more (e.g., to 90 seconds),
  
  
• Chakra to be passively, granularly generated over time spent off the GCD at 40% of a TFC per GCD's time (freeing up the button and making it far smoother),
• Form Shift to be passively generated per .5 seconds (i.e., the queuing period) less than a GCD's time spent off the GCD, allowing access to a further form's skills without losing access to the current form (thus saving a button and removing the need for FS spam into Coeurl form between pulls/packs),
• The Forbidden Chakra to be usable at any amount of Chakra, for nearly proportionate potency (slightly favoring usage at Chakra cap so as not to have people spamming it constantly and therefore not needing to know when the next boss jump would be),
  
  
• Tornado Kick to be usable at any GL level, at nearly proportionate potency and a 4-GCD cooldown or less, rather than a rigid 10 seconds,
• for Tornado Kick to be just barely potent enough to be used rotationally if within buff windows before Coeurl into PB (though it'd still usually be held just for finishing off a dangerous mob or forcing a phase-shift).
  
  
• and maybe Elixir Field not to be just a generic use-on-refresh AoE oGCD, perhaps instead being built up by Chakra spent (as a sort of mirror to The Forbidden Chakra),

And, by 4.3...

• GL again stays at 10s (see above, and remember that the suggested Fists of Wind offers a further ~10% Attack Speed to compete with Fists of Fire outside of high potency-per-execute GCDs or oGCD-laden periods),
• Deep Meditation built off raw potency dealt, instead of a % chance (since the above HW version of Chakra is already granular, more like a 0-100 gauge, you'd just get 1 gauge per every X raw potency dealt),
  
  
• Touch of Death retained, but perhaps as something not quite so front-loaded (and instead mostly as soft-CD access to a positional-less skill),
• some native alternative to Fracture returned to provide a second positional-less action every so often alongside Touch of Death (or, an early version of SSS that has at least situational rotational usage for alignment -- remember, we've already saved two buttons by making Form Shift and Meditation smoother and more intuitive),
• Arm of the Destroyer retains its AoE silence at lower potency, but adds to it a (DR-less) pacify,
  
  
• Riddle of Fire and Riddle of Earth would remain even if you left their stance,
• Brotherhood made to affect all damage and be generated by both attacks and spells (but half that damage-increasing effect and proc chance would be split across all allies, as to make Monk less dependent on a full party / to buff Monk's solo and light-party play),
  
  
• Earth's Reply removed and Riddle of Earth, itself, made to grant the further mitigation,
• Riddle of Earth made to freeze GL drain until 5s after your next attack (to a maximum of 15 seconds' hold) and grant up to 3 stacks of GL based on damage absorbed (making it a TK-generator, so to speak, rather than merely redundant given TK), with overcap adding duration above the normal maximum, at 6s per overcap stack (yes, this may slightly balance Monk around incoming damage, but since such damage is the rarity, the cost would be minimal despite the notable flavor when taken advantage of),
  
  
• Wind Tackle, itself, made to grant Greased Lightning and deal the potency previously given to Riddle of Wind,
• Riddle of Wind made to deal no potency (only to dash and stun at no DR, atop perhaps increasing your dodge chance against the next attack against you at an amount inversely proportionate to would-be damage taken) and made available whenever your Tackle skill is on cooldown (appearing in place of the on-cooldown Tackle skill until that skill is within its queuing period of refreshing its CD), though it'd force you into Fists of Wind on use (just like the other Riddles),
  
  
• Fire Tackle to have some bonus effect, such as by detonating Fist of Fire's DoT (see ARR) to double-dip into damage windows, as the detonation would itself apply further Fire DoT from its damage (and perhaps also be AoE),
• Earth Tackle to push you back up to 15 yalms (to pathable limits; cannot fly off cliffs) if within the target's hitbox and the target (e.g., a boss) cannot be pushed back, thus able to act as a backstep,
• and Earth Tackle to apply damage suppression onto the target based on damage dealt, giving it some raid utility in keeping with Fists of Earth itself.

While those are a lot of small changes, they're all pretty fine and work from the fundamentals given. It's a mere matter of polish, rather than fundamental revamp.

As for Shadowbringers...

• You do not introduce Anatman as a GL freeze. There is no such need.
• You do not lock GL4 to Fists of Wind. (You may, however, wish to use it as a variable-duration mode charged by Chakra spent, though this would further back-load Monk a bit and would require a very faint compensatory bump to Monk's sustained DPS.)
• You do not increase the cooldown of Perfect Balance.
• By all means, do offer Enlightenment as an alternative to The Forbidden Chakra, but likewise make it a granular spender.
• If you are going to add a further mechanic for notable flair, it should be neither (A) restrictive nor (B) redundant.

[Ilyn]

I get no enjoyment from monk anymore , there is no buildup to anything . Ya greased lightning was a pain in the arse but satisfying when you were done right . Monks and its weapon skills and positional never bothered me and find it engaging but everything else just needs a total rework . Me I personally would like them to take some inspiration from Naruto and let us open our Inner Gates and rework most of it's skillset around it like replacing support like Mantra with the Gate of Healing and Life . Gate of Opening, Pain and Limit as self buffs and Gate of Wonder and Death would unlock it's heavy hitting abilities ..... you know just something to work up it . Plus who wouldn't want to RP as Might Guy and Rock Lee lol @ it can also give a good reason to give us our green (and a red) aura around us again ...... I miss the greased lightning aura

[Shurrikhan]

Sure, but Greased Lightning still had major issues, as basically every bit of feedback going as far back as Heavensward can attest.

Feedback commonly from those who did not main Monk and never bothered to learn how to maintain it? You could have PB for every forced GL drop in every raid. If one lost it on T9 boss jumps, save into meteor phase (where PB was again available), that was from poor play. Rockbreaker allowed you an extra half-second of range and could leniently snapshot GL and Demolish effectively extended its next application's duration by ~1.5 seconds, returning you to GL3 even if you'd already lost all 3 stacks between the ability's actuation and its GL application. You could use stanceless skills (ID, HM, Frac, ToD) to delay Coerl skills to just before jumps. Those were all fundamental aspects of the job's design. On any other job, we'd largely disqualify feedback based on failure to use the job's fundamentals, no?

And when their solution to Greased Lightning's issues for three straight expansions were always half measures that were guaranteed to fail outside of narrow circumstances when the penalty from failing was falling from the baseline other jobs operate at directly to doing as much damage as a Healer with weakness.

The above hyperbole aside, two things:

1. We've already established that the punishment was excessive.
2. Their solution. Their. Why would we use the fact the devs did X as warrant that X was worth doing or the only available course of action? That's circular logic, at best.

The fact is they'd developed the mechanic so poorly that the scope of "Fixing Greased Lightning" had expanded to "Fixing Greased Lightning and the third of its kit that is terrible upkeep skills in such a way that we can win any scrap of approval from the most scorned player group in the game".

Yes. They developed the idea poorly. A mechanic's being developed for the worse has no bearing on its initial quality. If I give you a stellar painting and then much later splatter ketchup across it, that does not make the painting itself horrible. It merely means any conventional use of the painting was wrecked. GL ought to have been less punishing since it necessarily worked off a point of sustain, but all else literally ended with TK. You determine the potency cost, relative the assumed baseline (GL3 sustained), of ramping up to GL3 under PB and give that to TK. Voila. There is no longer a penalty to that ramp-up since the ramp-up occurs only as often as its due compensation.

That was it. That's where it should have ended. We did not need Riddle of Earth, at least as GL maintenance, because we already had TK. We did not need Anatman, because we already had TK. The compensation was already met. They needed only to not nerf PB to hell.

Yes, RoW's GL generation then necessarily allowed for TK to be used rotationally when both tools are present, since the potency cost would shrink even while its reward remains the same, but I don't see that as a problem (and even if you see a rotational action as being more involved than fire-and-forget-on-CD-refresh as a problem, it's still an altogether separate one caused by RoW, not the base concept of GL). To my mind, the only issue there was the triple-weave (especially given that XIV refuses to queue any oGCDs beyond the first per GCD-gap).

That said, I still would rather we have old GL, preferably with the PB timer from the back half of Stormblood and measures taken so PB was just a recovery tool/niche damage option (as it was in Heavensward essentially) rather than an accidental big damage cooldown.

Personally, I preferred 4.3's TK rotations, even playing at extreme SkS and 120 ping, but I could go either way. (I'd have just preferred the tipping point for those rotations be a bit less determined by your stats and a little less tipped in TK's favor.)

I'd go so far as to say that the GL system actually was fixed in 4.2 when Perfect Balance was 60 seconds and that nerfing it to two minutes instead of changing Tornado Kick so it wasn't being used in a non-developer mandated way was basically the crux of Shadowbringers Monk being the trashfire it has been.

Agreed. 100% agreed. (Even if with the above, tangential caveat.)

The only reason I'm okay with it is that they can't make the same mistakes they've made for three expansions in a row by adding something else like Anatman or Stormblood era Riddle of Earth.

When the most direct solution to destructive, but self-contained, weeds is to just remove the weeds, I'd rather they'd have just... removed the weeds, rather than razing the whole field.

[SpeckledBurd]

Feedback commonly from those who did not main Monk and never bothered to learn how to maintain it? You could have PB for every forced GL drop in every raid. If one lost it on T9 boss jumps, save into meteor phase (where PB was again available), that was from poor play. Rockbreaker allowed you an extra half-second of range and could leniently snapshot GL and Demolish effectively extended its next application's duration by ~1.5 seconds, returning you to GL3 even if you'd already lost all 3 stacks between the ability's actuation and its GL application. You could use stanceless skills (ID, HM, Frac, ToD) to delay Coerl skills to just before jumps. Those were all fundamental aspects of the job's design. On any other job, we'd largely disqualify feedback based on failure to use the job's fundamentals, no?

You brought up T9 which is an ARR trial but I didn't say ARR, I was talking about Heavensward. For all that GL worked there as originally designed, the poor recovery in Heavensward was one of the biggest issues.

Heavensward was essentially where we saw the beginning of the current the trend of fight design. Where the developers liked to add multiple phases of the boss being untargetable for enough time for GL to drop with enough frequency that you just wouldn't have it. Things like Resin Bombs in A1S which were 90s apart meaning you'd have a slow start, Thordan Extreme which between the fight starting and PB coming back on cooldown had two transitions longer than PB's full duration, Robot Conga interlude 1 in A8S which came close enough to BJ phase beginning that PB was still on cooldown, Nidhogg Extreme where there a 20 second divebomb phase 30 seconds into the fight, and A11S where the two active time Maneuvers were so close to each other your only option was to pick which one you'd rather have a fast restart on. All of these mechanics are instances where Monk was forced to lose GL and wouldn't have PB coming back even with Form Shift. Worse, they are are all fairly long in duration to the point where the paltry potency of Tornado Kick and Meditation didn't do nearly enough to make up for the downtime since Monk's burst damage at the time was nonexistent.

Those are also just the examples I can think of off the top of my head where it was forced. There were many, many more throughout the expansion. That is also just how they build encounters now.

Ultimately though the solution has always just been to cut Perfect Balance's cooldown. Riddle of Earth was unnecessary. Anatman was unnecessary. Everything that they did other than that has just been superfluous. The Form Shift GL refresh might have been necessary if they had built additional incentives for upkeeping GL in the vein of Dragon Eyes or Polyglot, but that's all hypothetical.

Yes. They developed the idea poorly. A mechanic's being developed for the worse has no bearing on its initial quality. If I give you a stellar painting and then much later splatter ketchup across it, that does not make the painting itself horrible. It merely means any conventional use of the painting was wrecked. GL ought to have been less punishing since it necessarily worked off a point of sustain, but all else literally ended with TK. You determine the potency cost, relative the assumed baseline (GL3 sustained), of ramping up to GL3 under PB and give that to TK. Voila. There is no longer a penalty to that ramp-up since the ramp-up occurs only as often as its due compensation.

That was it. That's where it should have ended. We did not need Riddle of Earth, at least as GL maintenance, because we already had TK. We did not need Anatman, because we already had TK. The compensation was already met. They needed only to not nerf PB to hell.

Yes, RoW's GL generation then necessarily allowed for TK to be used rotationally when both tools are present, since the potency cost would shrink even while its reward remains the same, but I don't see that as a problem (and even if you see a rotational action as being more involved than fire-and-forget-on-CD-refresh as a problem, it's still an altogether separate one caused by RoW, not the base concept of GL). To my mind, the only issue there was the triple-weave (especially given that XIV refuses to queue any oGCDs beyond the first per GCD-gap).

More or less agreed overall, however I'll make one note on Tornado Kick.

The developers don't like players using any action for anything other than what they design it as. This has ultimately always been the shortfall of Monk and especially Tornado Kick. Even if Tornado Kick's potency was perfect for how much Monk would lose from having to ramp up over X number of GCDs, it would still become a source of unwanted potency for anyone trying to optimize on the most basic level of not wasting cooldowns.

Therefore, from a developer perspective at least, the fundamental design of Tornado Kick has always flawed. They should have either realigned their expectations for the skill so it was something akin to Heavensward Geirskogul and used rotationally while spending your buff resource, or they should have changed it.

Them not doing either until they ultimately just axed GL was a failure on their part.

When the most direct solution to destructive, but self-contained, weeds is to just remove the weeds, I'd rather they'd have just... removed the weeds, rather than razing the whole field.

I ultimately feel the same way. The thought that they can't make anymore (bad) Greased Lightning upkeep skills is just me trying to find a nugget of positivity in what I think was the wrong move.