How is monk after the rework?

[Yokubo]

As somebody who has played Monk from ARR, I've got to say Monk peaked for me in ARR. The use of Touch of Death (DoT off combo rotation) and Fracture (Cross class DoT) made the class feel fun and interesting. I would actually think through the combo and juggling the 3 DoTs (3 including Demolish). The use of the OGCD (Off Globals) was fun weaving in.

I didn't read all the pages but I saw a couple people complaining about too many OGCDs currently. Honestly I think that is super insane and don't know what you mean. Aside from the personal buffs (RoF, Brotherhood, PB, Potion), there is only Shoulder Tackle, Elixir Field, and TK. Weaving in Role skills and defensives shouldn't be part of the 'rotation' but you can still use those in between your weaponskills. Going into Shadowbringer Monk got gutted hard and the only thing that Monk has been given as an actual useful skill is Four-Point Fury (AoE rotation) and Enlightenment (AoE balls). The same 6 skills have been used since ARR which isn't necessarily a bad thing as I think the main combo itself isn't TERRIBLE, but I would like to see something more than just passive buffs and situational skills given to the class.

The removal of GL is another QoL change, but completely makes Anatman useless. The best use of Anatman is to refresh Twin Snakes in dungeon pulls or delay having to use it in rotation 1 of a re-engage. In the previous expansions I said "The day Monk gets GL4 is the day they rule the world!" and then we got it, but it was such an underwhelming addition. They buffed Fists of Fire at level 72, and then gave us GL4 at 76 via Fists of Wind. When they removed GL it just turned into a % damage increase so we can stay in fists of fire, but those are just passive changes to the class which was previously something to manage. Now the only thing left to manage is Demolish and Twin Snakes, which is literally every other combo or every 3.

I jokingly said this with my FC but ever since I've been really wanting it, and I truly think it could breathe life back to the class, that if they added a Combo Counter (Similar to GL increasing Skill Speed only) but it stacks endlessly (or to a high value) upon landing successful positional until you fail to get a positional bonus. Even if SE continues to hate Monk and gut and give nothing in return, this could make the class fun to have something to manage and rewards players who are going for those positional bonuses [Which should be everybody]. It's just currently Monk does not feel rewarding to play because the lack of a class identity or like a purpose/goal.

Also I have been seeing a lot of very good recommendations or ideas for Monk. I truly truly hope that SE considers some of these ideas, because we who have been playing monk have first hand experience of what we would like to see changed because we've been dealing with the same class for so long, and I think we collectively can offer great ideas that would make the class more fun or rewarding.

[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.

[SpeckledBurd]

To be fair, there are also plenty of people out there who like the bootshine rotation as a baseline but have other problems with the job (useless skills, lack of build-up, tornado kick animation clipping, etc). The people talking recently aren't representative of everyone. You are right that my suggestion is in line with how the devs develop, which was my intent in making it. I think it just adds onto what we have, making it more satisfying, while being something I could actually see them doing. I don't think it would make the job any worse per se. I am just keeping my expectations low and offering up one suggestion for now that is feasible. I would like to see a really cool system like blitzes and whatnot implemented in the future though. Another idea is to have the bootshine plus be used during downtime but make PB more nuanced somehow

I'd be pretty confident to say there's significantly more people who dislike Leaden Bootshine than like it when you consider the last two years of discussion around Shadowbringer's Monk as a whole on the OF. DK/Leaden Bootshine's spam has come up a lot as far as examples about what people have considered to be an issue with the job in Shadowbringers, as well as Leaden Bootshine's positional being disproportionate when Monk already is loaded on positionals.

While we can give up on a mechanic as if it were fated all along for doom despite being the most iconic piece of a job's pacing and presence in combat, if it worked, then worked better, then worked better still, only to be killed off because the latest additions decided to go opposite of everything that worked before it, is that really the mechanic's fault?

Sure, but Greased Lightning still had major issues, as basically every bit of feedback going as far back as Heavensward can attest. 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 and the penalty from losing it was falling from the baseline other jobs operate at directly to doing as much damage as a Healer with weakness, then it was a serious issue for both it's recovery and upkeep to be awful. The fact is they'd developed the mechanic so poorly that the scope of "Fixing Greased Lightning" had to be 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" only added to the issues.

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. 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. 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.

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

I brought up ARR because it was, capacity-wise, the worst state GL had ever been in. HW was objectively better, in that you had compensation for the ramp-up and a longer GL duration. And yet even in that worst of all states, it was a fully workable mechanic.

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.

Again, here, I have to on one hand concur and on another disagree.

While it's absolutely true that the devs here can freak out over usage they (sometimes very negligently) did not predict, we can also make your same claim towards any skill that adds potency (such that it becomes necessary to those who would optimize their play) and whose usage is somehow disliked by some set of players, claiming that it is therefore "fundamental[ly]... flawed". That does not seem tenable.

Yes, TK rotations were, at the time, problematic for high-ping and/or high-SkS Monks, but that had far more to do with implementation -- notably, the necessary triple weave. That problem is similar, to, say, to Flaming Arrow or Salted Earth being "fundamentally flawed" if either had a chance of reset and might therefore be used in close timing with itself, causing delays and difficult-to-balance uptime cost across varying pings because of its lack of queuing (as per all ground-targeted skills). Such would be a problem only until XIV allows for ground-targeting skills (and/or the first active line of macros, thus bypassing the issue through <t> or <mo> targeting) to be queued, and the game improved universally as a result. Granted, TK's fix would have a bit far simpler: ideally, allowing Tackles to animation-clip their related stances, and at minimum having GL apply on Wind Tackle itself.

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.

Yeah, makes sense... I just... couldn't quite manage it. It's one of those forced-smile situations that'd just make me feel more at a loss / dead inside. A little too "arm can't itch if it dun' been amputated" for me.

[waterboytkd]

I was kickin' around an idea, it aint perfect but it'd be a damn sight more interesting than what we have now.

The Forbidden Chakra, Enlightenment, Tornado Kick, Perfect Balance, Shoulder Tackle and Anatman are all redesigned. The Fist of Element abilities are removed because they're useless. Make Fists of Wind a passive if it's so important.

So Chakras get split into the Light and Dark chakras from our job quests. Also we have a max of 7. (Why did they make such a big deal about 7 chakras of Light and 7 of Dark and then give us 5 of Yellow? Ugh.)

...

Lastly, re-add Riddle of Wind as its own button, a 2 minute cooldown that increases the range of your melee weapon skills to 20 yalms for 10 seconds. The ultimate disconnect move to make up for the inability to generate chakras off a target. Your autoattacks will not continue if you move out of range, and your oGCDs most likely won't reach, so you're still losing a lot of damage but you're not entirely helpless. Or add Chi Blast which gives 1 chakra of each, but that feels way too similar to Ninja and Samurai's generic ranged filler move. SSS will stay more or less the same as-is, but now it has a more distinct role without manual chakra generation. Riddle of Earth could do with some tweaking but I'm not sure on how to get that working. Personally I'd remove the no-positionals thing and just make it a pure defensive skill of some sort, but I know a lot of people want it to keep the anti-positionals functionality it has now.

I'm really late to this conversation, but I think these are really cool ideas. I would only have a couple of changes:
- Riddle of Wind: I'd like this to just be a 10-yalm skip back.
- SSS: I think this should replace Form Shift. Reduce the potency to 270 (or buff it to 280), give it a normal GCD recast, and then it gives a single stack of Formlessness. You can open with it, use it as filler to prevent oGCD drift, etc.
- as far as ranged attacking goes, the Fist Stances could stay but change to the following: Air stance could increase the range of your melee attacks from 3y to 10y, for when you're forced back; Earth stance gains "You ignore positional requirements against enemies for which you have enmity", becoming the stance for solo play; Fire stance remains unchanged, still being the default stance you want to be in. The idea here is that Air and Earth stance become niche.

But I REALLY like your Light and Dark Chakra idea, and really like the notion of overcap protection.

[Sqwall]

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.

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.


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.

Nail head....meet hammer.

[Prishax]

I didn´t play Monk before rework but as it is now i kinda enjoy it(80 and playing endgame content) and i found a good solution for everything except Atatman^^

Also Monk now definitely has build ups but i would agree that the strongest skills look kinda boring so as the True Strike and Lash Strike(propably not the right english name, i play in german) chain.