How is monk after the rework?

[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.

[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.