How is monk after the rework?

[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.