Controversioal Changes to Monk

[ssunny2008]

I would not play monk with an update alone, but not because of positional abilities. Positionals as a pain point for monk are a biiiiit of a false problem. They aren't really that important and when they are you have True North.

They´re important to do a decent damage. But yeah, they´re not important, because the given content doesn´t force anything you need to take care about. So why does ppl even want to get ride of them? Don´t play them, don´t claim to be a gamer and stay on a noobish level.

The overall issue with Monk is that too many of its elements were punishing.

MNK, especially the SHB MNK pre 5.3 has never been punishing. You had more than enough tools to maintain GL. Devs just want us to watch the same dumb cutszene over and over again. This is a design-flaw since castrum. No matter how short they´ve become.

But if we go that way... you failed, died to an aoe and got punished with a death or damage down. Should we get ride of it, because it´s too punishing?
A player wouldn´t get punished if he wouldn´t fail. It´s stuff you meet everywhere in RL too. If anything, classes NEED MORE PUNISHMENTS for bad plays, so players wouldn´t just play 123. I do play a lot with different groups and even casuals. None of them do even think about given circumstances. They run down what the guide has told. They´re not able to use their brain to react on other missplays, random design encounters or whatever. That´s just sad in my eyes.
Once i´ve even told the wrong safespot on purpose early in emerald weapon. Yes on purpose to troll my old static... and guess what? Everyone just ran in there and died poorly. So much about ppl watching and using their brain.

The obvious point of comparison is Samurai, because of how similar the jobs are

Yes any job is simple, but why does ppl still complain about everything? So many jobs got dumb´d down already. Have you ever played OT these days? You would´ve time to eat a pizza, meanwhile j...... on an incoming cutszene, etc. Playing MT isn´t better, it´s just boring af. With positionals left, you´ve atleast something to do, something to care about in this braindead game.

And to compare any class with SAM is still a joke. SAM is broken af. Ok, we could say the same to BLM, but BLM is it because of the movement friendly content, not like SAM who carries the player with way too high potencies. The most do even ignore positionals, because the damage increase is not relevant for them.
Any other classes have a way lower DPS and / or rely on the party. MNK´s brotherhood is the perfect example. You need really good players to make the most use of it and to get as much proccs as possible to increase your own DPS. But hey, even then SAM will still out-DPS you without and raid-related effects. Same if 3 players are dead, they won´t get the brotherhood buff or do less damage with the deathmark. SAM? Who cares, pew pew!!!

SAM is broken for a long time now. You don´t have to be a brilliant positional and "I care about Kenki" player to beat others in DPS. You just need to do your 3 combos and spam Midare to compete with others. That´s the whole reason, why SAM is often played.

SAM needs a nerf, that´s the truth and what devs missed way too long.

(Btw that´s the reason, why i dropped SAM. I don´t want to be carried by a broken class. I want to achieve anything by myself.)

TL;DR: Monk really doesn't need further difficulty reduction. It needs things in its rotation that say 'Good job, you did your rotation' and gives you something for it. Positionals are fine (if probably annoying to the encounter designers), and in fact probably need to be emphasized more, ironically, to help make them easier.

I can agree with the 1st part, but not the 2nd. Classes overall needs to become stronger, but harder to play with a good feedback / reward. But positionals shouldn´t become easier. They´re already too easy. If anyone can´t play them properly, then he never really played melee or practiced the job.

[Garnix]

snip

I mostly agree. Except with your take on SAM.
I think SAM is fine. Maybe a tiny little bit too strong, but not by a lot. And it has enough optimization potential to be enjoyable for skilled players.
SAM is certainly one of the easiest jobs to pick up, but I think the main reason it is played the most is because it is a Samurai, which is an aesthetic that many players like.
It's pretty much the same reason you see so many people getting excited for reaper (and a lot of players playing DRK too). They don't care how it plays or feel like, it just looks edgy so they want to play it.
Numbers do not matter as much as some people think, unless you are trying to speedrun things. I mean, seeing some huge direct crit midare is certainly a great feeling, but it is really not the reason why so many casual players play SAM.

[ssunny2008]

Numbers do not matter as much as some people think, unless you are trying to speedrun things. I mean, seeing some huge direct crit midare is certainly a great feeling, but it is really not the reason why so many casual players play SAM.

I personally see everything pretty often in any standard content, even MNK. The least i´m seeing is indeed BLM and DNC the most. The reasons are obvious.
My concern in kind of SAM goes into the direction of harder content and why it´s so popular there. The overall design of having "raid related DPS classes" is questionable anyway. Here we just see the clear pro of being a SAM and why it´s too powerful and makes the endgame easier to beat. That´s why it should get a little nerf.

[VentVanitas]

MNK doesn't suffer from being "too punishing." That exact misconception is what LED to Greased Lightning being deleted and promptly wasting 6 years of development time.

[Mikey_R]

Over the years, Monk dev time had seemed to be, what can we do with Monk? I know, more GL upkeep abilities, they keep complaining about it dropping off, so they obviously need more.

It has been said countless times, but from HW onwards, Monk has just stagnated. It never really got anything new, it was more of the same, for 2 expansions. This is one of the reasons why the TK rotation was a thing. People worked out how to get a small amount fo extra damage, but it required alot of thinking and preparing, which is what poeple wanted. Once positionals are muscle memory, there really isn't anything else to worry about.

For the past 2 expansions, the job hasn't evolved, we are still HW Monk in ShB and that is the main issue here.

[dezzmont]

The math has repeatedly showed that missing all positionals EXCEPT for Bootshine resulted in a negligible DPS loss. So, ignoring the vast majority of your positionals wasn't punishing for the vast majority of players.

I agree that positional on monk essentially don't matter and are weirdly less emphasized than other melee outside of Bootshine.

Positionals actually add to the job, its just the way they are implemented is real darn bad and they should feel 'better' to hit. Again, accessibility of a job and it being easy are not the same thing, part of why monk is so inaccessable is so many of its mechanics are 'hidden' or obfuscated and it 'demanding' something more visibly and offering a reward more visibly would actually probably help it a lot.

GL loss was the closest thing to "punishment" the job threw at players, and to be frank, if you were dropping GL at any point before a cutscene completely robbed control of the encounter away from you, you were either dead, or actually bad at the job.

It's sorta inarguable that GL was a punishment mechanic, sorta like dropping Enochian, but it lacks any of the charms of Enochian and you can instantly get Enochian back if you did it for long enough or if you died. GL's affect on death is REALLY bad, and that is a common occurance among new players in new content, and that definitely should matter in a job design.

Like imagine if Bard couldn't cast its dots for a full 45 seconds after doing its dots, so if you died or let them drop at any time you suddenly just weren't able to play Bard. It doesn't matter that this shouldn't happen unless your making mistakes on Bard, it is just way too punishing and doesn't actually make Bard better. If a skilled player barely notices a mechanic and an unskilled one is just finding it frustrating, it isn't a good mechanic, and keeping it in just so that it is harder to learn Monk isn't good design. It isn't 'dumbing a job down' to reduce dead weight like GL (at least in the form it was in, later on you have a really interesting idea of what to do with it I like!).

Chakra RNG has been a problem for the job since 2.0

I didn't mention Chakra RNG because I don't think it is really a 'punishment' so much as a bad design for the job, but fixing Charka RNG would be nice. Its something I have heard monks complain about forever and its so weird that their 50 capstone is so lackluster.

We should have gotten something that rewarded aggressive Monks for maintaining GL over a set period of time, even if that something was as simple as "press this, get max GL again and do some ogcd damage."

That would be a good mechanic that makes GL actually have a positive purpose for the job rather than kicking players while they are down, yes. That is baaasiiically how Enochian works: You can force reset it after dying (or if you hold it for long but make a mistake) even though you technically can upkeep it forever, and holding rewards you with a big attack. Still rewards agro monks, but makes the act of dying way less feels bad for newer players learning the job.

Enochian is basically 'not bad GL' so making GL more like Enochian does make a lot of sense. I think this would have been enough to 'save' GL. That said, I suspect this would make a lot of Monks unhappy because it basically makes recovering GL trivial so I didn't personally suggest 'make GL more like Enochian.'

[IruruCece]

It's sorta inarguable that GL was a punishment mechanic

Hard disagree, again. GL wasn't a punishment mechanic in the least. It was incredibly easy to maintain even under duress, to the point where even some loser like me could do it more often than not, and by my own standards that means it's accessible as heck. Honestly, cutscenes that robbed control from the players were more of a punishment mechanic than GL ever was, and ever those don't count as punishment. They're flaws in a game filled with flaws. Just like how SE's insistence that dropping GL at all, for any reason, whether it was your fault or the fault of being forced to watch an underaged naked girl get cuddly with a dragon for the umpteenth time while trying to prog a hard fight, meant that you had to start from scratch EVERY TIME. The "punishment" side of things has nothing to do with the idea of GL, if you want to insist it was a punishment of some sort, and more to do with the fact that SE doubled down on bad design decisions at every possible crossroad they could have zagged instead of constantly zigging.

Realistically, even taking new player difficulties into account with new content doesn't make GL a punishment mechanic either. Everyone dies on hard stuff the first (few dozen) times they run it. That would be like me, a TERRIBLE black mage, claiming that cast times are a punishment mechanic, or that dropping Enochian before I can maintain it long enough for my big special button is a punishment mechanic. That would be like me, a TERRIBLE and VERY INEXPERIENCED summoner, claiming that losing my trance before I could get off my big attacks is a punishment mechanic.

I disagree with calling the result of failing to accomplish something a "punishment mechanic", especially in the case of GL, and especially for new players, because everyone is new at some point. You have to practice to get better at something. Dropping GL isn't because the devs were necessarily being mean to the player, you either died or failed to maintain your combos. Both of those are on YOU the individual, and with practice you learn to get around those things.

What IS punishment, if you can call it that, is losing the self-buff because of things that are 100 percent outside of your control, or having to start over from scratch every time... and even then I'd still not call it punishment.

The solutions to GL loss, to Tornado Kick being worthless, to our Chakra generation, have literally been proposed for years by players who are FAR more experienced and hardcore than I ever was, am, or will be, and SE actively refused to take any feedback about the job seriously until player numbers for it dropped off the cliff. I'm not even the first person to say "make GL like Enochian is now", I stole that from someone better at the game and if I remembered who said it first I'd absolutely credit them. That players can sit down for maybe five minutes and think about the very game they are playing and come up with something more engaging than turning GL into a TRAIT really shows how little care has gone into the job at this point. I think some cynicism about things at this point is warranted, lol.

[Jirah]

MNK doesn't suffer from being "too punishing." That exact misconception is what LED to Greased Lightning being deleted and promptly wasting 6 years of development time.

Ehhhhh I agree on GL being removed was very pointless but MNK would’ve benefited a streamline process with GL rather than deleting it, hate to be a broken record but this worked wonders with Dart arts , ammunition, and Deck skills. devs are way to eager to delete what they can fix

[SpeckledBurd]

MNK doesn't suffer from being "too punishing." That exact misconception is what LED to Greased Lightning being deleted and promptly wasting 6 years of development time.

I mean it did suffer from Greased Lightning being too punishing, but it wasn't a fault of it being a buff on a timer. It was because Monk's options for recovering it were designed to be terrible this expansion out of a fear of us ever using Tornado Kick on top of the actually decently effective one becoming a poor man's Meikyo Shisui due to the devs not considering how Monk's kit came together when removing physical resistance's from the game.


That said, even keeping GL probably would have meant that the last 6 years of development would be a waste. To give Monk parity with other jobs it would need a "Max GL" button on a 30 second cooldown and that automatically makes everything to upkeep GL pointless, on top of still requiring Tornado Kick to be changed if they don't want stacks spent on it. That speaks more to how poorly its skills have been designed over the last several years than anything though.

For the past 2 expansions, the job hasn't evolved, we are still HW Monk in ShB and that is the main issue here.

We've regressed to sub Heavensward levels at this point. At least ARR/Heavensward Monk had three dots to juggle. All we've got now is Tornado Kick as our Steel Peak and Howling Fist with an RNG cooldown.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Mnh... Since the title is controversial changes, it should be fine to share one of my own may or may not be a controversial change ideas about the Monk... Proper Greased Lightning, I think, will never come back, and we are stuck with the dull trait, but I did have my own idea, before 5.4 did that ugly trait update, about a "fix" for Greased Lightning's main issue, that it could not persist through moments when bosses can not be attacked...

First, the third action of a combo still grants a Greased Lightning stack, but stack duration will be increased up to a maximum of (insert what ever number can persist through moments when bosses can not be attacked) seconds, while the third action of a combo will neither grant the full Greased Lightning stack duration, nor refresh the duration to the full duration.
Instead, the first third action of a combo grants only 10 seconds to Greased Lightning stack duration, while the third action of a combo after the first, will extend the duration of Greased Lightning stacks by 10 seconds, up to what ever maximum duration would solve the problem.

I chose to design Greased Lightning in this manner, because I think that it would be "better" than if it were brain-dead level of almost not possible to NOT upkeep and maintain, as seen with the Warriors' Storm's Eye or the Dark Knight's DarkSide.

Also, keep in mind that even at a (super) slow 2.5 GCD, that would be 7.5 seconds to gain 10 seconds, so as long as the Monk keeps their combos in flow, it would be easy enough to build up to, and stay at, the new maximum duration, while building up to that new maximum would be "essential", for Greased Lightning stacks to not be lost when ever bosses can not be attacked.

Side-note I: In the case of 10 seconds every combo being "too generous" or "too easy", it could even be just 7 or 8 seconds, to make the stack maintenance, and to reach the maximum duration, a little more difficult.

Side-note II: I think that it would also be ideal, if the fourth Greased Lightning stack is not restricted to and locked behind any action, which was Fists of Wind back then, and only be level-locked, like the second and third Greased Lightning stacks, while the Monk unlocks the fourth Greased Lightning stack at a much lower level than waaaaay up at Lv76.
Since Greased Lightning II is unlocked at Lv20 and Greased Lightning III is unlocked at Lv40, how about the Monk unlocks Greased Lightning IV at Lv60?

Related idea: A bit of a dare idea, in the case that the new duration maximum would be some ridiculous max like a full minute or some long time. What if the Monk would also be able to "spend" seconds off of the Greased Lightning duration, as a second resource along with Chakra?

First(?) Addition: A idea(not my own idea), worth mention. If the duration of Greased Lightning runs out, just one stack of Greased Lightning is lost, rather than all stacks of Greased Lightning are lost. / My own thought on this: after the one Greased Lightning stack is lost, the duration of the Greased Lightning stack/s that remain/s, defaults to 10 seconds.