Controversioal Changes to Monk

[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.'