Controversioal Changes to Monk

[dezzmont]

So of course we can claim and agree, that MNK is the least played class. But is it a bad thing or does it has a problem? NO!

You are right! Low play rate doesn't alone indicate a problem. Low play rate because niche (like BLM) is different than low play rate because of an unfriendly job design! Play rates should not be the only metric we care about.

- So many ppl claim that BLM is perfect designed, but it´s not more picked than MNK. Why?

Black mage has a lot going for it design wise. The main things that jump out are the clear 'goals' of the class that you can understand, with excelent, frequent feedback on how well you are doing in the rotation, lacking severe punish elements that make the job fall apart for more than a few seconds, while still having lots of room for mastery and for players to display skill.

Enochian and GL are very similar designs, but work to different ends. Enochian rewards you for aggression, but does so positively rather than negatively, and managing it is non-trivial. You will need to figure out yourself when to 'abort' to resetting rather than doing your optimal rotation, a skill even good players need. A good monk never really thinks about GL, but a good BLM has to think about Enochian.

On top of this, the abilities getting lots of visual updates or replacements means BLM has very good feedback. You want to earn abilities in the Black Mage rotation and play black mage well not for its own abstract sake, but because executing well on Black mage feels REALLY good, and losing out on casts is very noticable to the player and feels bad, without feeling like a punishment.

Monk doesn't need to become like black mage obviously, but there is a very good reason Black Mage is considered a well designed job despite it not being super popular: Black Mage knows what it is, tells you what it is, and you know pretty damn fast if you like black mage or not. Most players don't like turret mages and that is fine, but it is very 'honest' in what it is about to the point even non-black mage players know a lot about how black mage plays and sees the game (heck, people who I know don't play XIV send me Leyline AOE memes! The job is THAT well designed its influence extends outside of XIV!).

Monk meanwhile basically requires you to read a balance guide to 'figure it out.' So many abilities have unclear or confusing uses, or have overlap that make you wonder what the heck is going on (ex: PB vs Form Shift. Their actual uses are very different but if you are starting out Monk you will have no clue what you are supposed to use either of them for). This, combined with terrible animations and the lack of any 'reward' style attacks, combined with a lot of 'bad' outcomes like dropping debuff or GL or buffs, make it very disorienting and stressful despite not being hard.

Monk is in the worst case scenario where it is complex, but not deep as a job at all.