RIP MNK 1.x - 5.x

[Powercow]

Interesting... something like 50% faster auto attacks for 15s? Get one auto in between GCD maybe during downtime? Less exciting but sure why not.

It's a little unclear but looks like it's a 50% reduction in autoattack delay, which would effectively be double autoattack speed for that time. It's a little odd to phrase it that way though, but a 50% boost to autoattack DPS for 15 seconds every 90 is... pretty underwhelming for a brand new skill. (But hey underwhelming buttons, looks like it's really a Monk thing after all!)

Still, there's a couple pieces of the puzzle we're missing, it's entirely possible Monk has some mechanic that scales with autoattacks. We haven't seen any traits, after all.

As for the other ones you pointed out, the "AoE TK" one is a replacement for Arm of the Destroyer, 140 potency and guaranteed crit in opo-opo stance. Nothing too fancy. Does look cool though, if you watch the job actions trailer it's one of the first things (the three spinning kicks right after the first Perfect Balance, gives an opo-opo form chakra.)

SSS has no official word on what, if any, changes are coming with that.

[AndieEldritch]

snip

Well extra little button to pop while you wait for PB to cycle back around and fill in some extra damage in the base rotation isn't so bad, seeing as we are giving up our OGCD CD's like Elix Field for the MFB (Masterful Blitz) - Also if RoW is given low level enough it will help with Sync'd damage a bit. Being sync'd below 52 right now is pure pain.

Thought so, it looked familiar but I am too used to the Tornado kick anim being cut short - With GL gone (assuming it's now gone-gone), at least we'll see our animations properly now and maybe explains why we'd have a 90s "have some extra auto attack" button perhaps?

[dezzmont]

The issue facing monk and why feedback from people who won't main the job matters is that monk is a starter job that had an... amazingly low popularity/player satisfaction rating pretty much every poll coming about.

That is going to cause player retention issues long term, and the fact they nuked the job from orbit mid expansion tells us that they had a sort of crisis.

New monk actually may be harder than old monk in terms of proper execution. GL and positionals, as mentioned, are not really hard to do, but Monk's issue is that pretty much every mechanic it had heavily punished you for doing them poorly, and the monk's rotation didn't work towards any flashy 'reward' effect (ex: Iaijutsu, Xeno/Fire spam, Trick attack).

So it was this trifecta of badly designed: The things that made it 'challenging' were really not, and mostly existed to add to information overload in the job. When you made minor mistakes, monk as a job punished you more than any other job. And to top it off it was hard to tell if you were doing well ("I don't even know if I am doing damage" was a super common monk complaint I heard) so there isn't much of a reason to work towards it.

It seems silly, but it is a critical part of game design to get feedback not just from experts and people already into your systems, but new users, and users who don't like what you have to offer, because they are going to experience it from a very valuable perspective that you otherwise wouldn't get from people who already like how things are.

You then bias your responses based on how the ways different segments of your potential userbase interact with it. Monk's changes probably bias so hard to non-monk opinions because A: Low key I don't think monk mains really understand the design flaws of their own job that well because they mostly affect new players and are invisible if your parsing and learned the mechanics, and most just... refuse to engage with the reality that Monk is one of the few jobs that is actively disliked based on the data we can see from player run polls, and B: Monk probably was causing a disproportionate effect on the new player experience due to being a starter with a cool theme, which considering the extreme nature of doing a job overhaul mid expansion and the sudden surge in the free trial popularity SHB probably was starting to REALLY hurt sub rates of new players.

Of course, how you incorporate uninformed opinions matters to. It is sort of a game design truism to say "Players are great at spotting problems, bad at offering solutions." Stuff like "Remove all positional" is a bad solution, because positional aren't the problem, the problem was monk was a job with overwhelming amounts of information, a rotation so unintuitive with so many redundant buttons that you basically need a guide to figure it out, and which offers no rewards and all punishments in its execution. Blitz pretty clearly is designed to fix all of these problems (because you now have something to work towards in the rotation and better feedback if your doing it right because you get the blitz you want if you do, which also helps the "Am I doing damage?" problem), and removing two already unimportant positionals is just an attempt to clean up the info-clutter that makes even starting out as a monk rough.

Blitz actually paradoxically has the potential to make Monk actually harder to actually execute consistently (because, low key, monk isn't hard, it is just punishing and needlessly obtuse, and those words don't mean the same thing), while also making it easier to learn and play. Difficulty and ease of use are not opposed concepts and are actually usually fairly complementary.

[Leonus]

...

You're talking over most people's heads. This is something majority of people either can't, or most likely, don't want to acknowledge because their false sense of class difficulty based on positional and asthetic that in the end amount to something artificial.

At best, it's artificial, at worst it's unnecessary.

[Jirah]

Having charges means you actually can hold onto at least one, though. And seeing as how they're on a 40 second cooldown, I'm going to assume it'll be recommended to save one charge for Riddle of Fire. It'll make raid buff synergy far more interesting for the job, that's for sure.

Wouldn’t it be a DPS loss if you didn’t use one back to back with the other? Or is that stupid of me to say that? If it’s alignment issues like tsubame had with SAM then wouldn’t it make it abit too easy to disregard it? Maybe I’m overthinking it or underestimating the usefulness of stacks like Tsubame and PB, or maybe it’s defeatist or it’s just more flexible? Like I said my feelings are complicated as I don’t want jobs to be easier and it’s a thin line between the streamlined and the reduced

[Sqwall]

It was so obvious, that a dumb statement like that coming from you, no matter if it´s just sarcasm or not.
This game only offers ONE positional-heavy class, which is MNK. You don´t like positionals? Feel free to play 1 of the others. We MNK-mains don´t have that choice.

Lol. Oh sunny. Always love hearing from you mate. You know just how to say all the right things. It’s hard for me to, watching the monk ride or die community effectively lose there marbles over a measly 2 positionals.

Like seriously the reason I said that was sarcasm, yes. Because for 2 years I have heard that monk is fine, monk is perfect, don’t touch monk. Balderdash! And the whole time I have listened to you putting monk on a high shelf like it’s the best designed class ever. Maybe years ago.

It’s time to move on dude. You seriously couldn’t see the writing on the wall when GL got the axe?

Like I have been saying and will continue to say. It’s not about ruining a job it’s about making one better with more engaging gameplay while complimenting its identity. I’m over the moon happy about monk getting back to something that is not as shallow as positional style gameplay!

Figured some galaxy brain like you would have figured that out by now.

I’ll be waiting patiently for your arrogant retort.

[IruruCece]

I’ll be waiting patiently for your arrogant retort.

It is staggering how little you contribute to literally every Monk thread you have ever participated in, and I shudder to imagine your thoughts on any other job in the game.

[Sqwall]

You're talking over most people's heads. This is something majority of people either can't, or most likely, don't want to acknowledge because their false sense of class difficulty based on positional and asthetic that in the end amount to something artificial.

At best, it's artificial, at worst it's unnecessary.

NIN has mudra. Good design
SAM has Sen. good design
DRG has blood and eye. Good design
MNK had GL…oh wait. MNK has chakra…a 1-2 button damage dump. Hardly compelling. Ok, MNK has positionals….that’s is thing. If positionals are compelling gameplay then every melee should have 6 to deal with. Oh wait…..none of the other jobs care enough to ask for positionals because they are a stupid way to give gameplay to a job. Especially when that job centers itself around the lazy design.

Blitz will be MNKs gameplay. Like mudra,Sen, dragon blood/eye and I can’t wait

[Leonus]

...

Yea, I think this is a better direction overall than what has been happening in prior expansions. It's not like they got rid of all positional either, only got rid of two.

[Sqwall]

It is staggering how little you contribute to literally every Monk thread you have ever participated in, and I shudder to imagine your thoughts on any other job in the game.

Shudder away. I sleep soundly.