MONK is to confusing / annoying of a class now

[Sqwall]

To the OP, and to those the love my posts.

I would say I'm opposite with monk being confusing...after spending some time on a dummy, running some dungeons, back to dummy, running dungeons. After changing up my hotbar a little and years of muscle memory that needed purged. I find the job is MORE busier then ever. And I love it. Shadow of the Destroyer is so good. I find myself pulling incredible amounts of hate with brotherhood/enlightenment, and with dance partner, with a Tornado Kick (soon phantom rush (not 90 yet)...WOW. That AOE rotation with Blitz! *chefs kiss*

Single Target is where it's the most involving though. One thing that I have come to understand....it's OK to break combo with perfect balance. Perfect Balance should always be on cooldown...ALWAYS. Don't wait until after you finish this combo...or that combo...just USE it ASAP.

With Perfect Balance the WHOLE idea is what nadi do I have? What buff/dot is coming off first? Once this clicked....Perfect Balance was my friend...and I couldn't WAIT until it came off cooldown. With this thought process...I never missed a Leaden chance, Twin was always up, demo dot was always up.

Pushed away from boss? No matter...pop anatman...Formshit....is it twin or demo or Leaden? Neither? Thunderclap into Boot....business as usual.

Positionals: This took me a LONG time to revert YEARS of doing them....even though I hated them sooo much, and possibly being the largest advocate in hoping they would go. I just felt is was un-needed busy work to prop up an already shallow job. I still found myself running to the back for Bootshine/Leaden....*UGH*. After changing my hotbar up....things were easier to keep me from running around. Thought of it two ways. I plant myself on the flank....or I plant myself on the rear. Choice is yours. I found myself on the flank mostly, and just move for demolish upkeep. Then back to the flank.

The other way that worked for me and this helped with my muscle memory. And it's going to seem weird. Group skills this way:

Flank:
Boot
True
Snap (key skill) or (non-buff skills)

Rear:
Dragon
Twin
Demo (key skill) or (buff/dot skills)

After I did this the key skills let me know where I needed to stand after checking my buff/dot timers. After realizing this I started to let go...and ENJOY the job much more. Then it was all about "Ok, PB is coming up, I have Lunar Nadi. What buff/dot do I need to refresh?" No buff/dot needed, plus no leaden fist...ok! Dragon, True, Snap, with flank positional. Rising Phoenix...into Boot, Twin, Demo. Wait for Perfect Balance again.

Notice I didn't even mention the Riddle of Fire, Riddle of Wind, Brotherhood, Chackra or where they fit. Once I realized Monk is no longer the BURST phase job it was and that it's all about CONSTANT uptime and flowing your perfect balance....Chackra filled up....Blitzs went out...and MONK is incredibly BUSY and insanely fast now. And I love it!

[Silver-Strider]

We already have way too less buttons now, so i really don´t see any reason to combine even more.

Next to that, we would need some new gauge to see if PB is on cd or not, when it´s overwritten by a temporary skill. With its 2 stacks, it´s way clearer to keep both separated.

And yet MNK still has skills that can be cut entirely, like SSS and Anatman, I'd argue Riddle of Earth too, with little to no impact on MNK's gameplay.

[Crossu]

And yet MNK still has skills that can be cut entirely, like SSS and Anatman, I'd argue Riddle of Earth too, with little to no impact on MNK's gameplay.

I disagree, you use SSS to disengage since it doesn't break combo and the move speed is great to greed an extra gcd or change objectives, on the other hand Anatman is used to avoid Diciplined Fist (Twin Snake) from falling off.

As for my overall thoughts. Class is super fun a feels between a mix of DRG and SAM (DRG in the feeling that you want to have your damage cycle -life of the dragon- during your burst windows and SAM with the build up for the big boy damage skill).

Perfect Balance on CD is interesting because you have your priority of building Nadi for your burst window and is flexible enough for adaptation, in reality the rest of the rotation feels like filler waiting for perfect balance windows. That being said you still need to upkeep Dicipled Fist and Demolish.

I understand that reading tool tips is a bit hard to understand but after a bit you get the hang of it, and for better or for worse the main gameplay doesn't change from 60 to 90.

[Sqwall]

And yet MNK still has skills that can be cut entirely, like SSS and Anatman, I'd argue Riddle of Earth too, with little to no impact on MNK's gameplay.

SSS is still great for a disengage...better then tornado kick lol. I have actually started using it more in the Endwalker dungeons as the bosses have a ton of AOE mechanics (looking at your magus sisters, calm down). SSS is still relevant...but relegated to a disengage...much like Egress and ingress, DRG backflip, SAM backstep. The only thing I wish SSS had on it would be an enhanced effect. Like Enpi or Harpe. Which the effect is still sprint....so can't win them all.

OMG I use Anatman all the time now....it STILL has use. It keeps your forms stable and stops twin buff. If I don't have to use Twin coming back into range that is a huge benefit, and allows me the ability to refresh demo or leaden. If I have both of those already? Thunderclap with Boot, True, Snap. Anatman has saved my timesr tons of times (more so in Endwalker dungeons) then it ever has. It used to be a skill to keep your GL and boost charka. Now that it's just to keep your forms and twin timers from ticking down...I love it. Keeps me ready to go when I thunderclap back in.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

but also they could just give us the lore-friendly 7 chakras and that'd be enough.

And yes, I 100% agree on 7 chakras instead of 5 as the cap we can hold. I'm hard pressed to think of any other job that has its resource be at exactly 100% before you can use the skill tied to it. Or if they don't want to redesign the job gauge, even just reducing the number of chakras needed to use forbidden charka from 5 to 4 (even if you have to take a small potency hit) would solve the problem.

For what little that it is worth, I have been to work on to create a extensive re-design concept for the Chakra resource, the purposes of Chakra, and how the Monk spends Chakra, as well as on what that Chakra is spent... I can share the quick summary, at least.

(still in development)redesign concept for Monks' Chakra resource(just the summary)

The skeleton and backbone of my not-yet-complete redesign concept, takes the 14 Chakra of light and darkness as its base, 7 chakra for each side, to be a 14-point solid-resource dual resource pool, with the 7 Chakra of light as a fast build-up resource that the Monk spends often, with full-independent generation; and the 7 Chakra of Darkness as a slower build-up resource, that the Monk uses less often, albeit to execute more powerful actions; that is half independent in its generation, and half dependent on the Chakra of Light, for its generation...

Also, disclaimer: I came up with that before the Reaper reveal, and before we found out how Reaper resources function. The similarity, other than that one is sold-resource and one is gauges, is a total coincidence... I did not copy the Reaper to come up with that idea.

[Kolsykol]

And yet MNK still has skills that can be cut entirely, like SSS and Anatman, I'd argue Riddle of Earth too, with little to no impact on MNK's gameplay.

All skills have little impact on their own.
You should use Riddle of Earth to help your healers ( in certain scenarios it might be the difference between life and death ) and SSS is absolutely useful on disengage..........
Anatman is useful but I do agree with others that it's extremely underwhelming, especially since it has a 60s cd just wtf?
Why does it even have a cd at all?

But ppl who keep saying that SSS in particular is useless are kinda just essentially saying that they give low effort, do you really need to be rewarded with something massive just to put in a little bit of extra effort?
I've found great use of it to get a extra big hit in, altho I'd say that Thunderclap is more useful atm for escape but SSS is still significantly higher potency than normal skills ( and sometimes you can't rely on your team m8s for Thunderclap, and Thunderclap has 20y range SSS will let you close the extra distance if needed faster ).

The devs even removed how ranged attacks for melee ends their combos so now you have no excuse to not use them too during longer downtime.
But people act as if the game has to force you to use something and make it necessary or make it massively rewarding otherwise they won't do it.

I don't think that kind of mindset and those types of players is what skills like SSS exist for.

[Vahenir]

Im relatively new to monk myself but i did play it a bit before the changes went live.
I find the changes to be fine, more or less. Though i would love to see the cooldown reduced on perfect balance. The beast skills should also be ogcds to make them a bit less clunky to cast. Of course anatman, six sided star and riddle of wind need updates as well.
Anatman id say basically needs to do anything useful that isn't as insanely niche as it is now. Perhaps making it some kind of defensive form during which you get lots of damage resistance and dodge chance, as long as you don't move or attack?
Six sided star should just be a normal gcd with a cooldown. Or even an ogcd with a cooldown.
As for riddle of wind, as someone else have suggested i would love to see this further reduce gcd time for all skills rather than increase the rate of autoattacks.

Things i definitely hope wont make a return that is the positionals. As much as enemies spin around they were a huge pain to actually use and more up to luck than skill in most cases. Sure you could pop the various skills that removed the positional requirement, but then whats the point of them in the first place? They were the main problem i had with monk before the changes and i find the class to be a lot more enjoyable without them. If they must make a return they should be less required and be something like a 20+ to potency when hitting the right position.

[Kolsykol]

Things i definitely hope wont make a return that is the positionals. As much as enemies spin around they were a huge pain to actually use and more up to luck than skill in most cases.

They don't, and when they do turn you can look at where the tank is and adapt to how the boss will turn and you had so many cds to use having 100% or at least close to 100% uptime wasn't that hard.
And having a bit of downtime or imperfections is something every Job in the game has to deal with same with Casters having to move and learn positioning.

[IckeDerTyp]

Great thread