The problem with Monk isn't positionals (opinion piece)

[Andy_T93]

I know alot of people are unhappy with Monk currently and believe its down to positionals or lack of

However for me the issue is the lack of damage skills, doing some quick comparisons in my head to other DPS roles I play (I don't play all so can't compare to all)

Ignoring AOE's
Monk has 9 damage skills:
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Bootshine
True Strike (tbh its only 20 potency more than twin snakes so can arguably be dropped from hotbars anyway)
Snap Punch
Chakra
Blitz
Six Sided Star (barely worth a mention anyway)

Now lets compare to Red Mage who again ignoring AOE specific skills has 14
3 melee skills
4 main spell rotations
Scorch, jolt and resolution
Fleche
Engagement, displacement, corps a corps

Or lets look at Dancer, Ignoring AOE specific moves has 11
4 main dance moves
Standard and technical step
Fandance 1,3 and 4
Tilana
Starshower dance

Finally Samurai, a fellow melee DPS has a whopping 16 damage skills (again ignoring AOE specific moves)
6 main combo moves
Enpi, Gyoten and Yaten
Iaijutsu
Shinten
Senei
Tsubame-gaeshi
Shoha
Ogi Namikiri
Kaeshi Namikiri

So Samurai has nearly double the amount of damage skills than Monk, Dancer which is largely considered a support class has more damaging skills

These are the only DPS jobs I play so maybe someone who plays others can draw better comparisons

So for me this is the issue with Monk, there is nothing to actually do,

And no I don't want positionals back because I don't consider them something to do, I wan't some OGCD's back

[Mikey_R]

Black Mage only has 8 that they use on a regular basis (9 if you want to count Paradox separately, though it replaces Fire 1 in the rotation):
Fire 1/3/4
Blizzard 3/4
Thunder 3
Despair
Xenoglossy

Yet it is considered one of the best designed jobs in the game. Counting the number of offensive skills does not determine how well a job is liked, it is the kit as a whole that determines that.

While BLM has probably the fewest offensive skills for its single target damage rotation, the beauty of the job comes in using the rest of its kit to keep the job flowing. Triplecast, Swiftcast, Sharpcast all give ways to allow spells to have no cast time, which allows movement, Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines when used properly can help the BLM zip around the arena for minimal downtime, Manaward to block damage and continue to cast. All these together, along with Manafont, Ley Lines and Amplify help keep the job flowing and keep up the offensive momentum. You are constantly thinking about how to utilise your abilities to maximise casting time.

Monk on the other hand, before EW, was all about getting those positionals hit. You had things like True North and Riddle of Earth to help, but you also had your own wits to predict where the boss is going to be, which allowed you to save cooldowns. It is this extra thinking which is lost when you lose positionals. Granted, Monk is really really shallow in the periods between Masterful Blitzes, as I was levelling it, I always found myself subconsciously doing the positionals just as something to do. However, whilst adding in some more oGCDs to keep track of would be a very nice addition, nothing will replace the thought process of playing around positionals. From the media tour, where we only lost them on Raptor, many people did say, we will see how it goes and then voice opinions, but to have Opo-opo taken away as well, that was way too much for the fans of the job that wanted that extra layer of thinking power.

[Ransu]

Black Mage only has 8 that they use on a regular basis (9 if you want to count Paradox separately, though it replaces Fire 1 in the rotation):
Fire 1/3/4
Blizzard 3/4
Thunder 3
Despair
Xenoglossy

Yet it is considered one of the best designed jobs in the game. Counting the number of offensive skills does not determine how well a job is liked, it is the kit as a whole that determines that.

While BLM has probably the fewest offensive skills for its single target damage rotation, the beauty of the job comes in using the rest of its kit to keep the job flowing. Triplecast, Swiftcast, Sharpcast all give ways to allow spells to have no cast time, which allows movement, Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines when used properly can help the BLM zip around the arena for minimal downtime, Manaward to block damage and continue to cast. All these together, along with Manafont, Ley Lines and Amplify help keep the job flowing and keep up the offensive momentum. You are constantly thinking about how to utilise your abilities to maximise casting time.

Your BLM example is the point OP was making....MNK has nothing to do outside of that small subset of weaponskills because they literally took away oGCD attacks to put them into the new blitz mechanic. Because of that, mnk feels slow despite having a fast GCD and it also feels shallow because there's so little to do between the extremely slow build up of nadis for the final blitz which awkwardly falls in a weird rotation because SE for some reason wants MNK's burst to be outside of burst windows.

[Mikey_R]

Your BLM example is the point OP was making....MNK has nothing to do outside of that small subset of weaponskills because they literally took away oGCD attacks to put them into the new blitz mechanic. Because of that, mnk feels slow despite having a fast GCD and it also feels shallow because there's so little to do between the extremely slow build up of nadis for the final blitz which awkwardly falls in a weird rotation because SE for some reason wants MNK's burst to be outside of burst windows.

They are making the comparison using purely actions that cause direct damage, with more actions = better, not considering how they are used. This is why I bring up BLM. Less damaging abilities and all of them happen to be on the GCD as well. Of which, as I stated, BLM is considered a job that is very well put together, which directly counters OPs post that more damaging actions = better.

I then went into how the non damaging abilities help the BLM kit in keeping, what is a simple rotation, into something that requires thought and planning. It is not just purely damaging actions that define a job, it is the kit as a whole. Just saying 'add damaging oGCDs in the downtime' doesn't help. You need things that interact with the kit as a whole. I never said Monk doesn't need anything, however, just more damaging actions doesn't necessarily solve the issue.

[Silver-Strider]

They are making the comparison using purely actions that cause direct damage, with more actions = better, not considering how they are used. This is why I bring up BLM. Less damaging abilities and all of them happen to be on the GCD as well. Of which, as I stated, BLM is considered a job that is very well put together, which directly counters OPs post that more damaging actions = better.

I then went into how the non damaging abilities help the BLM kit in keeping, what is a simple rotation, into something that requires thought and planning. It is not just purely damaging actions that define a job, it is the kit as a whole. Just saying 'add damaging oGCDs in the downtime' doesn't help. You need things that interact with the kit as a whole. I never said Monk doesn't need anything, however, just more damaging actions doesn't necessarily solve the issue.

The problem is that MNK doesn't require much, if any, thought. With the removal of Greased Lightning and most of our positionals, all that's left to build upon are the Chakra and Blitz Systems and really, that isn't much to work with since all you could realistically do at this point is make them quicker to build up

[IruruCece]

I find it pretty disappointing that so much effort went into making Monk an AoE powerhouse. The worst masterful blitz, objectively, is a single target ability. The others are multitarget AoEs. While there's nothing inherently wrong with more AoE power, to me it represents yet another shift away from what Monk used to be since Heavensward.

The moment Samurai was introduced in SB, it was pretty clear that the role of selfish melee was going to be further contested, so Monk was given Brotherhood (that didn't actually benefit every DPS job) to provide some utility that nobody was really ever asking for (and punished by Riddle of Fire making us slower for some awful reason). Our utility WAS our damage, how fast we could deliver it, especially after being un-tethered from TP. That utility didn't actually bring more players to the job. SE doubled down on that again in ShB, in addition to other questionable changes mid-expansion, and that still didn't make the job more popular.

According to FF logs, Monk has the second least number of parses being submitted to the site, despite it being one of the top-ranked DPS in the game right now. Only Ninja is worse off. Granted, endgame raiders are only a fraction of a fraction of the total player population, but they also represent players who care enough about the technical aspects of playing a job to push them to their limits. I think that should be at the very least something of a concern to SE, since it represents another possible failure to actually address deficiencies with Monk.

The problem with Monk hasn't been damage for the longest time, but rather a clear lack of vision of what they want it, and in turn ALL other jobs in the game, to really even be. The continuous effort to homogenize the basic gameplay loop for jobs across the board (healers with one-button dps, the ongoing woes with tanks and what defines them from one another, the efforts at reducing melee to little more than close-ranged physical dps that don't suffer arbitrary and excessive penalties to damage like our ranged brethren do). SE clearly is pushing jobs to feel similar, and I can't think of anything more damaging to the long term appeal of the game for me. The fact that Monk borrows concepts from Ninja, its job-defining skill has the emphasis on AoE like Dancer, and the raid-buff challenges the support offered by Bard AND Dancer, makes the job feel like SE is throwing absolutely everything they can at it, from a spread-sheet standpoint, instead of actually listening to players who have played the job for years, or (gasp) playing the job themselves.

[SpeckledBurd]

The moment Samurai was introduced in SB, it was pretty clear that the role of selfish melee was going to be further contested, so Monk was given Brotherhood (that didn't actually benefit every DPS job) to provide some utility that nobody was really ever asking for (and punished by Riddle of Fire making us slower for some awful reason).

Mild correction to this, but quite a few people were asking for Monk to get a party buff going into Stormblood. You can't forget that Heavensward was the peak of DRG/NIN/MCH/BRD buff stacking and the perception was that Monk needed some sort of buff of its own to be competitive. For the most part people were actually fine with Samurai taking the "full DPS, no utility" mantle because the belief at the time was that Samurai would just land in the same spot HW!Monk did by not bringing enough personal damage to outweigh that of the buffs other jobs brought (which did happen for most serious statics at least).

Most of the outrage at the time was for the other reasons you said though. They made those changes without any consideration for the rest of Monk's kit and the job suffered from it. They ignored most of Monk's many other issues from Heavensward. Then literally every other decision they made in Stormblood was baffling, from Riddle of Fire's slow, Tackle Mastery was the most insulting trait the game had ever seen, RNG Chakras were immediately hated by everyone, Riddle of Earth was doubly insulting for being both bad as a GL refresh skill and that BLM/DRG got buff refreshing effects added to existing buttons without any of Riddle of Earth's nonsense, and Brotherhood turned out to have way more problems than it had any right to.

[HappyHubris]

I specifically picked MNK as my Endwalker melee due to having the least button bloat. I'd rather have to execute a few buttons well than stretch my fingers for rarely-used redundant abilities that serve no purpose other than be a bar creativity check.

If anything, I wish that MNK cooldowns were consolidated (e.g. RoF/RoW) and the resource system was made more interactive (e.g. building up to PB by hitting positionals or whatever).

[Atamis]

I specifically picked MNK as my Endwalker melee due to having the least button bloat. I'd rather have to execute a few buttons well than stretch my fingers for rarely-used redundant abilities that serve no purpose other than be a bar creativity check.

I know this feel. Dislike playing drg and sam because pressing 3 different versions of the same button gets annoying and they both have three sets.

[jerome15]

And no I don't want positionals back because I don't consider them something to do, I wan't some OGCD's back

why not just have both?

shb monk was gutted from sb monk, but after seeing the EW changes, shb monk actually didn't seem so bad even though it was mostly just gcd's which included all positionals. i think all positionals plus more ogcd's would be even better to speed up the class.