A wordy observation of 6.X MNK

[VentVanitas]

With the announcement of Dawntrail as well as Monk not receiving any adjustments in patch 6.4, it is completely safe to assume that the job is going to remain untouched until 7.0, hence this thread. The point of the thread is more of a pulse-check to see what our grievances, hopes and dooms are going into the next expansion for Monk and a general vent post about my overall thoughts about the job rather than an in-depth analysis of its issues. So if you were expecting me to get into the nitty-gritty details then sorry lol.

Six Sided Star and other buttons

SSS has always been a strange skill. I'm actually fine with it being a situational tool rather than a main rotation button, so long as the niche it serves is substantial enough. However in EW, there have been a lot of factors contributing to its usage becoming scarcer. Thunderclap, the ridiculous striking dummy bosses, changes to MNK's rotation, clunk-ily coexisting with the job's other disconnect tools like Meditation, etc. Its main purpose more resembles old Tornado Kick (squeezing out damage before a boss vanishes/dies, though not to say it didn't always have this use even when TK existed), rather than the disconnect tool that I believe the dev team intended it to be. I am not asking for its deletion or for it to become a main rotation cooldown, I am however disappointed that it remains unchanged.

Not much to say about EW Riddle of Wind. It's just extra auto damage which I don't particularly find exciting. I'm pretty sure it only exists because people kept asking for Hundred Fists from XI. I would rather see it be reworked into a functionally different skill, preferably with a cooldown that isn't as long as 90s. My thoughts for Riddle of Earth are the same. It is way too easy to forget that these skills are even there.

Even when Greased Lightning existed, Anatman was still a joke and EW hasn't changed that sadly. If I have to be completely honest Monk does not need a channel ability at all, especially when so little fights give you opportunities to actually take advantage of it. I hate saying "just delete it" because SE loves deleting things and replacing what was lost with nothing at all (especially for MNK), but I struggle to think of what Anatman could even offer the job if it were to be changed. It's a glorified emote in its current state.

Thunderclap is one the best no strings attached additions Monk has received in a long time. The sheer amount of mobility you have on MNK now is unrivaled and you can get away with some utterly ridiculous things by abusing macros. I wish so many EW raids didn't have such stupidly large hitboxes on top of them rarely challenging melee uptime, because I want more fights to use this skill in. I do miss Shoulder Tackle (mainly the animation), but what Thunderclap offers more than makes up for it.

Blitz

Blitz is... fine, but it could be so much more. To give the dev team some credit, making use of MNK's individual forms and Perfect Balance was probably the most logical thing they could do for a Blitz mechanic and they handled that quite well if nothing else. However if you do not parse at a high level or participate in speedkilling then it is very lacking as a central job mechanic in my opinion. It is exclusively used inside burst windows, and the Blitz attacks themselves are just high potency skills and... that's it. Not much impact or relation to anything outside of Nadi which makes it feel too standard and boring to me (again, outside of speedkilling. I am aware how much the job changes in that scenario, but depth shouldn't be solely found at high levels of play).

Chakra

The big one. I will admit that if it wasn't so terrible, I'd be willing to tolerate the aforementioned issues I have with the job, because none of them are really that significant compared to Chakra. It is that much of a badly designed job gauge that anything that is related to it, be it loosely or directly is only affected negatively by it.

Firstly, crit procs. On paper, having a mechanic tied to a substat is neat, however the job makes no attempts to accommodate for its RNG nature. Despite being proc based, it does not allow any leniency unlike BRD's Perfect Pitch or DNC's Fan Dance. Meaning that if you successfully obtain a Forbidden Chakra, your first priority is to immediately use it or you are at risk of wasting a proc with your next GCD. Which further means that there is no real strategy or goal with Chakra. You pop it and move on, it's pure APM filler at its absolute worst.

Related to Chakra, is Brotherhood. The idea of rapidly gaining a resource and machine gun firing it off sounds cool, in practice however it is one of the biggest contributors to Monk being overall ping unfriendly. The rapid accumulation being tick based, as well as the self Chakra gain having a very strange delay to it means that the fate of your weave slots is left up to god while bursting. The aforementioned lack of leniency with Chakra and having to fire it off immediately exacerbates this issue even further. If you play at a high ping, you cannot play Monk without clipping unless you have third party plugins like Noclippy, which is against ToS.

They have managed to create a mechanic that feels unsatisfying and frustrating no matter what state it's in. In downtime it's thoughtless and infrequent, and in bursts it's too frequent and inflexible. I am not asking for it to be a copy of Kenki/Ninki, I do however, think that it's the biggest problem with MNK currently and it shouldn't be neglected for yet another expansion. Please for the love of Rhalgr, rework Chakra in 7.0.

I do think that EW MNK is in many aspects better than ShB MNK (though in this case it was kind of a "the bar is in hell" situation), but it still has a lot of issues that I would like to see be alleviated. Overall though I am ultimately bitter that EW removed a lot of things from Monk to make it feel more standard along with the other melee DPS, only for it to still end up as one of the least played jobs in the game. In any case, I'm interested to know what other people's thoughts are.

[Bhearil]

SE had no idea of what to do with the Monk since the start. In 2.0 the monk was riddled with remmnants of the 1.0 like Fist Stances, Featherfoot, Haymaker and One Ilm Punch(that had its uses but was extremely situational). Fist stances lingered time and time again until they were repurposed into Riddles that even today have issues being underwhelming (Wind anyone?)

The introduction of the Chakra system was a real mess adding a system that was totally disconnected from the normal gameplay and forced to spam Meditation to be able to use it at all. Only in Endwalkers they looked at other jobs and finally made earning chakra in a reliable way(100% chance!!! unlike Shadowbringers!) by giving 1 chakra per critical weaponskill, and only took them 6 years!!. We are still stuck though with a 5 chakra system that makes no sense lorewise (should be 7 or 14) nor from a gameplay point since the resource overflow is a real problem due to the extra RNG gains during Brotherhood window.

Beast system is basically Chakra 2.0 welded in, completely gatekeeped by Perfect Balance CD making it a dull system since OGCDs were sacrificed for it and that means that Monk is basically using the base rotation over and over with some Forbidden Chakra/Enlightment sprinkled to avoid overflow as only OGCDs until Phantom rush is ready again, making a boring combat rotation moreso when most positionals have been eliminated and Dragoon now have more positionals AND more actions per minute despite being a 2.5 GCD job vs the 2 seconds of the Monk thanks to Dragoon's OGCD that gives some spice to their rotation even if its a bit overloaded (and Dragoon players are already dreading the upcoming rework considering the poor sucess rate of SE with reworks)

Monk still have issues today when unable to melee with badly put bandaids like Six-Sided Star or being forced to spam Meditation(a skill that should be gone or at least reworked), or even having super clunky optimal rotations that even the devs werent aware of

Even the last rework failed to make Monk popular since despite being mathematically amongst the strongest DPS, hes the least popular melee and the third least played job in a melee meta with only Bard and Black Mage being lower and mind you this is after a new fresh rework, meanwhile Summoner popularity post rework has skyrocketed and currently is the most popular job according to certain page which wont be named.

To put in perspective: People in general consider Monk as "not fun" and dont bother to play as one despite being extremely simplified post rework and removing the old tag "Monk is hard to play" that supposedly was the reason why so few people played Monk

[Valence]

MNK is kinda the only other job that relies on a semi freeform rotation with BLM, meaning that the rotation is a lot less constrained in its general flow than other types (fixed static rotations with no rng, or proc based priorities). The only concern is to keep dots and buff flowing and up, and it generates a lot of depth in what can be theorycrafted with it, or changed on the fly. BLM infamous non standard being the prime example of it, but MNK optimal drift and other more advanced shenanigans are a thing precisely because blitzes combined with PB allow for a very malleable freeform execution in order, and it can be, in my opinion, really galaxybrain as long as one doesn't just stick with the standard braindead rotation (or even more, the DK spamm meme, because like BLM, it's very well designed job in potency balance between abilities). This is, in my opinion, that makes the job have a very high ceiling if one tries to push it enough.

The intricacies of stances, especially when it comes to opo-opo vs stanceless, is elusive and hard to grasp to most newcomers to the job as well. On top of it, I feel that unless someone actually dedicates time (or just immediately clicks with it), the need to constantly at every GCD to wonder if one needs to refresh leaden fists, or disciplined fists, or demolish, on a fast paced recast, can be extremely overwhelming for most players, and I'm not even talking about making sure not to drop those during a blitz sequence.

I do think the blitzes feel extremely rewarding and it's one of the jobs that has the best flow/feel, but I do feel that the lack of guidelines confuse a lot of players more than anything, much like BLM but to a lesser degree.

If anything, I'm actually surprised that MNK so far has proven to be the only job rework that hasn't butchered its difficulty and/or intricacies, unlike MCH and SMN.

[Bhearil]

MNK is kinda the only other job that relies on a semi freeform rotation with BLM, meaning that the rotation is a lot less constrained in its general flow than other types (fixed static rotations with no rng, or proc based priorities). The only concern is to keep dots and buff flowing and up, and it generates a lot of depth in what can be theorycrafted with it, or changed on the fly. BLM infamous non standard being the prime example of it, but MNK optimal drift and other more advanced shenanigans are a thing precisely because blitzes combined with PB allow for a very malleable freeform execution in order, and it can be, in my opinion, really galaxybrain as long as one doesn't just stick with the standard braindead rotation (or even more, the DK spamm meme, because like BLM, it's very well designed job in potency balance between abilities). This is, in my opinion, that makes the job have a very high ceiling if one tries to push it enough.

The intricacies of stances, especially when it comes to opo-opo vs stanceless, is elusive and hard to grasp to most newcomers to the job as well. On top of it, I feel that unless someone actually dedicates time (or just immediately clicks with it), the need to constantly at every GCD to wonder if one needs to refresh leaden fists, or disciplined fists, or demolish, on a fast paced recast, can be extremely overwhelming for most players, and I'm not even talking about making sure not to drop those during a blitz sequence.

I do think the blitzes feel extremely rewarding and it's one of the jobs that has the best flow/feel, but I do feel that the lack of guidelines confuse a lot of players more than anything, much like BLM but to a lesser degree.

If anything, I'm actually surprised that MNK so far has proven to be the only job rework that hasn't butchered its difficulty and/or intricacies, unlike MCH and SMN.

Id say that gutting the OGCDs leaving only Forbidden Chakra/Enlightment, removing half of the positionals and making the second least busy melee only beaten by RPR that is mostly faceroll counts as butchering its complexity by a lot(just that there are also jobs that are even easier doesnt make MNK complex), it was actually one of the justifications for the rework: "job is too hard, average player can barely push glowing buttons in order so we must make it simpler plus its easier for the 4 job devs to balance if most jobs fall under our 2 min game system".


This is the average actions per minute in 6.4

Job CPM Min Max
NIN 48.3 47.7(4th) 49.4(2nd)
MCH 47.3 46.5(6th) 48.2(7th)
BRD 45.4 44.6(1st) 46.3(5th)
SAM 44.5 44.0(10th) 46.1(1st)
DRG 43.6 43.0(7th,8th) 44.6(2nd)
GNB 43.4 42.2(2nd) 44.8(3rd)
MNK 42.1 41.1(10th) 43.9(5th)
AST 41.3 40.1(9th) 43.1(7th)
DRK 40.5 38.8(9th) 41.7(1st)
DNC 40.0 38.9(5th) 41.5(6th)
RDM 38.6 38.0(6th) 39.3(2nd)
RPR 38.2 37.8(2nd,3rd) 39.6(4th)
SCH 37.4 35.7(2nd) 38.6(3rd)
SMN 37.3 36.2(5th) 38.2(1st)
PLD 36.4 35.5(7th) 38.4(4th)
WAR 36.0 34.8(4th,5th,10th) 39.9(7th)
SGE 33.7 32.3(8th) 34.6(2nd,7th)
BLM 33.3 32.6(4th,6th) 34.3(5th)
WHM 33.1 31.6(7th,9th) 34.9(2nd,4th)

[Valence]

Id say that gutting the OGCDs leaving only Forbidden Chakra/Enlightment, removing half of the positionals and making the second least busy melee only beaten by RPR that is mostly faceroll counts as butchering its complexity by a lot(just that there are also jobs that are even easier doesnt make MNK complex), it was actually one of the justifications for the rework: "job is too hard, average player can barely push glowing buttons in order so we must make it simpler plus its easier for the 4 job devs to balance if most jobs fall under our 2 min game system".


This is the average actions per minute in 6.4

Job CPM Min Max
NIN 48.3 47.7(4th) 49.4(2nd)
MCH 47.3 46.5(6th) 48.2(7th)
BRD 45.4 44.6(1st) 46.3(5th)
SAM 44.5 44.0(10th) 46.1(1st)
DRG 43.6 43.0(7th,8th) 44.6(2nd)
GNB 43.4 42.2(2nd) 44.8(3rd)
MNK 42.1 41.1(10th) 43.9(5th)
AST 41.3 40.1(9th) 43.1(7th)
DRK 40.5 38.8(9th) 41.7(1st)
DNC 40.0 38.9(5th) 41.5(6th)
RDM 38.6 38.0(6th) 39.3(2nd)
RPR 38.2 37.8(2nd,3rd) 39.6(4th)
SCH 37.4 35.7(2nd) 38.6(3rd)
SMN 37.3 36.2(5th) 38.2(1st)
PLD 36.4 35.5(7th) 38.4(4th)
WAR 36.0 34.8(4th,5th,10th) 39.9(7th)
SGE 33.7 32.3(8th) 34.6(2nd,7th)
BLM 33.3 32.6(4th,6th) 34.3(5th)
WHM 33.1 31.6(7th,9th) 34.9(2nd,4th)

I don't think we're speaking about the same thing. Yes, MNK used to be harder on positionals, and yes MNK used to be harder on keeping up greased lightning when it was still a thing, and peak MNK during SB with the double TK rotations was challenging on its own.

However, nothing has yet come close to the rotational complexity and depth the new Blitzes provide in terms of constraints to play with (not dropping fists, not dropping demolish, cf optimal drift and other advanced rotations), but again, if you're not going for the advanced optimization, yeah, it's not hard. You can even DK spamm and get 100 DPS behind the optimal results, which is ridiculous. Imo that's the real glaring problem with the design. The rest is more a problem of flavor and what people like vs what they don't.

oGCD and APM is not exactly a good indicator of what's easy or hard imo. We're probably going to get into very subjective territory (if we haven't already), but telling me that MCH is hard? Come on, it's pretty mindless with a stupidly low skill/parse ceiling. BRD isn't exactly either, but its main difficulty lies in an extremely finicky optimization, which isn't tied to APM but drift/clipping, and proc management. SAM used to be lower APM and harder than what it currently is due to Kaiten... And so on.

Edit: I realize that the complexity was maybe not part of the initial comment and I may have gone on a tangent. I'm not especially keen on difficulty for difficulty's sake, and I'm more after interesting and unique designs more than anything. But if something has 25 APM and proves super unique and interesting how it plays, then I'll take it over a carpal tunnel brainless 50 APM job hands down.

[Silhart]

I love MNK for the reasons outlined in Valence's post. Optimal Drift was extremely rewarding to learn; having flexible burst windows that can be adjusted for downtime or gameplay mistakes is, in my opinion, a big part of what makes MNK's rotation so unique and enjoyable. I hope this is something that stays the same going into Dawntrail.

My issue is that once you've mastered Optimal Drift, there's not much room left for optimization. This is something I feel even harder with the loss of nearly all our positionals and the fact that raids don't challenge melee uptime the way they used to. I would love if fights went back to forcing melee downtime; it would go a long way in making parts of MNK's toolkit relevant and/or enjoyable again.

OP gave Six-Sided Star and Thunderclap as good examples, but I think Riddle of Wind has potential too. From a purely mechanical perspective, it's a buff that requires you to stay in melee range to maximize its effect--even moreso than other buffs, because of how sensitive auto-attacks are to downtime. The design is interesting in theory, but in practice this is never a consideration because of how rarely fights force you to disengage in the first place. I think it would be cool if RoW was treated a bit more like Leylines, in the sense that you need to plan its usage and know in advance when downtime is coming to avoid letting the extra autos go to waste. But before it even gets to that point, a lot of work needs to be done on RoW's presentation so that it feels like a significant button to hit. Bring back the GL4 animation and have a tornado swirl around you for its duration--maybe change the animation of your auto attacks to something more exciting (I’m thinking lots of spinning kicks and flips). Heck, maybe it could make your autos splash AoE wind damage around you, with an impactful sound effect and animation to boot. Lots of ways they can make RoW a fun button to press.

I’m gonna speak heresy and say that I kind of like Chakra as it is now. I enjoy the gameplay of needing to plan my weaves to minimize chakra overflow. It’s an extra layer of optimization, and it adds some much-needed spice to my 2-minute windows. But I also understand that not everyone has 0 ping, and until CBU3 finds a way to fix ping-related oGCD locks, I agree that Chakra should be changed into something that’s ping-friendlier for everyone.

In the end, this just comes back to me wanting more things to optimize on MNK. Melee downtime and MNK’s old positionals are the two things I desperately want back. I’ve recently started to think about ways I can maximize my positional count in P11S, and it’s bringing me a bit of enjoyment (I’m still way off from hitting anywhere close to 100%, so this new goal of mine will keep me busy for a while). However, I also can’t help but be sad thinking about how P11S would’ve been more fun to plan with all 6 of my positionals and old Riddle of Earth at my disposal. Their absence is more keenly felt than ever.

All in all, I’m not optimistic about the future. As I got towards the end of writing this post, I began to realize that the things I want for Dawntrail are things that don’t line up with CBU3’s current vision for the game. Not just for MNK, but for other jobs I used to enjoy too (SAM & Kaiten being the most prominent example). In all honestly, I don't think I'm going to stick around to see what they'll do to MNK. But I genuinely hope whoever is still playing finds plenty of enjoyment in it.

[Rufalus]

MNK is kinda the only other job that relies on a semi freeform rotation with BLM, meaning that the rotation is a lot less constrained in its general flow than other types (fixed static rotations with no rng, or proc based priorities).

If they ever rework it from the ground up in an attempt to make it popular, I hope we don't lose that freeform rotation. I need jobs like that to exist.

[Shurrikhan]

However, nothing has yet come close to the rotational complexity and depth the new Blitzes provide in terms of constraints to play with

I'd have to say Triple Kick (very high SkS, ultralow ping MNK in late Stormblood) was at least slightly harder and more deliberate in salvaging optimizations due to/around downtime than Optimal Drift is, but yeah, Blitz is a really solid mechanic in terms of its frequency of PB, and the timing of two extra GCDs per 80s respective to Twin's and Demo's durations.

I'd just like to see Blitz have more tangibly diverse options. Having all be precisely 1 GCD's length, after precisely 3 GCDs, in set trios, all to the effect of... just damage, done directly... is pretty lackluster. Blitz a superb fit that offers a lot to the surrounding rotational nuances through its filling that hole, but it's not a particularly interesting part in itself, imo.

[SpeckledBurd]

Chakra

-SNIP-

I feel like another thing worth noting about Chakra and most of its complaints is that pretty much all of them are very old in the context of this games development. Many have been present since Stormblood; when chakra was sloppily converted from being exclusively a downtime damage loss mitigation mechanism to being our secondary gauge, the fact that it that worked by RNG it was pretty widely criticized for running contrary to how Monk played on top of the myriad problems that its design had. They've alleviated certain problems with it, like how it was previously also completely party dependent on if you'd get procs and that you used to have a 5 Second Cooldown on Forbidden Chakra causing you to bleed chakras more often, but ultimately the problem of it being an RNG gauge that has no overhead for banking your procs has basically gone unaddressed despite there being now 2.5 expansions worth of people having the exact same complaints about it.

I'd have to say Triple Kick (very high SkS, ultralow ping MNK in late Stormblood) was at least slightly harder and more deliberate in salvaging optimizations due to/around downtime than Optimal Drift is

While true, Triple Tornado Kick was also completely unintuitive in no small part because the entire rotation was predicated on Tornado Kick's potency being bugged causing it to do significantly more damage than was intended, so there would basically be no way for a normal player to actually intuit it as a viable rotation.

[Valence]

I'd have to say Triple Kick (very high SkS, ultralow ping MNK in late Stormblood) was at least slightly harder and more deliberate in salvaging optimizations due to/around downtime than Optimal Drift is, but yeah, Blitz is a really solid mechanic in terms of its frequency of PB, and the timing of two extra GCDs per 80s respective to Twin's and Demo's durations.

I'd just like to see Blitz have more tangibly diverse options. Having all be precisely 1 GCD's length, after precisely 3 GCDs, in set trios, all to the effect of... just damage, done directly... is pretty lackluster. Blitz a superb fit that offers a lot to the surrounding rotational nuances through its filling that hole, but it's not a particularly interesting part in itself, imo.

I mean I don't see what more you'd want at this point. I'm always for interesting things but I find this interesting on its own since it plays across multiple variables in an overlay of buffs/dots to refresh and correct Nadi combinations to output. It's already ten times more interesting than mudras. And than what a lot of jobs actually offer now that I think about it (aka just press GCD/OGCDs out of CD during burst for a lot of them)...