The Worst Iteration of Monk. What could be different?

[Yokubo]

Howdy ya'll! It's me again with yet another post expansion complaint post on Monk. Each expansion with the changes, I feel Monk has been drifting further and further from the beautiful ideal of Monk. I have to say though, going into Dawntrail, Monk has by far hit the lowest playstyle of the class in my opinion as it now has nothing to upkeep and the main goal is to squeeze in as many hits of Leading Opo as possible. The removal of Twin Snake Buff and Demolish Debuff no longer give a purpose to the other forms, and now the only effect on the skills is to do potency damage. With no more positionals (I would consider couerl form positionals almost non-existent now), the class no longer has the quick need for mobility as it had in ShB and before.

However, instead of drivelling about how disappointing the changes have been, I would just like to dream with you all how the class could be made better in our world of imagination.

I don't think returning the positional buffs to the class will fix everything, but I feel I would love to see the alteration of the Chakra from a big hit to something more class-fitting. I think I saw a post in ShB of somebody mentioning using the chakra to gain a buff which I thought would have been a sweet idea, but just a decent hitting oGCD I think isn't as fun or class defining.

For what it's worth, I feel Heavensward had the best Monk set up. There was plenty to upkeep with Greased Lightning, 3 debuffs (Touch of Death, Demolish, and cross-class Fracture [when cross-class was a thing]), Dragon Kick when it was a debuff, and Twin Snake buff. Additionally, all 6 core class abilities were positionals which lead to quick movement and a high skill ceiling of planning your rotation and debuff upkeep.

[koko-on-da-forumz]

Without changing the structure of the 2 minute dance and the overall combat system structure, I think Endwalker's iteration is about as good as it gets. Before the combat live letter, all I was hoping for was to get positionals and some incarnation of greased lightning back.

Instead, whoof.

Had XIV evolved differently over time, I would have liked to see Monk evolve burstless. Just timers upon timers. Instead of two sets of single target GCDs, add a third. Give the AoE rotation two sets of GCDs and buffs/debuffs. But that absolutely would not work in the current incarnation of XIV.

[Esmoire]

My main now has the ugliest gauge in the game. Full or simplified, it's always hideous, cumbersome, and bloated. I am surprised how much space it takes for what it communicates. To start, the "simplified" version can lose the separator symbols. Put the symbols and pips (coloured) into the gauge itself.

[Valence]

I do think the MNK changes in EW and in DT are great compared to the lacklustre rework ShB had. The loss of timers in exchange for something else that also brings technicalities i'm all for, but I do understand that some people like them and that it kinda ruined or changed optimal drift for advanced players. The loss of positionals on every skill feels like a removal of the job's identity to me though, and i'm saying that as someone that hates positionals.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I just want 2 things from Monk: Greased Lightning and positionals.

I fell in love with Monk because Greased Lightning was this fast paced system you needed to upkeep at all costs or risk losing all damage. It made me become a better DPS, because I had to find all these crazy ways to do mechanics while up keeping my buff, and as time went on they gave us various ways to keep the buff up anyway which made Monk so much fun refreshing GL literally 2 seconds before it fell off.

The positionals added to that fast paced and hectic experience, it was fast, and crazy and had its problems but it was fun!

The current iteration of Monk is a stranger to me, if they presented this to me back in ARR i would have just played DRG. The job doesn’t even feel fast anymore, such a shame.

[boomkinburger]

My main now has the ugliest gauge in the game. Full or simplified, it's always hideous, cumbersome, and bloated. I am surprised how much space it takes for what it communicates. To start, the "simplified" version can lose the separator symbols. Put the symbols and pips (coloured) into the gauge itself.

Hell I would be happy if the new Beast Chakra Gauge was separated. I don't mind the new addition to with the Fury stacks but I'd much rather it be a separate HUD element that I can place somewhere I find more convenient to see.

[Silver-Strider]

Our AoE is also problematic since, with the removal of the Disciplined Fist buff and only our ST rotation getting buffed, our AoE rotation is a DPS loss on anything less than 4 mobs, and with how many forced single pulls there are in DT, it's been rough.

[LucienFaust]

Sorry but no besides tornado kick monk this has been the best monk iteration since tornado kick monk not heavenward.

[Ramiee]

Monk again proves itself as being the job that will always get reworked every expansion.

[SpeckledBurd]

For what it's worth, I feel Heavensward had the best Monk set up. There was plenty to upkeep with Greased Lightning, 3 debuffs (Touch of Death, Demolish, and cross-class Fracture [when cross-class was a thing]), Dragon Kick when it was a debuff, and Twin Snake buff. Additionally, all 6 core class abilities were positionals which lead to quick movement and a high skill ceiling of planning your rotation and debuff upkeep.

I agree and Heavensward is the foundation that I'd have liked to have seen properly built upon rather than it constantly being eroded by system changes or peeling off mechanics to give other jobs. I honestly can't say that I like the current iteration of Monk all that much either, building orbs and spending orbs doesn't have the flow that I loved in HW and which kept me playing it during the iterations of the job that I found genuinely awful.

Going into Stormblood I would have leaned into Monk as being the job that doesn't hit hard, but hits a lot. Instead of Riddle of Fire which gave you a speed penalty for a damage bonus, I'd have done the exact opposite and make 100 Fists which would give a damage penalty in exchange for applying a Barrage effect to all outgoing damage to create an overall net DPS gain (IE: -40% Damage but X2 hits on all Weaponskills, Auto attacks and abilities for what would functionally be a 0.6 + 0.6 = 1.2x multiplier). It would feel faster without necessarily having to be faster which was the big fear of the devs during Stormblood.

Otherwise the biggest change would be to decouple Tornado Kick from GL so recovery wouldn't constantly be hamstrung by the devs to stop people from trying to use it. Something like "Executing X Number of positionals" or "Refreshed Greased Lightning X number of times" being the requirement to use Tornado Kick I think would be fair concepts, if functionally very similar to Enochian and Xenoglossy/Foul in practice. That lets Perfect Balance gain a reasonable recast to be used for recovery instead of needing to add truly asinine skills like Riddle of Earth and Anatman which frequently didn't work with how they built encounters.

Brotherhood or Monk getting any kind of partywide damage buffs I'm indifferent to, what matters is the second to second gameplay being satisfying. I still actively dislike RNG chakras and would really liked for them to build consistently rather than based on crits or RNG on top of crits.

From there there's plenty of room for growth I think and even giving Monk something like Blitzes could still be on the table as an addition since Greased Lightning is still on the more passive side of job mechanics rather than an active mechanic.