The Worst Iteration of Monk. What could be different?

[Shurrikhan]

I think we can infer from the dev's messaging during the Liveletters in the leadup to Dawntrail's Launch and the "In Regards to Upcoming Job Action Adjustments" announcement that the Fury Gauge was presumably meant to mimic the basic flow of old Monk's core GCD rotation that the Twin Snakes/Demolish Timers created.

I just don't get how they forget that discrete (single-spender) ammo stacks and durations are fundamentally different. Even if they had somehow mis-remembered Demolish as only being able to exist on a single target at a time and having a 24s duration instead... Coeurl Fury would still function nothing like it.

I'd hope for them to reverse course on the Monk Balls and bring back Twin Snakes/Disciplined Fist and Demolish because this was a completely unnecessary change that appeals to seemingly no one who actually likes the Job, but at this point I know the devs will triple down before reversing course on any Monk changes they make until it blows up catastrophically.

I at least thought that if they were going to go in some odd direction that "mimics" something old, it'd have been by, say, returning Greased Lightning such that each successful positional raises the potency of successful positionals (from 20 to 30, 40, 50, 60) and a stack is automatically consumed to guarantee a positional you would otherwise have missed (and does not grant a stack) with all skills again getting a positional. Or, to use MP instead of discrete Chakra, bring back a couple more oGCDs, and allow MP to be spent to "rush" said CDs. Or something to do with Light and Dark Chakra. Or even just the "Reply" GCDs. Etc., etc.

...Not... removing core mechanics for a fundamentally inferior single-builder-single-spender system of ammo types.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Got around to levelling my monk some today, my biggest wish is for them to improve the weaving issues for "higher" ping. I never had an issue double weaving without clipping pre DT but for whatever reason now... nope! Die hard monk mains running with a minimum of two plugins is terrible and it's a shame SE refuse to do something about it. Ik MCH suffers the same issues with weaving on high ping.

I did enjoy keeping greased lightning up back in the day, but I was always infuriated losing the stacks to cutscenes in fights. Glad I don't have that to deal with anymore. The new animations for DT look great, the rotation loop feels similar to before. Overall enjoy DT monk a lot, I do question the continued existence of RoW. We do need the potencies and stuff fixed but we already know that is coming to make the intended rotation actually be the optimal one instead of the cursed one we have presently. Lastly, making our AoE suck less would also be good.

[FemmeFatale]

I've played since ARR and I've never been able to make heads nor tails of monk, I'm trying to learn it today and I just can't wrap my head around the fucking horrendous gauges, masterful blitz and those ball gauge things.

How am I supposed to know what color is tied to what attack, and then work out what combo gives me whatever masterful blitz.. and then remember it? while doing mechanics?

How does Ast get re-worked every other expansion and Monk just exists.

Oh well, I'll level it with MSQ roulette to level cap then bench it till the following expansion. Why Monk is the least played class will always remain a mystery to me.

Not.

[Ramiee]

How does Ast get re-worked every other expansion and Monk just exists.

The implication that Monk of all Jobs doesn't get reworked often is honestly hillarious.

[ArcadianGenesis]

Monk is the least played class

Is it really? Do we have the exact statistics on this?

[koko-on-da-forumz]

returning Greased Lightning such that each successful positional raises the potency of successful positionals (from 20 to 30, 40, 50, 60) and a stack is automatically consumed to guarantee a positional you would otherwise have missed (and does not grant a stack) with all skills again getting a positional.

Man, this would have been such a fun change if balanced correctly. Really ties all of the systems together.

It'd require giving positionals back though, and I don't think they're ever going to do that.

[SpeckledBurd]

Is it really? Do we have the exact statistics on this?

We don't have the exact play statistics but there's a decent amount of evidence that it's at or near the bottom. It's typically the job with the least number of players who have it at max level in the Lucky Banchou character censuses and it's usually in last or near last place on FFlogs in terms of number of parses in all content.

[Leonus]

What classes are not “brain dead”?

None of the jobs in this game seem or look particularly hard as long as you have higher faculty processing. It’s more about what you want to play.

Going to give this iteration of mnk a shot… learning that people on these forums really complain for the simple pleasure of complaining.

[Yokubo]

A lot of you guys will hate me for this, but I still complained in Endwalker about Monk due to the positional gutting and the Blitz mechanic that was dangerously close to other class abilities (Samurai and Ninja of a flavor). I'll admit though, it did grow on me a bit and was nice to see Perfect Balance given a purpose after they removed Greased Lightning (Which I was unashamedly a fan of).

I was always secretly praying for them to double down on Monk's positionals value, but I know the casual player base seemingly hate positionals, which puts me on the losing side. Somebody earlier mentioned wanting to see Monk operate with an ability like Barrage where you hit more for less. I would LOVE to have seen something like that. My main draw to Monk was the building up and accelerating of the class. Abilities that hit multiple times with lower potency were always so cool for me, think Dream Within A Dream for Ninja.

Another earlier post mentioned 3 iconic parts of Monk; Greased Lightning, Positionals, and Timers. I feel the homogenising or universalising (Maybe I used those words wrong, just making all the classes more and more similar) really takes away the identity of being a "____ Main". I feel the only class that still really has that would be an Astroligian, which for me is probably my most hated class, but I still level it and then leave it. I don't go posting on the forums how much I dislike the class, I'll just play something more my style. I feel the people who level Monk and it's not their taste really hate the taste of building up GL, and were not accustomed to the class to land all the positionals. Granted I do agree that at this point it would be like Greased Lightning 5 or 6, which might be a bit much, but I think they could design great mechanics to build and remove stacks and give the class more purpose than the current state of "aiming to land as many guaranteed critical hits so I can throw my balls all over the target" which just is not doing it for the class.

Hot take, but if my class only has potency to it, it's not a well designed class, and it's certainly not fun. How will the dragoons feel when they take the DoT away from their rear combo and just turn that into a potency buff for the 123 combo? A post about the "Nobody asked for this, this is just the direction they decided to take" I think is a true yet sad sentiment that I think should considered as a lot of people seem to be in agreement that the dumbing down of classes isn't fun.

For me, Viper has been a great addition and I loved the busyness of the class, but of course we will see that going away in 7.01. The people complaining about a class being too difficult apparently rings louder than the people who have played a class for a long time wishing that their class wouldn't lose defining factors of why the class was fun.

[jerome15]

i have what i think is a great idea to make the class more tolerable for the older players and the newer players. bring back all of the positionals and tie them to the chakra gauge. you hit the positional correctly? boom, 1 chakra. you then have a reason to hit positionals plus you get feedback (since that seems to be one of the complaints) and the chakra now has meaning and isn't quite as rng based (i know boss turning, etc, is an issue, but that'll never be changed)