The Worst Iteration of Monk. What could be different?

[schway]

Am I going crazy or were the colors associated with stances swapped around on the gauge? I.e. Raptor used to be Green, but now its purple?
Also, the new gauge having virtually the same color balls (dark pink/purple barely noticeable difference in play) for Oppo/Raptor seems extremely lazy

I started in Endwalker & got used to playing with EW Monk PB coloring, I don't understand why the colors have been shell gamed for no apparent reason? Is this usual for an expac?

[Brill_]

Did they stealth buff mnk? I see elixer field and rising phoenix are both 900 potency now. Phantom rush is 1400. I didn't see any notes about it. I thought potency buffs were not going to be until 7.01.

[Sunhwapark]

Did they stealth buff mnk? I see elixer field and rising phoenix are both 900 potency now. Phantom rush is 1400. I didn't see any notes about it. I thought potency buffs were not going to be until 7.01.

Nah, it wasn't a stealth buff. We're still waiting for the potency buffs that are due on 7.01.

[Shurrikhan]

For what it's worth, I feel Heavensward had the best Monk set up.

It was fine, if given tweaks, but there are some things about Heavensward MNK that seem fundamental and yet also far worse than late Stormblood (Tornado Kick) or Endwalker Monk: Namely, that Greased Lightning existed as a per-fight tax rather than a real resource and Perfect Balance had to be saved for re-ramp alone (thus largely invalidating that tax anyways).

Endwalker Monk was actually shockingly good, imho, especially if playing at higher than recommended Skill Speed as to pull off slightly different rotational meeting points with CDs and get in an extra Bootshine (or reduced DF/DM clip) per RoF. I would ideally have just picked up off that via general gamewide QoL improvements instead of once again hiding those shortfalls (affecting only some players) by trimming away gameplay (for all players).



:: I included a mock-up of what a logical extension of Endwalker Monk in the interests of increased accessibility (without reduced skill ceiling) might look like on a recent thread asking what Dawntrail changes were for the worse.
See/expand the box below:

Guess I'll put in my own $0.02.

Although things have trended in this way for a while now so maybe it does meet every criteria for a "change", it feels like this trend has sharpened even more with Dawntrail:

Falling back on simplifications to forgot the need for technical advancements or even basic UI polish.

Let's take Monk for example. Let's start from the a couple potential issues that the dev team has, apparently, taken issue with: unnecessary barriers to accessibility, button bloat, and action bloat.

• Let us also say that, due to frequent player complaints about tracking DoTs or buff timers, that difficulty could be considered an unnecessary barrier to accessibility.
  
  
• Next, let us define "button bloat" as any button(s) the control or gameplay from which could be provided without loss with (fewer or) no buttons used.
  
  
• Finally, we'll take the former examples of old Power Surge (buffs next single-target Jump or SSD, meant to only ever be used on every third Jump and only ever Jump and therefore providing no real further thought beyond hitting it when it's available since Power Surge was on a multiple of Jump's timer anyways).

Given these issues commented on in the past and the opportunities, therefore, to address them, which of the choices below would seem to do the greater general good and least harm to job design?

OPTION ONE:
Improve the combat UI gamewide through simple but effective changes, thereby making essential (de)buff tracking a non-issue; revitalize lackluster actions; trim unnecessary constraints and buttons without opening rotation to ill or degenerative effects; and, in doing so, inadvertently make Monk more open to nuance and unique.

Click below to expand for details:

• Status Effects can now be placed separately and/or at separate sizes for one's own debuffs and Target Status Effects may now similarly be customized into chosen layouts of icons per row / total number of rows, left or right aligned. You may now customize the order of different types of status effects, including separately by self, party, and others.
  
  
• By default, timers for core debuffs, specific to each job, are now tracked directly below or to either side of enemy nameplates, with an icon, faded icon, small icon, or just the timer; said timer may be given as a bar beneath the enemy health bar, a number, or both. You can customize this to remove these timers or permit more effects to be tracked. Enemy nameplates may be further customized to reduce seemingly unnecessary information and now carry further information by default, such as interruptible casts, stunnable special actions, level of threat, and whether one is out of range, etc.
  
  
• HUD Layout has been revamped to include Gauges, Targeting, and Groups as separate categories. Additionally, many more pieces of UI have become separable and show this by default; UI elements with separable parts, including these new ones, now list each potentially separable element indented below the name for the combined form of that UI element.
  
  
• Most gauges and parameter bars are now separable in this way, including the Mana Bar, Song Gauge: Codas, Soul Voice, and Song Progress; Beast Chakra Gauge: Blitz Progress, Nadi, Forms, Leaden Fist, Disciplined Fist, Demolish, Perfect Balance Stacks; Balance Gauge: Black Magic, White Magic, Mana Crystals; Elemental Gauge: Elemental Timer, Elemental Counter, Umbral Hearts, Astral Soul, Polyglot Timer, Polyglot Counter, Paradox; etc.
  
  
• Twin Snakes and Dragon Kick potency reduced by 20 and True Strike, and Demolish potency increased by 20. This significantly increases the punishment of using simplified Dragon Kick rotations (from about 92% to ~86% of regular damage).
  
  
• Riddle of Wind now, for 10 seconds, increases you auto-attack and movement speed by 40%, allows auto-attack critical strikes to generate Chakra, and causes the use of single-target and multi-target attacks with Form to replace The Forbidden Chakra and Enlightenment, respectively, allowing you to use that skill again as an ability. Brotherhood and Riddle of Wind now both allow your Chakra to overcharge, up to a total of 10 Chakra.
  
  
• Anatman now grants 1 second of Riddle of Fire, Riddle of Wind, and Riddle of Earth for each second it is channeled. These durations do not begin to fade until the channel ends.
  
  
• Greased Lightning has been returned in a rehauled state. It now reads, "The damage of your Opo-opo, Raptor, and Coeurl skills are increased by 20% and their recast times reduced by 20%. Outside of Perfect Balance, each Form that benefits from these effects cannot benefit again for (3 GCDs' time)." Moreover, all Form Bonuses have been removed, their benefits rolled into the original abilities, but the bonus damage from Leaden Fist has been reduced to 80 potency and Snap Punch potency has been increased by 20 in its stead.
  

  This causes optimal play to follow the same rotations as before, as one can only get full value out of the form every but makes Form Shift unnecessary.

• Revamp the default Beast Chakra Gauge, having it instead by default show the three forms, Opo-opo, Raptor, and Coeurl, from left to right, with each losing its glow and shrinking upon consuming the effects of Greased Lightning, gradually restoring to normal size and glow over 3 GCDs' time to mark when it will again have full power. By default, the remaining time on Leaden Fist, Disciplined Fist, and Demolish (on your current target) are shown as a radial timer around and a numeric timer below the Opo-opo, Raptor, and Coeurl nodes.
  
  While in Fluid Form, all are shown again at full size and glow (since Fluid Form guarantees the effects of Greased Lightning) regardless of recent progress, and a stacking chevron appears above reused forms.
  

  This, in effect, maintains the same general rotation as before, but without need for windup (beyond Disciplined Fist), a single direction of progression (O->R->C->), or the bloat of Form Shift in order to begin from a different point in that set order. Essentially, for fewer buttons, you get a Monk who is more uniquely Monk, and by removing the need for set Form bonuses, you more nuanced use of Forms is now available.

• (Steeled/Forbidden) Meditation (and Inspirited/Enlightened Meditation) has (have) been removed, though Chakra spenders remain and can now be used at three or more Chakra for a fifth of their current potency per stack. Instead of needing an active button-press, you generate 1 Chakra per half of a global cooldown's time that you have not been under the global cooldown. Progress towards this the next Chakra granted in this manner is saved and accumulated and is now tracked just above your Chakra counter by default (and is separable).
  

  This provides roughly the same Chakra generation over time but without the need for a separate button press, therefore allowing more flexibility among Chakra spending and reducing the chore of use between fights.

OPTION TWO:
Make players look at their job gauge, instead of their more customizably placed (Conditional Buffs portion of the) Status Effects bar, to see whether they should use Dragon Kick or Leaden Fist, Twin Snake or Raptor Strike, Demolish or Snap Punch; remove Monk's GCD nuke, replacing it with a much more rarely pressed maintenance buff; remove any interaction between surrounding rotation and Blitz; remove any rotational interaction with downtime; rather than giving Anatman any purpose (again), remove it entirely.

For details, play Dawntrail Monk or even just review its job guide.

[Gorondu]

What keeps me from maining Monk is its Chakra procs. The 10 possible stacks should be baseline and not only during brotherhood. To play the monk perfectly you need to hit an ogcd that may come or not come after your very fast gcd attacks. No other class is that unforeseeable. Maybe bard with his one song, but this is only active one third of his time and his attacks are much slower.

I love all other changes to monk and would play him as main if this change would be made.

[Palladiamors]

Yea, you guys are around summoner level of deleted at this point. I'm sorry for your loss, and for the people who rush in screaming "I LIKE IT NOW!"

[Emitans]

Only tried it against a striking dummy but I really hate the "feel" of it now. Pressing Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes no longer gives me a buff, Demolish doesn't DoT the enemy. The buttons feel hollow now. They only exist to buff the "real" buttons.

[Shurrikhan]

Only tried it against a striking dummy but I really hate the "feel" of it now. Pressing Dragon Kick and Twin Snakes no longer gives me a buff, Demolish doesn't DoT the enemy. The buttons feel hollow now. They only exist to buff the "real" buttons.

Aye, and the part that I expect was missed on the developers is how different a maintenance buff that needs to be played around will feel from a maintenance buff that does not. At present, because a double-Lunar opener is so often the go-to, our only risk is 15% of the difference between Raptor-buffer and Raptor-spam and between Coeurl-buffer and Coeurl-spam...

...which... has seemed to normally remain pretty automatic to avoid under normal rotation, from what I recall in single-target combat (as there's... nothing to friggin do or juggle in AoE anymore anyways, AoE isn't relevant to this), though I forget whether that's from Blitz starting on 1st, 2nd (open after DK), 3rd (for lower SkS, opening after Twin and Demo since you can't get in the extra Leapopo anyways due to both Reply GCDs taking space in window) or 4th (opening with buffs)GCD.

Will test to check once I can get on after work.

What keeps me from maining Monk is its Chakra procs. The 10 possible stacks should be baseline and not only during brotherhood. To play the monk perfectly you need to hit an ogcd that may come or not come after your very fast gcd attacks.

Outside of Brotherhood, the Chakra can only come from your GCDs, so you always have time to spend whatever Chakra you generate, immediately after generating them. While it's far from fun to do as a broader habit, you can actually just spam Meditation up until the last second of your GCD's refresh to make your spender go off automatically if and only if you have enough Chakra to use it, since it won't queue weaponskills (only use abilities) until then.

Early on, I was a big advocate for, at minimum, "Hold 7, spend 5" (or, ideally, "Hold 7, spend <all available>") so that we had a bit more margin, but sometimes the need to spend them asap and actually think at least a little about Chakra in the moment rather than as a banking mechanism (a la modern Bloodletters) actually feels more good than bad to me. /shrug

[VentVanitas]

I haven't visited the forum in a while, took a break from it because I actually was enjoying myself going through Dawntrail. as a Viper, though, as I've dropped Monk for it after maining it since 2018.

to no one's surprise, making an even more unnecessarily designed system just to mimic old Monk had only introduced even more problems than solved them. who would've seen that coming? definitely not me. I can't even be angry or sad anymore. it's just funny now, I can't help but pity how pathetic the job is. even 5.4 MNK had more going on with it than this iteration does.

great job, SE! looking forward to seeing what they'll do to try and desperately salvage this dead job.

[Shurrikhan]

to no one's surprise, making an even more unnecessarily designed system just to mimic old Monk

And what system would that be? No part of Fury gauge, the removal of Disciplined Fist and Demolish (as a mechanic, not merely a name), Wind's Reply, or Earth's Reply mimic old Monk.

???

looking forward to seeing what they'll do to try and desperately salvage this dead job.

I mean, Endwalker Monk was far from dead. To "salvage" it they needed only to not randomly wreck it.