Job Homogenization – Restoring Monk’s Identity

[echo78]

I'm just dropping in to say that HW monk was the most fun I ever had playing this game. Sustained DPS with a bunch of OGCDs, buffs, debuffs, dots to watch. And all the positionals!

Monk is completely unrecognizable now. Its a different job that shares the same name.

[Shurrikhan]

For me it's late Stormblood MNK >~ Endwalker Monk > Heavensward Monk >> Dawntrail Monk / Early Stormblood Monk >> A Realm Reborn Monk (assuming fights equally hard to keep a 10s GL up on) > Shadowbringers Monk > late Shadowbringers Monk.

That said, I don't feel like Greased Lightning added much to the job outside of Tornado Kick. It hadn't had any skill expression since A Realm Reborn, and even then it was generally either easily maintained or prohibitive, with only 5-8 fights made more fun (T5, T7 if kiting, T9, T13, Levi Ex, Ifrit Ex, maybe Garuda Ex) for its presence despite.

And even with Tornado Kick, the most the ramp-up could offer was the occasional perfect-duration [de]buff from refreshing while slowed down... and that assumes you weren't running enough SkS to perfect-clip regularly anyways.

While Blitz is oversimple and overmuch, and the stances are worse for having been reduced to just a couple buffs and their follow-up attacks, I do think Blitz as a concept has more to offer than Greased Lighting ever provided. I also think the 3-step PB per 60s is far more interestingly and fittingly leverageable than the old 5-step PB per 90s.

Meanwhile Dawntrail's problems:

• The gap between a buffed and unbuffed is so heavy that, especially given the buff's infinite duration now, there's no virtually never a reason to just rush out direct damage.
• Lack of durations means no situationally-derived variation (granted, fights would have to not be foolproofed against melee downtime for that to matter)
• Lack of durations means no choice based on Skill Speed between rotations.
• Obvious opportunities to allow for overcap margining or at least to consolidate the Beast Chakra ( / Master's Gauge) UI missed, leaving it only half-leveraged and fairly bloated.

As for restoring Monk's identity, I think the biggest thing is to just take its rotational flexibility, self-buffing, and Blitz far further. Personally, I'd bring back stances as part of that, but I could see why some wouldn't be fans of the idea.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

The muscle memory on positionals is so ingrained in me I need to remind myself I don't need to bother. That said monk still feels unique and distinct to me from the other melee. And I don't see them adding back positionals, there are other ways to make a job interesting to play anyway. Current monk is pretty nice but feels like stuff is kinda tacked on, like wind and fires reply just feel kinda pointless and they didn't know what else to add for 96 and 100 skills. They're not interesting to use, just wauw another dmg button to hit that interacts not at all with anything else really. I'd like to see those buttons pruned in favour of something more interesting and interactive in the whole kit.

I miss tornado kick being it's own button u.u

[Phylecia]

I feel PvP actions do a significantly better job at providing identity to the jobs than the PvE ones.

Playing a NIN is very different from playing a MNK vs playing a RPR vs playing a DRG etc.

Even though they're all melee, they bring a lot of dynamic differences with their skills and mechanical differences to CC matches.

I point out Crystal Conflict because with a 5v5, many matches can have jobs not in them and you can very quickly notice classes doing THE THING they do for the jobs that are present on your team and the enemy team.

I wish unique class skills/effects could be more like how PvP feels--all the classes can be viable on the team, but are very different to play.

[Carighan]

There's also a lot of mechanics that have nothing to do with DPS directly, for DPS jobs. And I feel a lot of those ought to be taken over for identity/uniqueness reasons if nothing else. Viper scales, reaper benefitting from player deaths and having non-trivial healing procs, samurai slow but hard-hitting counterproc, that kind of stuff.

And for Monk, Earth's Reply in particular is a really clever ability. As is PvP's Thunderclap.

[mallleable]

MNK needs more Blitz combos in 8.0, and that's really it.

[SpeckledBurd]

I started playing in very late ARR to the point where it may as well have been Heavensward and to this day Heavensward Monk is still probably the most fun I've had playing this game, even if it was kind of the worst Melee (or frankly DPS) for most of the expansion with a lot of shortcomings. The core design of balancing multiple timers, Greased Lightning, Demolish, Touch of Death, Demolish worked extremely well and I frankly think it still would as long as it isn't essentially designed to fail as it was in the past. They just need to not needlessly hamstring it with poor recovery, give it useful tools and abilities (imagine if Formshift refreshed Greased Lightning like it did in 5.05 in 4.0) instead of abilities that are seemingly deliberately designed to fail at what they're designed to (OG Riddle of Earth and Anatman), and actually give the job rewards for succeeding in its gameplay loop by upkeeping Greased Lightning.

Unfortunately, the devs are stubborn and are almost certainly going to continue to develop it as the fill ball drain ball job. It's current design I frankly loathe deep in my soul since it turned Leaden Bootshine (Something I hated when it replaced Dragon Kick's blunt debuff) into the core of the job's gameplay loop replacing timers which were cool dynamic thought provoking and sexy. Since the devs have said Pictomancer and Viper are going to be the template for jobs moving forward, I fully expect next expansion for the devs to consolidate the six core weaponskills into 3 buttons for each form that switch depending on if you're filling or draining balls and I'm going to hate every second of it.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't understand how anyone would simultaneously want Greased Lightning returned only to immediately make it a non-mechanic / mere bloat-button chore such as by having Form Shift refresh it.

Tornado Kick was already able to compensate for the wind-up of Greased Lightning.

Anatman and Riddle of Earth at least didn't just waste all mechanical depth that GL had, unlike the Form Shift refresh. For as long as that shit existed, let alone with a timer so hugely increased from its original 10s, there was no point in GL even existing.

[Carighan]

I don't understand how anyone would simultaneously want Greased Lightning returned only to immediately make it a non-mechanic / mere bloat-button chore such as by having Form Shift refresh it.

I don't get it either, but I feel in lieu of anything else people see the finger-exercise button bloat of FFXIV's current class design as "design depth"?

Monk of all classes is well-suited to a future design of branching combo paths though where you'd effectively be thinking X GCDs ahead to decide now which button to press next, no? The forms basically want such a design, where it's not just a rote sequence you go through but got actual choices to make? And in return a lot of the current bloat even could be removed, as there'd be a certain amount of mental attention required each GCD to decide which to press next, no longer needing lots of other buttons to press endlessly.

[Shurrikhan]

Monk of all classes is well-suited to a future design of branching combo paths though where you'd effectively be thinking X GCDs ahead to decide now which button to press next, no? The forms basically want such a design, where it's not just a rote sequence you go through but got actual choices to make? And in return a lot of the current bloat even could be removed, as there'd be a certain amount of mental attention required each GCD to decide which to press next, no longer needing lots of other buttons to press endlessly.

I don't see how this would be feasible given the existence of Perfect Balance.

If we gave Opo, Raptor, and Coeurl 3 buttons (build, spend, AoE) both each and in total via VPR-style replacement, then PB would have to force a certain "optimal" action for each slot or create a 4th omni-functional skill for each form (again, to replace such choice beyond just which form to use) to replace the 3 total buttons' space during its buff.

The only logical consolidation at present would be PB itself with Blitz and maybe Opo-build with Opo-spend since there's no reason ever to rebuild early.

Though even that, imo, better indicates that we should simply go back to the old duration-based Dragon Kick, Disciplined Fist / Twin Snakes, and Demolish or that each beast chakra should have an extra orb of margin. (2/3/4 orbs max, likely displayed differently).