We need different class designers for Monk

[Yangxiaolóng-bleeding-hollow (Yangxiaolóng)]

@Zedak-haomarush

I didn’t say it was a hard concept, it’s just not any fun whatsoever. And as I said the most punishing class mastery mechanic I can think of in the game. You also have to pay way more attention than nearly any other class since again, you can’t make a mistake or you lose 5%

My friend, Hit Combo is not the class mastery, Combo Strikes is. You actually have to actively try to break mastery on our big stuff. Hit Combo is an optional talent now, and I honestly find myself using the other option, Flurry of Xuen, more often than I do Hit Combo. AND Hit Combo is becoming even more optional on Tuesday because Flurry is getting a 40% buff. I feel like you’re putting too much weight on Hit Combo and Combo Strikes for monk’s low popularity as opposed to Blizz constantly policing us.

@Zedak-haomarush

Like I said there is not a lot of reasons why Monk has been basically the least played class for nearly 10 years accept that people don’t like the way they play. Know what my first monk was? I played a Fist weaver healer, OH, blizzard nerfed that all together and removed it.

Good news. Fistweave is a thing again. That said, I agree that Blizz constantly gets rid of our fun stuff and it sucks.

[Babylonius-illidan]

Combo Strikes doesnt have any stacks, its our Mastery. The talent Hit Combo has stacks and drops if you make a mistake. Many people have complained about that and I’ve suggested a few times that it changes this way.

[Hellbows-frostmourne]

What if I told you, you don’t need to worry about these stats if you aren’t doing the top pinnacle of mythic raid or keys. Brewmaster does fine in keys 12 and below. Which is what the regular M+ gamer will probably aim for???

We’re not strong and the design of the class does suck but it’s not like you can’t play it

[Soill-illidan]

@Hellbows-frostmourne

regular M+ gamer

A regular M+ gamer isn’t going to pick Brewmaster.

Also past 10 keys competitive pushing is the only reason to log in. If you look at twelves the experience for brew is far different than that for Warrior or Druid to the points that

1. They cannot entirely self sustain
2. They will require attention from healers and are very spikey
3. It’s not possible to know as another party member how many healing spheres they have

[Hellbows-frostmourne]

@Soill-illidan

A regular M+ gamer isn’t going to pick Brewmaster

I mean I’m picking up bm because it’s the only tank I haven’t played yet and I’m finding it the most enjoyable

Not having issues pugging and I literally do like 3 keys a day if that

[Soill-illidan]

Most people that play brew do enjoy it. It’s a very fun tank. But I’ve been playing it for two expansions or so and once you reach the push phase of M+ you really start to notice Blizzards lack of attention for the class.

I have tanked 12’s and completed them, and many of the issues not timing have been DPS deaths. Ara 13 was even not too bad. But I’ve also 100-0 in seconds on some pulls, and Druid and Warrior are leagues less stress for the heals, and panicking over a tank can kill DPS.

[Hellbows-frostmourne]

100% agree

We do need an update and some buffs.agree

[Soill-illidan]

@Hellbows-frostmourne

We do need an update and some buffs.agree

I would have said this in Dragonflight >< when I started monk. After two expansions of all monk specs suffering a majority of the time, I think the problem is the people overlooking the class at Blizzard.

I kind of view it as this line by @Zedak:

@Zedak-haomarush

In PoE for many many season melee was just trash tier only one single spec really was compeitive and only in the first few weeks of the ladder reset. Justification for GGG doing next to nothing was that “Only 10% of the player base plays melee”. This obviously was because melee so very bad. Eventually the best melee players started to boycot melee and people started to leave to play other games in which melee was being treated better. So finally GGG did some real melee buffs, and what do ya know Melee player percentage exploded.

I remember this very well. I also enjoy PoE. Most of the gameplay comments around brew are very positive. It’s so enjoyable that I’d rather quit the game than swap classes at this point. It’s only not popular because it performs poorly.

[Elgrippa-illidan]

@Yangxiaolóng-bleeding-hollow

I’m pretty sure we have something this xpac too with Celestial Conduit, but I don’t know if that’s been patched yet.

/10char

@Zedak-haomarush

it does not feel good when you miss press a button that you’re going to lose 5% possibly on WDP or RSK

dont miss, simple as

@Julesx-frostmourne

This is my subjective opinion only, but at least MoP monk was truly fun. For me, all monk specs have been on a fun decline since the end of WoD.

On decline since Throne of Thunder.
RoRo was the first to fall.
Instead of fix the trinket, they nerfed mastery into obsolescence. The fallout was so bad, they replaced the core mechanic entirely in Legion with Combo Mastery.
Know your place, Monk.

[Julesx-frostmourne]

@Elgrippa-illidan

On decline since Throne of Thunder.
RoRo was the first to fall.
Instead of fix the trinket, they nerfed mastery into obsolescence. The fallout was so bad, they replaced the core mechanic entirely in Legion with Combo Mastery.
Know your place, Monk.

Yes I remember. Still, WoD was more fun for me. I adored the chi explosion (CX) talent. CX could have worked well with 5.2 TEB as well. Likely, the combination would have been an even stronger combination.

One of the great problems of combo strikes mastery is it reduces game play options, both in terms of player choice and class design. The official reason for CX’s removal was something like thry did not want monks to have some kind of ranged-wizard spell. Absolute bull dust. I loved the ability for its ranged aspect, and also that it took us one step closer to Dragonball/Street Fighter - am aesthetic that many people desire more for the class.

The real reason it was removed, IMO, was because CX would not play well with combo strikes. Often, we needed to jab twice consecutively to build up the chi needed. Obviously, the equivalent now, Tiger palming twice on a regular basis is heresy. Blizzard says it will not stand for game play that regularly goes against the use of mastery. Put two and two together, bye bye CX.

I’m pretty confident the reason Blizzard did not return us to 5.2 mastery is because it does not want to admit it made an error. That it dealt with monks too harshly and unfairly (remember feral benefited from RoRo just as much and continued to use it in 5.4).

[Elgrippa-illidan]

My favorite stump for current mastery is it’s basically passive. If that were the case, why isn’t it simply passive then?

Character sheet stats with zero gain scenarios are poorly designed stats.

Every 3rd rotation of FoF/RSK, I have a chance if procs are bad to hit an energy glut where I either BoK twice and break combo or stand there like an idiot and conserve Chi, for the 1.5s to get energy back and get back into swing with FoF.

Some of this has to do with being celestial and proccing Yulon too, which makes FoF channel hecka fast, so I get less energy ticks than usual. The design is cool but it has some of that charming jank (I wouldn’t want it fixed though tbh).

---

End of the day, a lot of the issues aren’t Monk issues. I have jumped around a bit since Dragonflight and find this general feeling that most button presses are no longer fun or exciting compared with MoP era and earlier.

I thought maybe it was nostalgia or rose-tinted glasses, but I think that’s false. I think it’s two design issues that just don’t mesh well in what I thought was a dungeon crawl genre – Always On and Know Your Combos.

With Always On, every GCD is crammed and that means every GCD is in this homogenized space of pressing the buttons. Some specs flow better than others but in general when you have 10 buttons doing the thing that used to be done by 3, at least 7 of those buttons are going to feel meaningless or bad (and likely more, as those 3 were probably distributed across them all, so EVERY button feels less impactful alone/individually).

Know Your Combos doubles down on this too by tethering abilities to each other to maximize differential value through stacking multipliers on your hardest hitting skills. Latency or interruption, like being targeted with mechanics during a major cooldown, results in a feeling of “shouldn’t have even came”.

By themselves they’re cool features, but since the entire game design has left the space of adventure rpg and into action ladder, and followed those design principles, it’s created a paradox where all of the charm that existed now lands in this hollow space of “but why though?”

[Popkone-azralon]

@Babylonius-illidan

Combo Strikes doesnt have any stacks, its our Mastery. The talent Hit Combo has stacks and drops if you make a mistake. Many people have complained about that and I’ve suggested a few times that it changes this way.

Oh! Thanks for the clarification, kinda confusing lmao