I want to start by saying that I don't care about DPS. I have a few posts documenting this. I don't play these games to look at my DPS, and, frankly, if I don't trust the devs to have the DPS classes in line properly, why am I playing? I find that making every post about DPS derails the discussion of the actual class design.
Second, my comments on gameplay are based on 3 hours of duoing high greens/light blues. Obviously this is not nearly enough to give an in-depth opinion on certain aspects, and I want to group some to test things out, but there are certain things that I feel will not change no matter how much I play.
The first thing I noticed with the monk deep dive is the lack of depth. Previous write-ups went much more in-depth on what the devs wanted from the class, their goals with the "rework" and their expectations moving forward. For monks, we get a list of our new abilities and a short summary. This feeling carries over immediately into the first changes. When we got the first write-up on monks, we were told they'd be undergoing a "thematic change." For me, being told my class is going to change thematically evokes a thought of something more than simply "the names of your stances are going to change."
Instead, they ditched the objectively worst stance (water), rather than trying to improve it, and the three remaining stances remained largely the same, but with different names.
As for the stances themselves: I've always been underwhelmed by them. In the past, in groups, I would generally have the same rotation: lead with fire to land the DoT, switch to wind to up my DPS. There were not any interesting, compelling choices here. If I wasn't tanking, earth stance had no use, and the lackluster proc from water had more utility in irritating my group members than it did for helping them.
Nothing has changed in that regard, except I now seemingly have to stay in fire/sun stance longer? To make sure the damage procs? It's not very intuitive, I'm sure more play will make this clear, but now it seems like dancing between Sun and Wind is just not a thing that will happen. You pick one and go.
So, I picked one and went. I tested all 3. None of them tickled me in places of note. I didn't feel like I killed remarkably faster, I didn't feel like I tanked noticeably better. These stances exist, seemingly, to say they exist and therefore "monks have a choice." But choices with no real consequences aren't compelling.
The body attunement options are similarly unimpactful, but at least once high enough level, I can cast it once every 30 minutes and get the entire suite of buffs. I suppose the under water breathing was nice. It felt like I could stay under water for the duration of the buff and not die, though I don't see (OR HOPE, I HATE UNDER WATER ZONES) how this could be relevant to normal gameplay.
As for pulling, pinning throw is nice, but I was using it last night, which was apparently a bugged version. If the actual version is to last half a second and have a 30 second cooldown, I cannot imagine this being very useful.
Mobs are still choosing to loiter/end their loiter far too close to each other, and damage seems to have absolutely NO impact on this (I decided to just beat the hell out of some mobs to see if that would work, it did not). The previous "bugged" FD was overpowered, but with the struggle to find a proper balance in NPC loitering, it at least made it possible to have some interesting pulls. The current system is basically back to square 1. The best puller now is just having enough CC to not waste everyone's time try to get the game to work in a logical way.
Choices/Abilities/The Ability Bar:
one of my biggest gripes/jokes prior to this patch was how I, a level 60 monk, did not have a full ability bar. This patch certainly changed that!
Now, I have about 7 abilities getting cut. The problem is, there are no interesting decisions here. If I'm in a group, I need taunt. If I need taunt, the decision to have taunt on the same CD as quivering and double-handed strike just means that I will never be using those two. Similarly, feign death, mend, and stone stance are non-negotiable. With Celestial Strike, Kick, and Round Kick also being necessary staples, I'm unsure how you want us to use even a fraction of the new abilities we were given.
I will also echo that channeling hundred fists felt bad, and that the quivering - hundred fists - CS rotation is not comfortable/fun/interesting at all.
Random thoughts:
I should have an easy, intuitive way of seeing how many quivering stacks I have on my target. I should not need sense magic from someone else.
I didn't test any of the cool downs because there's no place for them on my bar. Perhaps if the CDs were available in a separate bar like stances, it would be better.
I don't care for flying kick in any regard: the animation is weird and the distance restraints are frustrating. I do not know when I would need a damaging "gap closer" (I'm sure there are times), but the max range was far too short for any good use, in my opinion. Most of the time, I was simply backing up and using it as added DPS. It feels odd to have a relatively high damage ability being... useless? Sorry, I cannot think of a more constructive term. I do not know why you would not be able to execute a flying kick within melee range.
Overall: I'm fairly disappointed in the "rework". The changes to the existing monk felt like little more than a name change and the new abilities feel like interesting aspects from 5e, but together, I do not feel they form a cohesive class.
I have played monk in various games for over 25 years. I am not saying this makes me an expert or that my opinion is fact, but I am saying this: I enjoyed the previous MNM version of monk while acknowledging its shortcomings. What these changes have produced is my least favourite version of monk. I understand that I need to play far more to have a more solid opinion on some of the finer details. That's valid. But I have an embarrassing number of hours in this game, with this class. I have done previously what I was doing last night. In a lot of respects, nothing changed, and in every other respect, it felt worse.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
