I know i'm a bit late to the party here with Monarch. But I started playing Titanfall 2 again because my closest gaming friend has also gotten back into it. So what do I think? Well. I find her to be incredibly fun. Her "thing" is pretty cool. and it changes things up so much. Like your loadout choice and core level will determine who you are good against and who you're bad against. She's flawed though. In a few aspects. Her biggest one in my opinion is that while she encourages building to play certain ways (thus countering certain titans) you've got no way of knowing the enemy team composition. On top of that even if you guessed right they can just switch their titan mid match. Her second flaw is that she needs cores to survive. One of the titan specific kits allows her to get batteries on execution. However due to how much of a FREAKING mess melee is in the entire game you can't rely on it. If you don't know what i'm talking about...You can straight up whiff punches you lunge with. The lunge range can choose to not even activate thus you punching thin air. You can melee someone doomed and push them away rather than starting the execution. I can go on. it's bad. real bad. Her last flaw really isn't exclusive to her and it sort of pulls me into my rant about the game in general. (well the first part anyway.) That being there are clearly superior options. Both due to how powerful some options are. And how woefully bad other options are. A good example of this would be how all of scorche's specific kits are utter trash. Except the one that not only doubles the duration of his flame shield but also boosts the damage it does to other titans. For Monarch this not only applies to her kit specific choices. but also her core options. Let me break it down: Core option 1: You can choose between arc rounds, missile rack, and energy transfer. Arc rounds is passable. It not only works down ION and SCORCH personal shield abilities. but it also seems to effect legions gun shield and tones shield wall. Which is the real reason to pick it. the extra ammo is nice. But really considering how inaccurate her main gun is that clip size should be the standard. and this perk should give more. Missile rack is the superior option here. As you need more damage in order to build your core faster. and her standard rockets are laughable. Literally gutter trash. even if you land all direct hits with the base missile it's basically nothing. You do also get more damage by going with arc rounds. But her gun is absolute trash damage wise unless you're critting. and again you NEED damage in order to live. Thankfully the missiles have decent splash range and don't fall off much damage wise. so aiming at feet will get you consistent damage. And energy transfer is literally never an considerable option. The shields you give are not worth it. And you need shields yourself to live. if you're shooting allies you're not keeping your shield up. If they re worked it so you gave shields to titans near you by shooting an enemy with this that would be miles better. But the amount given would still need to be bumped up. No point in playing medic if you suck at doing medic. Core 2 options: rearm and reload, maelstrom, energy field. This is short. Maelstrom is the best option by MILES. The standard animation for rearm is already fast enough. And the reload speed is forgetable. the main gun sucks. a shorter downtime between firing doesn't help it enough. energy field is pointless because hitting multiple targets does NOT give you more shields. Literally all it's doing is letting you be less accurate. Titanfall is LITERALLY about being accurate at blinding speeds. You are always going to have smokes available with Monarch. always. the damage boost increase with maelstrom is just disgusting. Rearm and reload would basically need to remove the animation of the ability to be worth using. and a bump to the reload speed as well. like. 50% faster. If energy field bumped up the amount of shields you got per target drained it would be usable. i'd still literally never take it outside some maps. and even then maybe not. but at least it would be usable. Core 3 options: multi target missile system, superior chassis, and accelerator. MTMS is bad because you can't pull what tone does with their lock on. the animation and it's timing makes that impossible outside playing on PC with high mouse sensitivity for "flicking." Missiles already do good consistent damage by aiming at the feet. thus. MTMS is useless. Superior chassis is the best option. 2 free bars of health. and literally removing the ability to be crit shot. You get ogre chassis health. It's disgusting. If you combine accelerator and arc rounds congrats you have a serviceable gun. It only takes a specific loadout and hitting core upgrade freaking 3. Monarch specific kits: shield amp, energy thief, survival of the fittest, rapid rearm. Shield amp is trash. if you work the math out you'll find out just how little extra shields you get from it. In order for it to be worth it you'd basically need 60-70% more shields. energy thief is mandatory because of the 10% extra core build speed. survival is actually good. but doesn't stack up against thief unless you're running with a team who's constantly pulling you batteries. rapid rearm is "fine." The 10% should be a thing on it's own. and the first half of the energy thief thing should move to survival. That way I can technically survive a lot better. But I have to play a lot better. and the 10% could be bumped up a little. that way either I can take the safe option of faster build time. Or go the riskier but more survivable route with the core stealing option that gets me out of doomed. But that's my rant on monarch. She's fun. and "okay." but pretty flawed. And her main gun and starter missiles are bad. The devs were too cautious of her power level. and over did it. The other part of my rant really revolves around people who bag on me/others for disliking how people choose to play. By this I mean tone spam, camping in buildings/ at the corner of a map. Using things like devotion and A-wall. I usually get told "it's good that TF2 offers more play styles. gameplay doesn't get stale then." To which I agree. games need diversity. But. if one option is superior to the other by a wide margin you're still having the same problem. and it's not creating diversity. I fully acknowledge there are counters. and that this is mainly a console problem. But I believe the console crowd is and has always been bigger. There is no point for someone to learn/master combat at high speed when Aim assist and things like a-wall basically play the game for you. Thanks for reading. Glad I got it off my chest.