Monk rework suggestion.

I'm with SpeckledBurd on the issue of TK. The design of the skill conflicts with the core mechanic of upkeeping GL stacks; for it to consume all of them, it should hit much, much harder than it currently does - enough to compensate for (I'd say half would be reasonable) of the GCDs it would take to ramp back up. Otherwise, so as not to waste the animation, they could make it a GCD with a cooldown or a flat-out oGCD as others have suggested.

On the other hand, I think Shurrikhan has a point that there's still some potential to be had with the fist stances. I won't say that SE's track record with them has been great by any stretch of the imagination, but if they could somehow breathe life into them, I'd be interested to see what's offered.

I understand the issue of Brotherhood affecting only weaponskills is also a pain point (although, not particularly at the top of my list); at the risk of shifting the meta, I'd say Square should just double down here and make it grant a 7.5% (or even 10% if they're feeling spicy) bonus to incentivize physical damage comps.

Can't speak for all monks, but for me, my biggest gripe is still the double rng gate of Deep Meditation. There are better more engaging ways to generate resource than chance (e.g. grant a chakra for a correct positional).

While I agree that SSS holistically feels underwhelming, I'm beginning to appreciate it's (still) niche use cases a little bit more whenever I find myself having to disengage and handle a mechanic.

Monk I'm a bit torn on.

Their core rotation of the three stance weapon skills, I like. It's a nice spin on 'combos' without having linear combos like other jobs. Shoulder tackle and our kamehameha I like.

But a lot of the stuff built on that foundation is clunky. Greased lightning is weird. They give it a short duration, and for a long time would only give situational ways to keep it up. Then they finally just gave up and said 'form shift will refresh it now' making it almost impossible to lose GL unless there's a mid boss cutscene or something else that removes control of your character. Or you die. I feel like form shift was a bit of an over correction and that in 6.0, they should redesign this and give us one or two limited, less clunky ways of keeping it up. Similar to how dragoons can get a bit of a boost to keep their maintenance buff going a bit longer if not able to do combos but can't keep it up indefinitely without hitting something. Give monks one or two tools to keep GL going a bit longer but not the full on ease of form shift.

Then you have tornado kick, which to my understanding (correct if wrong) would generally only be useful if a boss was about to invuln and GL was going to fall off. IMO instead, maybe it should be reworked to be like polygot, and have it NOT remove GL but instead be a reward you proc by keeping GL up for a while.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

But a lot of the stuff built on that foundation is clunky. Greased lightning is weird. They give it a short duration, and for a long time would only give situational ways to keep it up. Then they finally just gave up and said 'form shift will refresh it now' making it almost impossible to lose GL unless there's a mid boss cutscene or something else that removes control of your character. Or you die. I feel like form shift was a bit of an over correction and that in 6.0, they should redesign this and give us one or two limited, less clunky ways of keeping it up. Similar to how dragoons can get a bit of a boost to keep their maintenance buff going a bit longer if not able to do combos but can't keep it up indefinitely without hitting something. Give monks one or two tools to keep GL going a bit longer but not the full on ease of form shift.

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The change was warranted because they'd been designed mechanics and transitions with easy upkeep in mind. Black Mage can keep Enochian up indefinitely with Umbral Soul, and Dragoon with Blood of the Dragon shouldn't fall off either with Blood of the Dragon's level 78 trait (the action grants 30 seconds of the buff on a 25 second cooldown). Monk had fallen behind in that regard because on launch it had Riddle of Earth, which was objectively terrible at keeping GL up consistently outside of a small handful of mechanics, and Anatman which had the glaring flaw of rooting you in place which ran contrary to how they've designed phase breaks for a while. Phases like 9S's bombing runs or Maelstroms in Leviathan, while possible to handle with Anatman, are clunky and to an extent a matter of luck as to if you're able to get the proper number of server ticks out on.

Two changes I think could work:

1. Six-Sided Star should be an oGCD and give us a full 5 stacks of Chakra along with a GL stack.

2. Anatman should be an upgrade to Mantra. It should have the effect it does now along with the Mantra buff (but allowing us to attack during it), and for those 15s it's up, TK will not use up GL stacks.

As someone who is new to Mnk I really like it ... and I feel like it can use a from the ground up rework.

Things I would do ...
1- Stop relying on the GL upkeep system, either make stacks take like 40secs to fall off or take it out. GL is something that you build up and want to keep full because it makes you hit harder and faster, it COULD be a resource that does that but instead of being trapped in "upkeep" the job gives you solid skills that would use GL stacks.
2- The 3 stances. As it stands 1 stance will always be the best. I say do this ... give all stances 4GL stacks. Make people want to stance change. Take away the current passives, have Fire stance boost Single Target attacks, Earth boost AoE, Wind does neither but when you go into wind stance it gives you a massive boost of movement speed and allows you to use a "jump back" move without using GL. Oh, did I not talk about that?
3- Because of the "upkeep" bs for GL the MNK has no reason for a jump back ... making them the least mobile melee. I mean, it makes sense I guesssss. The whole point of the upkeep is that you gotta keep attacking and you can't jump away and jump back in AND have keep your stacks perfectly all the time when you got a 16 sec window I guess. I'd give MNK a jump back that cost 2GL and if you're in Wind stance it's free. So you could go FoW just to jump back and get back then there and use FoF in a boss fight without droppin stacks.

But I'm no game dev, I do hope they make some massive rework though.

As a monk veteran player I really think monk needs a rework, just like ninja had recently, it's the only job that is is bound to the actual server tic to do more damage. But I know we are not gonna get any rework, in fact they are gonna ignore monk for a long time, that's how SE works.