Quote Originally Posted by Altena View Post
Again, if your argument is that MNK didn't see many gameplay improvements over the years since ARR, I would agree. However I can't agree that the loss of a few skills and a rather slight adjustment to their very static, short rotation is really a huge enough change to baby rage about (which I notice you're not doing, and can respect).
This is the crux of the issue to me. When we still had our stanceless skills, especially at high Attack Speed (e.g. sub-2s GCDs), Monk rotation wasn't fixed. it came down to priority systems and 4-6 windows. (Did I already stanceless this DK/Twin? Twice this Demolish? What stance will BFB hit in if I maintain current rotation? Can I DK-drop (on True Strike, before Demolish) given my upcoming oGCDs?) You'd actually even have two different optimal rotations depending on whether Fey Wind was active. Because you had fine rotational control (modular values by the GCD, rather than only sets of 3). Granted, most Monks did not take advantage of this, preferring to simply clip their (de)buffs and rotation as usual and/or being unwilling to put down enough Skill Speed to reach the next plateau (mostly due to crippling TP issues, which left these strategies mostly subject to fights with reduced continuous uptime, usually via speedkills). Oddly enough, now that the TP issues have finally been more or less fixed, we no longer have any opportunity to make use of the extra-fine control and accelerated rotations (e.g. DK/Twin per 8-9 GCDs) that we once needed that TP fix for.
I hope you can see from this, though, why those who did experiment with this level of play would feel cheated, having hoped that we would see more, not less, opportunity, to escape a fixed rotation.
The rest hinges highly on definition. Personally, I would say Heavensward granted immense capability improvement. Its only contribution to gameplay itself (noticeable, but less than often touted), however—mostly by virtue of Tornado Kick being too weak to be used rotationally except at the tail of both IR and BFB with PB ready to restore GL3 and Meditation not scaling with Attack Speed or otherwise too weak to warrant its use as a half-GCD clip-fixer—was its increase to Demolish duration, from 18s to 21s. This is what made the Skill Speed plateaus so much more noticeable, and made ToD and Fracture yet more pivotal in rotation. The rest was simple fight-checking, wherein we now had technically the strongest ranged filler in the game, could make use of up to 21s of downtime (Meditation x5, Purification, Meditation x5, Form Shift x3), and bonus potency before inevitable GL loss via Tornado Kick. Personally, apart from the downtime usage (i.e. our ranged attack filler), The Forbidden Chakra was irrelevant to gameplay. It just padded our opening burst a little.

My hopes for Stormblood were less bloat, which Touch of Death and Fracture were not, and more variety of rotation, stance (Fists of Wind/Fire), and pace. Instead we got more bloat, and less variation. This is, though not by a huge margin, the most "braindead" form Monk has yet seen. And its certainly the most contradictory.