Monk suggestions

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, I was initially in the "Riddle of Earth Sucks!" camp, but having used it for a few months, I think it's the best designed and most satisfying feature SE added to Monk this expansion. Sure it doesn't prevent you losing your stacks in every situation, but it's not *supposed* to. It allows for there to be some skill in finding/optimising where it can be used in contrast with Tornado Kick, and encourages knowledge of a fight and player skill. Like, using it between the pushback of Decicive Battle in v4s, and the Holy hit so you can get a few extra seconds of GL to refresh it with a Coeurl move when he comes back (really satisfying to execute). Or after the last boss of Rabanastre jumps when he does the pulsating AoE. The skill has uses and it's fun to find them. When you can't use it to keep your stacks? Use Tornado Kick. That's why that skill was put into the game to begin with, and that's why we still have it.

You cannot lose that much, divorced from any possibility driven by player control, and say that GL3 needs not be maintained 100% of the time, by RoE or otherwise. Monk simply does not have that kind of lead, nor should it: it should not be dependent on fights not having extended jump phases in order to be viable. That would be asinine. Or rather, it would then be left to remain asinine.

Now, by all means argue that RoE shouldn't be sole solution. Sure. Why should anything be? But consider:

For something to be a class mechanic, it must be able to be influenced by the player itself, at all times. This was true when we could precisely time our Coeurls to the final GCD of a Jump (especially for those with parsers and damn good eyeballing). It has not been true since. RoE merely circumvents the mechanic in certain circumstances, while providing nothing in the remainder. TK attempts to give it alternate reward, and therefore works in a broader range of situations, but as it so clearly inferior to GL maintenance, this merely becomes a type check, rather than a real decision: if GL3 cannot be maintained, free damage via TK. If it can, do not gimp damage via TK. At present, the team as a whole can push a jump such that it goes off directly Coeurl or directly before Coeurl, a range even now of 2 GCDs to how much downtime a Monk can handle, and certain jumps just become irrelevant because you have RoE. But there is nothing, lest you call that simple application of a very long Earth's Reply buff before the damage arrives sizeable player skillgap, the Monk itself can do about it.

Moreover, for a mechanic to ever feel like a reward to maximize, rather than a punishment to lose, it needs to have something like exponential difficulty or preperation required to be maximized such that maximization is rare, and it needs to be balanced around a state that is less than maximization.

Imagine, for instance, if GL was not a fixed duration, but instead extended by relative potency dealt (potency of all weaponskills, DoT ticks, and abilities, as per their multipliers). While GL could still be advanced by Coeurl moves, perhaps even technically to an infinite level, each ascended level burns through that duration more quickly, whereupon it descends to the previous level. You would be fighting for every precious second of GL4, but it would be always there, always possible, and would thereby again allow further modular control. Have both a single-burner (new) and all-burner (Tornado Kick) ability by which to quickly manipulate GL downwards. Now, after due tuning, the whole spectrum is in your hands: it's now a real mechanic, and its heights actually feel like rewards, not just the initial requirement for dealing halfway acceptable damage.