I saw that reddit post where a pro monk came up with a +5% better dps opener in a simulator that requires a certain popular addon to pull off consistently. I've never used addons before and play just like a console player so I've been mostly ignorant of its features. I knew that it could read data packets coming from the server and warn its users of things before the game does, or things they aren't supposed to know. But this is the first I've heard that it also manipulates packets being sent by the client to enhance your dps by aligning moves with the server ticks, helping to consistently weave things between gcds and fit more gcds into buffs windows etc. I know its users usually defend it as just a parsing tool which helps them learn, but it seems that isn't entirely true or not the extent of what everyone uses it for anyway.

Those concerns aside, I don't think the monk changes look entirely bad but some things are a bit confusing like Tornado Kick vs Six-sided Star, and GL4 being exclusive to Fists of Wind. Maybe somebody could explain to me, does that mean staying in Wind is now more powerful than Fists of Fire, or does the GL4 stack persist when you switch back into Fire so that you rotate both of those stances? I should probably watch a video on Monk to see how that works.