Quote Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd View Post
Anatman as a skill is conceptually terrible and it shouldn't have been implemented in the first place. Monk already had enough Greased Lightning Upkeep Skills as it was in Stormblood and we didn't need a new one, what we needed was for the ones we had to not have stupid activation requirements. Anatman was one of those, and the fact that it's purpose of "Keeping your stacks during downphases" was immediately invalidated by bringing Monks GL upkeep to the level of other jobs buff upkeep says a lot about how bad it is. Frankly the change is removing the only purpose the skill had left beyond extreme edgecases, and that's why people are upset about the change. The Anatman opener feels terrible, but having another borderline worthless skill on a job with the kit that has the most worthless skills Two Expansions after they said they were going to fix or remove the worthless skills is an infuriating prospect, especially when it's one of the new skills for the expansion.
I didn't hate Anatman at the launch of 5.0, but I can recall things such as Doom Train savage where unless you had your GCD line up perfectly, you'd drop GL before you could take the AOE damage and trigger RoE. To me, it felt like a strictly better version of the Stormblood skill since it not only maintained GL, but also built it up during jump phases.... then the patch to Form Shift happened, and it's fair to say that every other skill, except maybe Six Sided Star for temporary disengagement (I feel like that skill should have a jump back as part of it) became redundant.

Monk is still the king of redundant and unuseful skills, even after all the pruning, and is due for a reworking. Hopefully 6.0 offers something bigger for monks now that they developers have been unchained from just skills that are there to help maintain Greased Lightning.