Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

Also, I mentioned, that the only way they become a mechanic, is when you can basically skip it by quick stacking to the point of there being no actual reason to have TK consume GL in the first place.

Except that, even with RoW massively overtuned, it wasn't always the best choice for how to spend Tackle, it had vastly different interactions with or without PB, and back then we couldn't maintain GL indefinitely so TK still had a place outside of RoW and PB. It functioned on its own, functioned better with RoW, a bit better with PB, and better still with the two together, and it felt great for exactly that reason. It really brought the kit together, but not in the half-assed way that RoE and Anatman have where they function as bloat, existing only to invalidate something else. That TK was worth far more in the presence of RoW and PB did not remove its value outside of PB and RoW.

Or, option 4: Stances are restricted in the same way as AST's sects, in that you cannot change them in combat.

That's literally option 2. One that's also been shat on since AST was introduced and was forced to be a SCH- or WHM-substitute rather than wholly its own job.

Except, your suggestion doesn't help poor players who can't function at high speed.

They will HAVE to be jumping up and down in speed in order to utilize their Ki. Heck, everyone will, including speed demons.

No, they wouldn't. I was quite explicit in saying that overspending, the same thing that would drop BotD entirely during HW (but here only reduces you by a GL level at a time) reduces your speed, not any and all use of Ki.

Think of it like Tsubame-Gaeshi filler/rush GCDs. Without raid buffs, "ad hoc" play, especially at speed demon levels, is just as good as aligning perfectly to TG's cooldown. As more raid buffs come into play, syncing to them will naturally matter more -- just as it does for every job in the game -- but it's still not going to suddenly make a massive difference in performance. Even at the highest level of play, based on gear type one can choose how they play with only minimal change to performance. That's what I'm talking about here: putting control into the hands of the player, allowing for more flexibly timed burst, player-created peaks, and so forth, so that engagement remain high between CD periods rather than following the typical WAR/DRK burst-sleep-burst-sleep model.

Playing at full speed 100% of the time, especially in a comp not super dependent on snapshotting into raid damage windows, is still likely to net you 95%+ performance or so.

...one might argue [if] you open too much [decision making] you might end up in the same situation as SE's designed MNK where you have no idea if you're supposed to be attacking fast or slow or some mix of both.

What, exactly, is the problem with having some freedom to choose, some balance around the kit that could present two choices as near enough to equal that you might want to consult a guide for the minutiae of each's benefits or do what you want?

The only pitfall here would be if there was a clearly wrong answer presented in the same way as everything else (a la Ice Mage), despite making full use of the kit. But, there's been no example of that. Every "wrong" but sane answer (one that still makes full use of a kit, apart from whatever is for a time laughably underpowered, such as using Flamethrower for direct damage rather than Heat) has resulted in minute losses despite offering far more breadth of play.

We've seen it in Fuma vs. Raiton, where Raiton is best used to prevent clipping Shadowfang, except when nearing TCJ and/or where less potency clipping on SF is prevented than the potency in the difference between a final Aeolian before a Jump or just missing it. We've seen it in BLM's use of Thunder. Is BLM's identity destroyed just because it may have periods where Thunder is less worth maintaining? Is it wrecked because not everyone will immediately know whether they should use Thunder always, never, in certain circumstances, or in all but certain circumstances? These are precisely the things that offer jobs their skill ceiling and a sense of really and progressively learning a job. To throw all those out the window just because it causes people to question how they play is ridiculous. They should question how they play. That's a large part of the fun of any job.

And let's be clear: I am not advocating that one should have to obsess over decisions of GL. I merely want it to have actual decisions that one can make in regards to its use, thereby offering flexibility in timing and scrapping bloat and anti-QoL in favor of more efficient and manipulable design.

It's four birds with one stone:

• we get back forking rotations and thereby rotational variance and returning the ability to deal with positioning through preemption rather than merely through positionals-negating bloat skills;
• we get back the ability to sync our rotations to CDs, bypassing the awkward timing issues otherwise forced by all but certain SkS tiers and melee downtime;
• we negate the need for bloat and anti-QoL (e.g. FS spam) skills for GL and reinvigorate GL-dependent skills without having to remove decision-making by separating them from interactions with core mechanics or making them a mere side-effect of normal rotation;
• we get back GL as something that feels good to maintain (e.g. making it at least a little difficult to maintain, say, GL4 when having to move about, without making it so punishing to lose it, since it'd be lost only a stack at a time). This would be especially lucrative if do something like the frequently requested Chakra Gates ("Rock Lee mode" or what-have-you) allowing access to extreme speeds for as long as we can keep feeding it now that it wouldn't utterly crush you to lose GL and drop back to normal speed or so.

Simple as that. I'm not asking for a grand change here, only that we go ahead and use the tools already given to us when they can be so lucrative.

Not to mention, it will get mathed out what the optimal rotation will be.

Which has no effect on diversity of play so long as the circumstances behind play aren't limited (as TK windows mostly were) solely to CDs with zero interactions with other circumstances. There would be optimal rotational strings, but no one optimal speed or behavior that would divest you of all other means of play.

One need look no further than Double-Boot/True vs. Fracture/ToD per Demolish vs. ToD only while alternating post-reapplication Demolishes and clipped Demolishes in previous iterations of Monk play. Or look at Fuma usage on Ninja, or filler/rush usage on Samurai, especially at higher speeds. There is no one constant answer. They are context-dependent -- on downtime, on how long the fight will go on, on jump timings. That optimal play existed in no way restricted what could be used over a longer span of time, only which ought to be used in that particular 15, 18, 20, 24, or 30-second span while keeping in mind something some minute or two in the future.

There will always be optimal play. But if it reduces what skills you effectively have access to or what decisions need to be in the context of a encounter itself or the happenings therein, there is a problem with the toolkit. No amount of fatalism would make that any less lackluster of design.

You yourself have mentioned this time after time in the context of whether customization is possible. Yes, external balance will give us a best choice. Should we therefore remove all jobs not in the absolute highest performing speedrun composition? Maybe we could just rotate between which jobs are made available each month so we still see them all, but no one feels "pressured" to play the optimal ones, since those would be the only choices? Surely not.

The only difference here is that this is internal balance, the balance between choices that can be made in combat rather than outside of content (i.e. by choice of class, gear, or talents). Should we remove the ability to hit a 3-eyed-Geirskogul before BfB is ready just because it wouldn't be optimal in most raid settings? Should SB have removed Fuma just because it's going to be better at events 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 for this character in this fight while Raiton would be better at 4, 6, and 8 and players might not want to bother figuring out what's best? Surely not.

I want to balance for a larger variety of playstyles and make available (again, in many cases) a greater breadth of gameplay to the job. That's it. Therein, you could happily stay 24/7 speed demon at no negative effect prior to speedrunning Savage content. As for me, I'll probably be spending the majority of time as a speed demon, but occasionally banking for raid buffs because I just really like having the ability to sync my skills in smoothly order to deal with otherwise awkward SkS tiers. I probably will bite a bit more than I can chew, complexity-wise, and end up performing almost exactly the same. That's all there is to the suggestion: a desire for greater breadth of play and to eliminate a number of core problems in one of the simplest ways possible. Fix GL, and you fix four other issues that have since sprouted over the expansions. Fix, rather than leave yet another part half-done just to throw more random junk into the toolkit.

None of that precludes what can be done afterwards. It does not preclude fun new Chakra interactions. It does not preclude elemental effects. It does not preclude yet further GL mechanics. It merely doesn't leave anything to rot and does not scrap depth