I'm far from a veteran or expert, so ignore me or take this as "new player" feedback since I'm only recently back after not playing since 2.0 but after seeing Ranjit in game and the SB cutscenes I'd hope for a style overhaul. Monk should also be one of the more mobile DPS with a flying kick and a fireball, especially since it has the most positionals to deal with. Personally I can't stand switching between flank and rear for combos, this should be simplified to at least letting the rear also count as flank. The animations need to flow into each other better for combos too and look like martial arts instead of some combination of flower gardening and eighth grader physical education exercises.

I think the original theme was best overall: build speed to achieve high dps, and if you lose it start over. However there should be an insurance pool mechanic to either allow you to start from scratch more quickly, or burn it on a big dps combo if you have capped/more pool than you might need for insurance/boss gaps.

I'm predisposed to like monk as a dps class because I love the theme but seeing the current combo animations at a high level plus everything everyone is saying after scouring forum data on it is putting me off the class, esp with the bad feeling flanking mechanic and tanks spinning items every which way (at least in speed clears of dungeons so they can mitigate more on big pulls) in addition to natural boss movement.

Regarding the stances, esp. earth stance it seems you could use it as a mini tankbuster eater style buff (just not enough to eat a real tankbuster, or be on a very long cooldown if so) and build an insurance pool type mechanic buff for taking the risk of eating an attack. Sort of like a martial arts counterstrike or parry absorption theme thing similar to The Blackest Night. If RDM, SMN can bring a raise, cure and back healers a bit, this doesn't seem to outside of the realm of utility for monk to back tanks a bit and is in keeping with the FF monk style. Fists of wind would be your default builder stance, and Fire would be your insurance pool dump buff for burst. If you are confident enough to dump all your pool because you know you won't mess up to start your GL stacks from scratch, then you dump the entire pool. Ordinarily you might keep 1 restart buff in reserve.