Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Ultimatecalibur]

Or... Hear me out. What if they just changed GL from being the most unresourse like resource to exist in this game into not being something else. I don't understand people's obsession with trying to change the main rotation of the job by introducing new GCDs into the mix. When the single best course of action is reworking how GL interacts with the kit or just simply remove it entirely and just make it a passive trait.

Fixing GL will not fix all the problems the Monk has. There is also:

• a Calcified (nearly Fossilized) core gcd rotation that lacks the flexiblity that the original Form based Combo system implied when compared to the 1-2-3/4 system of every other melee class/job
• 3 Elemental Fist stances that tend to end up having 1 useful stance and 2 stances with limited use even in optimization.
• secondary resource that the monk has no direct control over generating unless they are not currently engaging a target (they are then unable to utilize the resource until they reengage with a target),
• (as you point out) a bunch of niche abilities with overlapping purposes of which their usefulness is more determined by fight timing than by how they interact with the job's rotation.

A rework needs to fix all 5 problems and removing GL/turning it into a passive trait just won't do that.

These 6 abilities interact/manipulate GL in some capacity in extremely niche ways that could just be solved with 1 button press. We lose out on so many awesome potential abilities cause, SE keeps trying to give us tools to mitigate downtime that we have nothing outside our standard 6 GCDS and a handful of oGCDs during uptime.

Perfect Balance was the original quick GL generator cooldown with additional open access to the Monk's two utility abilities (Rockbreaker for AoE silence and One-Ilm Punch for buff stripping). Reducing it from a 4 minutes cooldown, to a 3 and later 2 minute cooldown made it vastly more usable but the fact it makes all weaponskills usable no matter form requirements ends up forcing button bloat when adding new weaponskills.

Form Shift has been probably one of the most cheered Monk additions even when its primary purpose was to let the Monk start fights/phases with DK->TwS->Demolish. The StB additional ability to maintain GL made it even more useful. Only real problem with it now is that it requires 3 gcds to refresh GL.

Tornado Kick had a very niche position from the start. In some fights it never needed to be used while other fights you needed to use it regularly and you needed to know the exact times and hp%s to properly use it. It has a 10s cooldown and little reason to use it that often.

Riddle of Earth's original implementation is perhaps one of the best examples of why stance locking abilities is a bad idea. It required pushing 3 ogcd buttons to extend GL and sacrificing damage dealt to reduce damage received isn't a trade most players will happily make. ShB's addition of the ability to ignore positionals for 30s every minute might be overkill for making the ability useful.

Anatman is a flavorful ability (standstill and charge up) that fits the job fantasy but suffers from FFXIV's fight design that either wants you moving when not hitting a target or is doing a cinematic cutscene. High end fights don't really want you sitting still doing nothing for the 12s to 14s needed to charge up. Anatman was also made a gcd action because SE didn't want to require player to use a server tick tracker to play the job optimally/near-optimally.

Six-sided Star is a good example of an unintuitive and seemingly unnecessary ability that doesn't really fit. How is this even a capstone ability?

It would also help tremendously if SE would let MNK evolve and change from expac to expac instead of living in ARR but with fewer oGCDs and 5% faster.

The rotation isn't even really living in ARR. In ARR you could intermix Touch of Death and Fracture to realign your rotation if it was desyncing.