Quote Originally Posted by Mikey_R View Post
The question is, why do people want fist stances to mean something?
A few likely remember that 1.x Monk could outright tank in FoE (though not quite so well vs. heavy tankbusters as a cross-classed Pugilist), could kite in Wind, and dealt top-tier damage rotating between Wind (which increased Attack Speed and reduced its CDs and was therefore used over each mini-burst, because getting an extra mini-burst in between main bursts was faintly more efficient than buffing each of fewer mini-bursts, especially since the increased Attack Rate more than afforded that extra mini-burst's TP costs, back when AAs generated TP) and Fire (which was still just a straight damage buff). Arguably, Monk back then was overpowered in its versatility, but it was definitely a fun time to be Monk, among that lineup.

In other cases, because deliberate action, and restyling oneself to set up for those actions, is fun.

The problem is merely that it's done so little to act as a deliberate action or setup for a broad set, or "style", of actions.

With ARR, Fists of Fire was halved and Fists of Wind had its Attack Speed and Recast Speed components removed making it purely a DPS-negative situational minor movement speed increase, for instance. Why? With those components, Wind had sufficient reason for rotation alongside Fire. Without it, it was a situational skill AND too weak of one to be worth using (a mere 10% movement speed buff... when you have access to Sprint-Invigorate and can't swap back to Fire for 3 seconds) in most situations that would otherwise call for it.

The outcry of "But they've tried so many different ways to fix it!" since ARR is disingenuous. They've tried at most two, and only if you count tangential changes as attempts to fix stances.

The first was Tackle Mastery. It, and the TK rotation it obliged in Crit comps, especially at lower SkS levels, had mixed reception. I loved it despite being among those most screwed over by it. Most Monks I've met in game with under 100 or so ping miss it badly. Burd apparently hated it and has insisted that the vast majority of Monks did likewise despite that even on this forum it's had pretty good reception.

The second is the GL4 we have now, which has even less to do with the stances themselves and more a matter of "Well, we can't rightly get rid of RoW when we still have RoF and RoE, so let's just finally give them that GL4 they've been bitching for and lock into to Wind for thematic 'reasons'."

And so we've had all of two tangential changes and use this as proof that stances can never, will never, be fixed despite that their very first iteration, back in 1.x, allowed for multiple styles of play by, apart from a few key moments, making the difference between stances small enough that as long as you followed through on your setup, you could play in roughly optimal fashion and true optimal play required precise rotation between stances that was not merely limited to "use A for 30 seconds, then B for 30 seconds, repeat" as a Bard's would be.