MNK Rework is a great start

[PangTong]

Just wanted to drop my own feedback in this thread.

MNK is much improved from it's prior iterations. Greased Lightning was a design dead-end that no longer coheres with the way content is designed and presented, so I think dropping it was the right move. Making Perfect Balance usage-based rather than time-based is very welcome and makes it function reliably at all levels of ping and skill speed. I was unsure about the Riddle of Earth change initially but it works fairly well.

MNK still needs more work, but I wasn't expecting an expansion-tier rework in a mid-expansion patch. The new changes get it into a decent new base state where hopefully it can be further improved in 6.0.

These are what I feel are the current outstanding issues with MNK:

Chakra
In the absence of Greased Lightning, MNK lacks a standout defining mechanic which unites its entire design and toolkit, like NIN's Ninjutsu or SAM's iaijutsu + kenki. The form system is pretty much already at the limit of how interesting you can make it while still fitting with XIV's design, while Chakra is very barebones and has several issues besides.

There are only two things to spend chakra on, a single-target attack and an AoE attack. This makes Chakra pretty boring from a gameplay perspective since there's no real thought put into using it, you just hit the relevant button when it lights up. But on top of this, the RNG nature of gaining chakra combined with the fact that you can only hold a max of 5 chakra (with chakra-spending abilities also costing 5 chakra) means that overcapping chakra is a serious issue. It's typical to lose at least 2-3 or more chakra in a given brotherhood/PB window just because you can't spend chakra fast enough, or because the chakra comes in at inconvenient times. The unpredictable nature also means you sometimes have to delay your other abilities such as Elixir Field which can cause issues with buff alignment later on. This is an even bigger problem in 5.4 because the proc rate for chakra was increased, so we are getting more than ever before.

At minimum, the cap for chakra needs to be increased to 10. It's fine if Meditate only lets you build to 5, we just need an overflow buffer for when we're getting more procs than we can use. Ideally, MNK should also have more actions that interact with chakra to make it a more interesting system.

Abundance of useless/overly situational skills
The biggest offender here is the Fists stances. Since no changes were made to Fists of Wind and Fists of Earth with 5.4, except to remove Riddle of Wind, these skills have essentially been rendered worthless because there is no real battle situation where a MNK would choose to use their effects over the 10% damage buff of Fists of Fire. The Fists stances need a thorough examination and redesign to make them more compelling, or otherwise they need to be removed and replaced with more useful or interesting skills.

Anatman is also another failure of a skill that no longer has any true use. It's purpose was obvious when it was introduced in 5.0, a way to keep Greased Lightning during downtime. But this was almost immediately rendered worthless with 5.05 and the change which allowed Form Shift to refresh Greased Lightning. Even worse, Anatman allowed for a higher DPS opener which lead to the awkward situation of MNKs standing still doing nothing in the middle of battle and relying on invisible server ticks to do optimal DPS. With 5.4 Anatman is now a truly worthless skill, the situations where it offers any combat benefit whatsoever are rare, and the amount of benefit it offers is miniscule. It's even less useful than Shoha was before it was changed. Anatman either needs a full redesign or to be removed and replaced with a better skill.

Six-Sided Star is a tricky position because it IS useful, in some circumstances. However using it properly is difficult as it requires very strong knowledge of the content to know when and where it is useful. Additionally because it is on the GCD, timing it is awkward; you often find yourself in a position where using SSS would be useful, but you can't use it because you need to move away from the target before your GCD is refreshed. The change to make it increase movement speed is good, but not enough to make it feel like an integral part of MNK's kit. MNK already has something to do while disengaged from the enemy (charge chakra), and since SSS locks you out of your other GCDs for several seconds, it conflicts with the desire to use Meditation. There is potentially a design for SSS which is intuitive, feels good to use, and meshes with MNKs kit, but I feel like it'd be simpler to just replace it with something more broadly useful like a backstep oGCD ability.

Lack of interesting buffs/abilities
I'm glad that Tornado Kick is finally a usable skill, in some ways for the first time since it was introduced over 5 years ago. But it is a bit boring that it is just flat damage on a cooldown with no other interactions. This is especially ironic because 5.0 removed Howling Fist and Steel Peak for being the same thing.

Besides this, there is no real need for Brotherhood and Riddle of Fire to be separate abilities because they have the same cooldown and are always used together. Their effects could be merged into a single buff to save on both button space and rotational inputs. This is especially true because Riddle of Fire is just a boring +% flat damage with no other effects due to having its GCD slowdown removed in 5.05. I'm definitely not suggesting bringing that back though.

Abilities which require no thought as to their use are boring because you just press them when they come off cooldown and then forget. Well-designed abilities should either make you think more carefully about when to use them, or affect your rotation in such a way that you must play slightly differently while the ability is active. Brotherhood, Shoulder Tackle and Perfect Balance are good abilities, but things like Riddle of Fire and Tornado Kick are dull and need work.

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That about covers it. Obviously I wasn't expecting any of this to happen in 5.4, or at any point between now and 6.0. But I'm certain the devs are already thinking about or in the middle of designing job updates for 6.0, so I think it's important that they examine the feedback now. MNK is finally in a decent state, but it has a lot of potential that it's not living up to.