MNK Rework is a great start

[Ultimatecalibur]

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Haymaker, Fists of Earth and Featherfoot were all Pugilist skills not Monk skills. Monk seems to have always been intended as a DpS what with Fist of Fire (damage up) and Dragon Kick (Blunt Resist down) being locked to the Soul Crystal. The "Tank" skills Pugilist had seemed to be more a sign that the alternate Pugilist job was planned to be a Tank just like how many of the Lancer's "tank" skills pointed to an alternative Tank job. The failure to properly balance Arcanist for both Scholar and Summoner killed a lot of plans, but I don't think Monk was ever a failed Tank in the making.

[Brandedblade]

Haymaker, Fists of Earth and Featherfoot were all Pugilist skills not Monk skills. Monk seems to have always been intended as a DpS what with Fist of Fire (damage up) and Dragon Kick (Blunt Resist down) being locked to the Soul Crystal. The "Tank" skills Pugilist had seemed to be more a sign that the alternate Pugilist job was planned to be a Tank just like how many of the Lancer's "tank" skills pointed to an alternative Tank job. The failure to properly balance Arcanist for both Scholar and Summoner killed a lot of plans, but I don't think Monk was ever a failed Tank in the making.

To add to this, iirc the general idea was that classes would be flexible with what they can do, and the jobs would sacrifice that generality to be more efficient at a given role, however, this being an mmo where efficiency is the only thing that matters, outside of some niche early pvp stuff that element of the system was rarely used.