MNK Rework is a great start

[Sqwall]

Stances are remnants of an old system of DPS agro management. I believe the stances were a complete oversight by the Dev team and not recognizing the the lack of desire of coming out of one stance as a DPS. Reminds me of the ninja stances from YEARS ago that got the axe in HW I think?

The stances for mnk have and in of themselves always been trivial. Like you I can probably remember only ONE time I used fists of earth and it was when our tank died in Dazmel Darkhold on the 2nd boss due to standing in AOE. I flipped over to fists of earth and due to high DPS I held agro easily. Back then we had featherfoot and this accompanied with bloodbath, second wind, haymaker, fists of earth mnk could truly hold it's own in a tank situation until the tank was rezzed or until the mob was dead.

Where I think monk went off the rails was from 1.0 into 2.0. Monk has always been considered a tank from 1.0 and a lot of that carried over into 2.0 with bloodbath, second wind, haymaker, fists of earth and in 1.0 you also got Taunt (now provoke), but is no longer available on monk currently from 2.0 onwards.

Monk is a failed experiment of a former tank in 1.0 being turned into DPS while still holding onto a LOT of skills focused on tanking into 2.0. I totally believe monk could have been a tank in 2.0 if it weren't for the positional's. Which I feel were tacked on to put monk in the DPS category to make it compelling to play. If positional's weren't there and monk kept everything from 2.0, it would be a tank. My god your role + cross class allowed: Foresight (defense), Skull sunder (enmity generation), fient (slow enemies), keen flurry (parry chance), Bloodbath (HP regen), Not to mention featherfoot (evade chance), Haymaker (counter on hit ability that slowed), Fist's of Earth (damage reduciton), Mantra (increased healing), one ilm punch (removed buffs).

This ALL makes me believe and this held true in FFXI for monk. But Monk was going to be the 3rd tank in 2.0. There I said it.

Paladin - mitigation tank
Warrior - Life steal tank
Monk - Evasion/dodge tank (and without positional's this would have been AMAZING)

I truly believe monk with it's high DEX and Evade chance monk was a "dodge tank". Fist of Earth in 2.0 gave 10% damage reduction...Fist of Fire only gave 5% damage increase.

Haymaker was actually REALLY strong with 180 potency and a slow effect when a monk evaded an attack. Pretty reminiscent of Shield Swipe with pacify on block for a paladin.

The key here is positionals, and the unessicary need for them at ALL in this game. FFXIV didn't understand what it was until heavensward. After the complete overhaul of 1.0 and 2.0, heavensward was the real start of battle mechanics imo. Everything before it was something to get them started with the game. Monk was just a by product of an old system that nobody liked, and monk has been confused as to how it fit in the DPS world ever since leading up to 5.4.

[Ultimatecalibur]

...Snip...

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.

[ssunny2008]

Yeah, dude has 15 posts since 2014 and uses most of them to insult the "casuals" and other players. Probably won't be last long. He'll get bored after he's done berating everyone and flexing how great he s compared to everyone else.

Monk does need some more tweaks, which will hopefully come in the next expected with a better rework.

If you feel that insulted, because i highly doubt that anyone of the pre-commentors is a decent savage player or have played monk the last half year, than it´s completely up to you, you know?

But that some guys think, that losing FoW, the new RoE and a high speed button smashing opener are an improvement right now, shows me a lot about their game-knowledge. I would bet that the most players actually will die, because FoW is gone and that they don´t know "when to use SSS", otherwise they´re going to lose a lot of damage.
The 5.3 monk gave you more time to keep your off gcd´s rolling in the opener, you were much faster in movement ALWAYS and RoE let you easily play certain boss mechanics. All this is gone.

[ItMe]

Considering you get Fists of Earth at level 15, I'm pretty sure it's mainly for solo progression and FATEs and the like.

[Caitsithhh]

Its not a bad start but I feel this current iteration is only a base. It still needs another mechanic fleshed out next expac to its rotation. I’d like to see perfect balance falling off leaving you in formless stance, chakra rework, twin snake duration extended by 1-2 seconds, six sided star made into another ogcd, and a real disengage like Sam/drg/nin have. Chakra I’d rather when filled grant a small buff window, ie having 7 chakras to open up and after 5 is filled your next leaden bootshine does two hits. Or after 5 is filled it allows six sided star to be used without the gcd penalty. Current chakra system is clunky at best and ruins the more natural flow of the current rotation.

[SpeckledBurd]

Speaking of, I'm 100% certain there's a way Blitz can be introduced into the game without working as a copy of Mudras or forcing a pause in damage/rotation.

There was discussion on that in the 70 page "Monk needs a Rework" thread.

Essentially it would lean into Monk's Form based combos since there's still a ton of design potential there. Perfect Balance can be changed so it has the additional effect of allowing the use of a finisher should the proper sequence of three Weaponskills be used (which you still execute), with the sequence corresponding to the Form you'd normally need to be in to use the skill. So if a theoretical input was Coeurl>Raptor> Opo Opo to finish with a suplex, you'd use Snap Punch>Twin Snakes>Dragon Kick.

Even if they make major changes to Chakra so it's no longer RNG based as well as its other whole host of issues, which is still necessary considering Chakra is pretty much the worst designed mechanic on a DPS at the moment, they'll still need to add something else. Any gauge that just passively builds needs to have something complementing it in order to not be boring, it's why Kenki/Ninki aren't all that Samurai or Ninja have as far as mechanics go.

[VentVanitas]

There was discussion on that in the 70 page "Monk needs a Rework" thread.

Essentially it would lean into Monk's Form based combos since there's still a ton of design potential there. Perfect Balance can be changed so it has the additional effect of allowing the use of a finisher should the proper sequence of three Weaponskills be used (which you still execute), with the sequence corresponding to the Form you'd normally need to be in to use the skill. So if a theoretical input was Coeurl>Raptor> Opo Opo to finish with a suplex, you'd use Snap Punch>Twin Snakes>Dragon Kick.

Even if they make major changes to Chakra so it's no longer RNG based as well as its other whole host of issues, which is still necessary considering Chakra is pretty much the worst designed mechanic on a DPS at the moment, they'll still need to add something else. Any gauge that just passively builds needs to have something complementing it in order to not be boring, it's why Kenki/Ninki aren't all that Samurai or Ninja have as far as mechanics go.

Funny you mention this, because ever since I made that message I've been scouring the forums for ideas and suggestions on Blitz myself. And you're right, most discussions on it seem to boil down to making Perfect Balance the catalyst for Blitz and I can very easily see why. Being able to execute any form skill in any order, as well as the forms themselves being the way they are, it almost makes too much sense. Although I of course realise it is also because that players wish to see PB become something more involving and Blitz is an answer to that. My only minor nitpick about something like that is that it seems more like another effect of PB rather than a job unique mechanic. (Unless PB was made a shorter cooldown to be more frequent. Perhaps 2 charges of PB with 3 stacks, rather than having 1 PB and 6 stacks? Just spitballing) I have made my own sheet detailing on another possible route for Blitz as a rough concept but it is far too undeveloped to be worth sharing nor do I have confidence that it'd work better than the current popular idea of Blitz anyway.

That is if SE will even consider Blitz as it is for 6.0, seeing as how MNK has never had anything resembling its franchise counterpart in its kit. (unless you really want to count a handful of things that only share names with stuff from past games or Somersault, which has been removed from the game) They were barely able to think of a way to get Dualcast in the game, let alone other class-famous gimmicks.