MONK is to confusing / annoying of a class now

[Shurrikhan]

I´m not saying Blitz is bad at its core, but it´s overall a bad addition IMO.

We'll have to agree to disagree then.

I've defended the hell out of GL over the years, but Blitz did not cost us GL. GL was already dead and gone.

Heck, even by the start of Shadowbringers, GL had no real effect. Unlike its ARR iteration, it no longer allowed us to be tuned at BLM+ levels of damage so long as we maintained it even in complex fights (see T9). It didn't compensate for its own cost as it did in HW, when TK was tuned higher relative to n GCDs. It wasn't usable as a resource, as it was in 4.3. It was merely vestigial.

Nor did Blitz cost us of our "Fists of X" stances; they were stillborn from the start and it would have taken significant reworks to the whole kit, around said Fists of X, to breathe life into them. (There are means of reviving those stances I'd have loved to explore, but... that's a story for another time.)

And, frankly, if I had to choose between GL even in its best iteration (4.3) and Blitz as a single concept to build upon, as much as I will forever champion 4.3 Monk... I'd have to say that Blitz is the better base concept.

And let's be clear: PB->Blitz plays nothing like Meikyo, Iaijutsu, Inner Release, Delirium, or Ninjutsu or whatever other 3-part burst phase thingamabob you may wish to mention... due to its context. Before actually trying it in depth, I was worried about the same, since I generally despise homogenization. I needn't had been worried.

I´m not talking about MNK´s toolkit, i´m talking about the skillfloor and skill-ceiling. Positionals always gave you the advantage to grow, to get a better DPS, to switch up your gameplay a little bit based on the given content. Blitz is blitz and without positionals, the only gain relies on the Demolish timer and how to play around it in Solarnadi-phases.

Nor did Blitz cost us our positionals. If positionals were seen as uniquely an issue for PB, PB would have --in effect-- gotten the Gluttony treatment, guaranteeing positionals over its 3 hits. And having another tool with/around which to optimize Demolish and Twin is... exactly what Monk has been about since ARR (though via ToD/Fracture back then, or later your TK timings in 4.3, before being dead in the water for 5.x because of SSS's tuning).

It's honestly weird how much downtime it still has even with Raijuu. Feel like I'd need a faster mudra CD to really fill things out, combined with perhaps the Raijuu stuff being oGCD instead of GCD.

Well, yeah; Raijuu only varies up 2 GCDs per minute after your opener, since you should still be using one mudra per minute each on Suiton and Hyosho. Raijuu doesn't even add APM, since Forked and Fleeting are both on the GCD.