I think people are really underselling how difficult monk is to actually grasp and especially maximize. Monk's optimal rotation is not intuitive to learn with Demolish being every 3rd rotation and Twin Snakes every 2nd rotation, and the UI is not helpful in this regards. It's like playing Black Mage, but having to track your Astral Fire/Umbral Ice timer on the buff bar instead of your specialized UI. Enough repetition and eventually you remember the timings through sheer muscle memory, but until then, it's a really unfun endeavor. Add in positionals, delayed chakra gains depending on animation, and the inability to double weave on medium ping despite having multiple ogcds that you need to hit one after the other, and Monk becomes an unintuitive mess that turns people off, even if they want the general fantasy that pugilist offered.

I'm not a Monk main, the playstyle didn't suit my tastes and I really didn't care what they did to it for Endwalker. Removing positionals eased one of the pain points, but I still like Samurai and Black Mage more, Samurai because it has a more intuitive rotation that doesn't really bother with tracking your buff bar, and Black Mage because *all* of your focus is on the timer and how to get the most out of it through boss mechanics. However, I do like playing current Monk more as a casual and... well, that's probably what the designers were going for.