Endwalker MNK was a masterpiece. Optimal Drift MNK lives rent free in my head.

Dawntrail MNK with the ball system respective to the glowy buttons is a hot mess. It’s difficult to even keep track which input I should be going for when timers were easier to manage than constantly looking at a ball gauge or a glowy button to see what the next input is. It’s a large distraction and I sincerely wanna focus on my coordination more than looking at what is supposed to be my next GCD.

I can literally see the FFXIV dev team axing the six inputs we have and cutting them down to three, and giving it the VPR treatment: Dragon Kick - Bootshine, True Strike - Twin Snakes, Snap Punch - Demolish. Dragon Kick and Bootshine will be swapped in accordance to the change for leveling purposes. And the inputs will be displayed dependent on how many balls are stored. This change can be the death of MNK, or we can revert back to Endwalker MNK with whatever we’ve received from lv90-100.

It’s just… I can’t play PVE MNK anymore. I’ll stick to PVP MNK, but even then I’m very fearful of the eventual changes there.