Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

However, I'm not really sure if GS4 was even a good addition in the first place tbf. I feel like a higher number of abilities in SB at a slightly higher gcd length, did a better job at making the job feel fast and active as ogcds always have lower input gaps between them than any gcd. Not to say that the speed buff isn't important - they both play parts in making jobs feel fast-paced - but at gcd below 2 seconds weaving becomes an issue, hence why SE pruned MNK's ogcds in SHB which ironically makes the job feel slower.

All that said, it's just pointless rambling at the end of the day. I highly doubt SE would go back on big job changes and "admit their mistake"(not referring to TK or GS4 specifically, just MNK design in general), we'll probably just get another bunch of completely new alterations in 6.0. I'm honestly just insanely jaded and fed up with the design direction in SHB at this point.

Even though GL4 is really the only thing in Shadowbringers that its easy to have enthusiasm about (other than Monk actually having an AOE rotation but that’s a systematic change more than anything), I agree. It doesn't feel like it was a change they made because they had any vision for what it would be, it was a change they made because they felt like they had to after people railed against Stormblood Monk and GL4 kept getting mentioned in interviews. But it was made without any consideration for timers, because its now possible to squeeze in a second True Strikes in a Twin Snakes window with Twin Snakes falling off for its reapplication which I'm absolutely certain isn't intended. Even worse they made getting it feel like a wish was granted on a Monkey's paw because they trimmed all of our GCDs out of fear that it would be too fast. I'd also say that you could extend the criticism of GL4 not feeling like its part of any clear vision to all of SB/ShB Monk's changes, there's no vision of improvement just a desire to keep things the same that's at odds with needing to add things to it for a new expansion and the subtly changing encounter design.

I'd always been an advocate for GL4 to be something we'd enter temporarily in response to doing some Monk specific task like upkeeping GL for X amount of time/refreshing it a certain number of times. I also frankly wouldn't care if GL4 just didn't exist and for that level of speed to be emulated in some other way like a cooldown that doubles Auto-Attacks/Abilities and Weaponskills while reducing damage by 40% for a net gain of 20% overall. Regardless of what I would have done, the big thing is that there just doesn't feel to be any actual vision for what they want Monk to be going forward so much as a desire to keep it as it was in ARR. But in a game whose encounter and design has shifted drastically since then and which requires new stuff to be added every expansion, we've seen why that's a big problem. Even if it ended up being something I didn't entirely like such as spending GL routinely, I'd rather there be some clear idea on what they want Monk do be going forward rather than a confused mess that's a shadow of what it used to be like it is now.

As for admitting their mistakes, they did admit that Monk design in Stormblood was disappointing and a mistake in Live Letter 51 (I believe) leading up to Shadowbringers and they discussed it some in interviews during the media tour, but it just it turned out to be all talk and no action to actually address the problems they'd introduced with it. I'd already been pretty jaded with Monk at that point and it was the tipping point at which I just flat out didn't trust the developers any longer, because they'd abused that trust.