Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[SpeckledBurd]

- The stances, as they are now, are one and done for the most part. Once you build up your GL stacks, you can stay in wind and forget about it. To that effect, what do you all think about getting rid of the *stances* entirely? Vestiges of the stances can remain in the form of Riddles - Earth, Fire, and a new one for Wind (maybe a reskin of Internal Release?)

Remove them. They've had three attempts at making the Fist Stances something other than two stances you never use and one stance you stay in all the time. The Riddles are fine as cooldowns, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see Earth go now that 5.05 Form Shift fills its original function better than it ever did.

- I think other ways to spend our chakra would be great. Currently, we only have The Forbidden Chakra and Enlightenment. Might’ve been mentioned in this thread, but I think if we could consume chakras to generate GL stacks, that would re-introduce the viability of TK (similar flavor to SAM’s Hagakure and NIN’s Meisui).

I think a bigger consideration for Chakra should be reworking how we build chakras, making it so it isn't unusable unless its capped, and changing the levels you earn gauge actions at so they actually make sense. Enlightenment for example is a skill that on any other DPS would be earned in the 50-64 range. The only reason it isn't on Monk is because the devs practically ignored Monk's gauge in Stormblood. Then they had so few ideas for Monk in Shadowbringers that they would have had a hole in its leveling curve if they'd done what they should have and made it a level 58 skill to replace Purification.

Tying Chakra more into the Lore of Light/Dark Chakras strikes me as needlessly convoluted and a unnecessary. It needs to be reworked so we have overhead between being able to use our skills before we cap, IE, Forbidden Chakra/Enlightenment still Cost 5 Chakra to use but we can store up to 7/10/14. Really any overhead above our current Zero would be appreciated. Further we should build it in a manner that doesn't involve RNG, Monk is about consistency of output and the RNG aspects of Brotherhood and Deep Meditation have grated for a while. In fact just removing the RNG aspect makes the overflow problem non-existent, but having that overhead invites the opportunity to build new skills that will use more Gauge and have greater effects. I'd suggest Deep Meditation now just build Chakras on a Greased Lightning Refresh and that Brotherhood just grants you a 3 Stack Buff on you that lets you use a Chakra Free Forbidden Chakras (about what you get ideally with a standard 8 Man Comp) instead of having any of the manyfold problems that exist with it as it exists.

In terms of new skills I want... new Weaponskills and Abilities that we actually get to use as part of our rotation. One of the things that's made Monk players the angriest going from expansion to expansion is how we're constantly losing skills and getting nothing in return for them. The best we get is something close to similar skills that are worse in the leveling curve like Riddle of Fire replacing Blood For Blood but with an effect everyone hates, or Enlightenment replacing Howling Fist but we can't use it in Single Target. Monk is the only job that hasn't had a new rotational Weaponskill added to it since A Realm Reborn. Give us a replacement for the stuff we've lost, a Weaponskill with 30 second recast separate from the GCD like Shadowfang or Sonic Break that hits obscenely hard and feels good to use instead of an "Ultimate" skill like Six Sided Star that's just utility we get to touch maybe once or twice a fight. The reason this ends up feeling like a pseudo rework is that a lot of this stuff needs to be added into the low levels instead of into 80-90, because as it is Monk is absolutely barren down there and there's so many things that need removing and replacing that it'll create the worst leveling curve imaginable should they make the changes they need to.

Completely agree. Niche skills are too niche.

Also, what would you say to a 1.5 gcd? I feel like that's as low as SE would comfortably go.

As Shurrikhan said, it would be too low for the pace of this game (and it's Netcode) if it were sustained. If they put something like that on Monk it would make the most sense as a relatively short Duration Cooldown you could pop for like 10 seconds of insane speed, but even then its really going to make it painful to play at higher pings as we've seen with new Wildfire/Overheat on Machinist.