Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

Like we've ever had choice in this. Earth stance has been useless since its inception.

Yes, my criticizing the hell out of current stances and offering completely different alternatives to them was definitely me declaring my support for their current versions? I've called them crap since ARR. I've suggested changes to them since ARR. Why are you conflating how they currently work with my suggestions, wherein I completely changed how they work?

Focusing first on a foundation because it is necessary for making so much else I want to really work does not equate to wanting nothing else changed. Not wanting to spend 3 buttons just to determine whether I go at, say, base, +10%, or +20% Attack Speed, with no ability to change between them in combat, does not mean I like the current version of stances.

It is not a matter of poison A or poison B. There are likely dozens of other options. I arrived at my own preference carefully, based on what I want to see for the job once our current bloat skills can be decoupled from GL.

Though, this is why I also mentioned changes to the Riddle skills to make up for the loss of potential in "Stance swapping" between the fists, by having Riddle of Earth and Riddle of Wind be actually interesting and useful skills to contrast against Riddle of Fire and it's raw damage boost.

There is no ultimatum here. You can have BOTH. You can have GL as an actual mechanic and have Riddle of ~ as an actual mechanic. They. Do. Not. Preclude. Each. Other. You can even stack additional GL mechanics on, say, its ramping up stacks. It's not just one or the other.

There are no choices. Not for optimal play. As I've mentioned above. There will never be a choice in this game if you're playing for min/max.

Ignoring that I said "viable", not "optimal"... I wonder where I heard that before. Oh, right!

At such a confined performance level, we don't get choice; we at best get diversity with low costs for playing how we want.

A viable choice is one which can lead into an ultimately optimal set of choices. Taken in slice against alternative uses for the GCD or whatever smaller section of time, it is not optimal, though likely very near to the optimal choice's performance. Taken as a whole or larger section of time, on the other hand, it may be optimal, depending on surrounding contexts. I've expressly distinguished between the two.
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I can see things going to waste with the current kit if they keep reinventing things to maintain them as relevant.

The point is that you don't have to. In fact, every addition to GL manipulation since HW has only devalued the tools that have come before it, including GL itself. RoE devalued TK. SSS devalued 5.0 RoE. Anatman devalued both 5.0 RoE and TK. 5.1 Form Shift devalued Anatman and TK and replaced GL as a mechanic with anti-QoL spam. The last three are all bloat that never should have been designed as they were.

Then why are they there? For all of those, why? Because they didn't bother to fix GL itself, leaving bloated manipulations seemingly lucrative when in fact no additional skills should have been required. GL needs only to be build, optionally spent, and to be maintained in an engaging way. All that takes is to make it less punishing through passive adjustments and further no-bloat means of control.

Heck, even just maintaining a high speed can be engaging if it just means that it is (1) not easy, but (2) not necessary for high performance, either. There was a period in WoW where Shadow Priests could rev up to ridiculous amounts of Haste by maintaining Voidform for as long as possible. Breaking +100% Haste put you in the "Mile High Club". It wasn't easy, and because the Haste would then drain you that much faster it wasn't quite so rewarding as it might first appear, but it was damn fun.

Think of something like that, where we pop Riddle of Wind and suddenly we're not just GL1, GL2, and GL3, but GL-variable-transmission, going as high as we can, and where you're forced to gamble a bit early on, hedge those bets further in, and hope like hell near the end in order to get as much as you can out of it. (RNG can be fun when there are good and bad bets and a few safe ones to work around.) For those who can't handle... there's RoF, which can perform higher if it times to that particular batch of raid buffs since RoW would have a long ramping phase (that you want to ensure lasts into said raid buffs some 15 seconds or so later). RoE? Raid damage taken --> Potency dished out, but not stacking with positional potency bonuses (thus guaranteeing positionals). Now imagine those things as being spent by a granular gauge like a revised form of Chakra. That's what I'm looking for.

It just all tends to work far better with a stack-by-stack spendable GL. It both reduces the punishment enough to make the rewards worth the risk without creating massive skill-gaps and gives means of control that can contribute equally to undoing mistakes during flawed play and adding depth to optimal play. Otherwise, I wouldn't be bothering with this. It is not fun to argue about foundational elements.

My largest problem with GL is that it just gives us nothing to really look forward to or work towards. It's just there. It is nearly impossible to drop except when counting on a SSS at the end of a maxed out PB and suddenly lag spiking. That shouldn't be the case. We can strike a much better balance between something being stupidly fun and not too punishing for less capable players. Throwing out any possibility of a mechanic being fun just because it can be to some extent punishing to players not capable of higher APM is ridiculous. No job is going to reward an incapable player with near-peak performance, be it because of an inability to meet its APM requirements or forethought requirements or sequencing or whatever else. If "hit hard and really, really fast" is to be the motto of Monk, then it should feel like something we aspire to, not just get for free at a watered-down level.

That's not going to be possible, though, if we continue to drop all stacks at once, especially with no way to get them back quickly outside of PB (which, until DK changes are made, has only one use past perhaps the opener, and it's not to generate GL). What I'm asking for at the fundamental level is for the purpose of accomplishing the same sort of stuff being so often requested here, just without tossing out all the "spare" rope before walking into a pitfall.

I know manipulating speed is a good concept and it would be quite unique and rewarding. My problem is that I can't trust SE to make something with enough nuance in the rev ups or downs that doesn't lead to (after doing the math) to just stay at the highest speed tier because that's what SE would do if we're perfectly honest. BRD's soul arrow is an example of an ability that while it has nuance, you're better off using it at max than anything else between the min 20 points and cap.

Apex Arrow is not a good example of a nuance-capable gauge-skill, though by the mere fact that it is a GCD without a damage floor. Consider, if its damage floor had the same effective potency as Burst Shot when factoring in its chance at Refulgent Arrow, Apex Arrow could be used at any time without punishment. That's not a good thing, but it's also very easy to design, considering Apex Arrow comes after all HS/BS and RA buffs. It was very much a decision not to give it any base potency and only convert Soul Gauge, making the skill an at-cap nuke. It's not difficult to design something capable of complete flexibility; it's just not what they intended. They wanted a use-when-capped nuke and made a use-when-capped nuke. That it can be used slightly early is just a faint flexibility bonus for finishing off a boss who would otherwise die before you could get off Apex Arrow's potency bonus. Nuance would be somewhere in between, kind of like Pitch Perfect in an StB Crit meta comp wherein the recommended stack usage shifted with raid buffs, but less esoteric and leading to other interactions later in play rather than simply ending the line of decision then and there.

If you want something more comparable, just look at any of the granular gauges, such as Kenki or -again- HW era BotD. They're not quite there either, but at least they have a much closer design intent.

This. Remembering this wounds me.

Likewise.