Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

....

This. Well, not all parts were as necessary, but some were sorely missed the moment they were removed.

I loved leveling Monk in 1.x. It just felt so damn versatile. You could tag-team. You could suppress to aid your tank. You could snap-tank, yourself. You could actually main-tank some fights, even.

And then ARR came around and it was stupidly fun there too.

In early ARR, Monk was distinctly eclectic. It's original spam skill was... Impulse Drive, of all things.

By late ARR, it was all about modular control (so you could get Demolish off just as the boss would be jumping away, as to use the delayed GL-refresh to let it last until the boss's return). Fracture and Touch of Death provided that, with potentially Impulse Drive or Haymaker in a pinch. That modularity allowed almost any SkS tier to work itself out. (Haymaker was painfully lackluster, but at least quite TP-efficient. It ended up being slotted by every Bowmage in HW in fights with gaze mechanics as to make use of the auto-dodge for a TP-efficient instant cast strike.)

Fracture and ToD's removal in StB left one of Monk's core mechanics, adjusting when you'd hit Coeurl or Opo-opo or Raptor, dead in the water. I honestly didn't think they could do anything more gutting until, well, they killed off GL itself via the Form Shift changes.

Heck, back then the passive eHP gap between tanks and melee was small enough that Monk could tank dungeons in a pinch, albeit at cost to everyone else's positionals. It looked gimmicky as hell, since you had to stand almost perfectly centered in the target's hitbox to get your positionals off before they could turn, but hey, I never had to wait for a tank replacement. Even in Pharos. The only issue was the lacking tank's worth of damage and another melee having to Provoke in from time to time.

HW extended Demolish's timer, allowing for better 2-3 target damage without exhausting TP and allowing for some really fun rotational breakpoints at high SkS. Sadly it was reverted in StB.

Though little was ever made of it in PvE, until StB we also had the ability to rip buffs off targets via One-Ilm Punch. Mob enraged for triple damage on their next attack (an already triple-damage special attack)? Rip it; now it doesn't matter that we failed to kill the mob in time. In PvP, the enemy Summoner pops Trance? Just eat it. Enochian? Sorry, mate. (Now, the latter's probably exactly why it was turned into a no-DR stun instead, but still... it was funny.)

We had a fun macrorotational oGCD flow across Elixir Field, Howling Fist, Steel Peak, and Shoulder Tackle.

Internal Release, you original damage CD (alongside cross-classed Blood for Blood) synergized well with Deep Meditation. Naturally, they simply moved that skill's effects over to Dancer, because who'd want to be able to synergize with their own mechanics... right?

I would seriously love to return to basically late StB Monk with just some further polish:

• GL stacks fall off one at a time.
• A well-tuned version of SsS and a replacement for Fracture, by which to provide modular control again.
• Chakra via Deep Meditation no longer RNG. Instead, you make potency-based progress towards the next point of Chakra.
• Meditate made passive. You continuously generate Chakra progress (at roughly twice your average ppgcd) while your GCD is refreshed/unused (i.e. during downtime). Thus the button can always just be The Forbidden Chakra.
• The Forbidden Chakra adjusted to consume all available Chakra, at 75 potency per point. Be sure to use it before downtime periods in which you might overcap, but otherwise bank it for Internal Release/Riddle of Fire and don't let it get it in the way of the rotational oGCDs.
• Stances revised to be more impactful and more than just FoF used (even outside of TK rotation).
• A more impactful Riddle of Earth. Or just trim it and work that part into the above.
• Riddle of Fire's slow removed. I actually liked it, because it made me happier about my SkS tier whereby I could perfectly sync both the normal and slowed-down pace to my debuffs, but I'm in the minority.