Results of a reddit job satisfaction poll

[SpeckledBurd]

Im not seeing the issues you have. I played a bit of monk for the first Tier of SB, then quit with the changes they implemented cause I really didnt like how it played. Ive been a lot more active in playing it and how it is now doesnt bother me overall. SSS, TK, and Anatman are clunky, but I can see their points. If anything, TK is the worst, because Anatman can just be fixed by not being so damn finicky about not even rotating, and SSS is very niche but Im semi ok with having a skill on hand incase I flub something or an awkward transition. TK is the worst, as it sacrifices GL stacks to get a burst and it costs to much to get it back without using PB. Only time is if youre guarenteed to lose your stacks, so pretty much the end of a boss fight or a long ass transition where you cant anatman. Maybe the simple fix is to allow you to only use it once you have max stacks in FoW, and it just incurs a 30 second CD on it and doesnt eat GL stacks.

But if theres more to this Im not understanding of why its bad, Im all ears. Im just not seeing it currently myself.

Sure, I'll go in order of leveling.

Fists of Earth, Fists of Wind, and Fists of Fire as well as the traits enhanced Fists of Fire and Riddle of Wind: They're currently designed and with every iteration of the traits they've attached to them, has only ever had one stance you want to be using for the vast majority of the time. Up until level 76 that's fire because it gives you more damage, and at level 76 it's Wind, because GL4 gives you more damage. The entire system is superfluous and could be removed right now, or turned into traits, and nothing would change. They're not just wastes of buttons, they're wastes of buttons that continue to get new traits that are also wastes of traits which bars any sort of progression of the job along that vector.

Dragon Kick/Leaden Fist: Creates a disproportionate amount of potency on a single Positional (missing that positional alone is nearly as much as missing every positional a Dragoon would hit in both of its combos). It further incentivizes Perfect Balance to be used as a DPS cooldown to spam Leaden Bootshines when the developers clearly want Perfect Balance to instead be our "Build up GL and other buffs" button. A better way to alter Dragon Kick going into Shadowbringers would have been to make it a persistent self buff to Critical Hit rate or even just as a flat damage buff, that is what it it functionally was when its effect was inflicting the Blunt Resistance debuff since no other job used Blunt Damage anyway.

Meditation/Deep Meditation I and II: While Meditation as it was designed in Heavensward was fine as our pseudo ranged attack that we'd use on short disengages, Deep Meditation I and II both are at odds with that design and Monks design as a consistent damage dealer as a whole. The RNG nature of Chakra gain and the gauge only being useable when its full has several problems. The biggest one is a problem of feel compared to Monks identity, the job should be about consistent output, but RNG is at complete odds with that. Mechanically, by having no control over Chakra generation we can and will enter disengages or down phases where we'd want to build Chakra but will be less able to because of existing gauge. Because it's based on crits, this also emphasizes something the devs have tried to get away from by making Monk composition dependent on Dragoon, Scholar, and Dancer for their critical hit buffs. The gauge being all or nothing also means that it's common and unavoidable for overflow to occur and for gauge to be lost during Brotherhood windows. In general, people don't like the RNG on this job and our gauge should build in a more consistent manner such as by executing Coeurl form skills.

Tornado Kick: The reasons for disliking this have been well recorded, for all that it has great visual and sound design, we're basically dis-incentivized from using it at any opportunity because the rest of our kit is built around keeping Greased Lightning up. This skill is a newbie trap because its high potency and flashy animation will make people want to hit it. In actually it's currently only useful for excessively long phase changes, or executes. However, because it's also a sizeable amount of burst if we can recover stacks easily and the devs don't want us to use it as such, it's also the noose around the kits neck that caused them to nerf Perfect Balance back into oblivion. This skill more than any others needs a different effect.

Riddle of Earth: As designed in Stormblood it was one of the stupidest possible skills for a DPS to have. It was extremely unreliable for proccing because you could enter a phase where you would need to be hit at varying parts in your rotation depending on how consistent your play was, which could result in GL falling off before it procced. It could also be blocked by a Scholar shielding hard enough so sometimes it just wouldn't work anyway. Now it's a 30 second True North effect with the same ridiculous activation requirements. It's a little better now, but Monk's identity is partially tied to maximizing your damage through positionals, and being able to ignore that for considerable periods with this is an overblown choice.

Brotherhood: It's problems are tied into the previously mentioned Chakra problems and RNG, but also party composition. This skill only gives you chakra procs from physical party members and it's balanced around an 8-man party with one caster DPS. Anything outside of that general composition feels terrible. So solo duties, 4-man dungeons, or any 8-man content you run with a roulette which could give you a party full of casters is more than likely going to whiff and maybe get one Forbidden Chakra if any. However it also doesn't work in an optimal party composition either, because it can still whiff if the RNG is bad. Meanwhile, if the RNG is good... it still feels bad, because the all or nothing nature of Chakra means there's going to be overflow and lost procs. The skill is never satisfying to use and incredibly sensitive to party composition messing with it.

Enlightenment: While conceptually fine, this is a skill we should have gained at level 58 or so when we gain access to our gauge. It is not a Shadowbringers skill by any stretch of the imagination, we just get it there, it's a Stormblood skill the expansion where their selling point was every job having a Gauge. However there was no effort put into Monk in Stormblood or Shadowbringers for that matter, so we get it later than we should. This means it has all of the problems of Chakras, but earned far too late at such a time that it feels like a worse replacement for a skill they just removed which should have been an actual addition in the previous expansion instead of something to be excited about.

Anatman: This skill should not exist, full stop. It was designed to yet another Greased Lightning Upkeep skill with some major flaw that will render it nonfunctional in situations (In its cases, any time you have to Move) as well as an inefficient means of recovering stacks after they nerfed PB's cooldown. Right now, with Form Shift does the upkeep function in significantly more situations. The building stacks function I'd posit is intentionally ineffective, because if it was useful, then we'd use it for Tornado Kicking and god forbid we have buttons to hit, but as a result of it being ineffective the situations where it's useful are few and far between. However as far as unintended uses go, this also is the crux of the terrible feeling anatman opener where you fish for a stack of Greased Lightning so you can dump out Leaden Bootshines using Perfect Balance, which is one of the worst feeling things the game has ever had.

Six Sided Star: Yet another yet another skill for refreshing Greased Lightning, this time on disconnects. This has the most niche uses of any skill we have, that being short disconnects. However it inherently is at odds with Meditation for that duty, the Greased Lightning refresh function is redundant with multiple other skills in the kit and Form Shift just does it the most effectively right now, and really it's just... extremely disappointing as a capstone skill. It's visual impressive like Tornado Kick but about as useful in general.

tl;dr: The gauge is poorly conceived RNG that Monk players actively don't want, lackadaisically attached to a different mechanic in such a manner that makes both less effective and enjoyable. Brotherhood and Crit RNG mechanics makes the job composition dependent even though basically no one likes that, and that its something devs have tried to avoid this expansion. We have dozens of skills competing to do the exact same thing in our kit making all of them less effective, and more skills that straight up could be deleted right now and change nothing about how the job plays because they're pointless and poorly conceived. Despite all of this, we're doing less than what we would in the ARR rotation because they've trimmed skills from the job.

[Crushnight]

Enlightenment: While conceptually fine, this is a skill we should have gained at level 58 or so when we gain access to our gauge. It is not a Shadowbringers skill by any stretch of the imagination, we just get it there, it's a Stormblood skill the expansion where their selling point was every job having a Gauge. However there was no effort put into Monk in Stormblood or Shadowbringers for that matter, so we get it later than we should. This means it has all of the problems of Chakras, but earned far too late at such a time that it feels like a worse replacement for a skill they just removed which should have been an actual addition in the previous expansion instead of something to be excited about.

Great highlight of a lot of mnk issues bit I want to call attention to this as it is not exclusively a mnk issue.

SE has a problem with when to assign abilities across many jobs few examples

-Dnc' closed position is lv60 which is fine as that is level you unlock it at but get synced down anywhere below and the defining trait of giving powerful buffs to your party is gone completely.
-Ast's Diurnal Sect sits there doing nothing for 4 levels it is worthless for those 4 levels, short, yes, pointless to seperate it from Aspected benefic's level, absolutely.
-Gnb doesn't get an aoe gauge spender until lv72
-Melee aoes are all far later than casters and physical ranged making them worse for bigger pulls in earlier dungeons
-wasn't until ShB that Ast's Gravity was lowered from 52 and was the only healer for 2 expansions that couldn't aoe 50 content.
-pre SB sch had leeches lv 40 while whm/ast had esuna by Halatali

It has been an issue for years and probably many more but maybe just maybe SE may actually look at an ability and go hmm when is it appropriate for the job to have this rather than ooh new ability stick it here.

[Melichoir]

Sure, I'll go in order of leveling....*Snips*

Hmm these are all pretty good points but I personally feel some of them are up to personal choice I guess. What I mean is I dont see them as being a negative aspect (If the skills were cleaned up) and not being all that situational. A few of them are:

Anatman: This skill should not exist, full stop. It was designed to yet another Greased Lightning Upkeep skill with some major flaw that will render it nonfunctional in situations (In its cases, any time you have to Move) as well as an inefficient means of recovering stacks after they nerfed PB's cooldown. Right now, with Form Shift does the upkeep function in significantly more situations. The building stacks function I'd posit is intentionally ineffective, because if it was useful, then we'd use it for Tornado Kicking and god forbid we have buttons to hit, but as a result of it being ineffective the situations where it's useful are few and far between. However as far as unintended uses go, this also is the crux of the terrible feeling anatman opener where you fish for a stack of Greased Lightning so you can dump out Leaden Bootshines using Perfect Balance, which is one of the worst feeling things the game has ever had.

I dont see the complaint for it existing out of the moving bit. I agree that part of it is pure cancer. But beyond that, using it to keep stance and GL stacks maxed seems fine if were dealing with fights that either have smoe longer transitions. Form Stance obviously covers this, but frankly, I dont want to keep spamming form stance, especially if I end up off the stance I want to be in. As an anecdote, in F14 for e5s, I can use anatman effectively then when lining up for my rod. Bonus for bugging the animation so you dont get knocked down but do a weird moon walk. It works out for me. I can usually also use it in any point where theres a semi longer transition and I dont want to cycle through 2 or 3 GCDs just to keep stacks up. Maybe Im doing it wrong though but it seems to work fine in a few situations. I just HATE the movement aspect of it.... As for it restoring stacks, well, I guess Im ambivilant about it? You cant really rebuild full stacks with it, but its not hurting you to have that as part of it either. Maybe improve it by getting rid of hte "Dont move" aspect (or atleast be able to turn) and make it freeze/refresh buffs gained through rotation.

Riddle of Earth: As designed in Stormblood it was one of the stupidest possible skills for a DPS to have. It was extremely unreliable for proccing because you could enter a phase where you would need to be hit at varying parts in your rotation depending on how consistent your play was, which could result in GL falling off before it procced. It could also be blocked by a Scholar shielding hard enough so sometimes it just wouldn't work anyway. Now it's a 30 second True North effect with the same ridiculous activation requirements. It's a little better now, but Monk's identity is partially tied to maximizing your damage through positionals, and being able to ignore that for considerable periods with this is an overblown choice.

I think being to heavily connected to positionals might actually be monk's greatest weakness. If I was reading right, they adjusted potencies on monk so that if you didnt hit a positional, it wasnt as punishing. But even more beyond that, if monks are hard set on positionals, it means savage fights would have to be with this designed in mind otherwise they would be severely sub optimal. Even if they did the best damage, if it required them to hit positionals that werent possible unless the group catered to them, youd see them in content less I would guess. As for proccing it, something that did cross my mind was unlike in SB, raid busters and other large AoEs seem much more frequent this time around, so proccing it through unavoidable damage doesnt seem all to terrible? Unless we want less of that?

Beyond that I can see more or less the other points. Some of it can be argued as "This is whatll separate good from bad", but some of that makes sense (Like enlightenment just taking over for another OGCD...). Interesting points.

[Sylve]

This would create a whole new set of problems in healers.

Optimization would be trying to reduce over healing as much as possible such a change would cause massive spike in overhealing on all healers because trying to optimise will still try hit as much dps as possible however it is achieved this will be unsatisfying to a good few optimisers seeing such a high amount of wasteful healing especially because it will be mandatory wastefulness.

8 man bosses will have to have 1 of 2 traits, hit mt so hard with every auto to componsate 2 healers healing them every gcd or both tanks are hit continously ala Chardanook/Shinyru/Shiva-Dragonform. Both would cause strain on the healers if 1 of them dies 1 more so than 2. Dungeon bosses would have to hit tank harder too.

You're making the same mistake I saw a certain other MMO make when Healing got too strong.

The Tanks aren't the only players that are potential targets.
More mechanics like Hades EX triple puddle (One of the later phases) where the marker has 2 components, an unavoidable hit for light to medium damage, which then leaves a deadly puddle under them to be avoided by the one with the marker.

Even for the Tanks, Constant mid level damage interspersed with Busters as opposed to the current tickle autos and superbusters, which every tank nullifies with their handy Anti-Buster short cooldown.

If everyone in the party is taking damage at irregular intervals due to mechanics, even ones as simple as the boss turning and firing an attack at a random player that cant be avoided would give spells like Cure a place and purpose as a GCD filler.

Every single thread or response about Healers always ends up saying "We want healers to be DPS with some healing cooldowns", but in a dozen different ways.

Healers are the only Role in the game that actively strives to do its party role as little as possible.
Doing damage as a Healer should be encouraged by REMOVING the competition between Healing GCDs and Damage.

Once you remove the barrier between doing Healing and doing damage, You can improve the variety of damage dealing a Healer can do. As it stands, more DPS buttons will just crowd out Healing buttons even further.
Right now, there is no decision making to be had. The answer is always 'Do DPS unless someone is going to die'.

Look at what happened to Tanks when they abandoned Tank buttons in favor of just doing more DPS, no matter the cost.

[Billythepancake]

...

Healers striving to heal as little as possible is, in my opinion, a great thing. Healers are on the front lines with everyone else, they're a soldier, they're combat medics. Combat medics are given guns,the same as any other soldier. Yes, they'll patch you up, it's their job, but once you're good enough to fire your weapon, they're going to pat you on the butt, tell you to get back out there, then go back to shooting their gun. A good combat medic understands the best way to heal is to make sure your men don't get hurt in the first place, and the best way to do that is to shoot the enemies, after all, a dead enemy does no damage.

Taking the fantasy aspect out of it, one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with healing in this game, and the reason I could never get past level 40 in any other MMO, including the big boy WoW, is because DPSing is a huge part to being a healer. It feels nice to do more than kiss the booboos away, to feel like I'm making a genuine difference in the fight. I'm a support in every game I play, but in those games I will pick the aggressive support every single time, in lol for example, I always loved supports like Thresh, Leona, and Pyke, because their kits force you to be aggressive and attack your enemies, not just sit in the backlines and let everyone else do all the fun explody stuff, and the healers in this game, especially in SB, embody that philosophy. It's why I want my DPS abilities back, it felt so good to balance that while keeping people alive.

Also, "healing and DPS shouldn't compete", yes,.they should. It's called risk and reward. Do you take the risk of not healing your teammates, but,get rewarded in more damage. Hell, they tried to do that with aetherflow. They took away energy drain in 5.0, and now it was purely a healing mechanic, guess what? SCH did not work without energy drain. Aetherflow became a useless mechanic, because now you had nothing to blow your stacks on. Every single time aetherflow was off CD, I had at least 1-2 stacks left, unless I was with a bunch of window-lickers that ate orange circles like they were candy and went in with the lowest gear possible. Even if they upped damage, that would, at best, be a bandaid fix. Eventually you'll get better gear and need to heal less, or people will play the game with a better understanding of their class, or w/e else. DPS needs to be tied to aetherflow. Hell, one of the biggest reason the fairy gauge on SCH is considered useless is because it's a purely heal mechanic. You know how often I have that sit at full, because I just don't have anything to spend it on? If there were a fairy DPS ability tied to it, that cost, say, 30 gauge, I promise, you'd see a lot less SCHs calling it useless, and you'd have to actually pick If it was worth using the DPS on it, or if it'd be better to use that gauge on a heal. DPS competing with heals is a great thing, it offers risk and reward, and it offers more things to do the better you get at fights. Nobody will get upset at a healer for dropping a dot while they're learning, but the better you get at a fight, and can learn to keep that dot up, along with your other skills, the more rewarding it is, and it can only be more rewarding the more abilities you have to keep up. SCH in SB was fun because I had a rotation to keep up, and being able to keep that rotation WHILE keeping people alive is why I fell in love with the class in the first place, I cannot stress that enough.

Lastly, your suggestion just sounds like a nightmare to implement. First they'd have to retroactively change every single encounter in the game to fit that style of healers. Every single one. Not just the ones for the next expansion, they'd have to change ARR, HW, SB, ShB, and whatever the new expac is. That would be way too much work to add on top of everything else they have to do for an expansion. Not to mention, with that system, you'd be swapping targets a minimum of twice EVERY SINGLE GCD. No way in hell that'd be fun to play. I think AST is bad now with its target swapping in sleeve draw, this would put AST to shame. At least SD has a CD of 180 seconds.

[SpeckledBurd]

Great highlight of a lot of mnk issues bit I want to call attention to this as it is not exclusively a mnk issue.

SE has a problem with when to assign abilities across many jobs few examples

-Dnc' closed position is lv60 which is fine as that is level you unlock it at but get synced down anywhere below and the defining trait of giving powerful buffs to your party is gone completely.
-Ast's Diurnal Sect sits there doing nothing for 4 levels it is worthless for those 4 levels, short, yes, pointless to seperate it from Aspected benefic's level, absolutely.
-Gnb doesn't get an aoe gauge spender until lv72
-Melee aoes are all far later than casters and physical ranged making them worse for bigger pulls in earlier dungeons
-wasn't until ShB that Ast's Gravity was lowered from 52 and was the only healer for 2 expansions that couldn't aoe 50 content.
-pre SB sch had leeches lv 40 while whm/ast had esuna by Halatali

It has been an issue for years and probably many more but maybe just maybe SE may actually look at an ability and go hmm when is it appropriate for the job to have this rather than ooh new ability stick it here.

I'd clarify then that much of the annoyance with Enlightenment being a Shadowbringers skill is also partially because of Monk's abysmal development history, which is as much of a reason to be annoyed at the job than the kit itself. Throughout Stormblood Monk was the only DPS who's Gauge was exclusively Single Target, while other jobs would build up to powerful moves that also had AOE components such as Foul, Hissatsu: Gurren, Life of the Dragon/Nastrond, Hellfrog Medium, etc. Monk having no AOE gauge use for so long, then seemingly having to lose a powerful skill that was useful in both Single Target and AOE which also supplemented our Gauge, just so we could get a gauge skill significantly later than makes any sense is part of what makes Enlightenment so offensive. I speculate this is because it would require the devs to think of an actual new skill instead of something that should have been in the kit already which is... disappointing considering Monk was already one of the worst received jobs in Stormblood. You'd think they'd give it more attention after literally apologizing on stream for it, not less.

That said Gunbreaker (being the closest to this actual problem since its referring to an AOE gauge spender) also really shouldn't have it's gauge skill at 72 either, you'd think they'd have learned this lesson and you'd get it at level 62 or something.

Dancer's closed position strikes me more as an identity problem at low levels rather than a mechanical one, at low levels it isn't going to be lacking in power compared to other DPS jobs considering it's potencies are all fairly high and Standard Finish is the highest potency skill available there.

The levels of Melee AOE Weaponskills are definitely a problem, IMO they should all receive their skill at level 15 rather than at levels 26/38/40 depending on the job. Of special note however I'd say is Dragoon which basically has the problem Monk and Gunbreaker have with gauge skills but on its AOE combo. Every single AOE skill it earns, it earns significantly later than it should (40, 62, and 72 respectively). They should definitely shuffle AOE skills downward for Dragoon (Doom Spike 15, Sonic Thrust 35 also change its effect to refreshing Disembowel, Coerthan Torment 54 with Blood of the Dragon and its refresh effect is the same) so no job with an AOE combo has that combo incomplete by level 60.

I dont see the complaint for it existing out of the moving bit. I agree that part of it is pure cancer. But beyond that, using it to keep stance and GL stacks maxed seems fine if were dealing with fights that either have smoe longer transitions. Form Stance obviously covers this, but frankly, I dont want to keep spamming form stance, especially if I end up off the stance I want to be in. As an anecdote, in F14 for e5s, I can use anatman effectively then when lining up for my rod. Bonus for bugging the animation so you dont get knocked down but do a weird moon walk. It works out for me. I can usually also use it in any point where theres a semi longer transition and I dont want to cycle through 2 or 3 GCDs just to keep stacks up. Maybe Im doing it wrong though but it seems to work fine in a few situations. I just HATE the movement aspect of it.... As for it restoring stacks, well, I guess Im ambivilant about it? You cant really rebuild full stacks with it, but its not hurting you to have that as part of it either. Maybe improve it by getting rid of hte "Dont move" aspect (or atleast be able to turn) and make it freeze/refresh buffs gained through rotation.

The complaint for it existing at the moment is that it's redundant and seemingly its entire point for being implemented was to justify a nerf to Perfect Balance so they could feel like Monk still had a means of recovering stacks, but without having to fix the fundamental problems with Stormblood RoE and Tornado Kick's very design. In theory Monk would be able to keep up GL in most situations between Anatman for unmoving transitions, Riddle of Earth for moving transitions, and you'd use Tornado Kick otherwise. In practice it made Monk worse at every job because they just had one button, while Monk had a dozen with situations where skills being inapplicable fell through the cracks. For example, if Monk had to deal with any part of Alexander Ultimate's transitions without an easy refresh, the job would be dead in the water for it content. The transitions require too much movement to use Anatman while moving, take too long to refresh with Riddle of Earth alone, and you'd be losing a substantial source of damage in Perfect Balance by having to reuse it after every transition and losing the leaden bootshines.

Also that reminds me of something I failed to mention in my previous list of points, but Tornado Kick is also weakened in use cases by GL4 taking so much longer to build up to and GL4 itself makes a stronger recovery skill more necessary when its so substantial.

Frankly the best thing they could do to it right now would be to make it Monk Umbral Soul in my opinion, possibly as a direct upgrade to Formshift. Umbral Soul does literally everything a Black Mage wants, it refresh's your form, your buffs, and it grants a resource (Umbral Hearts). Make Anatman do that Make it refresh Greased Lightning, Extend your current form, extend Twin Snakes, and grant a Chakra. Then when you return you can begin right where you left off instead of having to juggle multiple downtime buttons we only have one that we have to hit at our leisure instead of alternating Meditation and Form Shift Spam before getting to the proper form to refresh Twin Snakes and settling into Anatman before carpal tunnel sets in.

I think being to heavily connected to positionals might actually be monk's greatest weakness. If I was reading right, they adjusted potencies on monk so that if you didnt hit a positional, it wasnt as punishing. But even more beyond that, if monks are hard set on positionals, it means savage fights would have to be with this designed in mind otherwise they would be severely sub optimal. Even if they did the best damage, if it required them to hit positionals that werent possible unless the group catered to them, youd see them in content less I would guess. As for proccing it, something that did cross my mind was unlike in SB, raid busters and other large AoEs seem much more frequent this time around, so proccing it through unavoidable damage doesnt seem all to terrible? Unless we want less of that?

Beyond that I can see more or less the other points. Some of it can be argued as "This is whatll separate good from bad", but some of that makes sense (Like enlightenment just taking over for another OGCD...). Interesting points.

I enjoy having positionals, it gives another layer of maximization upon the job. The problem is Monks positionals were once again made disproportionate to the amount it has relative to the other Melee. I'm not sure how to go about fixing this other than nerfing the penalty on Monk even further or some such. As far as Monk goes, it's one of the foundations of its early design along with GL and Form Based combos, but its easily the weakest aspect of the job at the moment. I personally wouldn't mind them toned down if another system were to be added that was compelling (Such as Blitz's).

[RyuDragnier]

You're all just reminding me that they should take Tifa's gameplay from FF7R as a basis and redo Monk's gauges and combos. Have them build up gauge for a burst Window, and then have a combo of finishers (with a 60s cooldown) that uses a stack of GL for each one. But in return, the finishers would get stronger for each one you combo, and you'd get a stacking buff that lasts for 20s that keeps your attack power and skill speed the same as if you still had your GL stacks. Said combo would be a combination of moves we've declared useless over the years, and a change of one of them (namely, a removal of the Chakra system or at least separating Forbidden Chakra from it). First attack, One-Ilm Punch. Second attack, Forbidden Chakra. Third attack, Tornado Kick. Fourth and final attack, Six-Sided Star. Combining this with the stacking buff would allow us a good burst window. We could then turn Anatman into an instant that instantly gives you 4 GL stacks and resets the cooldown on the finishers with a hefty timer (120-180s on it).

[Colt47]

I think the biggest problem I've had, especially now that I'm tackling Savage content, is that everything feels horribly sloppy for DPS and gunbreaker. Warrior is boring, but gets the job done, Paladin feels like I'm just not used to the new spell opener, and my WHM experience has been pretty standard.

DPS feels sloppy because of the combat design where half of the interaction is determined by the mechanics of the boss itself, rather than the player. Melee DPS in general gets the world asked of them every time they have to participate in a fight because they have more complex rotations than a tank, have to often deal with positionals, and also dodge boss mechanics at the same time. Meanwhile, ranged DPS can dance around like they don't even give a care and Summoner can blow everyone out of the water.

I don't know, it just feels like it isn't very rewarding to play a DPS optimally, which in turn makes savage feel forced and mostly about chasing a carrot on a stick.

Edit: Also going to mention that I think being able to achieve a high personal dps is deserving of a reward. The issue is this game does not provide recognition for personal achievements in proficiency because the point where it matters is the savage content, which is group based. There needs to be a means for players to push their skills in live 1 on 1 combat vs a boss. They need content that teaches them how to react, when to use abilities properly, and when it is safe to pull back.

Second Edit: Thinking on things the game does have a sort of over optimization problem. The reason a class gets boring is because there's little choice in what action to take for any given encounter, and when a choice is offered it gets taken into to account for the savage content and becomes part of the generic optimized rotation of skills. It's also worth noting that optimization and efficiency becomes more of a concern when the only reason left to play is to acquire something rather than experience something.