Quote Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont View Post
I’ve lost track of the amount of times that fists of earth has prevented a wipe in dungeons/raids/trials (including ex). It has uses, situational yes but situational skills give jobs depth, and some of them are more useful in synced content (very much part of the game) and I think that’s where SE fails by listening to the forum whiners too much, some people think that every skill you have should be used in end game raiding, or it’s useless and that’s just not the case.
Situational skills can be good and interesting additions, but the situations where they are useful actually need to exist with enough frequency to justify occupying a hotbar slot. I've played MNK for 5 years, and I could count the times where I got any use from Fists of Earth on one hand. It's a personal damage reduction on a non-tank job which doesn't have a raise. If you're being attacked as MNK in the first place, something is already going terribly wrong. You have to assume the tanks are dead and your enmity is high enough that the enemies are attacking you instead. But even in this case, Fists of Earth is only useful if it can prevent your death for long enough to revive the tanks. Since it's only a 10% damage reduction, you are probably going to die anyway. Essentially, by the time you're in a situation where Fists of Earth might be useful, a wipe is already nearly guaranteed.

Not every skill needs to be rotational, but skills which have no obvious use in normal gameplay and content can't really justify their existence.