MNK Rework is a great start

[SpeckledBurd]

It was nice to see this thread after a near week of nothing but vitriol for the rework. Even if they still don't know what to do with the job, they're going to have to force themselves to finally think of something substantial in 6.0 since they can no longer churn out boring GL skills. A lot of people want to see Tifa inspiration, but in my opinion I think they should look to the OGs, I want to see Sabin skills personally and no, not just because of a suplex. It would be nice to get some actual iconic, traditional Final Fantasy Monk attacks like Aura Bolt, Rising Pheonix or Bum Rush.

Speaking of, I'm 100% certain there's a way Blitz can be introduced into the game without working as a copy of Mudras or forcing a pause in damage/rotation.

While I agree that this is a good start, I can sorta get why people would be disappointed or concerned for the future.

The mere fact that it was called a rework at all comes with quite a few expectations as to how extensive it will actually be in terms of fixing issues. I'm certain the amount of effort and manpower that went into this was extensive due to how many parts of the kit had to change, however Monk had and still has a ton of issues and the number of those issues this addressed was relatively few. Just to name a few, chakra overcapping is still an issue, Chakra being RNG at all is itself an issue, Monk's mobility is still arguably the worst of the melee, Six Sided Star having a sprint didn't fix that and nor did the sprint make it any less lackluster as a capstone skill, Perfect Balance being used to spam Leaden Bootshine doesn't feel good and works poorly with how short Twin Snakes' timer is, and the Fists they're still wasted design space that may as well be a series of traits or eliminated. The rework actually exacerbated some of these problems, particularly Chakra overcapping and our Riddle of Fire window now having even more required weaving in it for how little slots we have to weave oGCDS even before Forbidden Chakra procs.

The other thing is that when they announced the 5.4 changes, they said that Monk was going to be reworked because it couldn't wait until 6.0. Now that the rework has been implemented, I think the best most anyone has to say about it is that it's a good foundation for rebuilding the job in 6.0. While some improvements were made, we're still essentially in the same position where we were before the rework happened: hoping that they'll fix a huge number of problems at a future date. And for a lot of Monk players, this is the second or third time they've been in that position. I think there's a very real fear that a 6.0 rework will just be them rereleasing 5.4 Monk without addressing the remaining longstanding issues because the developers have just... done that twice now with Monk. Once bitten, twice shy and all.

Not to say this isn't a small improvement on where it was and it's got more potential than it did before. There's more room for them to expand on the job in the future since at least some of the chuff has been cleaned up and there isn't a chance for them to make another two skills to upkeep Greased Lightning provided you jump through a given hoop. But this can't be where the devs leave it for another expansion like they've done with Monk in the past.