Quote Originally Posted by Stepjam View Post
It's a band aid. I'm 99% sure that Monk is going to get an overhaul for 6.0. Sorta like how in Stormblood the eventually unlocked role actions so you could have all of them equipped if you wanted instead of like 4. That was never meant to be a permanent solution, just a temporary one.
I can't even agree with it being a "band aid." A band aid implies some form of a fix. This isn't a fix, it's an admission of defeat. They finally gave up, after years of leaving the mechanic in place as is and giving us more and more means to try and preserve it and quickly build, while ignoring oftentimes unified feedback from people who actually play the job consistently, they finally just said "Eh, whatever." And by giving up, they basically announced that the entirety of 5.x has been the third expansion straight where they've bungled the job. To echo SpeckledBurd, it's hard to feel hopeful, much less excited, if this is supposed to be a prelude to anything at all.

So much of the new additions to Monk ShB were for the preservation of a self-buff that they have struggled to integrate with the rest of the kit for so long. The removal of GL, and subsequent half-baked changes to the new buttons really highlights the level of neglect that has been on display here.

Since vanilla, the developers have shown basically no real understanding of how they wanted GL to interact with every other aspect of the job. Every thing they built onto the job after ARR failed to acknowledge problems with GL that have always been present, either exacerbating existing issues or making new ones to stack on the old. This same attitude has been reflected on the underused, double-rng layered Chakra system. It is reflected yet again with the continued existence of elemental fists, even after TWO button culls that removed "useless" abilities (and in one case I can recall off the top of my head, later replaced with a new animation and name.)

Monk used to be one of the most selfish DPS in the game, offering next to nothing for any party beyond it's ability to do damage. But in SB and ShB, SE decided that it needed some form of raid utility to shore up it's historically low playerbase. It didn't work. What we're left with now is a job whose defining traits are "it fast", "more positionals than u *punches faster more aesthetically*", "why cant i hold all these chakras ; ;", and "look guys our raid buff finally justifies more than just a very, very specific comp please dont kick me i have been in party finder for hours"