Monks need a projectile!

[Kolsykol]

Meditation is your "can't hit the boss" button. It's approximately 200 potency / GCD. This is your fallback.

All other melee fallbacks are about 120-150 potency / GCD, and break combos.

Whether meditation / chakra should feature earlier in the leveling scheme is another discussion.

Yes, but like I said they charge up really fast and you most likely already have some and don't start charging up from 0.
Then you have Anatman ( no one likes it, booo ).
Keep in mind too that Chakra was meant for this at first, but then they were reworked but we got nothing really to compensate for that other than Anatman.
If we lived in the past I'd agree with you but Chakra's work differently now and charge way faster.

I think this is something you maybe don't realize until it happens, but I've been playing SAM and NIN a lot lately too and it made me realize ( even Tanks have a projectile too, when I said melee I included them too it's literally only Monk ).
For example in The Heroe's Gauntlet the bosses constantly force you to move away for longer periods of time, sometimes you can position yourself so you can keep hitting but it's not always the case and you pretty quickly start doing more damage with a projectile spam over Six Sided Strike or Anatman channel to keep Twin Snakes.

Granted, most people I see don't even use their projectile they just stand there doing nothing not even using their channels etc.
But it's still a tool at everyones disposal except Monk, even just in terms of fun.

Altho I'd personally rather take what I mentioned in the OP too, a backflip Enlightenment free Shoulder Tackle charge combo.
Heck Six Sided Strike could become the backflip if they won't do anything else with it next expansion, I just think it's something that makes a whole lot of thematic sense for Monk and also adds a lot of flavor and fun.
It's obviously not at the top of my priority list, but it's still something that I realized when playing SAM and NIN more.

Monk's current design makes this extremely inconsistent though. With Chakra currently being RNG without overhead between it being capped and being usable is inherently at odds with Meditation being the projectile skill equivalent. Chakra amounts will vary when you disengage, so if you disengage with an empty or mostly empty Chakra gauge you can make good use of the downtime, whereas if you have to disengage with a nearly full bar or if your final GCD when you disengage caps you're severely limited or can't do anything at all.

It also leaves Monk without a means of spot pulling in solo content or leveling, which isn't important at end game but can impact the leveling experience or the ability to do side content like PotD solo.

They need to severely overhaul Chakra no matter what because it is definitely the worst designed gauge in the game and Meditation being Monk's answer to other Job's having actual projectile skills only contributes to that.

The solo thing is another good point too, it's something else that I realized in the Bozjan Southern Front.
It's like '' wow, I can't pull one by one I have to just charge in or try to awkwardly bait them ''.