MNK still lacking range...

[wereotter]

yeah i didn't see any of them on his Hotbars, but it's just sad that they're turning them into passive skills. sure it's nice that we get more hotbar real estate, but do we really need it? i kinda wished they expanded more upon these stances rather than simply giving buffs. but turning them into passives to me removes the job fantasy, it's like how they removed cleric stance too, i liked that.

They did try in Stormblood to make stances more relevant... but it didn't really turn out very well. Problem is that with three options, one will always be superior. And for monks, that option will always be the one that raises your damage output the most. Even if they all did similar things, like one gives flat potency buff, one raises crit rate, and one reduces GCD, people will math it out, figure out which one gives you the most advantage, and that will be the one and only stance you use.

This was a thing we saw with Scholar too. Selene was widely considered to be vastly superior to Eos, and now both the fairies just do the same thing as each other.

[Shurrikhan]

They did try in Stormblood to make stances more relevant... but it didn't really turn out very well. Problem is that with three options, one will always be superior. And for monks, that option will always be the one that raises your damage output the most.

One will always be superior in a particular moment. But that was the thing about 4.3 Monk: the option optimal at that moment... varied. You spent most of your time in Fire, but RoW and RoE made the other stances quite relevant.

Did that effectively turn FoW (a la Tornado Kick) and FoE (a la Riddle of Earth's GL retention over jump phases), each lackluster in themselves, into mere clunk or bloat that slowed access to the effects we really wanted? Arguably, yes. But, you certainly weren't running a single stance 24/7 in optimal play; variance was damn near obligatory.

And that was with only the faintest, most dismissive effort put into making the stances relevant...

This was a thing we saw with Scholar too. Selene was widely considered to be vastly superior to Eos, and now both the fairies just do the same thing as each other.

Not really. Whenever Whispering Dawn was available, the difference between their potential outputs were huge, certainly making a frequent case for Eos over Selene, or even for using both over a given encounter.