Riddle of Earths' change was unnecessary.

[Rollout]

Removing the charges and instead making it a single 120s cooldown that gives a HoT is just baaaaaaad. Why in the world would I need an overall 500 potency HoT when healers should already be healing that damage I'm taking anyways? The way this is, I'm likely only ever going to use it on a raidwide or a mechanic where I'm specifically targeted, which, again, makes the HoT kinda pointless because the healers should be healing everyone necessary anyways.

If you wanted to improve its "ease of use" as you claim, you should have just made it a flat 10 second damage reduction. No falling off when you use GCDs or get hit or anything. Make it a single charge if you must, but don't make it 120s, that's atrocious, make it 30 seconds like it is was.

[VentVanitas]

I'm... not really sure what their goal was for Riddle of Earth, they've always struggled to do anything meaningful with the skill- but this is probably the worst and most superfluous iteration of it yet. At this point I'm sick of SE fooling around with the Riddle skills and I'd rather see them gone than continue to waste up space and provide nothing to the kit outside of Riddle of Fire. Keep RoF and rebrand it as Internal Release or something.

[Erinellza]

I hate this change. Spammable Riddle of Earth was what made Monk unique and different than other melees. It was fun and comfortable. Now it's boring and generic like the other defensive skills. Now the skill is just a worse Arcane Crest because of the overly long cooldown.

[Ransu]

Because the 3 charges was a holdover from ShB when the skill had a bonus passive that allowed you to ignore positionals which they took out in EW. 3 stacks on a 30s CD that gave a 20% damage reduction was pretty broken in the grand scheme of things and it made mnk tankier than they were supposed to be. I knew they were going to change it eventually, I just didn't think it would happen till the next expansion.

[ForteNightshade]

Old Riddle of Earth was comically broken.

None of the other Melee had anything close to 20% on demand mitigation with only a 30s CD. Dragoon doesn't even have a defensive CD since Life Surge is used as part of its core rotation and never held for healing. Bringing up Reaper and Arcane Crest is ignoring Monk also does Mantra, which is both incredibly powerful and unique to Monk. It was a necessary change.

[Rollout]

Old Riddle of Earth was comically broken.

None of the other Melee had anything close to 20% on demand mitigation with only a 30s CD. Dragoon doesn't even have a defensive CD since Life Surge is used as part of its core rotation and never held for healing. Bringing up Reaper and Arcane Crest is ignoring Monk also does Mantra, which is both incredibly powerful and unique to Monk. It was a necessary change.

Nature's Minne is now a more powerful Mantra, so it's not even unique. Mantra also only works on GCDs, whereas Arcane Crest just broke and provide a HoT to EVERYONE rather than just the Reaper.

[ElHeggunte]

I’m okay with the removal of the charges and stacks, but the quadrupled CD is absurd.

[enthauptet]

Removing player agency for their own mitigation is stupid, they should be adding more to jobs that don't have it rather than removing it.

[SpeckledBurd]

Riddle of Earth was pretty overtuned, but this is an over correction. If they'd just normalized the duration to 5-6 seconds and cut one charge while putting it on a 60 second recast, or even cut charges entirely but left it at a 30 second recast would have been a more reasonable nerf. Putting it on a 120 second recast is absolutely overboard and makes it pretty underwhelming as a defensive even with the regen.

Nature's Minne is now a more powerful Mantra, so it's not even unique. Mantra also only works on GCDs, whereas Arcane Crest just broke and provide a HoT to EVERYONE rather than just the Reaper.

They're also ignoring that Dragoon and Reaper have natively higher defense than the other melee because of their Maiming Armor type.

[Ransu]

120s is a bit long. Maybe 45s or 60s, but ya, the change was definitely necessary.