The Worst Iteration of Monk. What could be different?

[enthauptet]

I still struggle to figure out what it is that people liked so much about Greased Lightning in any era it couldn't competitively be used for Tornado Kick under certain but decently frequent conditions (late Stormblood Monk) and/or wasn't decently difficult to maintain and carry commensurate reward (10s duration ARR Monk during certain fights, such as T9/13 earthshakers/jump).

I can't really say GL really was something I cared for or not but it did add an element of difficulty when you had to maintain it which made gameplay interesting though fights weren't necessarly as complex as they are now and as we play more we get better which has an impact too.

I don't really play monk anymore, the job bar system just feels bad and while it's "mostly" the same gameplay wise it just doesn't feel good. (I'm also not super huge no the new animations too) Also why do we have 3 AoE skills if they don't impact anything anymore, there's no buff anymore, they don't interact with the gauge so why do they exist if we're trying to simplify things...

[Shurrikhan]

I can't really say GL really was something I cared for or not but it did add an element of difficulty when you had to maintain it which made gameplay interesting though fights weren't necessarly as complex as they are now and as we play more we get better which has an impact too.

I don't really play monk anymore, the job bar system just feels bad and while it's "mostly" the same gameplay wise it just doesn't feel good. (I'm also not super huge no the new animations too) Also why do we have 3 AoE skills if they don't impact anything anymore, there's no buff anymore, they don't interact with the gauge so why do they exist if we're trying to simplify things...

Right, but once HW arrived, you would have to spend the full duration unable to reach any enemy or nearly the full duration stunned to not be able to maintain GL, with it only getting even more lenient later on. We haven't had a GL that added any element of actually difficulty (i.e., anything beyond the annoyance of Form Shift) since ARR ended. Meanwhile, we still have 60% the ramp-up we had in ARR via PB (4 GCDs required for a near-full Demolish, 5 for direct damage actions --> 3 GCDs now), just available without spending an originally 3-minute CD.

Re: the AoE skills, though, agreed. By giving us AoEs for each GCD, it's just siphoned would-be power-per-GCD away from our previously fewer AoE GCDs and reduced our focus target damage for the trouble. I preferred the cycle diminished-AoE-damage (but some utility), focus damage only, and strong AoE over that.

And yeah, the loss of Disciplined Fist and Demolish-as-DoT have hit Monk pretty hard.