One button monk

[Aschbart]

No, not really

But close, as you will see:

The idea I had addresses the issue of monks having way too many buttons to comfortably take care of in combat, especially in laggy raids, with lots of movement involved, and greater difficulty to hit a relevant part of the group (or the mobs) with buffs like 'Walk of the Sun' or 'Aligning the Heavens' (or debuffs for dark monks). I'm not saying it's not doable, but the way monk finishers are currently organized makes it way too complicated to use them, and prone to accidental messing up, including lag-induced messing-up.

My suggestion is to turn the process of using finishers on it's head: Instead of selecting individual strikes that will eventually combine to unlock a particular finisher, select the finisher instead, and let the game engine cycle through the required strikes! The 'finisher' button then could double as a 'advance-to-finisher' button and always show the next strike required for the selected combo.

Example how this would work:

1. Preparation
Instead of pulling the individual strikes in your hotbar, pull the finishers you like to use into your bar
Maybe prepare shortcuts for those finishers that you know might need on 'short' notice (i. e. within an angoing combat, when you don't have the leisure to dig for the right button)
2. Before combat
Select the finisher you want to use and make sure you know which buttons or keys other finishers are on that you think might also be useful.
The UI automatically sets the 'finisher' button to the first strike in the series, at the highest tier available for the character.
3. In combat
a) Every time you hit your 'finisher' button, the shown strike in the sequence will be executed. If for some reason this isnt possible (e. g. insufficient Ki), nothing will happen. Otherwise the strike will be done, and the 'finisher' button will be advanced to the next strike, or to the actual finisher strike, if the combo is complete. After successfully executing the finisher strike, the sequence will again be reset to the first strike.
b) If you want to switch to another finisher combo, you can do so at any time within or out of combat, but in doing so the strikes already executed for an unfinished combo will be lost, as your finisher button gets set up for the new combo.

Benefits:
- you need less different buttons in combat, in fact you might not require more than 1-2 in most combats. Only tougher combats against bosses or mini-bosses will require a number of buttons closer to the 15-20 a monk currently needs.
- The 'finisher' button will always show the next strike of the sequence so you get a feedback on whether or not your last strike actually worked, or fizzled due to lag, lack of Ki, CD not run out, or whatever.
- More importantly, you will not accidentally already execute the next strike of the sequence after inadvertantly losing a strike in such a way, and thus messing up the combo!

Disadvantages:
- You still need all the individual strikes on your hotbar if you want to use them without regard to combos, e. g. for pure DPS mode. But then you might only need 3-4 of these strikes for that purpose?
- If you want to just use an elemental strike on an almost dead mob instead of the finisher that you just prepared, you also need an additional button on your hot bar for that, but that's basically the same argument as above. Or you might just want to use the elemental strike because it's cheaper on Ki.
- The automatic chain advancing finisher button will always use the highest tier, which may still be on CD. This could be fixed by either reducing the CD somewhat, or by always automatically chosing the highest tier that isn't on CD.

I can see various ways to overcome some of the disadvantages without compromising the benefits, but the post is long enough already, and I'd like to hear other opinions before going into even more detail.

[~jradnut]

I agree that I have way too much **** to fit on the hotbar, and all necessary to perform the finishers. Add Touch of Death, Quivering palm, and Stunning Fist, along with the Dark button and Void Strike and you have a full hotbar. I would like to have other stuff on active bar, but .......

Is my guess that about the time I have a workable set-up (to me), the nerf genie will land her hobnailed boots on my skull.