Actually it's a combination of things:

• We have this niche which is extremely hard to tune. We are the highest base damage offensive fighter class. This means that we should flat out own in the DPS arena for at least 25-30 seconds (The actual numbers change from time to time)  So as long as a Ranger is in it's progressive offensive form and studing it's opponent. A rogue is using it's stalking to it's maximum effectiveness then and only then should they surpass a monk in DPS.
• Mixed reports, some people say we are ok, others think we suck. My personal feeling is that we were getting there, but the recent batch of tweaks the rangers got threw us out of balance pretty bad. The waters have been muddied a bit so perception seems be off. (Look for Kyomi's thread regarding a damage parse vs. a ranger 9 levels below her)

Now this is my current "to do" list.

Bugs

• AE Attacks in some zone just are flat out buggy, You expend the endurance but nothing happens. Rhaz / Shidreth Mines examples.
• 1st tier of the Storm Dragon Stance is bugged
• Throwing item damage needs to be looked at and actually fixed
• Aspect of the spirit dragon needs to have a more reliable level of invis considering its out of combat only and has a hefty jin cost.
  

Tweaks

• Base Damage increase across the board
• P.E.H. needs more damage (Still not out damaging a 1KF Chain / CKotM Chain)
• Enhance Meditation to give an improved health regen as well as jin while in this state.
• Increase the duration of Iron Hands to 30 mins. The 5 jin is negligible in the grand scheme of things.
• Enhance the duration of Secrets Ice/Fire/Transcendence to a full minute. Adjust cool down 2 minutes (fire / Ice ) Transcendence lowered to 5 mins
• A bump in Dragon AE damage / lower end costs

Other goodies


Hidden chains – Monks currently have none. I’d like to solve that and grant some utility at the same time; (actual ability combo’s proposed not listed for obvious reasons

• Stunning Blow (3 sec stun)
• Toe Stomp (10 sec snare)

Drunken Monks: Aggro Management "bonds" for offensive / defensive targets to siphon off hate to pile it onto a group member. Using taunts / insults as a supplement to the rescue like abilities. It would be based on the DSC bond ability as you can have only 1 offensive / 1 defensive aggro tool up at any given time.

• Battery of Insults: A buff on the defensive target where the monk is mocking and insulting the monk's offensive target thus diffusing hate towards your defensive target.
• Mocking Challenge, a buff on your offensive target where the monk is hurling mockery to cause hate for your defensive target

Dragon Style: A singe target Adv Finisher chain *Fist of the Dragon*

Once this goes in and the damage numbers feel right I'll be a happier monk

~QTM

Thanks for the correction!!! *scribbles the right name down now*

~QTM

Aren't hands upgraded every 10 levels?

So theoretically, hands will always be relatively strong versus content at levels 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 but with each new level, that relative power scales down until they get upgraded again. Of course that also means that at level 50, bare hands will be very strong in terms of DPS since there are only so many weapons that are of higher level.

Don't trust the DPS measurment in the UI, it'll give higher values than reality for slow weapons and lower for faster weapons (it dosen't really care what speed you have, it divides by it's own number, making it quite useless), the only thing you have that is trustworthy is your damage range; which you then can divide by your speed to determine DPS rating.

Personally, I think it depends.

I could see a case for level 50 hands performing better than say a level 50 or 51 rare and perhaps even with a 52 rare. At 53+, rares should definitely have an edge though and pull away as you go higher.

The real issue IMO is Heroics and Legendaries. For starters, there don't seem to be enough of them.

Oh, it's not a fault at the weapon tooltip, but the DPS tooltip on the sheet.

For example:
Graystone staff lists 421.75 DPS for me.
It has a damage range of 792-895 and a speed of 3.25, which lands it realisticly slightly above 250 DPS.
Unless there's a magical 40% damage bonus (and I don't hit with autoattack for ~1200 on a debuffed mob with graystone stick, I'll tell you that) I'll say that the tooltip is broken.
Torchbearer and God King on the other hand were spot on during my calculations.
Unarmed fists (708 avg. damage) and a dps of 354 would land them at 2.00 speed sharp, but unless modified recently, they have displayed an actual speed of ~2.25 in parses (4 attacks in 9 seconds) - but it was a long long time since I parsed last, and even longer since I used unarmed fists so I can't testify on the accuracy of that.

Oh yea, I've relogged fully etc so it's not simply taking the speed of the first weapon equiped and then keeping that for all future updates, it has some inherital error.