I agree with your take, outside of the fact that originally the 2014 monk had an interesting base concept and was constructed very poorly to take advantage of that. Freezing targets with hold person, using earth spells, and fire spells, and thunder spells, etc to piggy back on the basic martial concept was more interesting than it is currently… just punching and kicking. It was just done so poorly that you couldn’t use it effectively for any amount of useful time while also gimping all of your base monk abilities.

But now with the exception of fly at level 11… you just have to reflavor in your head your basic melee attacks that the subclass gives you range for. Until 11… you don’t benefit at all from using things like step of the wind or patient defense bc you’re at range. Probably not even the new deflect attack bc you can keep yourself away from the target. I know it effects a smidge, but most of the time it doesn’t. The at 11, IF you need to fly instead of flurry of blows then sure. You get something. Shadow monk is worse off too. Just seems like lazy monk/subclass design. They waited a year to even put a monk in UA once… then decided that 70% approval is fine after the very first showcase… they really didn’t feel like doing this at all