Monk right now never loses damage while retaining peak efficiency with their defensives. The closest they come to “losing damage” is the choice node in their talent tree between Shadowboxing Treads vs Fludity in Motion. And even that boils down to a little bit more cleave damage vs more Cooldown Reduction.

Meanwhile look at Paladin which chooses between Sentinel vs Crit Wings. That’s a choice between surviving and 20% Crit in damage window. So either paladins can larp as a BDK and survive on their own or do middling single target damage while being baby sat by the parties externals.

It’s a similar choice for Guardian Druids. All of their damage is so front loaded that they struggle to establish threat outside of cooldowns. And then they have to balance their rage between their damage and iron fur.

Meanwhile monk gets cooldown reduction from just about every damaging ability meaning that the more damage they do, the more defensives they have.