Back before SoA I leveled Monk solely to get all 14 of the WSNMs. I was a WSNM and weaponskill fanatic in general. I've memorized so many skillchain combos(all the important ones anyway).
I got a Black Belt pretty late into the game. My last drop needed was the Adamantoise Egg, and I got it from the last Adamantoise that spawned on Asura before the ??? patch.
Anywho, I think my greatest monk story was in the abyssea age(which is primarily where my monk got used). The last Abyssea patch had just dropped, and at that time my LS still had about 20 people, but like 14~ or so that actually showed up to do things. We went in and stumbled around. We killed Alfard. I got Widowmaker. We made our first Raja set, setup camp to be way to the west of all those damn pots. We popped him and pulled. At the time our main party consisted of me on WAR, the leader of LS an Apoc DRK, my bard friend Fyea, our token Rdm, our only Whm(named Spiritmage, really loved that guy), and my BST/BLU/PLD friend who always came to events as BLU. Then the other party was like, these two chuckle *** who claimed to be DRK and SAM mains, but for some reason didn't understand melee builds? but they also had leveled BLMs, so the leader always made them come BLM for procs(but mainly so they couldn't screw anything up, since BLM isn't too complicated). Then two THFs cause one was the RDM's husband and wouldn't come on his COR. The other could sometimes come SAM, but his THF was the only thing he ever really kept up to date, so more often than not he came THF. And then beyond that, I don't really remember. Most of everyone beyond the main 6 were kinda clueless and apt to pissing the DRK off all night.
Anywho, we popped Raja. How hard could it be? We were kinda doubting he'd be ridiculous, since we didn't have a ton of trouble with the other Caturae. The second he gets to camp he does Firaga V. Almost no one had MDT builds, so like, half our group died. lol. So we're going into panic mode. Everybody's running around. People are screaming on Vent. I took hate on it, as I want to do. I was kinda the defacto tank, because I did the most damage. Raja killed me in like 3 or 4 hits, cause my PDT build at the time was total ***. Everyone still running around. The DRK's shouting for the Rdm to Bio it and kite it while everyone else tries to recover.
I just went silent. I was pissed. Nobody had cured me. I HPed. I had a plan. We didn't have any monk mains, so we'd never experienced Countertanking. My Monk gear wasn't really that great, but I had all the relic armor with the HP+% and the Counterstance relic boots +1. I had the Weaponkill damage +% baghnaks from ToM, because Baghnaks are my favorite hand to hand model lol. So you know, I wasn't really decked or anything. I popped a reraise item, put on the 3 best atmas I had, and went back to the fight.
They were still all running around, keeping it claimed, but every time the DRK unweakened and rogered up to attack it, he got his ***pushed in for lack of PDT. I killed a pot on the way for TP. I'd also purchased every temporary item available from Abyssea Mart, and I had a small collection of Temp items from bosses and boxes and ***too. I ran up, Ascetic's Fury'd Raja, did like 4200 damage, not bad for my level 90 scrub monk. So I got hate, but I'm in Counterstance in Abyssea. Raja starts pushing his own ***in. Course, every time he stops to nuke me, I don't even got Shell back on yet. I'm blazing through my temporary items, so I laid out a solemn order over Vent, "Keep me up." They were still screaming and going crazy and ***, so I raised my voice, "HEAL ME, NOW. KEEP ME ALIVE!" And just like that, they all shut up. Vent was totally silent for the next however many minutes it took for me to counter Raja to death. It felt epic, because with just me, his HP was going away pretty quick and once they'd regained their senses, the other melees went off to build TP or would meditate or even just wait for that one regain atma to charge them up. Then they would run in for a weaponskill and run back out. I saved the day!
Course, this prompted the DRK to finish his black belt, gear his monk some, and then come Monk for major NMs in abyssea. So when we went to do Rani... well, he tried having us fight it was 3 Monks and everyone else support, but this turned bad, and the BLMs nuked regardless of HP absoprtion timing and I mean, we almost did it at first, cause we started off with Cor rolls/bard songed abysseaed Hundred Fists, and we got Rani to like 11% within the first minute of the fight, but then we *** up cause we got charmed. Everyone got charmed. Rani went back to full. We tried to keep fighting, but we just didn't have the sense or the MDT or the PDT. We got rekt. It was kinda sad, but this dude who'd already gotten the Shinryu key item for cheap brews came and he was like, "I'll kill it if you let me have the drops." So we did that. It was very regrettable.