@NaClKnight There are some boss fights in the early game which benefit greatly from being able to deal elemental damage. Without it, you need higher level characters to do enough damage to finish those fights because of counter-attacks or attrition. Byblos is one of them, here's the entry for that boss on the new Four Job Fiesta wiki. As noted, Monk at least gets the command Focus (noted with an ! at the start), but it takes longer to execute than a normal attack.