What if: Stances were removed?

[magnanimousCynic]

I'd be glad to see the end of them, they are usually clunky, overly convaluted button-bloat - (along with any skills that clash with other classes, there are too many of those as well). The toggle idea is the next best thing I suppose.

Half of the stances (Diurnal/Nocturnal + Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire + Kiss of the Wasp/Viper) are ones you click once and never touch again, meaning you could just move these to a hotbar/crossbar that's by itself. They're barely a button bloat problem. The only ones that actually need some thought are the MT/OT stances and Cleric Stance.

Also how is it convoluted? Convoluted means extremely complex and difficult to follow. These simple buttons are anything but complicated...

[XiXiQ]

Also how is it convoluted? Convoluted means extremely complex and difficult to follow. These simple buttons are anything but complicated...

every pointless button makes things more convaluted, and adds to button bloat. Its not JUST these that are the issue, but they are adding to the problem.

[Duelle]

Half of the stances (Diurnal/Nocturnal + Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire + Kiss of the Wasp/Viper) are ones you click once and never touch again, meaning you could just move these to a hotbar/crossbar that's by itself. They're barely a button bloat problem.

Nocturnal/Diurnal were designed around the idea of AST mimicking a WHM or SCH depending on what was needed (a result of the devs designing a two-healer metagame). Those are less stances and more like modes simply because you can't change them in combat. Sort of like choosing who your striker would be in the older King of Fighters games.

Adamantoise Stance, Gale Stance and Vajra Stance (AKA Fists of Earth/Wind/Fire) are button bloat, just not the type that notably hinders gameplay. Instead, it's button bloat that hinders and somewhat limits design, since Fists of Fire is pretty much the go-to stance while the other two have tiny niches that don't really provide a notable benefit (unlike something like Tempered Will that allows me to cheese knockback effects). Simply put, it's 3 wasted skill slots that could have been used for something that added to PGL/MNK's gameplay. I still don't know why they kept those from 1.0.

Wasp and Viper are more examples of wasted slots, since the idea was that Jugulate would have different uses depending on which stance you're in. Which is sort of silly seeing that ROG/NIN would have been fine with one skill that stuns and one skill that's a silence and have both share a cooldown.

The only ones that actually need some thought are the MT/OT stances and Cleric Stance.

Getting into tank stances, the problem is that tanks are not using stances as per design, mostly because of other factors in the battle system. So instead of being a straightforward "if you want to live/hold aggro, hit your tank stance and stay in it" situation, you have people encouraging others to constantly swap despite that going against how stances are supposed to work. As mentioned by another poster, that makes gameplay needlessly convoluted and adds one extra button that's not really necessary.

Cleric Stance falls into that category as well, since that was designed as a way to get around letting spells like Stone and Aero scale with MND (in part because a healer doing full damage while also healing at full potential is overpowered). Between that, the fact its cooldown is long enough for things to go south if badly timed, plus the devs not taking healer damage into account during ARR's first tier tells me Cleric Stance was meant to be used for soloing, FATEs and leves. Sure, Hall of the Novice is telling people otherwise, but that came more than a year after ARR's launch, way after the chips had already fallen and the devs shrugged their shoulders on the matter.

[CookieMonsta]

Half of the stances (Diurnal/Nocturnal + Fists of

Also how is it convoluted? Convoluted means extremely complex and difficult to follow. These simple buttons are anything but complicated...

Stances are not the issue, its the implementation. As you mentioned, Cleric Stance, most tank stances and AST ones are necessary and well done because they add depth and a skill ceiling to the class. Removal of those would only cheapen the experience.
The main issues are stances which have no alternative (i.e. there is extremely situational or zero reason for keeping on/off), the Kisses could easily be removed and merged in to a trait with the utility merged in to Jugulate, the MNK stances are also redundant complexity as their impact is too low to warrant dancing.

[Shurrikhan]

Stances are not the issue, its the implementation. As you mentioned, Cleric Stance, most tank stances and AST ones are necessary and well done because they add depth and a skill ceiling to the class. Removal of those would only cheapen the experience.

The main issues are stances which have no alternative (i.e. there is extremely situational or zero reason for keeping on/off), the Kisses could easily be removed and merged in to a trait with the utility merged in to Jugulate, the MNK stances are also redundant complexity as their impact is too low to warrant dancing.

This, for the most part. On one end you could get rid of the two poison types and simply have Jugulate as a silence and, say, Spinal Tap as a stun, and put them on a shared CD (as per MCH). On the other, you could make something out of those poisons. The only issue is that you'll have some people who'd rather not have to stance-dance to play optimally, and once it's an actual concern, that will occur. Sadly, we've no customization choices by which to forgo mechanics we'd rather not handle, mitigating the lost output.

I'd argue though that MNK's stances are a different issue entirely. It's not that they're not worth enough. It's that they cost too much. Animation locks are already something of an issue for any Monk with more than minimal skill speed and a fair distance from Montreal or any Level 3 route there. The Fists of animations are on the long side, activate slowly, and can take up valuable gaps between the GCDs. They simply need to be fixed, as to activate more quickly, be more easily clipped, and to have a scaled cooldown—aimed exactly 1 or just under 2 GCDs, rather than some variable fraction of them (starting at 1.2, but likely as low as 1.57 with high skill speed).