What if: Stances were removed?

[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).