Not sure if this needs its own thread or not, but I'll just post it here to begin with.

Has the idea of getting rid of the timer tied with GL stacks ever been considered? Several jobs have resources that don’t expire: MCH’s Heat and Battery; SAM’s Kenki, Sen, and Meditation Stacks; Ninja’s Ninki and Mudra; DRK’s Blackblood and proc from breaking TBN; GNB’s Cartridges; WAR’s Beast Gauge; etc. Admittedly, the latter mentions are tanks, but I have a point that I’ll get to shortly.

In the case of SAM, I think it’d be hard to argue that buff expiration is an issue for them, seeing how once you apply Jinpu and Shifu in an engagement, they will likely be refreshed without any worry (that’s a little subjective, but what’s *ob*jective about it is that both of those buffs are 40 seconds… more than double the duration of GL). Best case scenario you can get both of these buffs up in 2 GCDs (via an inefficient use of Meikyo); worst case, you have to go through 6.

If you Form Shift (we’ll come back to this in a second) to Coeurl form before an engagement, best case scenario: you use PB and can hit GL4 in 4 GCDs; in the absolute worst case… (and this is considering you didn’t pre Form Shift or use PB) 12 GCDs to GL4. Also, reverting PB’s CD back to 120s was a mistake (at the very least make it 90 to line up with RoF and BH).

On the topic of Form Shift, it’s only useful now because of how incoherent MNK’s design is. If we got rid of the timer on GL, there’d be no need to constantly be stomping to refresh the timer; yes, we’d lose the ability to enter Coeurl form pre-pull, but I think replacing Form Shift with some other weapon skill or oGCD would be worth the trade. Form Shift is also only ever useful during downtime or pre-pull. You wouldn’t ever use FS when you could instead use a damaging weapon skill. So many other jobs (like the ones mentioned above) have skills to instantly generate resource at the press of a button with the only caveat that they be in combat (this is where I wanted to reference the tanks, esp GNB and WAR with Bloodfest and Infuriate respectively). Instead MNKs have a way to expend our most precious resource. Tornado Kick is an awesome skill and I love how often I get to use it! (:

Out of the classes I’ve played, I think DRG shares the most pain points with MNK in that they have no way to rapidly get into Life of the Dragon and are strictly gated by the cool down of High Jump. I don’t know how SE handles how they approach each job’s design, but you would think that for DoW/M jobs, they’d keep the combat experience first and foremost in their minds. Maybe they’re balancing around Dungeon/raid content, in which case keeping up buffs is a little easier because you’re in combat; but for overworld stuff, it’s almost painful to attempt anything as MNK or DRG.