Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
That depends entirely on the reward. Clearly even with a 30% bonus to oGCD damage and a relative ~47% increase to weaponskill damage over time during SB, it was still quite able to be utilized as a mechanic. Even now TK openers are viable.
From what I've read, TK openers are DPS losses.

Also, I mentioned, that the only way they become a mechanic, is when you can basically skip it by quick stacking to the point of there being no actual reason to have TK consume GL in the first place.

But therein lies the question. Do you mercy-blow any and all of these mechanics because they've been so gutted, or do you revitalize them?
I guess it would depend entirely on if you can think of any way to make them interesting mechanics despite their innately passive nature. Without giving way to clunky design for the sake of making them "Interesting" (I.e. What would most likely occur with Fire IV Mage)

speed manipulation is hardly the issue. The issue is control.
And yet, many Monks have complained about the slowdown on RoF as well as the slowdown post TK.

Both things are controlled. You know exactly when you're going to suffer the slowdown, since you induce it.

But it feels crappy either way, especially when one of the main draws to MNK is its faster attack speed (2.5s GCD's suuuuuuck)

While that might sound like a similar direction, it'd most likely nearly antithetical. There are only three ways such a system could go:
Or, option 4: Stances are restricted in the same way as AST's sects, in that you cannot change them in combat.

Thus, people find the stance they like the most and pick that. Instead of being arbitrarily stuck sitting in Fire/Wind 24/7 depending on what is SE's FotM mandatory stance (With the slight exception that is current Fire while at 1-3 stacks and old "Switch to Wind for literally 1 skill for free 2 GL")

Stance dancing is an unneccesary when literally the core rotation of the job IS stance dancing. If element based "Stance Dancing" is desired, I'd rather it come in the form of the Riddles. Provided Riddle of Earth and Riddle of Wind become something notably interesting to contrast Riddle of Fire's flat damage boost.

We can have just as much choice and flexibility in speed without needing that bloated approach to stances.
Except, your suggestion doesn't help poor players who can't function at high speed. They will HAVE to be jumping up and down in speed in order to utilize their Ki. Heck, everyone will, including speed demons.

It's not a particularly elegant design to make people have such varied speed, while in theory, yes you can open up a lot of decision making in doing so, one might argue you open too much where you might end up in the same situation as SE's designed MNK where you have no idea if you're supposed to be attacking fast or slow or some mix of both.

It honestly sounds like such a system would serve to piss off everyone, except specifically you.

Not to mention, it will get mathed out what the optimal rotation will be. No matter what, people will figure out whether its better to spend Ki or sit on high GL stacks and then you're left with the same "TK Optimizing" scenario, only you've put MNK through the wringer to get it.

When, there are far more ways to add interesting mechanics to MNK, especially if GL stack preservation isn't mandatory for passive DPS boosts (Since then GL maintenance skills can be repurposed). Not to mention the potential for a Chakra rework to make it something other than an oGCD that has an RNG CD that also causes MNK's to be slaves to Crit (Thus, also have the "Bard" issue where they go from horrible to amazing for DPS over the course of an expansion due to the scaling of Crit on gear)