Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
That small part was still a hell of a lot more than literally zero interaction, as was suggested by removing GL from Monk.
It's basically the same as not having GL. When you only use it when you have CD's that bypass it consuming GL or when your GL is going to fall off irregardless.

As mentioned, so long as GL is tied to a passive DPS gain, it's going to be near impossible to get an actually worthy "Mechanic" from it and at best you'll get something watered down into Huton/Blood of the Dragon/Enochian where it's a binary toggle on at the start of a fight and oh look you can now use X ability every now and then.

Since what will always happen, is someone will do the math to find out if/when consuming GL is a DPS gain and then it will only be a "Mechanic" in those circumstances where it is (Which, has so far been predominantly "When GL doesn't matter")

This is effectively a non-mechanic. Just as much as crap like Darkside/Enochian/Blood of the Dragon/Huton are a non-mechanic. Where you only think about them once or twice in a fight and only in very specific scenarios.

They're one and the same. AST Sects being designed as a simply out-of-combat SCH/WHM mode toggle, rather than actually building around hastened/periodic and empowered/preemptory mechanics to be used with synergy between them, is what made AST feel like a WHM/SCH-lite.
But that's what I was pointing out. AST Sects are crap because they're simply "Be a WHM" or "Be a SCH".

If they were instead designed around making AST do uniquely AST things it would have been much less of a problem. But no, it was "Here, have Regen and Medica II" or "Here have a shitty Adlo and Succor"

At least we're getting some mixing of the Sects in combat through skills like Celestial Intersection and Neutral Sect... Though, that's still just being WHM/SCH-lite these days...

Why are you condemning me over it, even ignoring the fact that imitating a DRG-lite or NIN-lite is not what we'd want? It was your suggestion. I simply pointed out that having the stances do so little would amount to only bloat, either in terms of relatively useless features or CS-like empty apm.
Since you seem to miss the point.

I mentioned that the stances are NOT making MNK into DRG-lite or NIN-lite. Which is the opposite of how Sects were designed, which instead of allowing AST to be AST, were simply WHM-lite and SCH-lite toggles.

Stances that are actual stances that have actual impact on how you play, while still retaining a uniquely MNK gameplay have yet to be seen and nothing similar has existed in the game (Outside maybe old Darkside? Where without it you got normal MP regen but with it you relied on an increased MP generation from skill usage?)

With an actual appreciable effect on your gameplay, rather than useless Earth stance and mandatory Fire/Wind depending on what SE feels like making the best with a particular MNK change.

To say nothing about how it would interact with optimization, where you might alter which stance you use depending on how much SkS you have on your gear if you wanted to min/max DPS.

With the final point being, it would allow the devs to be able to let MNK's go as fast as they want. They've already noted how they don't want the rift between top and bottom tier players to widen because of the bottom players difficulty playing fast. This is why they gutted a bunch of MNK's oGCD's when they added the 4th stack of GL.

They not only already expressed concerns, but also made detrimental changes to MNK's because of this.

Meanwhile, a static, out of combat choice that enables a player to tune the speed of their MNK would completely alleviate this concern of theirs, because it would mean that the bottom tier players who struggle with speed demon MNK play could opt for a lower speed and get increased damage to compensate, allowing them to still be on par with other MNK's while playing at a more managable pace.

Thus, it would let them actually add in fast gameplay with all the oGCD's MNK used to have for all the players who wish to play that way.

Trying to shoehorn in a pogo style alternating speed into the core gameplay of MNK, will just have them continue to do things to curb MNK's maximum APM so the people who can't play speed demon MNK can still utilize the job.

This could be even more relevant if other changes are made to MNK's kit, such as an improved Chakra system, better Riddle skills, more skills to use in combos, enhanced combos (I.e. Each skill functions like a Mudra and gives a different bonus to the final Coeurl skill) and the plethora of other things that could be altered to have more engagement attached.

I don't suggest something as simple as 3 stances that are functionally the same DPS increase for the sake of being redundant or poorly thought out, but instead because such a feature will serve to help MNK grow in potential complexity because instead of being designed in a vacuum, it is an idea designed with a problem that the devs have outright stated in mind.

So, yes. Convert the current useless Stances into "Useless" Stances, to allow for the betterment of the job as a whole. Rather than trying to cling on to useless features that serve to only hold back the potential of the job or outright cause detriment to it.