Monk Needs a Complete Rework

[Shurrikhan]

And I don't disagree with it being lucrative or something that can have benefits tied to. But based on what you can find as feedback with most posts from SB and onwards until they removed the slowdown from RoF, is that the slowdown was quite unwelcome, just like SSS's slowdown.

But just like how you may dislike Monk being centered solely around cooldowns, to the preclusion of any brawler style or interesting set-up, RoF was a slow-down forced upon us, rather than able to be flexibly and optionally integrated into rotation and thereby exploited as a part of Monk's unique advantages (e.g. flexible combos). Note that the same complaint was never used in connection to SB's TK usage; instead, TK rotations were villainized by their performance gap between high- and low-ping players and the clunkiness of their triple weave. The latter offered control and outside of meta comps was only a small gain at high SkS levels.

RoF lacked control and fit poorly with all but a couple SkS levels. The TK rotation, as might be expected for something utterly unintended, lacked polish in its buttonflow and stat balancing. But at least they each made use of the larger Monk kit when used properly. RoF allowed for perfect duration sync and a secondary rotation over its duration. TK allowed for RoW, stances, and PB to really mean something. That's what I want to see here: nothing going to waste.

Pushing the manipulation of speed as a Monk mechanic will at best be enjoyed to the same degree as the TK rotation -which itself was more enjoyed for the fact it made use of nearly all of monks skills...

And that's precisely what I want: to stop wasting the advantages the rest of Monk's kit would offer.

As far as TK just being Monk Foul. Why is that a problem? Homogeneity? If so where's your complaints about Dragoon and Black Mage.

My concern is that it would leave the rest of the kit's would-be advantages a pathetic vestigial waste for yet another expansion. The parts should be complementing each other, not left a hodgepodge of random tools with little synergy to each other.

Any homogeneity concerns about Dragoon or Black Mage would be found on Dragoon and Black Mage threads, respectively. Though, even there my concern has rarely ever been homogeneity, but rather making far better use of the existing kit rather than leaving something unpolished just to replace it later. None too shockingly, I've expressed dislike of both BotD and Enochian being mere maintenance gimmicks, offering that Enochian would more interestingly and usefully serve as a gameplay-adjusting cooldown (with F4 and B4 no longer locked behind it) and BotD as a gauge resource generated by skills, rather than just a cooldown, and again spent by Geirskogul or Nostrond.

[Mahrze]

But just like how you may dislike Monk being centered solely around cooldowns, to the preclusion of any brawler style or interesting set-up, RoF was a slow-down forced upon us, rather than able to be flexibly and optionally integrated into rotation and thereby exploited as a part of Monk's unique advantages (e.g. flexible combos). Note that the same complaint was never used in connection to SB's TK usage; instead, TK rotations were villainized by their performance gap between high- and low-ping players and the clunkiness of their triple weave. The latter offered control and outside of meta comps was only a small gain at high SkS levels.

RoF lacked control and fit poorly with all but a couple SkS levels. The TK rotation, as might be expected for something utterly unintended, lacked polish in its buttonflow and stat balancing. But at least they each made use of the larger Monk kit when used properly. RoF allowed for perfect duration sync and a secondary rotation over its duration. TK allowed for RoW, stances, and PB to really mean something. That's what I want to see here: nothing going to waste.


Any homogeneity concerns about Dragoon or Black Mage would be found on Dragoon and Black Mage threads, respectively. Though, even there my concern has rarely ever been homogeneity, but rather making far better use of the existing kit rather than leaving something unpolished just to replace it later. None too shockingly, I've expressed dislike of both BotD and Enochian being mere maintenance gimmicks, offering that Enochian would more interestingly and usefully serve as a gameplay-adjusting cooldown (with F4 and B4 no longer locked behind it) and BotD as a gauge resource generated by skills, rather than just a cooldown, and again spent by Geirskogul or Nostrond.

I can see things going to waste with the current kit if they keep reinventing things to maintain them as relevant. 1 or 2 abilities they earned in the last 2 expansions were lost and never found a replacement to compensate. Others were simply removed instead of finding ways to use them like you would like them to. So its clear at this point that what exists for MNK is something they struggle to work with and so far, the jobs that have received mid to complete reworks have been overall well received and have been given better purposes by pruning most of that is seen as things they can't (or don't know how to) work with.

I know manipulating speed is a good concept and it would be quite unique and rewarding. My problem is that I can't trust SE to make something with enough nuance in the rev ups or downs that doesn't lead to (after doing the math) to just stay at the highest speed tier because that's what SE would do if we're perfectly honest. BRD's soul arrow is an example of an ability that while it has nuance, you're better off using it at max than anything else between the min 20 points and cap.

...Also that cool super saiyan mode that was the Forbidden Chakra right before we got just a lame oGCD skill)

This. Remembering this wounds me.

[Shurrikhan]

Like we've ever had choice in this. Earth stance has been useless since its inception.

Yes, my criticizing the hell out of current stances and offering completely different alternatives to them was definitely me declaring my support for their current versions? I've called them crap since ARR. I've suggested changes to them since ARR. Why are you conflating how they currently work with my suggestions, wherein I completely changed how they work?

Focusing first on a foundation because it is necessary for making so much else I want to really work does not equate to wanting nothing else changed. Not wanting to spend 3 buttons just to determine whether I go at, say, base, +10%, or +20% Attack Speed, with no ability to change between them in combat, does not mean I like the current version of stances.

It is not a matter of poison A or poison B. There are likely dozens of other options. I arrived at my own preference carefully, based on what I want to see for the job once our current bloat skills can be decoupled from GL.

Though, this is why I also mentioned changes to the Riddle skills to make up for the loss of potential in "Stance swapping" between the fists, by having Riddle of Earth and Riddle of Wind be actually interesting and useful skills to contrast against Riddle of Fire and it's raw damage boost.

There is no ultimatum here. You can have BOTH. You can have GL as an actual mechanic and have Riddle of ~ as an actual mechanic. They. Do. Not. Preclude. Each. Other. You can even stack additional GL mechanics on, say, its ramping up stacks. It's not just one or the other.

There are no choices. Not for optimal play. As I've mentioned above. There will never be a choice in this game if you're playing for min/max.

Ignoring that I said "viable", not "optimal"... I wonder where I heard that before. Oh, right!

At such a confined performance level, we don't get choice; we at best get diversity with low costs for playing how we want.

A viable choice is one which can lead into an ultimately optimal set of choices. Taken in slice against alternative uses for the GCD or whatever smaller section of time, it is not optimal, though likely very near to the optimal choice's performance. Taken as a whole or larger section of time, on the other hand, it may be optimal, depending on surrounding contexts. I've expressly distinguished between the two.
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I can see things going to waste with the current kit if they keep reinventing things to maintain them as relevant.

The point is that you don't have to. In fact, every addition to GL manipulation since HW has only devalued the tools that have come before it, including GL itself. RoE devalued TK. SSS devalued 5.0 RoE. Anatman devalued both 5.0 RoE and TK. 5.1 Form Shift devalued Anatman and TK and replaced GL as a mechanic with anti-QoL spam. The last three are all bloat that never should have been designed as they were.

Then why are they there? For all of those, why? Because they didn't bother to fix GL itself, leaving bloated manipulations seemingly lucrative when in fact no additional skills should have been required. GL needs only to be build, optionally spent, and to be maintained in an engaging way. All that takes is to make it less punishing through passive adjustments and further no-bloat means of control.

Heck, even just maintaining a high speed can be engaging if it just means that it is (1) not easy, but (2) not necessary for high performance, either. There was a period in WoW where Shadow Priests could rev up to ridiculous amounts of Haste by maintaining Voidform for as long as possible. Breaking +100% Haste put you in the "Mile High Club". It wasn't easy, and because the Haste would then drain you that much faster it wasn't quite so rewarding as it might first appear, but it was damn fun.

Think of something like that, where we pop Riddle of Wind and suddenly we're not just GL1, GL2, and GL3, but GL-variable-transmission, going as high as we can, and where you're forced to gamble a bit early on, hedge those bets further in, and hope like hell near the end in order to get as much as you can out of it. (RNG can be fun when there are good and bad bets and a few safe ones to work around.) For those who can't handle... there's RoF, which can perform higher if it times to that particular batch of raid buffs since RoW would have a long ramping phase (that you want to ensure lasts into said raid buffs some 15 seconds or so later). RoE? Raid damage taken --> Potency dished out, but not stacking with positional potency bonuses (thus guaranteeing positionals). Now imagine those things as being spent by a granular gauge like a revised form of Chakra. That's what I'm looking for.

It just all tends to work far better with a stack-by-stack spendable GL. It both reduces the punishment enough to make the rewards worth the risk without creating massive skill-gaps and gives means of control that can contribute equally to undoing mistakes during flawed play and adding depth to optimal play. Otherwise, I wouldn't be bothering with this. It is not fun to argue about foundational elements.

My largest problem with GL is that it just gives us nothing to really look forward to or work towards. It's just there. It is nearly impossible to drop except when counting on a SSS at the end of a maxed out PB and suddenly lag spiking. That shouldn't be the case. We can strike a much better balance between something being stupidly fun and not too punishing for less capable players. Throwing out any possibility of a mechanic being fun just because it can be to some extent punishing to players not capable of higher APM is ridiculous. No job is going to reward an incapable player with near-peak performance, be it because of an inability to meet its APM requirements or forethought requirements or sequencing or whatever else. If "hit hard and really, really fast" is to be the motto of Monk, then it should feel like something we aspire to, not just get for free at a watered-down level.

That's not going to be possible, though, if we continue to drop all stacks at once, especially with no way to get them back quickly outside of PB (which, until DK changes are made, has only one use past perhaps the opener, and it's not to generate GL). What I'm asking for at the fundamental level is for the purpose of accomplishing the same sort of stuff being so often requested here, just without tossing out all the "spare" rope before walking into a pitfall.

I know manipulating speed is a good concept and it would be quite unique and rewarding. My problem is that I can't trust SE to make something with enough nuance in the rev ups or downs that doesn't lead to (after doing the math) to just stay at the highest speed tier because that's what SE would do if we're perfectly honest. BRD's soul arrow is an example of an ability that while it has nuance, you're better off using it at max than anything else between the min 20 points and cap.

Apex Arrow is not a good example of a nuance-capable gauge-skill, though by the mere fact that it is a GCD without a damage floor. Consider, if its damage floor had the same effective potency as Burst Shot when factoring in its chance at Refulgent Arrow, Apex Arrow could be used at any time without punishment. That's not a good thing, but it's also very easy to design, considering Apex Arrow comes after all HS/BS and RA buffs. It was very much a decision not to give it any base potency and only convert Soul Gauge, making the skill an at-cap nuke. It's not difficult to design something capable of complete flexibility; it's just not what they intended. They wanted a use-when-capped nuke and made a use-when-capped nuke. That it can be used slightly early is just a faint flexibility bonus for finishing off a boss who would otherwise die before you could get off Apex Arrow's potency bonus. Nuance would be somewhere in between, kind of like Pitch Perfect in an StB Crit meta comp wherein the recommended stack usage shifted with raid buffs, but less esoteric and leading to other interactions later in play rather than simply ending the line of decision then and there.

If you want something more comparable, just look at any of the granular gauges, such as Kenki or -again- HW era BotD. They're not quite there either, but at least they have a much closer design intent.

This. Remembering this wounds me.

Likewise.

[Kalise]

Why are you conflating how they currently work with my suggestions, wherein I completely changed how they work?

I've literally not seen any of your suggestions on them.

I'd assume there'd be here in this 27 page long thread? I'm not about to dig through that looking for something that is irrelevant to my point.

That is, currently, we have never had a choice in what stance we have used. With my changes to stances, we continue to have no choice in optimal play (But in optimal play, there are no choices. If there ever is a choice that's just button bloat), but then get 3 choices for sub-optimal play.

Not wanting to spend 3 buttons

Again, I highlighted that stances need only take up a single button.

It's almost as if you don't even bother to read posts and instead just spew whatever takes your fancy out?

It is not a matter of poison A or poison B.

That's true enough.

I merely came up with my concept for the stances to directly target one of the devs primary concerns. Hoping that with that particular issue out of their mind, they don't have to hold back the rest of the design.

Inb4 "OH BUTT IT DOESN'T PRECLUDE THIS!!!!eleven!!!"

Theoretically, no. But as has been shown throughout the entire history of this game across every single job the devs have an aversion for giving a job multiple systems with any sort of nuance. Heck, it's hard enough to get a job with a SINGLE system with any nuance.

Hoping that the devs will randomly decide to go against the entire way they have designed jobs for 6+ years and give MNK multiple systems with nuance seems absolutely ridiculous.

There is no ultimatum here.

I never said there was.

I merely said that to cover the simple stances, I suggested a change to Riddles that would effectively provide the same (Theoretical, given it has never existed in the first place) feeling of dancing between the 3 Stances of Earth, Wind and Fire.

You can have BOTH. You can have GL as an actual mechanic and have Riddle of ~ as an actual mechanic. They. Do. Not. Preclude. Each. Other. You can even stack additional GL mechanics on, say, its ramping up stacks. It's not just one or the other.

I'll point you towards my prior statement. Yes, technically, it IS possible for MNK's to get a GL mechanic, a Riddle mechanic, a Stance Swapping mechanic, a Chakra mechanic, a Ki mechanic, a combo mechanic and a meditation mechanic all at the same time.

But the likelyhood of that happening is slim to none. Getting even a single one in a decent state would be somewhat of a miracle. Let alone several.

Ignoring that I said "viable", not "optimal"...

But not ignoring that you keep bitching about "How we'd be forced into a single stance because of muh raid buffs and muh oGCD's and muh Demolish!!"

Which would only be true at optimal levels. As picking an alternate stance won't be trashing your DPS to the point of non-viability. Especially given that people are more frequently using bottom tier DPS jobs in world first groups and something as small as losing 1-5% overall damage during raid buff windows won't be dropping you down that far.

Heck, even your premise about this has yet to be proven, since we currently have a situation where FoF makes your Demolish and oGCD's stronger than 4 GL, but I have yet to see anyone actually utilize the "Stance Swapping" into Fire to utilize these skills that you talked about would be the case (As well as would cause a non-swappable stance to ultimately boil down to "The slowest one")

Instead, people are doing just fine pushing out logs that have MNK as the 4th highest DPS in the game (Behind SMN, BLM and SAM) without having to macro like crazy to go into Fire before every oGCD, Demolish and Raid Buff window.

[Shurrikhan]

I've literally not seen any of your suggestions on them.

I'd assume there'd be here in this 27 page long thread? I'm not about to dig through that looking for something that is irrelevant to my point.

If your point is to assume that a single part of a suggestion stands in place of all other possible changes, then maybe you should at least first consider the tone with which someone has referred to the existing systems and what references they've made to them. Fists of Earth certainly does not convert into added defense that that adds potency when consumed, nor does Fists of Fire apply DoT damage that works like an Ignite mechanic, useful for banking towards periods of burst, yet both those spitballs were mentioned in our conversation. No part of that involves leaving one stance at a time dominant and one stance at all times defunct. I explicitly said I would not be doing that.

Again, I highlighted that stances need only take up a single button.

Yes, I misspoke. I apologize. I meant to edit, but did not want to fix anything but typos after you may have already started replying.

But not ignoring that you keep bitching about "How we'd be forced into a single stance because of muh raid buffs and muh oGCD's and muh Demolish!!"

I made the simple point that the exact same problems you've picked apart my idea for your own idea unfortunately has in equal amount, making it rather hypocritical to dismiss one notion on the basis of forced decisions in perfectly optimal play without then applying the same criteria to the other idea. The difference between then becomes a matter of diversity. No more, no less. One has it in-fight diversity. The other does not. I like in-fight diversity and a having larger set of tools, thus I prefer the one over the other despite their being almost equally (non)choices (to the same degree that all choices in any game are non-choices). I like depth and breadth of play. If two things have the same choice-ness, I'll take the one with more breadth and depth of play. It's that simple.

Heck, even your premise about this has yet to be proven, since we currently have a situation where FoF makes your Demolish and oGCD's stronger than 4 GL, but I have yet to see anyone actually utilize the "Stance Swapping" into Fire to utilize these skills that you talked about would be the case.

Probably because the two have little in common? FoF/W-dancing requires two oGCDs as possible that cannot be used within a GCD of each other, consuming valuable gap time. For all but the lowest ping players at minimal SkS, you can only get one oGCD out of the bargain when returning to GL4 as quickly as possible, and cannot return to GL4 off the embonused Demolish, making it worthless except in a cycle laden with Demo, TFC, ST, LF, EF, and TrS, which there still isn't enough time to fit for any but the lowest-ping, lowest-speed players because of the oGCD space consumed by swapping in the first place. It's rendered nonsense because of the surrounding limitations.

And even then it still has nothing to do with, effectively, conserving gauge for a period of burst, as per what I mentioned, with no necessary wastes of oGCD space and where the Couerl skill already gets the bonus of its next level and which has nothing to do with damage multiplicity.

I never said there was.

Kalise, if explicitly calling something overspending is nonetheless enough for me to have "imply" that any and all spending of a resource would slow Monk's attack rate, your insistence that allowing for any speed variation as a part of Monk's in-combat play cannot coexist with any other systems is more than implying that there is an ultimatum. And sure enough, you spell one out right there.

Heck, it's hard enough to get a job with a SINGLE system with any nuance.

AGAIN, are you okay with that? Is at best a single system with nuance per job the direction you want to see XIV go in? I'd much rather be called overly ambitious than just roll over and take the gutting of all jobs. Your "realism" here isn't just realism, it's complacency that takes a dump on anyone who wants more from the game.

Instead, people are doing just fine pushing out logs that have MNK as the 4th highest DPS in the game (Behind SMN, BLM and SAM) without having to macro like crazy to go into Fire before every oGCD, Demolish and Raid Buff window.

And there's something to be said for that. There is a point where APM can feel like bloat, a la Cleric Stance or, to many, even Kaiten, Shinten, etc. The question is where we draw the line. With those analogies, I draw it after Shinten, after Kaiten (though right at its edge), and before Cleric Stance. What I am suggesting is, to me, the same.

That's why, for instance, I was wary of any system of direct speed control through stances (dedicated solely to that purpose) as part of in-combat play, rather than their being able to include other balancing factors that could allow for greater diversity without making a chore out of them. That result is a lot harder to accomplish if there's nothing left to the stances than just speed control, but even then, as I said before, it's probably possible. Difficult, unlikely, but probably possible to at least get close enough to optimal that 99.8% of players can play as they like.

(Again, my point was not to belittle your idea, only to show the hypocrisy of condemning one idea based on criteria that you would not apply to your own idea. You can't play the "but there's only one Optimal" and not see how it fits even more solidly to an idea with the same problem yet less diversity.) It'd just be a whole lot easier to get there if one didn't first rip out everything else about the stances that could give them significant balancing factors besides just how best they should be "macro'ed into" your rotation. It also, frankly, offers more engagement with a given fight if their situational advantages can see real use.

I'm not dead-set on this one idea in my mind so much as simply having more balancing factors for a revised, empowered version of stances allows for in-combat manipulation that does not yet become a chore. When having a certain tool at all, we expect to be able to utilize it via synergies with our kit, not just to have our pick of three different items where we could have otherwise had a full and complementary course. The more of our kit we can utilize through the rest of our kit, the better the kit feels. There is a balance in there somewhere between each skill feeling like part of what should be a single skill (imagine RoE, for instance, being unavailable until you are already in FoE or similar drudgery), offering only empty APM, and everything feeling like disconnected tools that could as easily belong to any other job's toolkit or are taken off a template checklist. In that balance lies a fluid, responsive, but synergetic kit. I just suspect my view of such a kit allows for (not even demands, mind you, except perhaps at the highest levels of play) a bit more complexity than your would.

[Kalise]

Fists of Earth certainly does not convert into added defense that that adds potency when consumed, nor does Fists of Fire apply DoT damage that works like an Ignite mechanic, useful for banking towards periods of burst, yet both those spitballs were mentioned in our conversation.

Wait, THAT was your reworked stances?

I thought that was what Ki was supposed to be doing?

Are the stances JUST that and thus equally boring (With Wind sounding like total garbage) as current ones?

Given that seemingly, there's still little reason to actually swap between them at all. There'd just be one that is strongest and that one will be the "Mandatory" one just like we've seen with current ones (Most likely Earth, unless the DoT from Fire stacks)

Probably because the two have little in common?

How so?

You literally mentioned that in the "3 potential outcomes" that one of the outcomes will be swapping stances a ton to capitalize on oGCD's, Demolish and raid buff windows.

We literally have a case where that is possible, yet no-one does it. Not even simple things like swapping for raid buff windows.

Which is indicative that your "3 potential outcomes" are nonsensical and by far not absolutes.

Thus, allowing for a true "Option 4" in which the stances I suggested aren't locked in combat with it also not devolving into mandatory stance swapping en masse. Creating a system where stance dancing and in combat speed manipulation is possible.

Throw in more defined features of stances (I.e. Bonus damage being weapon skill specific, the "SkS" effect functioning as SkS and so buffing DoT/AA damage etc) and you can even mitigate the potential worst offenders for "Mandatory Swapping" such as trying to triple weave for oGCD's and double weaving for Demolish. With only raid buff windows maybe being optimal to swap to slow stance for.

AGAIN, are you okay with that? Is at best a single system with nuance per job the direction you want to see XIV go in?

No. Not in the least.

But, then again, I wanted Tanks to have better balanced stances that offered more depth of gameplay. Instead they just got axed.

I wanted WAR to evolve past the braindead IR meme cleave spam. Instead we still have it and now have additional meme cleaves only with 9001% more underwheming animations.

I wanted Tanks to have multiple combos that they can utilize for different effects to aid them with tanking, be it managing aggro, aiding with sustain or providing raw damage. Instead, they just neutered every tank down to a single combo with PLD/WAR simply having a secondary finisher to upkeep a timed effect.

I wanted DRK to be given a theme and a place of its own among the tanks. Instead we got "Dark Warrior".

I wanted Healers to be given more reason to interact with their healing skills and more interesting ways to use GCD's. Instead we got more oGCD's, buffs to oGCD heals and the neutering of DPS rotations.

I wanted MCH to get a more engaging gameplay, that would also perform up to standard. Instead we get "Heat Dab" spam.

I wanted BLM to evolve past Fire IV spam. Instead we get more Fire IV spam and continued uselessness of Umbral Ice phases.

I wanted RDM to get more melee usage, allowing them to feel more like a proper melee/caster hybrid. Instead, we get basically no changes outside a more streamlined AoE rotation.

It's clear to me that what I want doesn't matter. That any dreams about having jobs that are designed with engaging systems belongs in Lyhe Mheg alongside any dreams of them doing a coding overhaul to fix all the limitations in the game caused by 1.0 spaghetti code as well as any dreams of them actually designing encounters to facilitate actually fulfilling Tanking and Healing roles where mitigating damage and healing are core gameplay as opposed to simply being DPS that use CD's every so often.

As such, it feels more productive to suggest things that are within the scope of what the devs seem to want to do. Lest we let them do what they want unaided and see "Brand new 6.0 MNK" that features the cool super saiyan mode from the quest added as a boring IR clone where you just spam a GCD "The Forbidden Chakra" 5 times in 10 seconds and that makes up 50% of your total DPS because seriously fuck IR.

[Shurrikhan]

Are the stances JUST that and thus equally boring (With Wind sounding like total garbage) as current ones?

No, those are merely the parts that came up specifically in this conversation with you and Mahrze which should have signalled to you that I was not a fan of leaving the stances as is.

But sure, they are as boring as Snap Punch is just a 200 potency attack with absolutely nothing that could ever happen have a consequence of its use.

Nevermind that ignite mechanics can set up tremendous nukes or that the relative potency from said nukes could allow you to not only survive extreme risky uptime mechanics but be paid back in damage for having done so or else lead into periods of extreme haste. Nevermind that you have Riddles, stance-dependent skills and not yet used concepts to tap into. Sure, any stance is inherently boring and will only ever be that. You know, like Jump, or a button to build a specific resource and a button to spend any said resource. Pure unimaginative waste. It's not like we ever got Nostrond or TCJ off those things. /s

Given that seemingly, there's still little reason to actually swap between them at all. There'd just be one that is strongest and that one will be the "Mandatory" one just like we've seen with current ones.

One may be slightly dominant, one slightly situational in rotation as a "per CD, use to rush or delay rotation slightly for setup", and one more fight-dependent, yes, but that in no way equates to the 99/1/0% usage we see now.

We literally have a case where that is possible, yet no-one does it. Not even simple things like swapping for raid buff windows.

Because that's not simple when you have to swap twice within 3-4 GCDs at a GCD length that doesn't allow for most players to double-weave even when in merely FoF. Again, you'd be getting only 2 embonused oGCDs out of the bargain, at most. Maybe you're playing at 10 ping and zero bonus SkS because you despise everything to do with the Double-True rotation, but for anyone else that's just not a viable use of resources, not because the effects of the stances are so little but because of the gap-uptime punishments for swapping at all.

By comparison, if even just one of those stance-swaps are dropped, such as during a one-tick Anatman opener, FoF is used for all oGCDs. That's all it takes, one oGCD gap less of penalty.

By extension, when the penalties for doing so are less, no oGCDs need be wasted, and the method of pulling off the technique is far more convenient, one would expect it would be wholly usable.

What you're saying amounts to much the same as claiming that TK wasn't viable in late StB. You're completely ignoring the contexts by which its costs were so greatly reduced, or, in this case, so much of the costs and annoyances being removed entirely.

As such, it feels more productive to suggest things that are within the scope of what the devs seem to want to do.

When the devs are insisting that everyone gets IR and anything but IR equivalents should be purged, it is not productive to suggest solely what is within the scope of what the devs want to do. It is by then productive to complain and to set a higher bar. Anything less is, by degree but inevitably, just giving up on the game's combat systems as a whole.