I really doubt they'll de-emphasize positionals, the positionals were already '' nerfed '' in the sense that the damage difference is fairly small at this point so messing one up isn't even the end of the world. And every other melee has them too.
What I am thinking is that they might keep the timer but simply make it more like the BLM system where we keep the timer up and then we can use Tornado Kick or SSS much like BLM uses Xenoglossy.
That way you'd still have to maintain a timer, but the building up of GL charges would just be replaced by it.