Monk Identity and Blitz ?

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

...I have a idea about Leaden Fist...thought about it two days ago. I thought about the Leaden BootShine issue, and what to do about it.

I could see Leaden Fist being a stacks-style passive, similar to how Perfect Balance and Riddle of Earth function, of which buffs the next three actions that the Monk uses, both WeaponSkills and abilities.
In most cases, the Monk would either spend Leaden Fist on one GCD and two oGCDs, or two GCDs and a oGCD, which would also get rid of it before Dragon Kick activates it again; under the assumption that the Monk is going through a normal 1-2-3 GCD rotation, any way...

For a bit of elaboration, Leaden Fist would still buff BootShine, but it would also buff other actions, which may or may not exclude kick actions, while the intent behind this.. is that those buffs are relevant enough.. to not just use BootShine three times and ruin the intent of this change.

What do the rest of you think about this? Any thoughts, suggestions about buffs, or alternate suggestions to fix the issue?

[IruruCece]

What do the rest of you think about this? Any thoughts, suggestions about buffs, or alternate suggestions to fix the issue?

Your idea is better than the currently existing Leaden Fist, but lets be honest, the bar is literally laying on the ground, and you have the decency to not have brought a shovel to dig under it. I do like the idea, speaking personally, because it resolves one of the problems with Monk's overall design by making the combos more meaningful. Part of this is also addressed (potentially) by the existence of Blitzes.

The reason why bootshine spam is part of our burst phase is that it's way too damn strong. Your idea would have to come with a dramatic rework of potencies for our combos across the board. Rather than front loading our damage, I'd prefer having the finishers be where the money is. Ideally, we'd reward proper execution of our basic mechanics (postionals, we still have 4) with even more damage. Ideally we'd also flat out ignore everyone who whines that being asked to move a little to the left or right of a clearly marked place next to the boss is "hard", there's plenty of other jobs they can play.

Since I seriously doubt SE's ability to fix Monk, they probably are going to leave Leaden Fist more or less as is. The best move they're probably capable of, IMO, is to straight up remove it from the game. Regardless, there is absolutely no good reason why our level 1 dps move should have the level of outsized importance it currently enjoys. Bootshine should serve as a starter, not a goal of any sort, not as a centerpiece of our damage when we're fully buffed. We're literally the only melee in the game with that problem, and it begs the question why.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Your idea is better than the currently existing Leaden Fist, but lets be honest, the bar is literally laying on the ground, and you have the decency to not have brought a shovel to dig under it. I do like the idea, speaking personally, because it resolves one of the problems with Monk's overall design by making the combos more meaningful. Part of this is also addressed (potentially) by the existence of Blitzes.

Sure, I prefer honesty. To be honest, I need to set the bar on the ground, and let some other person set the standard, because my personal standards are too much for FFXIV to handle. I would set the bar too high for the poor game to even be able to reach...

As for Blitzes, that is my hope, at least. Leaden BootShine spam needs Perfect Balance to even function, so if the Monk spends all Perfect Balance on Blitz, under the assumption that Blitz is good and always worth it to spend Perfect Balance on, there goes Leaden BootShine spam straight out of the window.

The reason why bootshine spam is part of our burst phase is that it's way too damn strong. Your idea would have to come with a dramatic rework of potencies for our combos across the board. Rather than front loading our damage, I'd prefer having the finishers be where the money is. Ideally, we'd reward proper execution of our basic mechanics (postionals, we still have 4) with even more damage. Ideally we'd also flat out ignore everyone who whines that being asked to move a little to the left or right of a clearly marked place next to the boss is "hard", there's plenty of other jobs they can play.

I already thought about the potency issue and made some theoretical changes to potencies across all actions, albeit that does not account for Blitzes...
The concept exists only in a world where Monk will remain ARR Monk Mark IV(ShB Monk), so I chose to not copy-and-paste all of that deeper stuff, since I plan to re-do all of that once I know what the Blitzes are worth and how Monk will change...
I have found it fun to re-design ARR Monk Mark IV(ShB Monk), but since HW(EW) Monk is about to be a thing...I will need to re-design my re-designs, around the all new HW Monk. ...Which is another reason why I chose to post my re-design idea for Leaden Fist, with the bar on the floor... Almost all of the current risen-bar effort that I put into it, is liable for change, except for the BackBone of the concept, so I chose to share just the skeleton, the part that is not liable for change.

That said, I can dance to your tune... What if the Leaden Fist buffs have positional requirements, or buff the positional requirements that already exist, then? As for finishers, that will have to wait for more Blitzes information, since those should fit that bill, if their design turns out to be done well.

Since I seriously doubt SE's ability to fix Monk, they probably are going to leave Leaden Fist more or less as is. The best move they're probably capable of, IMO, is to straight up remove it from the game.

To be honest, I also doubt, yeh... At this point, I wonder if the bad job design is just Squeenix has given very specific orders to them...
Aaaaaany waaaay... As for to delete Leaden Fist, that would.. be way too easy to do. Just set BootShine base potency to 370 and call it a day... That would more or less be the same ScapeGoat that they took with Greased Lightning... Just delete the problem, instead of to fix it, and make what the old thing did permanent... -_- I would hate that so much, though.

Regardless, there is absolutely no good reason why our level 1 dps move should have the level of outsized importance it currently enjoys. Bootshine should serve as a starter, not a goal of any sort, not as a centerpiece of our damage when we're fully buffed. We're literally the only melee in the game with that problem, and it begs the question why.

And I do agree with that BootShine should not be so important... to be literal, Leaden BootShine hits so hard that only Demolish hits harder, across a duration, and Tornado Kick hits harder once every 45 seconds... (sarcasm warning)At this point, they may as well at least switch Dragon Kick and BootShine. It is obvious that Leaden BootShine is the real Lv50 skill, so we may as well start with Dragon Kick, and then get BootShine and Leaden BootShine at Lv50.

I would prefer that they do away with Leaden Fist entirely and give Dragon Kick a maintained buff/debuff. Leaden Bootshine just sucks and it's not fun to play around with because it ruins any kind of potentially interesting interaction the job would have with Perfect Balance or Form Shift.

Either that, or just make our weaponskills function differently whilst under PB so using it strictly to set up Leaden Fist spam isn't possible.

A buff or debuff to maintain, hmn... The first thing that came to mind 5 seconds after I read that, would be if Dragon Kick is like Twin Snakes, a second damage buff to maintain as a side thing... That would be kind of a bore, though. I would prefer either a idea of interest that takes more than 5 seconds to think up, for a more of interest re-design of Dragon Kick itself, or a re-design of Leaden Fist to make at least that more of interest.

[IruruCece]

That said, I can dance to your tune... What if the Leaden Fist buffs have positional requirements, or buff the positional requirements that already exist, then? As for finishers, that will have to wait for more Blitzes information, since those should fit that bill, if their design turns out to be done well.

In general, I'm for positionals actually providing a noticeable indicator to the player that they've successfully pulled them off. Whether it's a damage increase to that specific move, or a buff that benefits the combo later down the line, both would resolve another problem people keep bringing up: a lack of feedback from the job. A lot of newer players apparently complain that it doesn't "feel" like they're doing a lot of damage on monk, or they're struggling to determine if they're "doing things right".

Part of that issue, again, lays directly on current Bootshine/Leaden Bootshine's doorstep. As you point out, outside of Tornado Kick and Demolish's full DoT duration, Bootshine's the most significant numbers a player is going to see, the most immediately obvious indicator that they "did something right." It was so significant that you could say it encouraged players to say it's "good enough" to only hit your Bootshines. That simply should never have been the case, ever.

Positionals should ideally be a significant enough damage increase that lazy monks won't cut it in hard content, and they'll be lagging behind other DPS that are playing better, especially behind a better monk. The reward for playing the job well should put those players more than 10-15 percent ahead of a dude that's only landing their rear positional. In your concept, tying leaden fist buffs to landing positionals does solve that, so I already like it better than the existing implementation.

I'm leaning more towards Vent's idea of just up and removing Leaden Fists entirely, however. It's too connected to an existing problem (Bootshine being too important), and Vent also brought up how it's tied to Perfect Balance. Tweaking how Leaden works means we also have to address Perfect Balance, because the last thing I personally want to see is that it gets used to spam a specific weapon skill when we're in our burst phase.

[Shurrikhan]

...I have a idea about Leaden Fist...thought about it two days ago. I thought about the Leaden BootShine issue, and what to do about it.

I could see Leaden Fist being a stacks-style passive, similar to how Perfect Balance and Riddle of Earth function, of which buffs the next three actions that the Monk uses, both WeaponSkills and abilities.
In most cases, the Monk would either spend Leaden Fist on one GCD and two oGCDs, or two GCDs and a oGCD, which would also get rid of it before Dragon Kick activates it again; under the assumption that the Monk is going through a normal 1-2-3 GCD rotation, any way...

For a bit of elaboration, Leaden Fist would still buff BootShine, but it would also buff other actions, which may or may not exclude kick actions, while the intent behind this.. is that those buffs are relevant enough.. to not just use BootShine three times and ruin the intent of this change.

What do the rest of you think about this? Any thoughts, suggestions about buffs, or alternate suggestions to fix the issue?

Kind of like a more interesting, multi-charge Life Surge? I'd take it over the current version, sure.

That being said, I do kind of hate how something like this and the new "Perfect Blitz" would work together to make the standard rotation feel largely irrelevant, with only oGCDs (especially this and PB) giving any real punctuation to the job. Of course, I'd actually rather delimit Blitzes (or rather, find a different way to make Perfect Balance useful to them, rather than Blitz just outright subsuming Perfect Balance) than not bother with this over the current Dragon-Fist mechanic.


Food for thought:

Way back when... maybe in ARR, I had wanted to make to make MP not just be UI bloat for Monk, and I had planned to do that through our various stances, wherein each stance would consume increasing amount amounts of MP per second while in combat (albeit with certain ways to also generate back MP -- Fire from the DoT damage it inflicts, Earth from absorption, resistance, and counterattacks, and Wind passively). Such would force a soft rotation but also, more importantly, provide a centerpiece for Internal Release (an old 1-minute hefty crit buff CD that you'd often try to align Bootshine away from so long as it wouldn't force desync), which caused you to consume hugely more MP over time to double (or triple) that stance's effects and could be hit again to instantly spend even further MP on stance-based effect for the following GCD. Gimmicky, but it seemed a fun idea at the time.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

[...]I do kind of hate how something like this and the new "Perfect Blitz" would work together to make the standard rotation feel largely irrelevant, with only oGCDs (especially this and PB) giving any real punctuation to the job.[...]

A fair concern... I had to think for several minutes, to think through a good response.
My answer to that would be my re-design of Greased Lightning stacks, which would replace the current Greased Lightning traits... the concept fixes the Greased Lightning stacks old duration issue, also makes the upkeep and maintenance of Greased Lightning stacks both more demanding and interactive than Storm's eye, DarkSide, or Huton; and even makes if the Monk fails that upkeep, less of a harsh loss...
While.. since the only way to gain Greased Lightning stacks, is to go through the normal combos and do proper form-to-form shifts, this would make the standard rotation and normal combos important and relevant, so I hope that it would resolve your issue and ease the concern.

If you want, I can post my re-design concept of the Greased Lightning stacks, for you to examine and evaluate.

[Shurrikhan]

A fair concern... I had to think for several minutes, to think through a good response.
My answer to that would be my re-design of Greased Lightning stacks, which would replace the current Greased Lightning traits... the concept fixes the Greased Lightning stacks old duration issue, also makes the upkeep and maintenance of Greased Lightning stacks both more demanding and interactive than Storm's eye, DarkSide, or Huton; and even makes if the Monk fails that upkeep, less of a harsh loss...
While.. since the only way to gain Greased Lightning stacks, is to go through the normal combos and do proper form-to-form shifts, this would make the standard rotation and normal combos important and relevant, so I hope that it would resolve your issue and ease the concern.

If you want, I can post my re-design concept of the Greased Lightning stacks, for you to examine and evaluate.

Though it'd come at risk of someone telling you that any and every possible iteration of GL is a concept beyond redemption, sure, feel free to share.

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Though it'd come at risk of someone telling you that any and every possible iteration of GL is a concept beyond redemption, sure, feel free to share.

Heh... I do not care enough to allow nay-sayers to bother me.
I will respect the opinions and perspectives of others, but no person can talk me out of my own opinion and perspective, that all Greased Lightning stacks had need of was a serious and functional fix, not to be given up on and delete Greased Lightning into a damn trait. Verily, it is more probable that Monk will not turn course back around, that I both acknowledge and admit, but I came up with my redesign before 5.4, any way; and have just put it on a shelf, since then.

Aaaaaaany waaaay, copy and paste time...


First: Greased Lightning stacks only affect “speed”, or in other words, they only reduce WeaponSkill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time, and auto-attack delay; where-in each Greased lightning stack reduces these by 5% per stack, up to four stacks and 20% reduction.
(I can comprehend why the Dev Team chose to remove damage increase from Greased Lightning, and chose to stay with that.)

The only way to gain a Greased Lightning stack, is to enter Raptor form, and shift forms from there, Raptor to Coeurl to Opo Opo, unto which the third action, being Demolish, Rock Breaker, or Snap Punch, will activate a Greased Lightning stack, when the Monk shifts form again, Opo Opo to Raptor.

Greased Lightning stack duration has also been given a increase, up to a maximum of 60 seconds, and while the Monk flows through form shifts and the rotation, each Opo Opo-to-Raptor form shift of a third action, which activates and maintains/upkeeps Greased Lightning, will neither grant the full Greased Lightning stack duration, nor refresh the duration to the full duration.

Instead, the first Opo Opo-to-Raptor form shift activates one Greased Lightning stack with only 10 seconds on the Greased Lightning stack duration.
Every Opo Opo-to-Raptor form shift after the first, will activate another Greased Lightning stack, up to the maximum of four, and extend the duration of Greased Lightning stacks by only 10 seconds, up to the new maximum duration of 60 seconds.
I chose to design Greased Lightning in this manner, because I think that it would be "better" than if it were brain-dead level of almost not possible to NOT upkeep and maintain, as seen with Warriors' Storm's Eye, Shinobi Huton, or Dark Knights’ DarkSide.


Also, keep in mind that even at a (super) slow 2.5 GCD, that would be 7.5 seconds to gain 10 seconds, so as long as the Monk keeps their rotation in flow, it would be easy enough to build up to, and stay at, the new maximum duration, while to build up to that new maximum would be "essential", for Greased Lightning stacks to not be lost when ever the Monk can not attack targets and maintain them.

Side-note I: Just a personal perspective... If 10 seconds per 1-2-3 rotation is still "too easy", it could even be just 7, 8, or 9 seconds, to make the stack maintenance, and to reach the maximum duration, a little more difficult.

Side-note II: I think that it would also be ideal if the fourth Greased Lightning stack has no restriction to and/or lock behind any action, which was Fists of Wind in the past, and only have a level-lock, like the second and third Greased Lightning stacks; while the Monk will unlock the fourth Greased Lightning stack at a much lower level than waaaaay up at Lv76.
Since Greased Lightning II was, and still is, unlocked at Lv20, and Greased Lightning III was, and still is, unlocked at Lv40, I chose to follow the pattern, and the Monk will now unlock Greased Lightning IV at Lv60, instead of Lv76.


Addition: A idea(not my own idea), that is worth mention.

If the duration of Greased Lightning runs out, just one stack of Greased Lightning is lost, rather than all stacks of Greased Lightning are lost.

My own thought on this: after the one Greased Lightning stack is lost, the duration of the Greased Lightning stack/s that remain/s, defaults back up to 10 seconds, so that the Monk has a chance to recover the one loss, before the Monk faces another loss.
Keep in mind that the maximum duration is now 60 seconds, so to even lose the first Greased Lightning stack, under the assumption that the Monk had proper maintenance, would take up to a full minute of the Monk doing naught at all, to happen.

[Shurrikhan]

...

Max 4 stacks of GL, each worth and only worth 5% Attack Speed. I could dig it.

The conditions for gaining GL could use some clarity, though. I don't really get the point of changing it from just being applied on any Coeurl skill, except perhaps to nerf Perfect Balance. The same goes for GL acquisition "neither grant[ing] the full Greased Lightning stack duration, nor refresh[ing] the duration to the full duration." Given that, I don't know what is meant by a duration "up to a maximum of 60 seconds."

___________________________________

To avoid simply copy-pasting some of my older ideas (including the only-one-stack-falls-at-a-time concept, haha), let me try out a new concept that might sound technical beneath the hood but should seem pretty intuitive on the surface.

GL will function a bit like a much more granular version of HW-era Blood of the Dragon. It would be a spendable resource which also drains over time and is generated from any and all relative potency dealt, exempting the effects of GL itself and any enemy mitigation. That form of generation is a new idea, sure, but ultimately pretty simple -- deal damage, get GL.

The GL tiers are still there, each granting 5% modifiers to your Damage, Defense, and Speed stats (yes, that includes Magic Defense, Ability Recast Speeds, and Movement Speed), to a total of 20%. Exceed the requisite GL Gauge and that's it, you're in the next tier. And if you drop below its requirements, there's a 2.5-second grace period before you actually lose that tier's benefits. (This should allow for you to spend tightly without the average Monk feeling like they have to be incredibly precise... even while it may let highly skilled Monks purposely dip below just before a strong GCD that'd pop them back over.)

But, by the same amount as GL increases your stats, it increases your drain rate, i.e., by 15% per tier, to a total of 60%. It's worth noting by then that at GL4 you're also generating 20% more potency over time (due to increased attack rate), though, so it isn't quite as scary as it may sound. In practice, this really just means that your GL falls off one stack at a time and each lower stack lasts longer than the one before.

So thus far we have something for which our excess can be spent, making it an actual resource rather than just a ramp-up penalty and light maintenance challenge.

Graphically, it looks like a horizontal gauge from GL0 with the GL1 threshold marked about two-thirds of the way left-to-right. Once you hit GL1, that progress squishes that down and left and the next threshold is revealed, again two thirds of the way down. Repeat. Repeat. By the end, you have a GL4 gauge with successively smaller and thinner threshold bars as you move from GL4 at two-thirds of the way left-to-right to the previous ones. This means your max banking margin is a third of the total gauge or half of what you've spent just to reach GL4, which is pretty sizeable. (And yes, if you lose a GL tier, the gauge expands/stretches back to how it was at that prior tier.)

Simple enough?

____________________________

But, that still leaves us with our potential spenders and GL's other potential interactions. Let's begin with the latter.

I'm not a fan of how only a third of Monk's skills can be used at a time outside of Perfect Balance, so I figure I'd do something about that.

One possibility is to get rid of the openness from Perfect Balance and use dynamic buttons based on stance, such that we more deliberately switch between them, with each stance having, say, 4 options. For instance, Coeurl might have one option that remains in Couerl (modifying that skill itself), two that go to Opo-Opo, and one that goes to Raptor, while Raptor would have one that stays in Raptor (modifying that skill itself), two that go to Couerl, one that goes to Opo-Opo, and so on.

The other obvious option is to simply remove the form limitations altogether. In their place, we could, say, simply have all Form-based weaponskills generate 100% (after acquiring GL4, lower previously) more GL for each preceding unique form different from their own. If I use a Coeurl skill after having used a Raptor and an Opo-opo skill (between that Coeurl skill and the previous one), then that skill generates three time the GL. If I had just one of the two between it and the Coeurl skill -- only double. Back to back Coeurl skills -- only the normal amount. Or, inversely, I get full contribution when I rotate, on average, in even thirds; two-thirds contribution (not sustainable) when I rotate only, on average, between two of the three forms; and only a third of the possible contribution (causing GL to plummet rapidly) when using the same form. It's worth noting that Dragon Kick has been returned to its earlier form (+10% damage to the target) rather than a trigger for Leaden Fist, so it's not worth abusing this freedom to exploit. Like Twin Snakes, you'd want to be minimizing its portion of casts while retaining effective coverage.

Naturally, Perfect Balance would ignore this penalty. However, as mentioned before, I'd rather Monk feel more free-flowing and driven by interactions between its CDs and rotations, rather than those CDs seeming to be the be all and end all of its macro-rotation. On that note, Perfect Balance is now an Additional Effect, generated by a few other, more frequent abilities, and works to nullify the loss of one such skipped step (i.e., returns a +1x multiplier you'd otherwise lose). Just from natural CD usage, you'd be looking at 4 or 5 stacks per minute, which is enough to allow for some no-cost craftiness with your rotations.

So now we're down to the question of spenders.

On what, if not for rotational variance, ought one spend their excess GL? I'll leave that mostly to your imagination, but off the top of my head... (A) actually fun and impactful stances (similar to what I mentioned before, but running off GL, if we're not permitted to use Mana) and/or (B) Tornado Kick, The Forbidden Chakra, and Enlightenment or (C) a way to "rush" out CDs (assuming equal ppm). (The last would certainly fit the idea of Monks being highly adaptable and modular, such as by being able to cycle two normally minute-long CDs into a single 1-minute period, for instance.)

I see no reason to restrict the last two to RNG when we've got a gauge right there into which they'd have more interaction and potential nuance compared to the mere "hit when full" gameplay they have via Chakra. Drop the Chakra entirely unless it's going to have an effect that's actually fun, unique and reminiscent of a theme one might expect from the idea of chakra. Tornado Kick, thereafter, will be your all-spender (like Flare, but with damage nearly proportionate to resource consumed, though technically best to be used just after having dipped below GL4 anyways), thereby remaining your pre-jump or execute skill, essentially precisely redeeming what potency you lost in ramping up (and thus removing any so-called "weakness" to GL in a fight lasting more than some 10 seconds, so long as you can get the kick off before combat ends).

[Anahlise_Auhn_Giinslai]

Max 4 stacks of GL, each worth and only worth 5% Attack Speed. I could dig it.

The conditions for gaining GL could use some clarity, though. I don't really get the point of changing it from just being applied on any Coeurl skill, except perhaps to nerf Perfect Balance. The same goes for GL acquisition "neither grant[ing] the full Greased Lightning stack duration, nor refresh[ing] the duration to the full duration." Given that, I don't know what is meant by a duration "up to a maximum of 60 seconds."

I was very specific with my choice of words, as the literal intent of that change is to break Monks' built-in loophole, but not delete that loophole.

Just as Riddle of Earth and True North allow the Monk to ignore positional requirements, Perfect Balance and Form Shift, the latter now Formless Fist, allows the Monk to ignore form requirements and ignore any sense of the "combo bonus" lock, or in Monks' case, form reliant bonuses.

You yourself, my dear intelligent kitty, had lain out the fundamental problem for me, when you did type the concern that the more Monks can do this,
the more that Monks' basic form shift rotation will be made, for the most part, irrelevant in the end.

It baffles me that most Monk players just argue about positional requirements all of the time, when two things that are both more important to Monk's identity, are under threat; be that Greased lightning, already a brutal loss, or the way that monks' forms and form shift is the core of its rotation, which gives it a very unorthodox sense of "WeaponSkill combos". That aside...

The clarification, I: I broke the loophole. The original Greased Lightning stacks activate from "the third hit of a WeaponSkill combo", the Coeurl form actions. This allows both Perfect Balance and Form Shift to skip the basic form shift rotation, jump straight to a Coeurl form WeaponSkill, and gain Greased Lightning stacks. This loophole to skip the form shift rotation and "WeaponSkill combo", to me at least, is a antithesis to Monk, as the Pugilist story makes it very clear that the fundamental identity of Greased Lightning, is a reward for the execution of Monk's unorthodox "WeaponSkill combo".

The reason why I chose to shift Greased Lightning off of the Coeurl form actions, and into the form shifts, is to break the loophole. Greased Lightning stacks no longer activate from the execution of a Coeurl form WeaponSkill, and instead now activate from the form shift after those actions, so long as the Monk had gone through a proper form shift rotation:

The only way to gain a Greased Lightning stack, is to enter Raptor form, and shift forms from there, Raptor to Coeurl to Opo Opo, unto which the third action, being Demolish, Rock Breaker, or Snap Punch, will activate a Greased Lightning stack, when the Monk shifts form again, Opo Opo to Raptor.

What does this mean?

The Clarification, II: if the Monk uses Perfect Balance or Formless Fist to skip straight to a Coeurl form action, those two will still have their loophole effects on the action, BUT.. Greased Lightning will not activate. Greased Lightning requires that the Monk enters Raptor form, and form shifts Raptor --> Coeurl --> Opo Opo, as a prerequisite, before the Opo Opo --> Raptor shift activates Greased Lightning.

The loophole is broken, Monk only obtains Greased Lightning the way it is meant to activate.

On the visual HUD side, imagine a indicator that is a Blitz / Dancers' Dance steps hybrid... the Greased Lightning meter shows active Greased Lightning stacks and tracks their duration, but it also has a second part, that tracks how the Monk has gone through the form shift rotations, sort of akin to locks and keys, of which indicates when Greased Lightning will activate; sort of like the Dancers' "finish", but the indicator spends the locks' keys like Blitz does.

I apologize for that had not been more clear... As for the acquisition of Greased Lightning stacks itself...

The clarification, III: Remember for me, for a moment. The original Greased Lightning would jump straight to its maximum duration, 16 seconds, the moment it activates. I chose to remove that and slow down the duration build-up. Consider what I did type above, and imagine for me... every Opo opo --> Raptor shift, after a proper form shift rotation, The Monk activates Greased Lightning, gains a Greased Lightning stack, up to a maximum of four, and that will have a duration of 10 seconds, up to a maximum of 60 seconds.

[...]will neither grant the full Greased Lightning stack duration, nor refresh the duration to the full duration.[...]

[...]Instead, the first Opo Opo-to-Raptor form shift activates one Greased Lightning stack with only 10 seconds on the Greased Lightning stack duration.[...]Every Opo Opo-to-Raptor form shift after the first, will activate another Greased Lightning stack, up to the maximum of four, and extend the duration of Greased Lightning stacks by only 10 seconds, up to the new maximum duration of 60 seconds.[...]

What does this look like in a actual rotation? Allow me to type out a example of the flow, then...

First rotation: Dragon Kick - Twin Snakes - Demolish, 2.00GCD / 6 seconds: Greased Lightning I activates and lasts 10 seconds.

Second rotation: Dragon Kick - True Strike - Snap Punch, 2.00GCD / 6 seconds: Greased Lightning I - duration: 4 seconds, but now.. Greased Lightning II activates, and lasts for(+10 seconds) 14 seconds.

Third rotation: BootShine - Twin Snakes - Snap Punch, 2.00GCD / 6 seconds: Greased Lightning II - duration: 8 seconds, but now.. Greased Lightning III activates, and lasts for(+10 seconds) 18 seconds.

Fourth rotation: Dragon Kick - True Strike - Demolish, 2.00GCD / 6 seconds: Greased Lightning III - duration: 12 seconds, but now.. Greased Lightning IV activates, and lasts for(+10 seconds) 22 seconds.

Fifth rotation: BootShine - Twin Snakes - Snap Punch, 2.00GCD / 6 seconds: Greased Lightning IV - duration 16 seconds, and now... Greased Lightning IV still active, but now lasts for(+10 seconds) 26 seconds; up to a maximum of a 60 second duration, which the Monk can reach 9 rotations later, at the end of the 14th rotation.

Does that make sense? I think that it does...? =w=;

[...]I do kind of hate how something like this and the new "Perfect Blitz" would work together to make the standard rotation feel largely irrelevant, with only oGCDs (especially this and PB) giving any real punctuation to the job.[...]

since the only way to gain Greased Lightning stacks, is to go through the normal combos and do proper form-to-form shifts, this would make the standard rotation and normal combos important and relevant, so I hope that it would resolve your issue and ease the concern.

As I did type before, I had already thought that the form shift rotation made irrelevant was a issue, and we just share that same conclusion, so when you did type that, it made me think that you have a similar manner of thought along the same lines as mine; of which I had already thought of a way to deal with it, hence my offer to share my idea with you.

All of that said, as I do realize how drawn-out this post has become, I did also read the rest of your post, and will work on my response to the rest, next...