[Numbers appended above in place of breaking this into a ton of small quotes.]
- Agreed.
- Same, but it's not either-or. Chakra was, after all, coexistent with even the brief period Tornado Kick was actually integral (4.2-4.55).
- Sure, but ShB Monk didn't really even have an issue with GL beyond turning Riddle of Wind from a way to generate GL to needing to generate one GL more (effectively taking twice as long to reach full performance). More generally, too, I'm just not a fan of creating new mechanics just to "solve" another, especially if its 'constraint' already amounted to a leverageable mechanic (as GL was between 4.2 and 4.55).
I consider Barrel Stabilizer utter bloat for that reason, for instance, with a tweak to the mechanic itself being preferable to how that skill was used in practice, especially after Stormblood. (Old Ikishoten, on the other hand, in the context of gauge management amounting to more than just Shinten charges, at least worked with and enhanced the existing considerations/optimizations, though, so even Barrel Stabilizer's being crap may have had at least as much to do with tuning.)
- Agreed.
- What actual warrant is there for this belief though? Those in charge of a given decision shitting the bed does not mean that a bed could only ever have been intended for feces.
- It doesn't, but I don't think anyone, even the devs, have ever implied the two were conflicting. Greased Lightning, like so much else, was removed because they gutted it to the point that it was no longer a means of gameplay, only of annoyance, and many therefore asked for its removal.
(And, again, without TK and/or sufficient DPS for a mechanic that is more legitimately hard to maintain [e.g., a far shorter duration but falling off one stack at a time instead, though even that would depend on frequent downtime to be entertaining]... it really is/was a dead mechanic. There's no point in keeping Greased Lightning by itself -- i.e., without any means of leveraging it.)