Actually my entire reason for KI drain on offensive is this. Putting extra energy behind each punch. Basically each attack you do or use does more damage, but it also burns more KI and stamina and in this stance not having your guard up causes you to take more damage, as opposed to defensive where the damage you are dealt to gets partialy absorbed by the KI and stamina, instead of the health bar, as well as being "on guard" and doing less damage.
Pretty much the idea I have for the stance, too - except for the stamina part, I didn't know about that until a few days ago. Just reading some of the replies sparked a thought inside my dull, and pointless little brain of mine. Obviously this sort of goes against everything that the stance
are in their current conception, but what if for arguments sake we made them all passives.
EDIT: These ideas are separate to stances. They are Modes that automatically trigger.
Aggression: A stance/ mode that activates once you drop to your last few threads of health. Upon reaching 25 health your willingness to survive above all else consumes every fiber of your being. On top of the standard Turbo aura that exists whenever you swoop ect, a few faint red flames/ sparks circle random bits of your body. This is akin to SS2's lightning visual, and if you were in the SS2 then the lightning that already exists could be converted to red. Anyway, back on point; Aggression does all the things that we discussed early, we could perhaps double it's strengths though - double the numbers with the trade off that it only last for like, 10 seconds or something, or maybe it could last for a certain amount of hits. If Aggression was like this, then (if you wanted to) you could justify giving the stance a fair amount of life steal during this 10 seconds, maybe like 50% or something outrageous like that. However, such a powerful form needs something to keep it balanced - so, if you are hit within this form then you either die straight away, or you lose the stance, and are unable to use it again until the next time you respawn. If you are not hit then the stance has a 2 minute cooldown or something - perhaps activating this stance also refunds an inkling of stamina, too.
Defensive: It automatically activates after you receive too many hits in a row within a certain time frame. Once it activates, you gain like 10 stamina (just a lil' sumsing, sumsing), and you also gain all the other % buffs to defensive stats. When it activates all enemies within 10 yards are sent tumbling away by the explosion of forth you had sent out (would require unique animation). Maybe you get a temporary health boost, as well? Defensive only comes about when you are getting so utterly annihilated (I'm talking like 15+ consecutive hits) - and it only activates because you (your character) becomes so frustrated with how badly they are losing that it pushes them over the edge for a brief moment <-- you see things like this happening all throughout the show; even if they only get a few hits in, and the hits don't actually have any effect - the point is that this alone justifies having a mechanic like this within the game.
Movement: I'm trying to keep with my passive theme I've got going here, but I can't seem to find anywhere for Movement to go. My idea for it is that once it activates then all of your movements cost a lot less Ki to use (swooping, and teleporting in particular). Stamina could, once again, be refunded as well. The amount of Ki or Stamina that you receive once this activates be a very large amount, and it also increases your flight speed dramatically, and also how far your teleport takes you. The trade of being a debt, and I can see it working similar to the real life occurrence of an oxygen debt. The amount you received could either drain over time, and very rapidly - or it could persist for a time, and then suddenly fall off. You could even create idles for the characters that showed them slouched over, and breathing very heavily for about 5 seconds. The problem is that I see no situation that could incur this particular stance's activation nor do I think this idea is all that great, but I wanted to make it similar to the other two.
You could just remove movement all together, and just go with the other two - perhaps going as far as to keep the three original stance ideas as well as this new one. The Modes I just described don't have to be all that passive either. Once your health is low enough a little symbol on your screen could flash, telling you to hit "O" to activate Aggression mode ~ and the same can be said the Defensive mode.
In regards to the amount of buttons required to activate each individual stance surpassing how many the team would be willing to advocate; you could just make them modifiers. To justify this a bit more, anyone that's versed me in 1.2.3 will know about my play style. It's a play style revolving entirely around teleporting. As a side, all of my keys are the defaults. In order to achieve this style of play, I press 5 buttons in this order: E>T>G>Direction input. Depending on where I want to teleport, I'll either hit space for up, control (or shift, can't remember) for down, up for forward, left for left, and so on. As soon as I've reappeared I will do this sequence again, and again, and again, and on, and on until I can find an opening to attack. I'll teleport down, then forward, then back, then left; and the second my opponent stops to charge his Ki, or he stops because he can't find me then I will swoop in to strike. Every time I come out of teleport my Turbo is already up, and all I have to do is swoop at them. Having read all of this, you can imagine how fast I'm moving my fingers in order to preform all of this - and believe me, you HAVE to move them fast. If you're too slow in preforming this, or if you stumble with the keys for a second then you're opponent (assuming they're skilled) will catch you. So, putting a shift-O modifier for Aggression, and a control-O modifier for Movement (for example) is not going to be an issue for me. And once other people practice preforming these movements then they won't have an issue with preforming it either. And if some people don't want to bother with all learning those modifiers then... who cares? You cannot create a game with the sole purpose of making every single aspect of the gameplay applicable to the casual audience. More to the point; the whole idea behind stances was that they were optional, you don't HAVE to switch to Defensive if you're being hit ect, ect, and so on.