I was thinking at one point, and had the interesting idea of modes for slotted passive.

The idea was this, rather then having passives limited to what stance you are in, have the effects of the passive based ON the stance. fire form in avenger gives you more damage but less soak and no energy gain unless hit with fire. Protector modes gives you much less damage but reduces most any form of non physical attacks to a much lower amount AND give you energy.

This poses interesting thoughts, so i expanded on this. Brawler for this example will be used with fire form (wait what?) Meaning, instead of defense or offense bonuses to fire attacks, you convert your melee damage to 50% melee of choice (slashing, crushing ext) and 50% of fire damage with a chance to set targets on fire. so people can have flaming fists or swords if they wanted while keeping a small amount of defense (not much however) Guardian will not be changed and gives all passives a baseline to use, nothing will be spectacular however you get most of the effects.

A quick rundown, the idea is in it of itself subject to change.

Fire form:
avenger mode; Increased ranged fire damage, no resistance other then fire damage, does not gain energy unless struck with fire
guardian mode; moderate increase in damage, light defense to all non physical damage, energy gain on hit with non physical damage
protector mode; low increase in damage, moderate defense to all non physical damage, energy gain on hit with non physical attack
support mode; no damage increase, light damage resistance, 20ft (subject to change) AOE fire damage to >ALL< targets (meaning no limit of 5) by use of clinging flames, does no direct damage, gains no energy on hit even with fire (you already gain power in support mode)
brawler mode; moderate damage increase, damage splits between melee and fire allowing you to use melee weapons with fire damage, low to moderate damage resistance (moderate/fire), no energy gain
all other passives would have similar things to that, different modes for the same power based on your stance. not JUST changes in damage


Now chances are, this idea is crap, but hey its worth a shot to post.