Should they remove positionals at this point?

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Why do you assume that people not liking positionals have a comprehension issue? I think everyone speaking about it in this thread knows how it works.
If someone doesn't like eating broccolis, explaining them what broccolis are won't suddenly make them like it.

Besides, your picture shows a target dummy that never moves. This is very different in actual combat when bosses spin faster that freaking beyblades.

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I'm not making a blanket assumption about anything. I'm asking a question, not making a statement. Now my question is based on what I've personally seen people lamenting about positionals on the forums and how I've seen people play in-game, but that's it. Maybe some of the posters in this thread do indeed know how it works, but I can't tell because they haven't actually said why they don't like it. Hence my question because I'm legitimately curious.

Fair enough that the target dummy doesn't move (which is an odd contention because the point of the image and text is to illustrate how easy it is to adjust to a spinning target while still landing most of your positionals and not having to run two miles around the target's entire hitbox every time it moves), but most mobs in the game don't move that much anyway outside of brief phases or specific periodic attacks. Sometimes you might not hit your position because you have to avoid an AoE, but that's not an issue unique to melee or positionals. However, if the mob is constantly "spinning faster than a beyblade" to the point where you can't land most of your attacks properly, that's an issue with your tank. Give him five across the eyes and tell him to sit still and celebrate the fact that most tanks do a pretty good job of holding mobs in one place.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Except that they're not really. They may not be completely broken and unplayable, but they're not ideal either.

Positionals are an interesting idea, but the reality is that they're often more annoying than fun or challenging. Boss has back AoEs, or spends a lot of time moving, or randomly turning, or whatever? That's not skill, just frustration.

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Completely disagree. I've raided Monk through since T1 through all Savages and Ultimates. Positionals are both challenging and rewarding to get right as well as being an integral part of melee jobs. I swear to god no one on this forum is happy until everyone is a 1,2,3 rotation you can just faceroll and no one needs to be accountable for their own gameplay. Waaah, everything is too hard. Nerf jobs. Nerf savage. Nerf primals. Nerf story trials. Sigmascape Savage was hands down the worst raid tier in this game, boring, uninspired, clearable within a week. 2 of those fights were no positionals and it didn't make either of them better.

If the boss has back aoes or spends time moving, you learn the fight and where to optimise True North. If its randomly turning, talk to your tank.

No wonder dev's only listen to the Japanese. They actually take the time to learn and practice their jobs.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

Maybe some of the posters in this thread do indeed know how it works, but I can't tell because they haven't actually said why they don't like it. Hence my question because I'm legitimately curious.

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So I hate monk. Second worst class in the game to play imo, only beaten out by blm. And the reason I hate it so much is that it is the posterchild of melee dps problems, 2/3's of which are positional related.

1. Positionals are garbage whenever you don't have a tank around.
2. Positionals are garbage when you have a bad tank around.
3. Ramp up time, but it's unrelated to positionals, mostly just stuck it here for the curious.

Since I main Sam, if I end up doing something sync'd where I don't have a kenki gauge, I don't really miss not having to bother to move to be honest. I played WoW for years before this game as classes without any positioning requirement and it was still fun. Do I really want them to be removed? Eh not really, but I am tepidly more for cutting them than I am for keeping them just because it doesn't affect my personal play experience but it might make randos in dungeons less terrible 5% of the time and make my life less miserable the once in a blue moon I get some nerd tank who parks the enemies butt in a fire.

Positionals are Garbo lol honestly its almost always easier to be range, Caster or physical there Is literally no fight hard on us.

But this raid tier alone has been complete utter trash for melee, I also play Monk and fights like midgard I just won't do as melee. Most bosses this tier just wants to always turn or fly away for what seems like hours at a time.

The new ex trial is a huge example of ranged privilege in my opinion, that mofo spins like crazy, teleports back and forth. It drives me nuts on Monk.

I think the problem is less about Positionals and more so about SE catering to range with the occasional simple mechanic for us to do.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

I swear to god no one on this forum is happy until everyone is a 1,2,3 rotation you can just faceroll and no one needs to be accountable for their own gameplay.

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Literally no one has ever asked for that. The issue here is that there's a big difference between "challenging but fun" and "complicated for the sake of being complicated", and unfortunately a large part of the game's combat systems fall solidly into the second category.

If one skill per combo has a positional (nin drg sam)
or literally has a 123 flank 123 back repeat (monk)

is too complicated for you? Then the issue isn't the design.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

So I hate monk. Second worst class in the game to play imo, only beaten out by blm. And the reason I hate it so much is that it is the posterchild of melee dps problems, 2/3's of which are positional related.

1. Positionals are garbage whenever you don't have a tank around.
2. Positionals are garbage when you have a bad tank around.
3. Ramp up time, but it's unrelated to positionals, mostly just stuck it here for the curious.

Since I main Sam, if I end up doing something sync'd where I don't have a kenki gauge, I don't really miss not having to bother to move to be honest. I played WoW for years before this game as classes without any positioning requirement and it was still fun. Do I really want them to be removed? Eh not really, but I am tepidly more for cutting them than I am for keeping them just because it doesn't affect my personal play experience but it might make randos in dungeons less terrible 5% of the time and make my life less miserable the once in a blue moon I get some nerd tank who parks the enemies butt in a fire.

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That's the kind of detailed answer I was looking for, thank you.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Except that they're not really. They may not be completely broken and unplayable, but they're not ideal either.

Positionals are an interesting idea, but the reality is that they're often more annoying than fun or challenging. Boss has back AoEs, or spends a lot of time moving, or randomly turning, or whatever? That's not skill, just frustration.

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If the boss is randomly turning then maybe you should talk to your tank and raid team to figure out the optimal strat. Many statics will place melee on certain intercardinal positions and ranged on other positions, for example, to better take advantage of melee positionals. It's really not that hard or that big of a deal to figure it out with your team.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Literally no one has ever asked for that. The issue here is that there's a big difference between "challenging but fun" and "complicated for the sake of being complicated", and unfortunately a large part of the game's combat systems fall solidly into the second category.

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Complicated? In the time it took you to type out your post you could've read the skill description for one single melee class and understood the positional requirements. Like Tigerlilly said, one positional per combo is not complicated.

Remembering boss movements in their ability timeline in order to pre-emptively hit positionals as well as co-ordinating a team in an MMO to hold bosses to a direction was one of the more fun and involving part of being a melee. I really appreciated tanks that didn't swivel Susano, Suzaku, etc. all over the place during their certain mechanics.
I thought the most threatening part of O6S was dozing off from the total lack of aforementioned going on. Easily my least favorite raid instance this expansion.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

I'm not making a blanket assumption about anything. I'm asking a question, not making a statement. Now my question is based on what I've personally seen people lamenting about positionals on the forums and how I've seen people play in-game, but that's it. Maybe some of the posters in this thread do indeed know how it works, but I can't tell because they haven't actually said why they don't like it. Hence my question because I'm legitimately curious.

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You asked a question, yes, but you immediatly answered it yourself and went on to explain something extremely basic in a thread about positionals.

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Is it because people think they have to run around a lot to reach the Rear and the Flank?

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You should have stopped there. Because the answer is no. The rest of your post was unnecessary.

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Originally Posted by ElHeggunte

Fair enough that the target dummy doesn't move (which is an odd contention because the point of the image and text is to illustrate how easy it is to adjust to a spinning target while still landing most of your positionals and not having to run two miles around the target's entire hitbox every time it moves), but most mobs in the game don't move that much anyway outside of brief phases or specific periodic attacks. Sometimes you might not hit your position because you have to avoid an AoE, but that's not an issue unique to melee or positionals. However, if the mob is constantly "spinning faster than a beyblade" to the point where you can't land most of your attacks properly, that's an issue with your tank. Give him five across the eyes and tell him to sit still and celebrate the fact that most tanks do a pretty good job of holding mobs in one place.

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I'm seriously doubting that you played any Savage fight this tier, and I'm even starting to wonder if you played Extreme ones. Seiryu, for instance, moves a lot, spin a lot, knockbacks you a lot, covers one half of the platform a lot (while following the tank), follow the former MT during a tank swap up until the TB, forces you to follow your healer sometimes, and teleports mid facing south.

Granted Seiryu is quite an extreme example, but numerous bosses do move a lot, and force you to move a lot. Also, for some reasons, the devs like it very much when the bosses go mid to cast something... and face south. That's almost malevolent at this point.

Why do you think they changed every melee DPS job at or during Stormblood, and now drastically buffed True North at 4.5? If you think that it's as easy to do positionals than positioning yourself properly on a training dummy, then you should have absolutly no idea why they made all these changes. You could probably answer about the gap between good and bad players, but that's only one part of it.

Currently, you have to pop True North for almost every mechanic. Which does raises the question of this thread: what's the point of positionals if the goal is now to get rid of them using True North as much as possible, and mitigate the punishment of failing them by raising potencies? 4.5 clearly showed us that SE wants to reduce the importance and impact of positionals as much as possible, in order to do stuff like Seiryu.

Many people want to see positionals go away for melee.
Yet I haven't ever seen anyone offer feasible alternatives for it.

Even though I don't play melee DPS I feel like if they remove positionals they need to add something else in exchange. Otherwise they are going to be making melee DPS way too easy to play and way too rewarding. My reasoning is that a bad caster is a bad caster for missing something a melee dps have a little bit of help with: Rotation. While a perfect rotation is something I consider easy to be done, often times you'll see that summoner that doesn't apply dots at all, that black mage that doesn't know what blizzard IV is or that red mage that simply refuses to alternate Verholy and Verflare based on what the job demands. While every job suffer from mistakes like that, melee dps have a combo rotation highlighted to be done perfectly and in the order it is supposed to. If you take away positionals it really bottles down to being a 1, 2, 3 combo with no conditionals to it other than using self-buffs on cooldown. And while some people might say that ranged dps don't have positionals, and that's why melee dps shouldn't also; Ranged dps end up having a more supportive role throughout the fights and the way their combos work tendo to be pretty RNG. I personally don't think it's a fair comparison.

At least to me, a melee dps with perfect positionals is like that black mage that knows exactly when to use leylines and when to save it and use triple cast instead to maximize damage upkeep. It's just executed differently.

Personally, I'd like them to go away but I understand not everyone shares that view.

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Originally Posted by mosaicex

Many people want to see positionals go away for melee.
Yet I haven't ever seen anyone offer feasible alternatives for it.

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Yes, this. Every job has downsides that make maximizing DPS a challenge. Casters need to learn fight timelines well to minimize movement, melee need to learn when the boss is going to move so they can continue to hit positionals or pop True North as needed.

Ranged physical DPS have lower overall damage potential because they don’t need to worry about movement or positionals. They are the go-to mechanic handlers on mechanics that can be baited onto a specific player for this reason. So I’d say the downsides here are (occasionally) handling specific mechanics and lower personal DPS.

Yes, melee players need to be in melee range - but honestly most casters and ranged stay in melee range for heals, unless there are mechanics that force them out. And with the gap closers/movement skills on all the melee jobs, staying in melee range almost constantly is not a problem.

Each job has something to separate highly skilled players from the rest of the pack - positionals are one of these things. Removing positionals removes a lot of the optimization melee players need to do to maximize DPS. If you can just stand completely still and wail on a boss with near 100% uptime, there needs to be a trade-off. Less damage like BRD/MCH? I doubt people would want that.

Personally I agree with whoever says to just do positionals for the last bit of the combo(snap punch, demolish etc) like it is with samurai.

If fight mechanics were more random instead of scripted, I would probably agree with you OP. But things like positionals still keeps fights interesting after you've learned it. Keeping up a optimal rotation while dodging mechanics and still landing your positional bonuses is quite challenging, so you're basically asking for an element of difficulty to be taken away. It's like me asking for no unavoidable AoE as a healer, or for no tank busters as a tank. These are elements for each role that the player controlling them can't do anything about; they can only handle them in the best way possible. Mechanics are meant to disrupt your flow, and punish you if you don't follow. If overlapping mechanics make it difficult to land positionals, then welcome to content that challenges you.

Seeing this makes me sad. The worthwhile thing to do is positionals on melee, something to kill the boredom. If you really don’t like melee positionals then try a different job.

I don't think positionals should be eliminated entirely, however, I do think more bosses that require a specific dance is a lot of "stand here" need to have the position-less target ring. Midgardsormr is a good example of this in this raid tier. Too much of his fight requires you to stand in specific points for elongated periods that really punishes melee jobs, and while all the fights of this tier do it to some degree, none are as much of an offender as that fight.

There is a degree of optimization that you learn as you play a fight more and more, and you'll still miss the occasional position due to how you need to do the dance of the fight (True North helps with this if you know you're going to miss for a while) but when you have an entire fight where the mechanics of beating it require the party distribute itself in certain patterns for the entirety of the encounter, then that's a boss that should just not have a positional ring so as not to make non-melee jobs more powerful simply because they don't have to worry about where they're standing in relation to the boss's hit box.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

I play the laziest positional melee dps and even I wouldn't want them scrapped entirely. That said, they need find a way to make all the other jobs like samurai where they aren't losing huge potency chunks if they can't hit their positionals. The positionals do make doing stuff out in the world a huge pain. Not that there's much to do there I suppose.

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I see a lot of people saying SAM's positional's are mostly inconsequential but if you do the math, you find that 5 kenki roughly equates to 60 potency, which is much more than any other dps missing theirs. Just because it doesn't add a flat potency increase doesn't mean you aren't losing a lot, SAM tends to get a pass because their raw potency is very high, but the loss can be noticeable.

The biggest problem with positional's used to be if you missed them, you didn't get the buff they apply, like DRG missing Heavy Thrust meant you wouldn't get the buff, which in a fight like Demon Wall where you couldn't attack the flank, just absolutely sucked, even NIN as of now can miss applying Trick Attack, which is a massive chunk of DPS down the drain. I always wished they applied the debuff even if you miss the rear, but add more damage if you do hit it.

I dunno, I feel that positional's add some depth to melee and isn't something I want to see removed based on "I dun like it" because I think it adds just enough to make them more engaging than without. A lot of people express disappointment in missing positional's or how sometimes its impossible, but its not like you are expected to hit the positional every single time without fail, you learn to hit as many as possible as you learn the fight.

Take Pantokrator in 011s, I can't hit every positional when circling the boss, if I tried, I would die, so I save True North for it, minimizing the loss as much as possible but even then I can still miss some, it is all part of the dance and I enjoy that.

I'm not saying it's ok to miss positionals on sam, just that missing out on 5 kenki feels less bad, even if by the numbers it isn't.

I think they could remove positionals from NIN and SAM, but MNK and DRG keeping theirs.

They feel tacked on for NIN and SAM - and actually they are. NIN originally didn't had positionals (on their combos) and SAM only gets them later with the addition of the Kenki gauge. Does every melee job needs positionals? If you like them pick a job with them - if you don't pick one without.

I honestly never missed them when playing my tank in dps-mode. Why not cater to different preferences with different jobs?

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Originally Posted by Tint

I think they could remove positionals from NIN and SAM, but MNK and DRG keeping theirs.

They feel tacked on for NIN and SAM - and actually they are. NIN originally didn't had positionals (on their combos) and SAM only gets them later with the addition of the Kenki gauge. Does every melee job needs positionals? If you like them pick a job with them - if you don't pick one without.

I honestly never missed them when playing my tank in dps-mode. Why not cater to different preferences with different jobs?

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No comment on SAM, but NIN has always had a positional at the end of their combo and for trick attack. SAM is the only case of an ability not having a positional, then suddenly getting one.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

No comment on SAM, but NIN has always had a positional at the end of their combo and for trick attack. SAM is the only case of an ability not having a positional, then suddenly getting one.

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Sneak Attack, when it used to exist, was also a frontal positional, so just adding onto it, ninja always had that as part of its job.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Sneak Attack, when it used to exist, was also a frontal positional, so just adding onto it, ninja always had that as part of its job.

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I left sneak out since it was never used I thought outside of below 50, but yes, that's another one.

I don't mind having positionals but if they were to be removed I probably wouldn't care.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

No comment on SAM, but NIN has always had a positional at the end of their combo and for trick attack. SAM is the only case of an ability not having a positional, then suddenly getting one.

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Yes, Sneak- and Trick Attack always had positionals. But the other positionals were added with the release of Heavensward, originallay NINs combos didn't had them.

Sadly it's not stated in detail in the 3.0 patchnotes, but they were talking about it in a Liveletter:

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Furthermore, we have added positioning to several weapon skills. Current ninja doesn't have much positioning and was able to attack from any direction freely, so we included positioning for some.

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You only need to be on your positional just as you hit the button to do your attack. You can frick off otherwise. Monk is really the only one that suffers from positionals, anyway, as they are basically the only class that has these requirements on six of their nine weaponskills; the skills that don't are their AoEs and One Ilm Punch. That was part of the reason why the class did so much damage; it rewarded good play. Then samurai came out and monk completely lost its identity. ARR and HW monk felt like you were playing Goku when you did everything right - you were top DPS and it felt great. SB feels like you're playing adult Gohan now and watching samurai take over Goku while still busting your ass and coming out with less damage. It just doesn't feel good.

Basically, no, positionals shouldn't go away. Most classes don't have that many positionals to begin with and the only class that does should honestly do more damage or gain more offensive utility.

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Originally Posted by Tizzy_Tormentor

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I dunno, I feel that positional's add some depth to melee and isn't something I want to see removed based on "I dun like it" because I think it adds just enough to make them more engaging than without. A lot of people express disappointment in missing positional's or how sometimes its impossible, but its not like you are expected to hit the positional every single time without fail, you learn to hit as many as possible as you learn the fight.

Take Pantokrator in 011s, I can't hit every positional when circling the boss, if I tried, I would die, so I save True North for it, minimizing the loss as much as possible but even then I can still miss some, it is all part of the dance and I enjoy that.

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Also, pretty much this.

In my opinion,they can remove positional actions from DRG,SAM,NiN,I don’t care.
But please leave MNK alone.
Doing - Flank,Rear,Flank
Rear,Flank,Rear
Flank,Rear,Rear
Rear,Flank,Flank is what we’re doing and enjoy it.
End of Story.

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Originally Posted by Tint

Yes, Sneak- and Trick Attack always had positionals. But the other positionals were added with the release of Heavensward, originallay NINs combos didn't had them.

Sadly it's not stated in detail in the 3.0 patchnotes, but they were talking about it in a Liveletter:

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Oh, then I stand corrected.

Still wouldn't say NIN feels forced into it though. They at least made it clear from the moment someone would level it, rather than SAM where people manage to get into savage without knowing they gained positionals. And it kinda makes sense to be behind your opponent...

I think some people in this thread missed the point for thinking that not wanting them is about them being "too complicated" to do, especially the person who posted the training dummy and explaining how they work.

Doing the positionals themselves are easy, especially on a training dummy, you barely move a cm and suddenly you did your positional, then a few seconds later move again and there's the other one. This is not hard or complicated, and I don't think anyone would argue that to begin with.

It is when you have to do this when actual mechanics are happening that seem to have been purposefully designed against doing positionals. You either forgo uptime/actions to maintain the positional which is bad, or maintain uptime and forgo the positional which is also bad.

Which just brings me back to the things I already discussed. That is bad design, one way or the other, pick your poison. Either it is bad mechanics design or bad job skillset design. They are designing fights going into it saying it is ok to play suboptimally because you have no choice, you just make do with what you get.

If the positionals did not exist then all the fights that are mechanic heavy with a lot of built in movement would not suddenly become less complicated it would just mean the actions can function to their full potential.

Missing out on 40 potency because the boss decided to turn/teleport in the middle of my combo is out of my control, especially if this occurs more often than True North can cover. That isn't some sudden jump in a skill gap, it is the difference between taking a step to the left or right, and yet the bosses tend to just ignore that entirely either due to hitbox sizes/turning completely or abruptness of movement.

We already have decent fights that don't require positionals so the proof is already there, I don't think anyone would say Shinryu EX was a boring fight or not complicated enough, ignoring the add phase since they have it.

Lastly I will just say between ARR/HW to SB I believe there has been a sharp increase in mechanics + movement either as a player/party or the bosses themselves compared to the old ones. The differences between the ARR extremes and the SB extremes seem like night and day for example. This in general is fine, I'm not complaining about that per se, in fact they've been great but something has to give if the fights themselves are going to be more complicated and that's part of why I would suggest the positionals be removed.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

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So what you're saying is doing positional is easy except when it isn't easy, in which case it becomes difficult. Nice revelation going on there.

Also why are you people acting like missing a few positionals will dumpster your DPS? This hasn't been the case since 2.4, since then they have been continuously easing the penalty of missing positionals from "rotation crasher" to just "cool if you do it, fine if you don't (as long as you don't intentionally miss all of it)"

This isn't 2.0-2.3 DRG era anymore, where missing a positional outright denied you the damage buff or won't let you progress further into your combo, or in 3.1 where missing positional with Fang & Claw and Wheeling Thrust dumpster'd your whole potency per gcd to below the point where not doing them gave higher gain.

Of course except for NIN, but such is the cost of powerful debuff like Trick Attack, and even then unless the boss is spinning like spinning top there's no excuse not to wait a few seconds to land it safely.
This is also assuming you're playing by ears and not already have all CDs planned out like you should be.

Sure some fight(s) are a bit tougher on landing positionals eg. Suzaku EX (especially if tank isn't so good at minimizing the movement) but none of the Savage fights through 3 whole SB-tier have this particular problem.

"BUT SHINRYU EX"
This is not really relevant. Shinryu EX is not Suzaku EX, much like how Neo Exdeath isn't God Kefka or Final Omega. If fights weren't designed with postionals in mind then of course they will have to compensate in some other ways.
It's all about the fights presentation first, mechanics second, unless you're somehow suggesting it's the other way around ("Gee, I don't wat Shinryu EX to have positional so I guess I will present him like this")

Sometimes you just have to accept that you will miss a few of them and move on.

Part of why I don't think dropping positionals as a mechanic would hurt anything is because we already watched something similar play out with another love it or hate it skill based mechanic. Cleric Stance.

I loved Cleric Stance. I thought it was a fun and interesting thing and was proud of my stance dancing skill, and was sad in pre-SB when I heard it was going away. Wouldn't healing be super boring without it? As it turns out, no. Not at all. As much as I liked the play style, the reality is that it's been a year and a half now and I honestly haven't missed the stance dance at all. Looking back and comparing I think the game is better off without Cleric Stance and I think the same would probably be true if they dropped (or downplayed) positionals.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

I think some people in this thread missed the point for thinking that not wanting them is about them being "too complicated" to do, especially the person who posted the training dummy and explaining how they work.

Doing the positionals themselves are easy, especially on a training dummy, you barely move a cm and suddenly you did your positional, then a few seconds later move again and there's the other one. This is not hard or complicated, and I don't think anyone would argue that to begin with.

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As a Blackmage the rotation on a training dummy is easy. At SSS-dummy I do 8,5k on Chaos (O9S). In the real fight my highest was 7,2k, building up from 4,6K at my first kill.
And Chaos is a really slow fight.

So there comes Seiryu, quick mechanics, much random stuff. First kill 4,9k and my last kill 6,1k (have 22 kills and much more training sessions).

Its all about training and learning the fights. Had a Monk in my team who had done 6,2k. So it seems, he had no problems doing the positionals.

Train and get better, like with every Job.

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Originally Posted by Seddrinth

If you don't raid savage then you can just ignore positionals anyway. It's not a requirement to get through other content easily. Just play for fun and not worry about min/max. But those who enjoy the challenge shouldn't have it dumbed down to cater to the more casual players.

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i find this amusing because it generally is a requirement to get through everything easily. the just play for fun and dont worry about min max really doesnt fly.
i mean its like recent threads about running abania in i270 gear. and so many people flip out about it.. but hey don't worry about min/max just play for fun...
or again players who dont bother melding get grief because the game can throw so much materia at you for free why arent you melding it... hey don't worry about min/max yourgear just play for fun...

it's funny how the game has dumbed down simplified and scrapped so many battle elements that were actually fun and interesting but people said they were pointless and added an element of complexity. but then people say positionals which are dull and boring must stay because they add complexity or something. they really don't add anything to the battle system.

if you want to add some complexity bring back crowd control mechanics. or incapacitations or battle regimens or unscripted unpredictable encounters or any number of things infinitely more fun than positionals

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I found it annoying on Ninja, but I'm quite happy with positionals on Sam.

You don't crash your dps by missing them. Infact, if you just stand in one spot, you'll generally hit half of them by default. But aiming to hit as many as you can rewards you with that little bit more damage and adds a skillcap.

You can just about beat SSS o12s ignoring positionals as Sam. It's just at the right point to look at as a bonus for hitting, rather than a loss for missing. Maybe other classes need to aim for this mark.

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same can be said for ninja generally. i mean if you stayed in one spott he entire fight (rear) the only positional you would ever miss is armor crush for huton.

It never really made sense to me why monks have positionals in the first place. Dragoons and Ninjas sure. One fights dragons the other is a sneaky stabby type. But monks always struck me as a fighter that takes advantage of all positions.

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Originally Posted by Aomine1992

The new ex trial is a huge example of ranged privilege in my opinion, that mofo spins like crazy, teleports back and forth. It drives me nuts on Monk.

I think the problem is less about Positionals and more so about SE catering to range with the occasional simple mechanic for us to do.

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It's not that bad, honestly, it just takes some practice and experimenting and full usage of your kit keep up with uptime and positionals. It's not likely the difference between a clear and a wipe, but it is a difference of like 500-700 dps (in my case at least). As DRG I learned exactly how far i had to be to not get knocked into water while keeping uptime, exactly when to spineshatter dive when the boss "randomly" jumps (its not random i found), when to elusive jump after the snake push (its the perfect distance every time). Basically had to True North on cd but i typically saved it for the snake push or when Big Chungus was about to slam his fists and the tank had the boss positioned badly.

All in all, a little experimentation went a long way for me and the same habits carried over for SAM.

Also, I find the "in or out" mechanic balances out the ranged vs melee privilege.

edit: I can likely remember other tips throughout my day. like:
- the kiji - something (checkerboard pattern AOE). his direct front and back is always safe on the first AoE and then i move to his flank, which is always safe.
- the "stack" aoe is actually just a "get in line" aoe and you can be on the boss away from the party and be perfectly fine. I see so many people stacked for this just due to safety concerns.
- if you're comfortable dodging the mechanics, go ahead and EAT that Yin-and-Yang vuln stack! only do this if it wont cost you your life, but i found the raid damage is not high enough to put you in danger (AS LONG AS you dodge every mechanic while having the vuln).
- Big Chungus is a cheeky c*nt. dont let his fists scare you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

Also, I find the "in or out" mechanic balances out the ranged vs melee privilege.

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*interrupts cast and runs in the donut AOE then runs out as a RDM*
Oh you shit snake I hate you.

Yeah I agree. While different in practice, it can all be brought down to the same conclusion. DPS need to analyse each fight to work on their uptime.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dzian

To be honest I'd happily see them all scrapped. Its really not interesting. Especially when you can typically do them all with 1 step here and 1 step there..

If they scrapped them entirely I'd probably play and enjoy monk a hell of a lot more personally..

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I agree, been around since ARR and these days i barely care about hitting them.

To me a lot of fights are designed acting like positionals do not exist. So my take is stop desgining fights like that or change positionals stuff again, like limiting them to last move in a combo, with it only effecting one combo of a job.