Dragon Sight change - Just remove positionals already

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Originally Posted by Taranok

If anything, all you have done is made my point for me.

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- Positionals never stood in the way of any Fight design being made, ever
Zero points presented to disprove it. Showing what non-positional fights offer? doesn't disprove positionals existence holding back anything. Fights are designed around reaching the boss not around hitting all positionals. Makes claiming that they restrain anything quite bold. Not being able to hit all positionals doesn't make a Fight bad, it just means players b*tch over missing optional decimals that should be viewed as means to optimize - not the bar to clear a fight.

- Never have I stated to like Giant-Hitboxes
Liking aspects of EW/XIV doesn't mean I advocate for a game to be worse ( how did you get to that out of all of this? ) Ironic, as I don't support giant-hitboxes vs overhyping Wall-bosses that have the biggest hitboxes of them all. The " spoon-feeding-words " attempt was Cute.

• I focus on what I find Fun - regardless of Design...
• You focus on the Designs - regardless of others Fun...

Notice? I critique the game, but I ain't knocking your fun... Complexly designed fights doesn't by default translate to a interesting fun engagement. You may pick apart every example I named based on design, it doesn't take away that the once I happen to find interesting? more likely have have positionals. I named some EW fights because it's recent.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

Endwalker has created literally the worst fights this game has seen since Gordias, period.

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For someone championing fight designs, mocking ARR's Titan EX and E4S? That's your hill to /playdead on. I won't defend XIV's flaws... but, " DSR " is regarded as the best Ultimate by plenty. Vexes me to see a Heaven's Legend glaze over DSR...

- Fun remains subjective
As are players who want to disprove the values of positionals that others value when they don't play Melee themselves in this expansion... ( That sound like someone you know? ) Deletion of Non-Positional fights was never my stance. GL making it seem like that's my angle. Devaluation of Positionals is the direction we're heading, which truly adds nothing to the game.

- Better fights or mechanics are never promised...
Show me this " Amazing Improvement in Jobs " to replace positionals, and then I'll entertain the idea. Yet this imbecilic mindset... that we should give up Job features of any kind in exchange for the empty promise that Square will deliver better fights & mechs? Is incomprehensible. It's also a endless rabbit hole, as positional removal? is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to " any Job features we can come-up with as standing in the way of better fight designs to be discarded next ".

https://i.ibb.co/jLr7CPX/921907529137668147.webp

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Originally Posted by Ransu

P2S straight up would not work if you had to do positionals and it was one of the more fun/unique fights that tier. Players would lose their collective shit trying to do positionals on that fight because it would essentially be impossible to even complete half your positionals.

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I will admit, I have no personal experience in P2S, so what I have to say is completely subjective. However, I did watch a video from a SAM PoV and there were plenty of times the SAM was sat somewhere with no mechanics going on. Obviously, they had pre-positioned for the next mechanic, but there was no reason they couldn't have been at the prime positional position and then head to where they needed to go for the mechanic.

There is also the potential that a different strat could be made, one which tries to keep the positional uptime as high as possible. Again, since I have no personal experience in the fight, I'm not going to speculate too much on how that would go about.

However, just taking one boss and saying this fight wouldn't work with positionals does not mean that you have to suddenly get rid of all positionals. Going from a different angle, if there was a fight that had casters struggle, or even make it impossible to keep casting continuously, would that fight then be justification for removing cast times? I can confidently say noone would make that connection, however, this is the claim being made here. One fight makes it a bit harder to hit positionals, therefore positionals are bad and must go.

Now, again, there is no reason you couldn't have a whole suite of melee with differing levels of positionals, yes, even one without any positionals. Is this something you would be against?

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Originally Posted by Aco505

Plenty of them. Fitting a non-damaging oGCD during even-minute bursts can be difficult, more so when TN has to be used in a specific GCD. It's not impossible but more often than not something will be moved out of buffs, especially as the fight progresses due to GSK drift. There's also the fact that STD is always a single weave and that Life Surge may be used once or twice depending on timing, although the value of a 5th positional LS is not that important.

The change is mostly QoL for those situations, but a lowered skill ceiling in fights where it wasn't needed. I think it's a band-aid before 7.0, where they'll probably remove some positionals from the job and I wish they didn't but we'll see.

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I can see where you made that connection, however, that wasn't the question I intended to ask. What I was implying was, are there situations where you NEED to use True North and you could not just do the positionals as normal and if so, how frequently does it come up? If one of the potential issues is caused by the party buff ranges, does the increase in the range in 6.4 then alleviate that issue?

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

I can see where you made that connection, however, that wasn't the question I intended to ask. What I was implying was, are there situations where you NEED to use True North and you could not just do the positionals as normal and if so, how frequently does it come up? If one of the potential issues is caused by the party buff ranges, does the increase in the range in 6.4 then alleviate that issue?

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I believe I replied to your question: it depends on the fight. Party buff ranges have nothing to do with it though, only the Dragon Sight change.

DRG's GCD string lasts 25s without any SkS, this means that your burst is always going to start and finish at different GCDs in full uptime, because those happen every 60s and 120s and these are not multiples of 25s.

True North will cover the next four GCDs and 50% of DRG's GCDs are positionals. The GCD string looks as follows: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 1 - 6 - 7 - 5 - 4. The positionals are those marked in bold.

With this in mind, in even-minute bursts your damage oGCDs and TN (or any other non-damaging oGCD) may clash depending on the fight at level 90:

1. In some cases, you can fit everything just fine: Act 4 of P4-2S.

2. In others you may be able to fix it in some way: P3S before the add phase, it required you to do a triple weave but didn't cost you anything if playing properly.

3. Finally, in some other situations it was borderline impossible without putting something out of buffs (i.e. 15s duration ones such as BL): P5S if bursting during the Double Rush mechanic. In this case it's due to not being able to double weave all the way throughout the dashes and because of having to press an additional oGCD (Arm's Length).

So the DS change helps with situations like 3 but reduces the skill ceiling required to do 1 and 2 although there can be other examples similar to Act 4 that would be way better with this change. For instance, it's quite helpful in Zurvan Unreal.

Speaking of P4-2S, getting all the positionals was RNG based as you often had to use two TN in Act 4, which was immediately followed by Finale, a mechanic in which you would lose positionals often due to the boss facing random directions and you getting a random clock position in the arena immediately afterwards. Therefore, the DS change would have solved that problem there, for instance.

If you do uptime BJCC in TEA, having this DS change makes it more lenient but reduces the skill ceiling, as it's possible to hit every single positional there without killing anyone if playing properly, even if you're the DPS getting the first thunder debuff. And this is as DRG, whose number of positionals goes up by one in 2-target situations, or 60% of the GCD string.

Any other situation (e.g. normal uptime fights like P6S) will probably not have this problem and you can greed positionals just fine while saving TN uses for mechanics in which you cannot greed normally such as Cachexia.

No. Play ranged, caster, or tank. Enough with removing stuff. Add something for once, for God's sake.

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Originally Posted by Tetsujin

No. Play ranged, caster, or tank. Enough with removing stuff. Add something for once, for God's sake.

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You know they've added other mechanics to DRG over the last 10 years that have nothing to do with positionals right?

Things that have actually added layers to the gameplay of DRG. Meanwhile they have consistently been removing positionals over YEARS of playing, or adding the abilities to remove them.

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This isn't a new idea, the devs are doing it themselves. Why keep some archaic game design around that added to the game during ARR but are effectively pointless now in multiple forms of content AND when it becomes "mechanically difficult" to do in a fight you are given (now multiple) skills to IGNORE positionals and removing that aspect of the mechanics. Any other time when they aren't an issue to perform they are brain dead move left/right a mm and press your buttons. Which again, I'm not saying it's "easy" to hit 100% positionals all the time but the entire point of those skills are to make it so you don't have to.....

And again, the developers are not only designing ENTIRE pieces of content devoid of positional requirements but also fights where they aren't needed individually.

It is such a stupid hill to die on 10 years into the game's life if anyone truly think they add any value to the job compared to it's actual job skills evolution since ARR. You know the ACTUAL MECHANICS of the job.

If you think you are some big brain skill level cause you hit Chaos Thrust from the rear compared to hitting True North > Chaos Thrust from anywhere you need to play more games.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

If you think you are some big brain skill level cause you hit Chaos Thrust from the rear compared to hitting True North > Chaos Thrust from anywhere you need to play more games.

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- Says the person having played this for 10 years...
Standing still for equal DPS performance = Boring. Encourage Laziness. Positional removal deletes optional optimization. Easy to execute surface level, harder when doing it all the time everywhere. Encouraging DPS plus for movement is a plus. Standing still a lot is for casters, it's available if u wanna play it.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

You know they've added other mechanics to DRG over the last 10 years that have nothing to do with positionals right? / Things that have actually added layers to the gameplay of DRG.

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- What Square has done is homogenize our Jobs
Streamlining Job gameplay down to a handful of braincell requirements to play. Unless the 2 min meta is what you think is the pinnacle of Job gameplay. Encouraging Square to homogenize our Jobs more for nothing in return is just moronic, as is your assumption of players hitting their positionals and accusing them of feeling superior over you. Does this indicate that you can't hit even over half yours in normal raids post-DRG changes? Well... not my DPS loss.

- Once positionals are removed, and jobs are not improved?
It would not surprise me... if you lot who support any ounce of simplifying anything Job-wise? will double down... to request Square to remove even more under this false pretense to improve the jobs. Now there's more room for more layers and depth... riiiiight. It would not suprise me one bit =u=; but I guess we'll wait and see right. I'd like to be proven wrong that they are not making our jobs dumber.

I'm surprised at the number of posters advocating for removal of positionals and combos on melee who don't actually main melee in the first place. These are going to be the same sorts of people who will invariably turn around and demand dps nerfs to melee on the basis of 'role difficulty' if and when such changes are implemented. We know that you're eyeing that M2 spot, but it's not yours, sorry. You already have R1 and R2.

If you want to instead make threads advocating for all spells being instant cast, given that casters pretty much are now ranged dps in all but name and special privileges anyways, you will have our collective support. Let people who enjoy melee enjoy melee. Thanks.

Positionals aren't the real problem anyway, it's that they're tied to the target rather than the player.

This makes them pointless gameplay in basically all solo content that doesn't just give up on the concept entirely (eg, Deep Dungeon, Bozja, etc), which is a pretty weird look to present to new players for so much of their initial experience.

It also makes positionals exasperating rather than fun in situations where targets spin their facing randomly, strats encourage stacking on a boss's face, Tanks that aren't trained properly, and so on.

This makes Positionals a fundamentally over-specialised design that's at odds with the rest of the game, and an archaic relic from a time when the game was much simpler and slower, and needed extra mechanical convolution to zest the rotational experience. Now, they're just legacy design bloat that people threatened by change continue to cling to as one of their 100s of hills they like to histrionically die upon.

That said, I think very few people ever actually had a problem with the basic concept of positionals — shifting a few millimeters left or right for big juicy potency gains is not exactly arduous.

Instead, what causes "Positional Hate" is that people feel like hundreds of factors outside of their actual control cause them to lose out on the mechanic. It feels helpless to most players, and so they react with hostility to the entire concept.

If positionals were tied to the player rather than the target, I don't think there would be any real backlash against them — ie, if for example you gained potency bonuses for not standing in the same location as the previous Weaponskill. Same active style, but now decoupled from encounter design, and also actually usable when going through the game's solo journey.

i never understood some of you who seem to be so in love with positionals cause personally it kinda gets on my nerves in fights like the new EX when i have to waste true north charges on the boss spinning because it lines up perfectly with my gcd. other than cases like this the truth is positionals are easy and the one time they aren't it's just annoying and you either press TN (very hard) or eat the potency loss.

there should be and are more interesting things about playing melee and positionals aren't one of them.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm surprised at the number of posters advocating for removal of positionals and combos on melee who don't actually main melee in the first place. These are going to be the same sorts of people who will invariably turn around and demand dps nerfs to melee on the basis of 'role difficulty' if and when such changes are implemented. We know that you're eyeing that M2 spot, but it's not yours, sorry. You already have R1 and R2.

If you want to instead make threads advocating for all spells being instant cast, given that casters pretty much are now ranged dps in all but name and special privileges anyways, you will have our collective support. Let people who enjoy melee enjoy melee. Thanks.

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I've been a melee main since ARR. I literally only played BLM last tier and I'm back to melee this tier to try out ninja because I basically refuse to go back to SAM until I see what they do with it in 7.0.

In ARR I thought they were were kind of neat, especially with MNK, but I was over the entire design pretty quickly. I'm at the point where I don't care if they stay or go because eventually to me they became so mundane that they are basically second nature and pretty automatic and I've watched boss fights get more and more static over time which is clearly due to the positionals. If they stay, whatever nothing changes for me and I'll still parse in the 80's and sometimes 90's. If they go, great, maybe we'll get less static boss fights and more interesting ones like P2S or Endsinger, so yes I generally lean in favor of them being removed because overall I see them to be pretty pointless because they don't add anything to the game. Boss circles going back to being small and having heavy movement forcing melee out of range of the boss and making me find ways to maintain my rotation in that manner is WAY more interesting to me than stepping 1inch to the left or right.

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Originally Posted by Elena_Farron

i never understood some of you who seem to be so in love with positionals cause personally it kinda gets on my nerves in fights like the new EX when i have to waste true north charges on the boss spinning because it lines up perfectly with my gcd. other than cases like this the truth is positionals are easy and the one time they aren't it's just annoying and you either press TN (very hard) or eat the potency loss.

there should be and are more interesting things about playing melee and positionals aren't one of them.

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- Difficulty remains subjective
What's easy to you can be hard for another. I never understood this love for removing something on the basis that it's easy. Cause then I can suggest to remove anything that anyone finds that easy to do, making it a flawed argument point.

- Parsers have an allergy to anything RNG
Positionals inlc. due to rotating bosses. A parsing problem is not the bar to set to clear a fight. Though anything that stands in the way of a perfect upload is deemed a nuance right? LBing/Missing GCDs/perfect KT/specially fellow players those are like so the worst... ( sarcasm ). Also love the bravado of posters claiming positionals to be that easy when even the top parsers upload logs missing them, unless you lot claim to be better then even them? I remain a bit more impressed with someone landing them all on the hardest fights vs someone who doesn't. ( any 100% positional Rank 1 DSR enjoyers in this thread? ) Unless that's a crazy take.

- What has Square removed recently to return depth in Endwalker?
SMN Rework? Pre-Lobotomized RPR? Any Mug-change enjoyers in this thread? the 2 min meta? The existence of positionals doesn't disprove preventing any fight designs ( Like Endsinger/P2S etc which I found boring... ) ever being created. Not a fan of them, but I don't mind them existing. Yet every fight design now has gigantic hitboxes. Where is this improvement y'all are talkin about after all the homogenizing? I can't even get my " Kaiten " back. Idk what this unfound faith is in Square that you all have to deliver us depth/flavor/nuance of any kind after they remove anything, but pls pass the bong...

- I'm simply against anything that simplifies the game further
I prefer drawing a line somewhere vs nowhere. If you not gone draw it anywhere? just make the game Autowalk and turn all jobs into a 1 button rotation Jo. Cause encouraging Square to keep removing more in exchange for apparently nothing? that seems to have been working out so well so far... chefs kiss, mhm ( obviously )

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

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Idk what you are wafflin about because i didn't really say anything about parsing. Though i'm glad you mentioned the ludicrously sized hitboxes this expansion like the person before you, because i think that's what was much more interesting and skillful about playing melee than shimmying a little bit for some potency.

I actually think that Square Enix doesn't design encounters with positionals in mind at all, considering they like to make you run circles around bosses, use random movement patterns, or stand in front of their face for extended periods, which makes it feel a bit silly when you are pressing true north because it's clearly a bandaid fix for mechanics where Square Enix simply doesn't care whether you may hit your positional or not. I don't see how this is somehow a way of skill expression because personally it doesn't feel like it.

Honestly idk if you are serious considering you haven't even played melees other than SAM with it being your only job at 90, let alone cleared a single Ultimate. Though I do have TOP clears, etc. with 100% positionals hit.

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Originally Posted by Elena_Farron

Honestly idk if you are serious considering you haven't even played melees other than SAM with it being your only job at 90, let alone cleared a single Ultimate. Though I do have TOP clears, etc. with 100% positionals hit.

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Am actually pretty serious regarding my " Fun ", unless having fun is irrelevant in a... " Game "...

Tried most jobs on EU, fell in love with SAM and started playing on NA as only SAM. Got DPS shamed, then parse shamed, making me want to practice and get better gear for more DPS. Only to be Log shamed ( by a certain Diceroll ) in Savage as a new player... Ever since then I wanted to get better and help players prog/clear Ex/Savage as I see myself in plenty players who struggle there. I'm still bad... but I like to believe I improved a tiny bit since grey performing my first savage tier at E11S. Ultimate was never appealing, even less so with the phrase " Just go play Ultimate " after Kaiten removal. Never liked parsing, never joined a party for it for obvious reasons stated above... most of what I have is aimed for self improvement.

- Being Ultimate Shamed is a new one...
Didn't knew my points are null and void. I thought Positionals aren't limited to... well Ultimate. Also makes it hard to take you serious when you or others avoid tackling my argument points. Discussions with plenty who dislike positionals usually come from being " annoyed " as you put it yourself, by it standing in the way of a perfect parse. Postionals still gets missed by even top players. Landing them took something vs not landing them all.

- What has Square removed recently to improve Job depth?
Nothing. Yet players champion the idea to encourage Square to homogonize anything and that we should accept all degree of streamlining in exchange for something better, that never came. My SAM got simplified six-fold ( I'm losing count... ) I'm still waiting. Then Kaiten removal, and still nothing!

- I want more job depth, but pls Square keep simplifying the jobs
Like... How are we surprised that we are not getting Job improvements in the form of complexity/depth/layer/flavor/nuances when all we do is tout that we should accept more simplifications to our gameplay? Then why stop at positionals? remove gauges / delete our resources / erase cast bars / double our melee range / create hitboxes the size of our entire arena, we're basically halfway there in some fights. Positionals are not the pinnacle of gameplay no...

Its about drawing the line " Somewhere " vs " Nowhere ". Cause as far as I can tell? you lot draw the line at " Nowhere " regarding Job designs, Ultimate raider or not.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

Positionals aren't the real problem anyway, it's that they're tied to the target rather than the player.

This makes them pointless gameplay in basically all solo content that doesn't just give up on the concept entirely (eg, Deep Dungeon, Bozja, etc), which is a pretty weird look to present to new players for so much of their initial experience.

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I don't quite get this idea. I leveled as Monk and still got most of my positionals even when tanking / doing solo content.

It's gimmicky due to the XIV-traditional lack of polish / disconnect between the mob facing shown and the facing noted by the server, sure, but it's not as if it's so unintuitive as to never be engaged with outside of group content.

The conflict comes simply upon tanking while another melee is fighting the same target (see Pharos Sirius pre-nerf when tanks would throw a hissy fit at getting it for their roulette and refuse to budge), which then gets a little complicated, but was also technically doable.

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If positionals were tied to the player rather than the target, I don't think there would be any real backlash against them — ie, if for example you gained potency bonuses for not standing in the same location as the previous Weaponskill. Same active style, but now decoupled from encounter design, and also actually usable when going through the game's solo journey.

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That's really not the same thing, though. The idea is that it's supposed to be contextual, not just an arbitrary requirement to walk one step left or right. The two only match up in the dullest possible contexts for positionals (static fights, which have been more the norm without positional bosses than with them).

And if it were just a bit more polished, be that by leniency (say, double-checking position in rapid succession and taking either success of the two) and/or adjustments to mob/boss spins (which are presently and have been traditionally jank af), etc., it'd be fine. Despite slower/clunkier movement in 1.x, positionals were easier to land by the simple fact that most mobs couldn't spin like tops.

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

- Says the person having played this for 10 years...

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Surely you aren't trying to take a dig at me for playing THIS game for 10 years, as if I somehow haven't personally played through countless other games to prove my point...

Anyone who has played a fighting game or action game would surely agree that positionals are the lowest of low in terms of any kind of "skill" requirement. And again to be clear I am not talking about the situations where mechanically it matters, because we are given skills to remove that factor at the cost of having to press an extra oGCD, wow. Which is why I do not understand the people who think it's some complex gameplay that adds to the job identity, it's nothing and is removed where it even has the slightest difficulty.

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

Standing still for equal DPS performance = Boring. Encourage Laziness. Positional removal deletes optional optimization. Easy to execute surface level, harder when doing it all the time everywhere. Encouraging DPS plus for movement is a plus. Standing still a lot is for casters, it's available if u wanna play it.

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Again, the game could just NOT be boring because of the mechanics of the fights... Or they could add more layers to the job itself that isn't positionals, as in something more unique. Just like the job has evolved beyond positional requirements over the last 10 years to make it more interesting. In ARR yes positionals added something because there was NOTHING. That isn't the case now and hopefully isn't in the future. They already said it was getting a rework and just the fact that every expansion adds something new means it should happen again.

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

[B]- What Square has done is homogenize our Jobs
Streamlining Job gameplay down to a handful of braincell requirements to play. Unless the 2 min meta is what you think is the pinnacle of Job gameplay. Encouraging Square to homogenize our Jobs more for nothing in return is just moronic, as is your assumption of players hitting their positionals and accusing them of feeling superior over you. Does this indicate that you can't hit even over half yours in normal raids post-DRG changes? Well... not my DPS loss.

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I didn't say anything about homogenizing. Positionals are NOT unique to Dragoon to begin with. DRG has it's own job mechanics and could get other stuff in return.

For example:
- They gave us Blood of the Dragon, which changed our combos/buffs, and had Geirskogul.
- They added Mirage Dive, Dragon Sight, and Nastrond which brought some buff and an extra layer of gameplay with getting eyes for Nastrond as part of the "Life Cycle"
- Shadowbringers were more or less core changes besides the new stuff.
- Then we got Wyrmwind Thrust which was another layer of building mechanics.

So they could just as easily add something unique again, which they likely would...

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

[B]- Once positionals are removed, and jobs are not improved?
It would not surprise me... if you lot who support any ounce of simplifying anything Job-wise? will double down... to request Square to remove even more under this false pretense to improve the jobs. Now there's more room for more layers and depth... riiiiight. It would not suprise me one bit =u=; but I guess we'll wait and see right. I'd like to be proven wrong that they are not making our jobs dumber.

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When has this ever happened though? They always add something new because they would be stupid not to. Positonals are OLD and not unique to the job.

Are you someone who thinks all the changes to Blood of the Dragon makes the job inherently worse/less fun to play? Before you had to maintain the timer which ended up becoming pretty strict. Then they increased the timer (QoL) which made it a lot easier to maintain. Then they outright removed the timer (QoL) and now you don't have to worry about it, it's just built into the job. I imagine a lot of people saw these as welcome changes since they were just quality of life upgrades.

How bout when they changed Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw to not be random? Were you upset about that? Did that really remove the "skill" required to play the job?

I think a lot of people would agree that Dragoon as it is now was already in a good place in terms of playability and it didn't make sense when they were talking about a "rework", more so one that now involves an entire expansion of changes. Which means all the changes that HAVE happened put it where it is now...


The other thing I'll touch on is the Samurai Kaiten change which I think was/is overblown (of course). There is another perfect example of the same situation, which was Dark Knight using Dark Arts. That was beyond annoying, and if you somehow think fixing it removed some complexity or playability of the job you must like spamming the same skill for some reason. Kaiten was/is the exact same thing. Makes no sense to me.

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Monk is another one, there was a 40 page post about MNK positionals in 6.0. If your "job identity" is based around positionals in people's head then it's not well designed or unique at all since other jobs had/have them. Add to the fact that even beyond what DRG got with Dragon Sight, they had Riddle of Earth with 3 charges to remove positionals anyway before all the other changes. Which again, are the devs themselves removing the positional requirement WITHIN the job that people seem to somehow tag as its identity, and that was more than DRG.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

Again, the game could just NOT be boring because of the mechanics of the fights...

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Sure. They're wholly able to do that. Even now. With positionals. The two are wholly separate. Never has the inclusion of positionals constrained boss design.

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I didn't say anything about homogenizing. Positionals are NOT unique to Dragoon to begin with.

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Tell me, which is more homogenizing? A sub-role having certain things in common between its member jobs, or there being no distinguishing features between sub-roles to begin with?

Let's say we remove cast times from casters because they're "just DPS anyways"? Surely that wouldn't be homogenizing, either? For each among RDM, SMN, BLM, and BLU... another job has cast times anyways, after all.
/s

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The other thing I'll touch on is the Samurai Kaiten change which I think was/is overblown (of course). There is another perfect example of the same situation, which was Dark Knight using Dark Arts.

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But they weren't the same situation.

With the Endwalker changes and removal of Kaiten, Kenki degraded from a gauge that required a degree of actual preemptive margining and had multiple spenders (even excluding situationals), to effectively charges of just the single non-situational spender (Shinten, in place of DA).

They were distinct, in large part because of Kaiten, right up until Kaiten was removed.

Was Kaiten the only thing making that difference? Of course not. Removing the 50-gauge cost from Senei/Guren was also a large part of that, as was doubling the cooldown of Ikishouten. But Kaiten was the final straw there, as the only other margining left is both situational and too modest to actually require any forethought.

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Originally Posted by PotatoTree

Unironically keep positionals and remove True North, and make the boss hit box small again. Make melee fun again instead of the current snooze fest.

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That'd be kind of a fun take. Remove true north for every melee aside from monk. Other melee would need to figure out semi-unique rotations if they want all positionals but monk is already really nice and freeform for any fight (thank god too because I'd be crying for uptime without six sided star AND no ranged attack filler).

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Originally Posted by ataren3

That'd be kind of a fun take. Remove true north for every melee aside from monk. Other melee would need to figure out semi-unique rotations if they want all positionals but monk is already really nice and freeform for any fight (thank god too because I'd be crying for uptime without six sided star AND no ranged attack filler).

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MNK is no longer the positional job it used to be, so it wouldn't make sense for it to keep TN but DRG, which has 50% of its GCDs being positionals.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

Monk is another one, there was a 40 page post about MNK positionals in 6.0. If your "job identity" is based around positionals in people's head then it's not well designed or unique at all since other jobs had/have them. Add to the fact that even beyond what DRG got with Dragon Sight, they had Riddle of Earth with 3 charges to remove positionals anyway before all the other changes. Which again, are the devs themselves removing the positional requirement WITHIN the job that people seem to somehow tag as its identity, and that was more than DRG.

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just so you know, people who didn't play monk because of positionals still don't play it now. removing 4/6 of them did absolutely nothing to "improve" the job.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

just so you know, people who didn't play monk because of positionals still don't play it now. removing 4/6 of them did absolutely nothing to "improve" the job.

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Aye. Nor were the former greater number of positionals incompatible with the new Blitz system. We could easily have had both.

The only real competitor with Blitz was the pressure of alternative uses of Perfect Balance, such as for the likes of Stormblood TK rotations. Reducing it from 5 to 3 hits was fine for either system (technically even better for GL than the less frequent 5-hit ability was). And even then, a "use special move based on your last 3 skills" could easily have worked alongside GL.

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Originally Posted by Aco505

MNK is no longer the positional job it used to be, so it wouldn't make sense for it to keep TN but DRG, which has 50% of its GCDs being positionals.

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Just an example. I know shadowbringers monk was absolutely ridiculous with positionals but it sort of made sense to me that the "punchy" class relied on hitting the opponent with the proper positioning did good damage. I'd actually like it if monk had a little more positionals than we do right now just not as insane as it used to be.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

Anyone who has played a fighting game or action game would surely agree that positionals are the lowest of low in terms of any kind of "skill" requirement.

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What are you smoking? Your position in relation to your opponent/s is a very high level skill to have, especially in fighting games. Knowing your position relative to your opponent is crucial in knowing what you can do, what they can do and as a result, try and predict what they will do to give yourself the advantage. Whilst it is not as crucial in action games, in fighting games, it is absolutely a high level skill that takes a long time to master.

There is one crucial thing that plays into fighting games in regards to your position, and that is anticipation, where/what do you think your opponent is going to go and putting yourself in a spot to best utilise that. The same goes for FFXIV. You need to anticipate where you need to stand before the boss moves. If you need to go clockwise to hit the rear, but you know the boss is about to turn to do a mechanic, go anti-clockwise instead. Encounters are fixed, you know what is coming, so there is no reason you cannot anticipate where the boss is going to be and adjust accordingly, especially in fixed groups where you know where everyone is going to be. it is this skill that I believe most are not playing into when playing melee. They think where they need to go at the time rather than anticipating where they need to go in the future. This is why people like positionals and why it is rewarding to hit them.

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Originally Posted by ataren3

Just an example. I know shadowbringers monk was absolutely ridiculous with positionals but it sort of made sense to me that the "punchy" class relied on hitting the opponent with the proper positioning did good damage. I'd actually like it if monk had a little more positionals than we do right now just not as insane as it used to be.

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It was originally only going to lose 2 positionals if you look at the media tour info, IIRC it was Raptor form (Twins Snakes/True Strike) but they changed it since then (along with alot of other things across multiple jobs).

The whole reason I and many (manily me) were so vocal about MNK having to many positionals...was because it was a shallow attempt at gameplay. It DID make sense in ARR and Heavensward...but it quickly outgrew it's "identity" in Stormblood and Shadowbringers with Endwalker being the nail in the coffin to make room for Blitz (which is WAY better then 4 positionals). Raid content was main cause, Positionals contributed to the problem. Positionals were just the tip of the iceberg for MNK. It seemed nothing endgame was even designed thinking of MNK at all (looking at you shadowbringers anatman, tornado kick, Six Sided Star -- I don't think ANYONE used these skills in shadowbringers).

With the inclusion of True North and eventually 3 charges of Riddle of Earth (which mind you is the most bastardized skill in the game going through I think 5 revisions, to then ultimately be deleted...tells me a lot about how MNK no longer fit the mold come Endwalker)

Truth is... MNK was a round peg....trying to fit in a square hole since Stormblood. And by Shadowbringers the damage was done. By then the players associated that job with "positional" gameplay...and it came with a lot of baggage. Most "elitist" players just log shamed and laughed at me for not being goku level MNK and missing a postionals. Truth is I didn't care...I loved MNK and being the speedy punchy class because... IT WAS FUN! Positionals be damed! I truly felt bad for those that loved it for that one reason, part of me felt bad that they lost something so I could gain some semblance of a more streamlined job.

I constantly go back to the analogy "The ship of Theseus". MNK was designed with positionals in mind back in ARR, of which worked back then. The years seemed to just add things to the job that no longer supported what it was designed to be...the positional job, and it just became this mess of design choices that NOTHING complimented the other. As other jobs were introduced, and better design choices made for those jobs respectively, and non of which given to mnk...it's fate was sealed. MNK was shadow of it's former self, and just a train wreck to play. It had lost it's focus.

MNKs fate was a result of the raid content department NOT communicating with the job design department for nearly 9 years. I would bet dollars to donuts that the dev team will NEVER go back to that type of job design as long as this quest for perfect endgame balance continues.

Blitz system is new and interesting system doesn't require to much thought. Just do your normal rotation and you are granted a large damage bonus, and it's always fun to build up blitz to then unleash that phantom rush. Super satisfying! Way better then using all your Greased Lightning for a Tornado Kick, to then stunt your DPS for 9 GCD's in Shadowbringers. I can't wait to see the additions to Blitz come 7.0.

Will DRG go the same route? Will it become more streamlined for the sake of new and interesting designs? Who knows, but I can't wait to see the changes to DRG...this Dragon Sight is a step in the right direction. And with jobs having less and less positionals more and more....I would NOT be surprised if they finally just got the axe.

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Originally Posted by Sqwall

The whole reason I and many (manily me) were so vocal about MNK having to many positionals...was because it was a shallow attempt at gameplay. ...

With the inclusion of True North and eventually 3 charges of Riddle of Earth...

Truth is... MNK was a round peg....trying to fit in a square hole since Stormblood. And by Shadowbringers the damage was done. ...

I constantly go back to the analogy "The ship of Theseus". ...

MNKs fate was a result of the raid content department ...

Blitz system is new and interesting system doesn't require to much thought....

Will DRG go the same route? ....

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Here is the thing though, there is no reason positionals and Blitzes couldn't co-exist, infact, I would even be fine with the Blitzes being positionless. As for Anatman and SSS and ShB fight designs in general, they didn't inhibit the ability to do positionals, how they hampered Monk was in the upkeep of Greased Lightning, which, in my opinion, WAS an archaic mechanic that was not keeping up with the times. All Monk used to get was different ways to keep GL through longer and longer downtime intervals and so, rather than getting something new, we got more GL maintenance. Come EW when GL is no longer an issue, that is when Blitzes were added. They were no longer shackled to GL and could have more freedom.

As for RoE, the change it give it TN properties was a mistake.

What about losing positionals made Monk more streamlined? I found Monk to be very streamlined with positionals, so I am curious as you why you think it had this effect.

The Ship of Theseus analogy doesn't apply here as that is about replacing a component with the same, newer component and asking the question, if you replace one, 2 maybe a whole section of the boat, you would still call it the same boat, however, if, over time, you replaced everything, is it still the same boat? It looks exactly the same as the original, but there is nothing original about it, so can we call it the same ship? If not, at what point did it stop being the original ship? None of this applies to the state of Monk.

Again, there is no evidence that raid design is being hampered by positionals.

Yes, Blitzes are better than GL by a long shot, doesn't mean positionals had to go though.

As for DRG, I have no idea what they plan and to be honest, I'm not too bothered. It isn't a job I play a lot so i will leave it to the people who DO actually play it to have thoughts on how the want to change it.

However, the question I keep asking over and over has yet to be answered. Why could we NOT have the melees cover the whole spectrum in regards to number of positionals? Have a melee that has none, have some in the middle, have one with loads. Everyone should be satisfied then as there will be a job for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Again, there is no evidence that raid design is being hampered by positionals.

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The evidence is the fight design itself and what the devs can and have accomplished. Specifically, P9S is a very boring, very static fight. P10S is a very dynamic and arguably interesting fight. Having to work around positionals in P9S is tedious and doesn't really have any impact on my DPS outside of the boss randomly rotating because of bad tank movement, but the in/out mechanic with a front/back and several positions to dodge from cracks actually is interesting, especially since you can greed with max melee, but you have to be very careful about it. Everything else? Oh look, I just true north almost every mechanic because it's up. For everything. Woo, such riveting design.

Like, we can argue over split hairs. I'd say P10S is the perfect example of the garbage fight design for casters, but as a melee I've enjoyed it a hell of a lot more while progging than P9S. P1S and P2S, kind of the same thing. 1 was boring (admittedly I was a red mage,) 2 was a lot more interesting.

Nothing about P4S, both phase 1 and 2, individually or collectively, was truly that interesting compared to P2S. Same thing with P8SP1 versus P2. Actually, P8SP1 is arguably one of the worst designed fights since it simultaneously did nothing new or interesting, positionals added nothing to the fight, and it still screwed over casters. We can throw in P7S, but that had a handful of interesting mechanics and, for some reason, the devs put them back to back right at the end of the fight.

Simply put, of all the fights in Endwalker I have done, despite them all being garbage for casters almost entirely, the fights without positionals have all done vastly more interesting things than the fights with positional mechanics. Even if you just look at how often you need to move to handle a mechanic, the required times you have to run around the arena to do something is vastly, vastly greater on fights without positionals.

When the devs have to design fights around melee existing, they assume there can be up to 2 melee DPS, and the devs go out of their way to expect DPS to have a static spot on the corner of the boss, and then design the boss to stay near the middle of the arena, constantly facing north, constantly giving melee these positionals. When freed of this requirement, the devs are allowed to, you know, do interesting things with the boss, like jump around the arena, shape the arena, and in general restrict movement. Which the devs have been doing a lot of in Endwalker.

To me, the boss jumping around is a hell of a lot more interesting than players running across the arena, and they can enable this style of gameplay if the devs remove positionals from the game. Hell, I like coming back to it because it's probably one of the actually best designed fights in the entire game. Neo-Exdeath. Between jumping around the arena, line cleaves between in and out, forced melee downtime, things for ranged DPS to need to do with movement. Even casters being forced to stack and move. It all made for a very well balanced fight for all roles. And, you know, it had no positional requirements.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

The evidence is the fight design itself and what the devs can and have accomplished. Specifically, P9S is a very boring, very static fight. P10S is a very dynamic and arguably interesting fight.

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But, again, in what way does that have to do with positionals? Looking at the results of myriad factors and then saying that all but one point in difference must be irrelevant isn't terribly convincing, especially given that we've had even more intricate fights than P10S that nonetheless had positional and show no signs of having been constrained by them.

We've had positional bosses, for instance "jump around the arena, shape the arena, and in general restrict movement". What we see far less often is non-positional bosses being anywhere but on one side of a massive rectangle, being punchable practically from outer space.

Positionals are okay, but bosses constantly turning in different directions for mechanics is not.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

When the devs have to design fights around melee existing, they assume there can be up to 2 melee DPS, and the devs go out of their way to expect DPS to have a static spot on the corner of the boss, and then design the boss to stay near the middle of the arena, constantly facing north, constantly giving melee these positionals. When freed of this requirement, the devs are allowed to, you know, do interesting things with the boss, like jump around the arena, shape the arena, and in general restrict movement. Which the devs have been doing a lot of in Endwalker.

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Bosses do already jump around the arena, positionals doesn't stop this. Look at the second boss of Aetherfont as an example. If you want to talk about trials, then have you thought that there are other issues with a boss jumping around all the time? One of them being, it's just annoying, positionals or not, if a boss jumps around too much, it is just annoying.

Changing the shape of the arena, P12/P12S1 change the shape of the arena, the boss still has positionals. Changing the arena shape doesn't restrict the use of positionals. The same goes for restricting the arena. It doesn't stop positionals. Plenty of mechanics restrict movement and still have positionals and they aren't hindered by them.

There is also the fact you don't seem to have an issue with bosses that sit on the outside of the arena. You might prefer that fight design, I don't know, however it is worth noting that because the dynamic between boss and arena is different, they have the potential to do different things in the fight. This, again, has nothing to do with positionals.

The only fight you listed that you can even compare to the majority of other fights is P2 and P2S, however, at no point do you say WHY you prefer the fight. What is it about the fight that you like and more importantly, why would positionals make the fight less enjoyable, if you assume it did have them. To be clear, just saying the boss restricts movement to a hollow square therefore positionals are bad isn't a good argument. You can still have positionals in that scenario.

And to touch on True North, I assume you have no issues with Swiftcast, Triplecast and Dualcast as well as the myriad of instant cast spells? Well, these are the caster equivalent to True North, you use them to aid yourself in dealing with mechanics, which is the same as True North allowing you to ignore positionals.

And lastly, noone has answered this question:

Why could we NOT have the melees cover the whole spectrum in regards to number of positionals? Have a melee that has none, have some in the middle, have one with loads. Everyone should be satisfied then as there will be a job for everyone.

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Originally Posted by ataren3

Just an example. I know shadowbringers monk was absolutely ridiculous with positionals but it sort of made sense to me that the "punchy" class relied on hitting the opponent with the proper positioning did good damage. I'd actually like it if monk had a little more positionals than we do right now just not as insane as it used to be.

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Shadowbringers monk was great. The job had a sense of urgency and the continual movement to hit positionals made the job feel even more busy and fast paced. This expansion, with the elimination of greased lightning and that you just sit on the boss's flank except for every three rotations when you move to reapply Demolish, the job is so hollow and boring. Blitzes are a good start to giving the job something more to do, but just playing a ninjutsu style button game every 60 seconds just isn't enough.

I love monk... but I've had a really hard time getting into and enjoying it after how they ruined it this expansion. Dragoon doesn't need to go down this path. The people who have been arguing for the removal of positionals now have multiple melee jobs that barely have to consider them. Dragoon can keep them.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

What are you smoking? Your position in relation to your opponent/s is a very high level skill to have, especially in fighting games. Knowing your position relative to your opponent is crucial in knowing what you can do, what they can do and as a result, try and predict what they will do to give yourself the advantage. Whilst it is not as crucial in action games, in fighting games, it is absolutely a high level skill that takes a long time to master.

There is one crucial thing that plays into fighting games in regards to your position, and that is anticipation, where/what do you think your opponent is going to go and putting yourself in a spot to best utilise that. The same goes for FFXIV. You need to anticipate where you need to stand before the boss moves. If you need to go clockwise to hit the rear, but you know the boss is about to turn to do a mechanic, go anti-clockwise instead. Encounters are fixed, you know what is coming, so there is no reason you cannot anticipate where the boss is going to be and adjust accordingly, especially in fixed groups where you know where everyone is going to be. it is this skill that I believe most are not playing into when playing melee. They think where they need to go at the time rather than anticipating where they need to go in the future. This is why people like positionals and why it is rewarding to hit them.

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Nice job taking what I said out of context, or at least ignoring the context entirely.

Surely you are not about to compare hitting positionals in FFXIV (moving 1mm left/right) to the same thing as footsies or screen spacing in fighting games? I hope you can clearly understand the distinction between the two when I talk about the "skill" required to play these games by comparison, and not taking what I say out of context or misunderstanding it. That would be a terrible look...But yes your explanation would more or less be proving my point if you didn't misunderstand what I was saying. Or at least the reason I was saying it.

You say that it's the same in FFXIV, but it's not. When those situations come up, you literally have buttons to press that let you ignore the situation. Which again, I brought up....Which invalidates the entire point of the positionals as a mechanic being a challenge when the "skill" of performing them is to in fact know when you don't need to do them by pressing a single button.

If anything I would point out how hard fighting games are as perceived by new players and why developers are always so invested in making them easier for more casuals players to get into, which still doesn't account for actual fighting game fundamentals such as spacing...Which is more or less the complete opposite of how FFXIV is perceived, rightfully so, because it's already so welcoming to new players and they are STILL making adjustments so there is less of a skill gap.

The difference in physically/mentally playing a job in FFXIV (NOT the fight mechanics) is nothing compared to learning/playing a fighting game character in terms of execution required.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

hitting positionals in FFXIV (moving 1mm left/right)

When those situations come up, you literally have buttons to press that let you ignore the situation. Which again, I brought up....Which invalidates the entire point of the positionals as a mechanic being a challenge when the "skill" of performing them is to in fact know when you don't need to do them by pressing a single button.

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Originally Posted by zeth07

moving 1mm left/right

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Still waiting for anyone that posts drivel like this to show proof of positional being this simple and boring, come on show 100% positionals done on P9S, P11S, P12S or EX6 fights, nobody has provided any while saying it's easy at the same time yet, they just go dark after asking them or just becomes excuse city.
and no the target dummy is not proof. neither is normal

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Originally Posted by wereotter

but just playing a ninjutsu style button game every 60 seconds just isn't enough.

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Tbf, that's only half the optimization that goes into Blitzes. The actual, original point of Perfect Balance is still alive and well -- more so than ever before, actually, as 3 GCDs on a 40s recast timer is pretty much exactly the sweet spot.

But, agreed that Blitzes should not have, and absolutely did not need to, cost us our greater number of positionals.

Food for thought, though: Those virtually always pairing DK with Twin and Boot with True, per the 'standard' rotation / simplified macrorotation, were already re-positioning little more than now.

PB itself is fine, 2 charges with 3 stacks would have been a feature I would've loved to have in previous iterations of the job. I however don't like how barebones Blitz itself feels in anything that isn't speedkilling.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But, agreed that Blitzes should not have, and absolutely did not need to, cost us our greater number of positionals.

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What had always bothered me about this decision is that I distinctly remember a lot of us MNK players being disappointed by the removal of raptor form positionals in the EW media tour build, but willing to accept it even if it was still unnecessary- only for EW's release to come out of nowhere with the steel chair. Raptor positionals being removed wouldn't have been enough to compromise the job's playstyle, but they felt the need to overcorrect anyway.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

PB itself is fine, 2 charges with 3 stacks would have been a feature I would've loved to have in previous iterations of the job. I however don't like how barebones Blitz itself feels in anything that isn't speedkilling.

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I could agree with that. What I'm satisfied by most is actually the +1 GCD following PB and the impact that it and the 3-GCD PB (4 fluid forms) have on the rotation surrounding those Blitzes.

Personally, I really wanted to see more lengths of Blitzes and/or at least two Blitz options per PB, with Blitzes having synergies with one another that could lead to different branching decision paths of sorts. Would have loved to see Flint Kick stay as just a fast-af burst damage (maybe just after 1 PB GCD) option, Tornado Kick remain even at max level as some alternative, Phantom Rush to be changed to an actual blink-move with i-frames against non-raidwide physical AoEs rather than *just* another identical form of damage, Meteor Stream (with suppression and CC, as redundant as that might typically be), and maybe even getting access to Phantom Flurry / Phantom Kick (w/e the Suzaku channel was called), etc.

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Originally Posted by VentVanitas

What had always bothered me about this decision is that I distinctly remember a lot of us MNK players being disappointed by the removal of raptor form positionals in the EW media tour build, but willing to accept it even if it was still unnecessary- only for EW's release to come out of nowhere with the steel chair. Raptor positionals being removed wouldn't have been enough to compromise the job's playstyle, but they felt the need to overcorrect anyway.

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Yep. I wouldn't have felt too bad if Demolish and True Strike didn't have positionals. True Strike's original positional bonus was worth only 2.5% damage, iirc (was 5% added crit chance), and I could have sworn Demolish started with less of a positional bonus than Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Snap Punch, or obviously Bootshine, and as the seemingly hard-slaps-faces-with-one's-feet DoT... I wouldn't hate to see it lose a positional, especially in a context that'd still have GL (since we'd then be opening with it).

Twin, though? It honestly looks like it's meant to strike kidney and lung together like some manner of 'chi strike', so the flank looked appropriate for it.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But, again, in what way does that have to do with positionals? Looking at the results of myriad factors and then saying that all but one point in difference must be irrelevant isn't terribly convincing, especially given that we've had even more intricate fights than P10S that nonetheless had positional and show no signs of having been constrained by them.

We've had positional bosses, for instance "jump around the arena, shape the arena, and in general restrict movement". What we see far less often is non-positional bosses being anywhere but on one side of a massive rectangle, being punchable practically from outer space.

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When you have positionals, every time a boss has to simply rotate, it makes the experience of playing a class with positionals that much more tedious, annoying, and frustrating. If a boss jumps to the edge of the arena, as seen with Cloud of Darkness Savage (E9S,) it means you cannot get any back positionals, meaning the devs will use mechanics like this less often. It means if you have to shape the arena, melee has to have access to positionals or they will fail at their basic class mechanics.

And, you know, when you have a boss like Nael (T9,) it doesn't completely shut down melee rotations as it did back in ARR.

When you have positional requirements, bosses are severely restricted on things like turning, jumping around, and denying access to specific sides of the boss, but primarily the back. When you lack these requirements, bosses across the board start denying access to specific parts of the arena, especially by forcing melee away from the boss, or jumping from 1 position to a position outside of melee that requires a reaction from the player to follow up on. Admittedly, this is only true if the devs also aren't basically trying to boost melee DPS numbers by specifically catering to melee, as they have been doing in literally all of endwalker.

All of which start fundamentally breaking down once you require melee positionals.

So the only constraint... is that bosses are less likely to jump to the edge of the arena as often if they have positionals?

First... that's hardly worth mentioning, especially in any context with True North. Moreover, they could literally just temporarily guarantee positionals while bosses are moved to areas where only their front can be attacked, removing that 'constraint' entirely.

And no, T9 was not impossible to get positionals on. It wasn't even impossible to maintain the old 10s GL on except during the pre-meteors boss jump. You could land every positional as long as you kept track of the tank's movement relative to where he jumped from and predicted the stack-turns (which, yes, were telegraphed).

You just had to not be bad at doing them / know positionals for what they were, instead of assuming they can only ever be 'one foot left/right' or 'impossible'.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Tbf, that's only half the optimization that goes into Blitzes. The actual, original point of Perfect Balance is still alive and well -- more so than ever before, actually, as 3 GCDs on a 40s recast timer is pretty much exactly the sweet spot.

But, agreed that Blitzes should not have, and absolutely did not need to, cost us our greater number of positionals.

Food for thought, though: Those virtually always pairing DK with Twin and Boot with True, per the 'standard' rotation / simplified macrorotation, were already re-positioning little more than now.

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Except you're not using Perfect Balance every 40 seconds. You use it twice in the 2-minute cooldown and hold it to use it again once in the 60 second cooldown, lining up your blitzes with Riddle of Fire. So even if it feels like it *could* be more engaging to use a blitz, because it stacks and, you're incentivized to hold those big attacks until you can buff the damage.

Old positionals, when every skill had one, you'd have to move back and forth a lot more. Dragon kick, twin snakes, sure you'd pair them, and bootshine with true strike, again you'd pair. But you'd still have to move back and forth to get your bootshine and true strike rear position even if you were finishing it up with a snap punch for your third skill rather than just sitting on the flank now and getting the full potency from bootshine and true strike from the boss's flank. Monk rotation now you can sit on the flank for 8/9 skills only moving to the rear now to reapply demolish.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

So the only constraint... is that bosses are less likely to jump to the edge of the arena as often if they have positionals?

First... that's hardly worth mentioning, especially in any context with True North. Moreover, they could literally just temporarily guarantee positionals while bosses are moved to areas where only their front can be attacked, removing that 'constraint' entirely.

And no, T9 was not impossible to get positionals on. It wasn't even impossible to maintain the old 10s GL on except during the pre-meteors boss jump. You could land every positional as long as you kept track of the tank's movement relative to where he jumped from and predicted the stack-turns (which, yes, were telegraphed).

You just had to not be bad at doing them / know positionals for what they were, instead of assuming they can only ever be 'one foot left/right' or 'impossible'.

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You appear to have completely missed the point of how positionals force the designers to make fight more static. And I literally can't even begin talking to you if you think T9 was anything other than impossible for melee DPS. That fight by itself almost completely killed Dragoon because the fight demanded that most of the party be in X position, take specific mechanics to Y position (usually the back of the boss,) and if you failed a single positional, your entire rotation shut completely down. Dragoons for the most part died out from T9 parties because of how obscenely intolerant that fight was of allowing classes to get positionals.

This is at a time where you had to nail positionals on multiple GCDs in a row or you lost the entire combo. A little under half of all Dragoon GCDs required it. Part of the reason they changed positionals to not break combos was because of how supremely intolerant it was. Hell, it's the reason Raiden Thrust no longer has a positional requirement.

Hell, you even bring up true north, as if trying to emphasize the point I'm trying to make. How many resources, how many restrictions, are placed on the developers to enable melee positionals? From my perspective, it's a hell of a lot more than you're willing to admit.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

You appear to have completely missed the point of how positionals force the designers to make fight more static.

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Because you would have at most a loose correlation of a degree of one thing the developers might otherwise like to do that positionals would be punished by -- the boss moving to past the edge of the arena while still being attackable. That is, if we ignored that we already have fights where the same boss can be positional at some points and non-positional at others.

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And I literally can't even begin talking to you if you think T9 was anything other than impossible for melee DPS.

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And that's according to your... having played since HW? I actually played Monk through T9 and T9S. Again, T9 was not impossible for melee DPS. The worst that can be said for them was that T9 forced one PB-less return from Greased Lightning (which you'd lose at each end of meteor/adds phase). But given that Monk actually pumped back then, it was plenty worth it (especially up until hugely overgearing and blitzing through the fight).

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and if you failed a single positional, your entire rotation shut completely down.

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All you are proving with this is that you clearly did not play the game anywhere around that time.

What you are describing applied solely to two skills in the entire game: Heavy Thrust and Impulse Drive (and only on DRG). Neither are mid-combo, and therefore could not reset your combo; they'd simply delay it by 1 GCD per failure. Back then, a standard rotation would clip Chaos Thrust, so no, your rotation would not somehow "be completely shut down" by repeating a single skill every so often if you screwed up.
Monk did not fail to shift forms nor fail to gain buffs from failing to hit a positional; it just lost potency, identically to now.

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This is at a time where you had to nail positionals on multiple GCDs in a row or you lost the entire combo. A little under half of all Dragoon GCDs required it.

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Please have at least checked a damned gameplay video before commenting on a period of time you haven't played.

Two. Two Dragoon skills required positionals, out of 8 native single-target skills. Out of Heavy Thrust, Impulse Drive, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust, Phlebotomize, True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, and Full Thrust... only those first two had positionals. That's... 25%.

Heck, the next GCD threshold used a loop of that brought the portion of positionals GCDs by rotational frequency down from that 25% to just over 18%.

:: Chaos Thrust didn't gain a positional until it was removed from Impulse Drive. And since only DRG buffs were ever dependent on positionals, it meant those previous sole outliers then worked identically to what we have today.

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Hell, it's the reason Raiden Thrust no longer has a positional requirement.

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Raiden never had a positional requirement. It simply doubled the value of the positional requirement already attached to the final dragon skill of either combo. Though it said it required that both Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw's positionals must succeed in order to generate Raiden Thrust, that effect was actually bugged for the entirety of its lifespan and actually required only the second positional.

We'll never know whether making Raiden Thrust (Draconian Fire) generate independently of the combo-ender's positional was done because (A) they felt it'd make that GCD have too much positionally-dependent potency (despite leaving MNK with ~193 potency every Bootshine tied behind a positional over that period), (B) because they planned to add an additional means of generating Draconian Fire, or simply (C) to save face when they continued to be unable to fix the bug.

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Tl;dr: Please get your facts straight before using parts of the game you clearly never played as if they warranted any part of your conclusions. Also, they don't; if anything, they disprove them.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Except you're not using Perfect Balance every 40 seconds. You use it twice in the 2-minute cooldown and hold it to use it again once in the 60 second cooldown, lining up your blitzes with Riddle of Fire. So even if it feels like it *could* be more engaging to use a blitz, because it stacks and, you're incentivized to hold those big attacks until you can buff the damage.

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I never said otherwise. 12 Form-fluid GCDs per 120s, though, is still considerably more than, say, 5 per 90s. (Old PB didn't grant Formless Fist at its end, while modern PB grants one more form-fluid GCD than its number of stacks.)

On average, one per 10s vs. one per 18s. Moreover, even were they the same average frequency, there's more you can rotationally leverage from a smaller number of fluid GCDs at a time, at greater frequency, than a larger number at a time at lesser frequency.

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Old positionals, when every skill had one, you'd have to move back and forth a lot more.

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That's was my point, though I should have said it more clearly:

Depending on your rotation, non-contextual movement could be very similar to what it is today, because repositioning against, say, a striking dummy is only a matter of the forced moves from flank to rear or from rear to flank, not the number of positionals themselves.

But because fights are NOT actually just "move left one step, move right one step," it made a considerable difference in practice.

If you were using a rotation that was essentially R->F-F-F->R-R->F-F-F-F->R-R-R, etc., the non-contextual repositioning required is surprisingly similar to the current R->A-A-F->A-A-F-A-A-A->R-A-A rotational flow we have today. Though positionals were reduced by two-thirds, repositioning not caused by the target was only reduced by about one-quarter.

Now, if we were still back in Stormblood with its more varied rotations pre-Leaden Fist and slow-downs from TK usage... yeah, then the noncontextual repositioning could be nearer to what you'd expect from the portion of positionals. (Personally, I ran enough SkS to double-Boot/True, so... I often had less forced repositioning between triple TKs than most ShB Monks.)