Positionals

Hello everyone, since the launch of EW in particular I've been finding boss design is heavily unfavorable to melee in general and especially for positionals. The Alliance raids are the number one culprit for this and it gets so frustrating I just stop caring. Either get rid of positionals or change boss design to accommodate it better. Positionals feel outdated and pointless as they typically only give a small potency increase and with the huge hit boxes and constant turning of current boss design it's more of a hassle then anything.

My position on this is that I agree that bosses rotating is frustrating when doing positionals. It is one thing when I can blame the tank for this, but when the game decides to "re-center" the boss and rotate it a lot, it is annoying.

I support positionals only making a minor difference to DPS. The reason for that is because min-maxers, people who truly care about min-maxing, will do them even for the 0.01% gain. But the large amount of people who can't do positionals or other job mechanics well, will not have a huge gap between their performance and that of the min-maxers.

Yes, there should be a gap between good players and bad players, but it's really not healthy for the good players to be doing double or triple the damage. That becomes a balancing nightmare, because then the content will die in 2.5 minutes for some and in 10 minutes for others. I miss stance dancing on tanks, for example, but I couldn't pretend it was healthy for the game for 50% of tanks to do over 20% less damage, probably among all the other differences between them like gearing, rotation competency, materia and food.

It's interesting to see this popping in meleewalker out of all the expansions.

I guess that reducing the rotational importance of positionals, having several charges of true north, making the bosses have hitboxes the size of a city block, make the bosses reposition automatically and increase the number of wall bosses with no positionals isn't enough for some players

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

It's interesting to see this popping in meleewalker out of all the expansions.

I guess that reducing the rotational importance of positionals, having several charges of true north, making the bosses have hitboxes the size of a city block, make the bosses reposition automatically and increase the number of wall bosses with no positionals isn't enough for some players

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This is why I've honestly lost hope for this game to go in any other direction than more dumbing down. When you think it's already at the lowest point something like this shows up, complaining about the last vestigal systems that do not run on auto-pilot.

Or just do what I do, and forget about positionals. Idc if my damage gets lower. If my gameplay gets easier, then so be it

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Originally Posted by avaule

I'd even go so far as to say I wish ranged physical had something similar. Like, when queuing a ranged weaponskill, maybe you could get a potency boost equivalent to a melee positional if you held the button for the right amount of time, like half a second. Give the bowstring a nice little "twang" sound; the gun a beefy report; and the chakrams a hearty "whoosh" when you pull if off. Though, that'd probably mess with double weaving or animation locks or some other detail that my casual self is yet ignorant of.

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How about no D:

Most things in this game are scripted. This includes boss orientation, especially since tanks rarely have to position bosses nowadays. If you can't predict how a boss rotates and moves in a fight, then you probably haven't done it enough. It should be second nature.

Removing positionals on melee is like removing casts on BLM. If they're not willing to simplify the director and producer's favorite job in the name of accessibility, then they have no business touching melee.

Tbh I agree with the removal of them but theres a personal reason, I only just returned to the game recently after getting married and moving country, I joined a dungeon with my husband and was having fun until the tank told me to learn to play because i wqas slowing the whole run down because of positionals, i was like wtfluff you talking about I had completely forgotten about positionals but that one tank then reminded me of why i hated playing melle and this was ina normal dungeon >.>

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Originally Posted by avaule

I'm by no means good at the melee jobs, but I enjoy working with the positionals when I play them. Gives me something to strive for. If I'm having problems with my rotation (not uncommon) or mechanics are going crazy, I can either hit True North or just forget about them. The damage loss doesn't seem that big a deal. I wish there was some sort of audio feedback when you land them so they feel more satisfying. Nothing crazy: just a little extra oomph to the hit.

I'd even go so far as to say I wish ranged physical had something similar. Like, when queuing a ranged weaponskill, maybe you could get a potency boost equivalent to a melee positional if you held the button for the right amount of time, like half a second. Give the bowstring a nice little "twang" sound; the gun a beefy report; and the chakrams a hearty "whoosh" when you pull if off. Though, that'd probably mess with double weaving or animation locks or some other detail that my casual self is yet ignorant of.

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Absolutely hells no...

They just need to reduce wall boss usage and stop putting them everywhere they're always lame when the entire fight is a wall. And learn from crit bosses, working for uptime feels good, hitboxes don't need to be gigantic, nor do they need to be tiny.
As for bosses spinning, that's just something you learn while progging either by pre-positioning or by mapping true north usage.

Missing a positional isn't the world.
Especially in larger group activities like Alliance Raids. The boss will go down anyways and the time it does won't really be noticable if you miss a couple or so.
You still do damage, just not as much but still more than if you didn't hit it at all.

Before I played Melee DPS (played tank from ARR up to Endwalker) the thought of having to position for attacks felt bothersome to me.
But I am having no issues with it at all. In fact it just makes the combat less boring as if I want to perform the best I have to pay attention and stay awake.
That was one thing I didn't really like playing the tank, to always stand still, unless avoiding AoEs.
And for that I always liked fights where there was a lot going on so I had to "dance", as I called it.