Should they remove positionals at this point?

[Khalithar]

I'd be very happy if they removed positionals, it adds a bunch of needless busywork to DPSing as a melee. I'd rather focus on mechanics than having to run to this side for that attack and then that side for this attack, etc.

[Schan]

I'd be very happy if they removed positionals, it adds a bunch of needless busywork to DPSing as a melee. I'd rather focus on mechanics than having to run to this side for that attack and then that side for this attack, etc.

I'm sorry but if that is what you enjoy while playing DPS I would advise you to play ranged physical dps instead. Arguably you get targetted by more mechanics as well so from the tiny insight this post gives me, it seems you should be right at home with ranged physical dps.

Now i'll admit i skimmed over this thread. I personally find positionals both fun and frustrating. The frustration comes mostly from how lately bosses just spin around like crazy; they're massive or they decided to create a insta death zone in said areas you need to land your positional. I guess they're not planning to change that considering how they're buffing damage to skills when not landing positionals and reducing True North's cooldown.

now for the fun part. it makes melees have a certain flow to them and I enjoy that in the classes. I personally enjoy having to pay attention to mechanics while figuring out how to squeeze that sneaky positional. For some people that is rewarding.

IMO they should stay. I do agree however that we need better visibility regarding landing or missing our positionals.

[Khalithar]

I'm sorry but if that is what you enjoy while playing DPS I would advise you to play ranged physical dps instead. Arguably you get targetted by more mechanics as well so from the tiny insight this post gives me, it seems you should be right at home with ranged physical dps.

I almost exclusively play tank. Positionals don't matter to me *personally* but when I'm having to move a boss (I raid savage the bosses are movement heavy) or when the party has to move to stay alive, I see the melee in my raid and in various group content unable to land their positionals while we're doing what we need to as a requirement for staying alive.

You say you like positionals and I do not, but since you wanted me to elaborate more let me tell you what *I* see when it comes to positionals which you sort of touched on yourself but I'll take it a step further.

The frustration comes mostly from how lately bosses just spin around like crazy; they're massive or they decided to create a insta death zone in said areas you need to land your positional.

What I see when it comes to the combination of positionals and mechanics is the melee DPS jobs (sam, mnk, drg, nin) being penalized and missing out on dps through absolutely no fault of their own. Now granted they do when they have to run outside of a hitbox to survive a mechanic but when melee are in melee range doing mechanics correctly, there is no reason why they should suffer a dps loss/penalty simply because some designer made some arbitrary inane requirement where you have to be in just the right spot for full damage because it adds "depth." You may like it, but I consider it utterly asinine. A melee in melee range that is able to stay in melee range and does their rotation correctly while doing movement heavy mechanics correctly, should never receive a nonsensical dps penalty because they weren't standing in the "correct" place, true north notwithstanding.

Edit: Let me just add though, that based on the design decisions we've seen so far, I have a feeling that positionals are on the way out or may be reduced to fewer attacks with that sort of necessity.

[m3eansean]

Some of the newer savage/extreme raids have mechanics that require a melee dps to miss out on positional potencies and true north has too slow of a cool down to cover all of those instances.

If they are set on keeping positionals, I would like the true north CD reduced to 15s to make it fair for the melee's in content like this. More often than not, my team mates will opt to run as ranged dps on these fights so positional mechanics can be ignored, we just bring NIN along for the TA buff.

[Shougun]

Some of the newer savage/extreme raids have mechanics that require a melee dps to miss out on positional potencies and true north has too slow of a cool down to cover all of those instances.

If they are set on keeping positionals, I would like the true north CD reduced to 15s to make it fair for the melee's in content like this. More often than not, my team mates will opt to run as ranged dps on these fights so positional mechanics can be ignored, we just bring NIN along for the TA buff.

This is why I thought they could pre-bake true north into melee DD as a passive give and take mechanic based on performance (and remove true north for another new skill each melee can toy with, level 70+ job specific skill would be neat). For whatever reason some mistook this as an argument to remove positional, which it wasn't.

Before either A. mechanics mess you up or B. other players do, so even if you're doing it all right sometimes it just feels bad to miss them and there wasn't a thing you could really do. Also if they add in a passive pre-baked mechanic then SE can play with the boss movement a bit more and not mess up melee.

Tl;dr of the concept was as you do well you get a few "exceptions" that will automatically be consumed on a failure to meet the positional, meaning it works on the fly but too many failures will cause it all to spiral out as one would expect (there would be a max buff stack, so you can't store 1,000 and then forget how to play lol).

Another concept I thought of was that all positional melee get a dash move by double pressing the movement key/stick (hotkey can be rebound). Based on direction it'll dash you to one of the sides of the boss ring (flank left, flank right, back) such that if you were on the back and double tap right it'll circle you to the right side and for a few seconds lock in that positional. Meaning even if you were moved out of position it'll count as that direction positional. Forward should be either manual still.. or at least a triple tap, just for safety lol (and that's a vary large dash distance for some bosses.. which makes it less realistic looking).

Alternate controls that might be more consistent and easier would be not based on where you are on the circle but just what you press such that double tap right is always the right side (even if you were on the left side), forward is on the butt of the boss, and left the left side (so if the boss is spinning mad you can nail it perfectly given that you're trying to move).

Add a short cooldown, and it'll only work when you're in very close vicinity to the boss's circle. Should work such that if you're free to move it's not too much to move manually if you didn't feel like double tapping, but when things start to get funny you could better lock yourself into position temporarily (via a movement, you still have to play the game lol). I think the first is a bit friendlier to mishaps though, since if at a split turn mechanic the boss changes where you hit even though you felt it was their "right side" then the exception buff would save it from failure.

Also just to let you know True North lasts for 15 seconds, so a 15 second cooldown is uh.. pretty intense .

[wereotter]

Some of the newer savage/extreme raids have mechanics that require a melee dps to miss out on positional potencies and true north has too slow of a cool down to cover all of those instances.

If they are set on keeping positionals, I would like the true north CD reduced to 15s to make it fair for the melee's in content like this. More often than not, my team mates will opt to run as ranged dps on these fights so positional mechanics can be ignored, we just bring NIN along for the TA buff.

I agree. I main monk in savage, and I refuse to play that job in Midgardsormr because of how frustrating it is. We've got a boss in that tier with an absolutely massive hit ring that has multiple instances of "you must stand here for 4+ GCDs" where the damage tanks (not to mention how often you drop Greased Lightning due to jump phases). I realized that because of just how terrible the fight is for that job, we do more damage as a raid if I'm playing a more poorly geared Red Mage than if I'm playing as a monk, and to be honest, most of this entire raid tier has favored ranged and casting classes over melee.

I still don't think the positional ring needs to be removed entirely, Doom Train was an absolute snore to fight as a melee because you could just stand in one place, but more bosses that have lots of requirements for standing in certain spots to do the mechanics need to have the omni-positional ring.

[Shurrikhan]

I agree. I main monk in savage, and I refuse to play that job in Midgardsormr because of how frustrating it is. We've got a boss in that tier with an absolutely massive hit ring that has multiple instances of "you must stand here for 4+ GCDs" where the damage tanks (not to mention how often you drop Greased Lightning due to jump phases). I realized that because of just how terrible the fight is for that job, we do more damage as a raid if I'm playing a more poorly geared Red Mage than if I'm playing as a monk, and to be honest, most of this entire raid tier has favored ranged and casting classes over melee.

I still don't think the positional ring needs to be removed entirely, Doom Train was an absolute snore to fight as a melee because you could just stand in one place, but more bosses that have lots of requirements for standing in certain spots to do the mechanics need to have the omni-positional ring.

The sad thing is they've come up with ways to deal with positioning when stuck within a certain sector from the boss before (original Demon Wall, etc.), but opted not only not to use those conditionally during certain bits of other fights that create the same problem but for small periods of time, but then made it difficult to manage the easiest player-based positional fix -- stacking directly under the boss -- due to the need to save uptime while being ready for either the 'in' or 'out' mechanics.

It's not like it has to be all or nothing, either. We can just have the boss go ring-less for while it's spamming Ahk Morn or the like.