Should they remove positionals at this point?

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather not see positionals removed. I like moving about the enemy for them.

That being said, I would like to see some changes to make their near-instantly spinning towards random targets or the like less frustrating.

[AxlStream]

Why is everyone always so down on "the average player"? You realize that the vast majority of all players are mostly average, right? The super players (and also the really terrible ones) are a pretty small minority. If average players can't do or don't like something, it's probably poorly designed.

If you are terrible at this game you are borderline afk or RPing in the chat while fighting. The average player seems like they spam 1-2-3 while watching netflix. As soon as something asks more than that, you see multitudes of threads on here saying "X is poorly designed" "X is too hard" and now it's "positionals should be removed". Yes, this expansion has been rough on melee DPS as a whole. Has that stopped good melee DPS players from performing? No. They adapted, they adjusted, they learned. The average player didn't because it wants to watch netflix and press 1-2-3.

[Fyce]

They only rebalance it because the average player is so abysmal that unless you literally press the buttons from them, you won't get any decent performance that SE expects you to do.

Without "the average player" you seem to hate so much, this game wouldn't exist.
It's logical to appeal to your playerbase.

Whatever I guess. I'm done having this discourse.
But mark my words.
If they somehow remove positionals the playerbase will definitely come up with new excuse to justify their poor plays, that much I can guarantee.
Remove positionals today and they will ask for removal of CDs next (and some people already did, actually), slippery slope and all that.
Something will never change, whether it's ARR, HW, or SB.

Is it so hard to accept that some people simply don't like the mechanic?
It's not to "justify being bad", nor asking for a removal of CDs. You are using outliers as a generality here.
Some people don't like the mechanic. And not having a single melee DPS job without positionals is disappointing. That's all.

Not everything revolves around being good or bad. There is no slippery slope of any kind. Just a legitimate request not to see an already dying mechanic being kept for no reason to the point of not having a single alternative.

[Shurrikhan]

Is it so hard to accept that some people simply don't like the mechanic?
It's not to "justify being bad", nor asking for a removal of CDs. You are using outliers as a generality here.
Some people don't like the mechanic. And not having a single melee DPS job without positionals is disappointing. That's all.

Not everything revolves around being good or bad. There is no slippery slope or any kind. Just a legitimate request not to see an already dying mechanic being kept for no reason to the point of not having a single alternative.

But there's nothing objective about it being a dying mechanic. I and other players like it, at most just wanting some fixes to visual/actual discrepancies. I'd be fine also with seeing the bonuses be something other than pure skill-gap forming damage, maybe providing future safety or mobility for risks or forced movement taken with positionals. But I like moving around my enemies. It's fun.

That's not to say I'd be opposed to an alternative, so long as it provides me with the same need to think ahead a bit. But I don't want it to see it removed just because some people have difficulty with it. I'm sure some people have difficulty with stutter-casting or oGCD weaving as well, and would like to see those people less negatively affected by their latency, but I certainly don't want to see those aspects of gameplay outright removed.

[Fyce]

But there's nothing objective about it being a dying mechanic. I and other players like it, at most just wanting some fixes to visual/actual discrepancies. I'd be fine also with seeing the bonuses be something other than pure skill-gap forming damage, maybe providing future safety or mobility for risks or forced movement taken with positionals. But I like moving around my enemies. It's fun.

That's not to say I'd be opposed to an alternative, so long as it provides me with the same need to think ahead a bit. But I don't want it to see it removed just because some people have difficulty with it. I'm sure some people have difficulty with stutter-casting or oGCD weaving as well, and would like to see those people less negatively affected by their latency, but I certainly don't want to see those aspects of gameplay outright removed.

It is objectively being toned down every patch where balance changes happen for melee DPS. That's an objective fact. If dying is too strong of a word for your liking, then at least recognize that it's definitly not as strong of a mechanic as before and has been constantly pulled back to be made less and less impactful.

And I get that some people like it. What I ask is for these people to understand that some don't, and that the melee DPS role completly left that part of the playerbase out.

[Shurrikhan]

It is objectively being toned down every patch where balance changes happen for melee DPS. That's an objective fact.

True, but it's also devoid of context. The Monk changes were given literally as "band-aid" changes to be replaced with 5.0. The Dragoon positional changes before that were in line with the stated goal -- reduced skill-gap. Neither shows a sole aim to phase out the mechanic, else we wouldn't have certain jobs still just as, if not more, affected by frustrating positioning than they were in Heavensward.

More importantly, though, think about how much patch content this expansion has been made to fix unintended consequences of some other change. The ability of melee to manage their positionals were hit incredibly hard with the SB changes. Compensation should have been due at the start of SB, but, unsurprisingly, they've not noticed the effects of losing flexibly timed non-positional skills until

Each melee initially had far more skills that had no positional requirements. On Monk and Ninja, especially, one could slip in an extra cross-class skill into the rotation at faint TP inefficiency or negligible DPS cos or faintly delay one of their DoTs for until a spin would occur, utterly removing the positional risk. I would actually posit that positionals were easier to manage in Heavensward than even now, after all the buffs diminishing them, just due to that. Its just that we had actual near-constant access to means to ignore positionals rather than a 90-second cooldown and each positional being worth less.

The reductions we have now are necessary just to reach the same performance over a positionally frustrating piece of content that we had before. Note that the one job that has seen no reductions to its positional costs (60 potency per missed positional in terms of Shinten, higher if in terms of Guren or Seigan or an effective Gyoten), is also the one with the most control over its timings of position-less skills. Everyone else lost their control, and was compensated. Samurai retains that control, and was not compensated.

And historically, the trend of positionals is far from uniform. The positional bonus attached to Demolish was originally nonexistant, and then irregularly small making the skill most "okay", after Fracture, later-ID, and ToD, to use from the wrong position. In ARR, Ninja scarcely even had positionals. The portion of dictated positions, i.e. the prevalence of position-dependent gameplay, has only increased over time.

[CorbinDallas]

What I ask is for these people to understand that some don't, and that the melee DPS role completly left that part of the playerbase out.

So just because some people don't like it, they should remove it?

[Tiraelina]

Positionals were always a poorly used mechanic that added little to nothing to the game. You were either with a tank or they might as well not exist, there is no class in the game that has crowd control and needs to set up and like Rogues did in WoW before. The only major thing it ever did was cripple you for playing a monk solo because... reasons? The fact they have already watered it down down as much as they have or are just turning them off in some content. It isn't doing anything but making its continued existence more meaningless and showing how inconsequential they are. The bosses spinning around because they absolutely have to face their target for any abilities is just adding to the issues.

They can take all the cost savings in server performance to add more things to the cash shop.

[Kallera]

So just because some people don't like it, they should remove it?

The story of the Official Forums. Just because people can beat content with it, doesn’t necessarily mean it is worth having.

[Seraphor]

I don't get the idea that positionals prevent you playing solo.
I solo'd most of ARR as NIN and I have to say without positionals that would have been some boring stuff.
You don't need a tank to use positionals.
You time your attacks as the enemy is in animation lock, or you can stun them, or with enough practice, move to the rear/flank at the exact moment you need to, and if you're quick enough you can get it off before the mob rotates.