Should they remove positionals at this point?

[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.

[ChaseNetwork]

Actually, I'm kind of thinking that Positionals would allow for another kind of Ranged job that I've been theory crafting.
The bread and butter of my Sniper job is paying attention to the positioning of the boss to maximize damage.
(potencies are just examples, and not actually suggested values)
"Front Shot"
130 Potency (260 from the front)
"Flank Shot"
130 Potency (260 from the sides)
"Rear Shot"
130 Potency (260 from the rear)

Job Gauge would be the Rangefinder Gauge, which displays current distance from target enemy.

OGCD's
Doubletap
When within 10 yalms of target, your next Weaponskill hits twice. (Maybe includes a backpedal feature. Moves player backwards from target 20y or so? Sort of like Elusive Jump)
Breach
When between 11 and 19 yalms of target, dash forward 10 yalms, increase skill speed 20%
Target Locked
When equal to or greater than 20 yalms of target, Next weaponskill is a guaranteed Direct Critical hit

[Jijifli]

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.

If you don't like something a class does, maybe it's just not for you?

My girlfriend doesn't enjoy monk at all. And no, it's not because it's the positionals, but because it doesn't do combo lines the way other melee's do (You know, how other melee's do 1 2 3, but monk can 1 4 3, or 1 2 5?) She didn't like it. It kept throwing her off and she didn't enjoy it.

Did she ask to change monk so that it plays like the other melee? No, she just doesn't play monk. She does like DRG and SAM though.

I got another example, being myself. I didn't like BRD all that much. Did I ask for Square to change BRD? No, I just didn't play BRD. Changing a job (or in this case, all the melee) because some don't like it, isn't a good idea. I actually know players that enjoyed monk in particular simply BECAUSE of how many positionals it had. It let them keep moving and focused, and rewarded them for performing the dance correctly.

If people want a melee with no positionals that badly, Square can make one. Do not remove them for others.

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

Also just focusing on this part real quick. Yes, appeal to your playerbase. That doesn't mean baby them. And I'm glad in at least some departments they stood on the ground of "Don't baby". Shinryu story's an example. All the crying and complaining about how unfair and difficult it was, threatening to quit. Square never nerfed it though, because as it turned out, when people are 4 manning the 8 man trial they probably just need to pay attention.

[Sithconjurer]

I like think of the games fight mechanics as a distraction economy. Everyone shares one part of it. The mechanics of the fight.

Tanks tend to have simpler rotations because they need to avoid damage more, think about timing mitigation CDs and positioning the target optimally.

Healers have simpler rotations because they are watching the health of the tank. Looking for emergency healing among the party and and also fulfilling support roles.

Physical Ranged have longer more complicated fast paced rotational strings that require more focus and situational support roles because of their relaxed mobility.

Magic Ranged deal with casting lock and maintaining buff and dot uptime but get a less complicated though still nuanced rotation. So they need to manage optimal positioning more.

Melee have very strict combo systems but mostly stick to nailing ogcds and move around alot for positional attacks to get the most out of their rotations.

Of course there are hybrids in between, but I think SE did a great job with balancing the distraction economy in the game and gave every class a fair balance of stress. Now where this diverges is what of these systems works best for you to play at your best. Everyone is different. Some people like hitting skills when they glow, others like to follow the dotted line and do same sequence over and over, others like to hit the right skill at the right time, or maintain uptime of skills.

There is something for everyone and in between.

[lionelbrun]

Never liked them, yes they should be removed as well as a lot of the ability bloat

[Barraind]

I've never been a fan of positionals in any game, with maybe the exception of backstab on rogues, and even that had to be addressed in a number of games to make it work from not-the-back, or situationally from not-the-back, or from not-the-back if you took talents/aa's from it, or "back" being a 270 degree arc.

Either the class is balanced around hitting every positional, which makes fights where mobs like to spin to cast on things a nightmare and you're better off using something less reliant on them, or its balanced around positionals being a bonus and those classes are by far the best option on any fight where you can reliably hit them. The best case being where you're expected to hit a certain number of them, and fights are tuned to where you -should- hit that many, but it still ends up favoring one or the other by a large margin.

If positional damage was calculated based on client-side timing, it would be significantly better, especially when things like to spin around and take their hitboxes with them, but would be easily exploitable. As it is, ive seen plenty of trick attacks fail from as directly behind a mob as you can be just because the server sees the input and goes "naaaaaaaaaah", so they seem to be more harm than good, and weve been seeing changes made to lower the impact of positional stuttering.

[Burningskull]

I've been playing tank since the announcement of Gunbreaker and honestly I don't see how not having positionals would make DPS boring. Tanking is only boring to me cause you tend to not have that much complexity in your rotations compared to DPS. So I'm all for removing them. But I also wont really care if they leave them in.

[MorbolvampireQueen6]

No they stay unless casters can cast spells while moving around without interruption

[Orbus]

No they stay unless casters can cast spells while moving around without interruption

I mean, it kinda is like that?
Most summoner spells are instant, well, many of them are classified as "abilities" but those are just spells not on the gcd.
And while black mages have to hard cast everything normally, swift cast and triple cast lets them cast one and three spells while moving on a one minute cooldown for each buff, which lets them do it preeeetty often.
Then red mages, well they're all about chaining instant cast spells together.