How would people feel if they took positional requirements away?

[Lastelli]

No, I'd say it takes roughly the same amount of skill; which is why I don't see the point. Keeping an enemies back isn't difficult; the tank pretty much gives you the enemies back by default. The only time keeping an enemies back isn't easy is situations where it's impossible.

Good melees can hit their positionals close to 100% of the time in any content currently available. The only situation where it's impossible is if the melee is inexperienced.

So either you say that positionals are useless because you can always easily hit them, or you admit that positionals introduce an additional layer of skill as inexperienced players are not able to do them properly.

[Goji1639]

Good melees can hit their positionals close to 100% of the time in any content currently available. The only situation where it's impossible is if the melee is inexperienced.

So either you say that positionals are useless because you can always easily hit them, or you admit that positionals introduce an additional layer of skill as inexperienced players are not able to do them properly.

Well, by impossible I mean situations like when playing solo or fights like Leviathan, where you can't take the enemies back. Otherwise positionals don't really make any difference, and really don't require skill.

[Powercow]

Well, by impossible I mean situations like when playing solo or fights like Leviathan, where you can't take the enemies back. Otherwise positionals don't really make any difference, and really don't require skill.

The first like, 5 seconds of Leviathan don't matter. After he re-emerges from the water you can hit your positionals like normal.

[Lastelli]

Well, by impossible I mean situations like when playing solo or fights like Leviathan, where you can't take the enemies back. Otherwise positionals don't really make any difference, and really don't require skill.

Solo play: true north is more than enough...assuming anyone cares about mobs in the overworld that die if you sneeze at them. PotD/Eureka has no positional requirement.

Leviathan: 5 seconds of a 10 minutes fight when it was relevant 6 years ago...

Sorry, but it really looks like you have close to no experience whatsoever when it comes to melee dps.
In those situations where hitting your positionals would be impossible, they already removed that requirement (E3S, E4S and other savage/extreme content where the boss is gigantic and stands outside of the arena) and let me tell you, playing melee is less interesting in that kind of content.

[DRKoftheAzure]

If people didn't to defend enmity combos because DPS, why should I care about positionals because DPS...?

[Fhaerron]

If people didn't to defend enmity combos because DPS, why should I care about positionals because DPS...?

I'm not 100% sure what you mean so please explain to me if I answer wrong.

Emnity combos were useless in SB, because they did less DPS and we didn't need more emnity. We had Shirk and Provoke and that was all you needed. And WAR were gods and had a great opener to build up that emnity.
Even in the case when something went wrong and a tank died you could just provoke and shield lob and you had the boss back.

During ARR & HW tank DPS was 'less important', it was only really since the second half of HW that tank DPS became a real thing (skip soar or disband) because a lot of pugs are just total fail and couldn't do mechanics so they had to cheese.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'm not 100% sure what you mean so please explain to me if I answer wrong.

Emnity combos were useless in SB, because they did less DPS and we didn't need more emnity. We had Shirk and Provoke and that was all you needed. And WAR were gods and had a great opener to build up that emnity.
Even in the case when something went wrong and a tank died you could just provoke and shield lob and you had the boss back.

During ARR & HW tank DPS was 'less important', it was only really since the second half of HW that tank DPS became a real thing (skip soar or disband) because a lot of pugs are just total fail and couldn't do mechanics so they had to cheese.

"Skip Soar or gtfo" and Provoke+Shirk and giving enmity dumps to every single person is what started the decline interesting tank mechanics, casuals complaining that holding aggro/using aggro dumps is too hard is what basically made tank role as a concept dead... and now that they took away enmity combos and aggro dumps(though aggro dumps should not have existed in the first place) that were not Shirk, they will go after positionals and True North next... I guarantee it...

[Dzian]

Scrap them. They do nothing anyway.

Its come up time and time again on here and many people myself included have often mathed it out and proven that positionals literally do nothing.

For example, If your a ninja and you just stay behind the boss for the entire fight completely ignore positionals on armor crush you lose a whole 2 potency per second. (60 extra potency for positional once every 30 seconds) That's less than one half of one percent of your total damage. Samurai is basically the same, if you just stood behind the boss the whole time or beside the boss the whole time you'd still lose less than half of one percent of your total dps.

It's really not an engaging or rewarding gameplay element at all. It makes no noticable difference and should be scrapped.

[DPZ2]

casuals complaining that holding aggro/using aggro dumps is too hard is what basically made tank role as a concept dead...

Sources for this off-hand statement?

I don't remember seeing any questions for the Live Letters around 'holding aggro is too hard'; neither do I remember massive forum posts about the difficulties of tanking and how it should be made easier.

There are certainly a number of people posting on the forums these days complaining about 'the casuals' ...

[ForteNightshade]

Sources for this off-hand statement?

I don't remember seeing any questions for the Live Letters around 'holding aggro is too hard'; neither do I remember massive forum posts about the difficulties of tanking and how it should be made easier.

There are certainly a number of people posting on the forums these days complaining about 'the casuals' ...

I think it's fairly reasonable to assume the biggest catalyst for them turning aggro into a joke is they didn't like how the community responded. Tanks wouldn't go into Tank Stance, they'd simply demand DPS use Diversion/Lucid/Tactician/Refresh. I'm guilty of letting many a DPS eat tank busters for refusing to pop Diversion. >.>

Now I doubt that was their only reason but I suspect it was a significant factor in their decision.