Positionals

[IruruCece]

Yeah, I agree with that point of view. It's just that gets a bit frustrating at some point to play a positionals-based job.

I'm complaining but it's really not the design's fault, but you getting teamed with a tank that just doesn't care about MNK, DRG, etc... I just stopped to run random content with monk altogether because of this frustration.

You see, this is where I have a tough time understanding why anyone complained about Monk's positionals prior to the latest patch. We had the ability to ignore positionals for lengthy periods of time thanks to True North and the old Earth's Reply, to the point where SE NERFED those two abilities so that we would engage with positionals MORE.

It has never been very hard to land positionals, full stop. The game provides visual cues that tell us if we're at a target's rear OR their flank, and in optimal situations you're not even moving that far. I'm sorry you've come across some legitimately terrible tank players, but if we adjust everything based on player's ability to mess with someone else, we may as well remove Rescue, Taunt, and Shirk from the game too. Hell, just remove aggro from the game too, and make it so that enemies target tanks first, then DPS, then healers.

If the complaints about positionals are centered around dungeons and large pulls, then honestly they make even less sense. With Shadowbringers, Monks got a full AOE rotation that should be getting spammed like mad if there are at least three targets or more. There is little reason to worry about losing DPS due to missing positionals in the vast majority of content outside of bosses.

If nothing else, I think this says a lot about some very basic problems with FF14's dungeon design: They're theme parks that all inevitable degenerate down to "Pull to the wall, AOE the group, single target the stragglers." I don't think this is actually fixable, though, because that's how the game has been for so long. If they actually made fights leading up to the bosses require light parties to take mechanics like positionals more seriously, I think you'd see players complain that the pace of the dungeons is then too slow/demanding. So, for the game that FF14 actually is, it's up to the boss encounters themselves to justify the full extent of player's abilities, and that currently includes positionals on melee DPS.

And honestly, SE has done a pretty good job at mixing things up there. There are a number of bosses where positionals are barely or straight up not a factor whatsoever due to their sheer size, or because the encounters are designed in a very specific way, for cinematic/gameplay purposes.

At the end of the day, you have to accept that you will miss positionals sometimes, either because you screwed up, or because another player screwed up. And that's fine.