Controversioal Changes to Monk

[Garnix]

The problem with your idea here is that I'm pretty convinced that positionals are dead come 6.0. I don't want them to go, but the job's history suggests that they will.

Positionals have regularly been de-emphasized on the job with every expansion. We're where we are at right now because of SE's efforts to eliminate whatever pain points the community brings up, and for better or worse, positionals are regularly proposed to go the way of GL. As things stand, the job really does just have ONE meaningful positional, and given SE's own track record on doubling down with some honestly bad choices with the job for the past six years, I'm not exactly brimming with optimism for what comes next.

While I absolutely agree that positionals should be more meaningful, for Monk and for EVERY job that has them, players already complain about how hard they are to land under duress, and SE has shown that they would prefer to sacrifice meaningful moment-to-moment gameplay (even something as simple as moving a little to the left or right of an arbitrary, clearly marked part of a circle surrounding a mob) in order to try and appease people who don't even main ANY given role in the game.

Accessibility trumps everything in FFXIV, and people screech about being gatekept by basic gameplay mechanics all the time despite this. I know people who have dropped DRG entirely because they hated "being punished" for missing positionals. I know people who refuse to play BLM because dropping Enochian feels like "punishment." I've even heard people complain about NIN's bunny-no-jutsu and having their haste fall off. These are the people for whom SE made GL a trait, rather than something to manage.

"Locking" fancier animations AND greater potency behind properly landing positionals/putting some effort into your time with the game just seems to be asking for the same complaints here.

Positionals de-emphasized every expansion? Yet they added Raiden thrust in ShB.
They also added true north, and they improved the readability of the hitbox so that positionals get easier to reach.
I think they will de-emphasize positionals in one way in ShB : by not giving any to reaper.
So if you want to play a melee without positionals, play reaper.
But we will know soon.