Samurai have positionals?!

[Kolsykol]

No they really don't. People have tested this. The only class they matter for more than a percent or two is monk. That is not annihilating your dps. Why? Because even ignoring positionals you will still hit some. People struggle enough already with the much more complex rotations of the melee dps, no need to go on to pile on you must go for positionals on them. Hell even the Ultimate clears I've been watching, the the melee largely ignore positionals.

I am sorry but I don't believe that you're being for real right now...

I know the video people keep citing about this and he even says that you shouldn't ignore them.
And the fact still remains that you're just playing it wrong and losing out on damage no matter how much you want to argue otherwise that's just an objective statement of fact you can't argue against that.
You're throwing out less Shinten and each Shinten is 320 potency ( + buffs ) that adds up very quickly you can't escape that fact no matter how much you want to.
That may as well be a lost gcd.

Yes you'll hit some, but you'll also hit some by just spamming 123.
Positionals are not even hard it's truly baffling to me that this is even an issue.

The only time you should miss a positional is if you can't hit it and you need to keep your gcd on cd, you shouldn't miss a gcd for a positional.
If this didn't matter then no one would be doing positionals, and this is also a difficult thing to measure just by dps alone because dps fluctuates a lot.
If you do a parse and do positionals on SAM and you get unlucky with crits you're probably going to end up lower than if you don't do them but get really lucky with crits.
Something that can't be disputed is the lost Shinten however and the rest of the bonus potency that is just there those are things that can be stated with a great deal of certainty and your dps would be higher in the latter scenario.

People are essentially just making up excuses to put in less effort if that's what you want to do then fine but it's getting very tiresome with all of these arguments where people are trying to make themselves feel better and more validated about it.
The fact still remains that every positional you're not landing is lost damage and it adds up to a larger total number in the end you can't escape this.

And still, most people dont want to play a melee for some reasons.

Melee are very popular, and most people I see playing are at least making an effort and seem to be playing just fine.
This is something I only hear about on the forums and on Reddit.