Monk Identity and Blitz ?

[Ardour]

But those players would (rightfully) complain that their job is too streamlined AND too weak (a problem that MCH is currently going through). To maintain a job that has zero positionals means that it needs other trade-offs, so what are SE's options? Add more mechanical complexity to job? Add cast timers? I guarantee that melee players who are complaining about positionals would also be upset if the job added either one of those things, too.

Maintaining melee uptime is a challenge innate to the role that's frankly already more difficult and impactful than landing positionals. While I don't support MNK losing its positionals, the argument that it's impossible for a melee class to have an engaging design without positionals is just nonsense to those of us who have played melee classes in other games.

Ranged DPS is a different story since the role truly has no innate drawbacks, but even then, BRD/DNC's heavily proc-based design has proven to be a reasonable (if imperfect) solution to the problem. A melee job with a similar level of randomization to those jobs could certainly be difficult enough to warrant strong DPS numbers. In fact, I could easily imagine it ending up more difficult than the current melee DPS paradigm of more or less extremely static rotations with minor potency gains from positionals.

At the end of the day, positionals are just one way of adding depth to a class, in the same way that DoTs or procs are just one way of adding depth to a class. Arguing that every melee job needs to have positionals makes about as much sense to me as arguing that every caster needs to have DoTs. It's just unimaginative and promotes a homogenized role design for no good reason.