Would this compromise for positionals work?

[Demiplume]

Hey! First post on this forum ~:

Theres many types of positionals:
- Healers being in range of everyone
- Cone attacks to hit most enemies behind target
- Not standing beside tank on big pulls
- Making big pull face away from party
- Be far away when casting long spells
- Not be too close to others when floor aoes are cast on allies
- Boss mechanics
- Strategy for said boss mechanics

Id say on this that the game system engagement is based on positionals and group performance.

Now if I get you, we are talking the "flank and rear" system..
as I was a monk 100% main that didnt complete ShB yet, for me it was for pushing myself to perform. The potency bonus doesnt even need to be big, right now I think its 60 potency bonus on the 2 monk positionals (and they nerfed bootshine by more than 250 potency).

If they kept all 6 positionals, but only gave 20~30 potency bonus for hitting each positionals, id argue the complainers should be playing something else. They also could have made blitz be positional based instead of skill based, that or either make blitz cooldown reduce by 1 second everytimes you hit the correct positional on a monster.

I feel that the game hars been way too streamlined, this games been acclaimed RPGmmo by many, and yet all glimpse of individuality of all classes seem to be eroding away. Theres so many ways I can think of to make monk cool and fun to play, but they resorted ( and I hope only temporarily ) to making it feel like any other melee class.

[Mikey_R]

But I'm glad my trap worked. As I suspected, even when I spelled it out in my first post, they can't help but demand having positionals be the Ego boost THEY need. Who cares about other people's opinions right? I main (insert class here) despite having the ability to play every class on one character.

Except, without a proper tangible reward, there is no point. Monk doesn't need more defence, RoE does that just fine and is by far the best one to the point where you could argue it is complete overkill. Just compare it to any other melee defensive and you can see the difference.

Movement speed, while it would be nice, it isn't necessarily something to go out of your way for to hit a positional, especially now with Thunderclap and SSS giving a movement speed increase for the disengage.

If you were to decrease cooldowns, that then just messes with job balance and timings. Everything is designed around the 60/120 second burst windows, by allowing cooldowns to come sooner, you start misaligning everything. A good example of the effect this can have was demonstrated when AST Spear used to reduce the cooldown of oGCDs, one of the most common complaints was the fact it made everything misalign and even made some rotations now flow as they should.

However, why is it that positionals get shafted on for being busy work and just to stroke someone's ego, when doing a proper rotation does the same? If you don't do a proper rotation on any job, you lose damage, it is as simple as that, so why is it that, when a job has more positionals, that is designed to increase damage, it suddenly gets labelled as bad? It isn't even like every melee has a massive overabundance of positionals, it was just Monk, there are now 4 melees that have far fewer.

If I was to say, I hate combos, they should just be one button spam, you would be in your right mind to tell me to play something else, however, if SE then decided every job should be one button spam, you would again be in your right mind to fight back against it. It is the same case here. If you did not like positionals, you had other options. Now, if you want a positional heavy job, well, you are out of luck as there isn't one.

Everything is designed around damage, how you do the damage is different for every job, why should there not be one that relied heavily on positionals.

[foehnweisz]

As someone who has tried to use this forum before, and have had an awful time trying to figure out how half the things work here (Seriously, the reply system here is very strange I still don't get how you quote multiple people.) I have attempted to find out what makes people like positionals the most.

So I pose a compromise; if Yoshi P returned positionals BUT, they didn't boost potency and instead boosted something like say movement speed or something defensive rather than offensive, would you be okay with it?

Terribly sorry to anyone I haven't responded to in previous threads, I really don't like how the multi-quote system functions and works kind of backwards compared to other sights. That being said, glad to see a lot of people now playing monk in the raiding scene though!

Please post your thoughts below!

Can't be straight up biased that others don't enjoy postionals and only do it for dmg.
If you truly want to find out what others think, might help not to latch onto the one guy that agrees with you and dismiss valid points made on the opposite end.

That said, we're melee! The whole idea of shifting around a target while engage in melee seems natural to me (especially MNK).
As others have mentioned as well, being rewarded in DPS (cause we're DPS) by shifting properly adds to the feeling of mastery, instead letting go of the WASD/Analog and just click away on skills.

Otherwise what are we playing, FFXI? Designed decades ago like all MMO's of that era of hugging/clicking target and spam skills?

[Grimoire-M]

This tbh.

I’ve never had a problem with Monk being a positional heavy job personally. My problem with it is this exact archetype of ‘heavy positional job’ isn’t handled with appropriate flexibility. I’ve said the job needed positional based flank/light and back/shadow chakra generation multiple times in the past because it explicitly rewards and highlights the exact kind of planning the mains of the job love it for while improving its flexibility for newer players as well as letting it scale into higher tempo content better in the long run. That base concept with the right meter count (3/4 each? Need that many pairs minus one for Chakra skills?) would go a long way to informing that without needing explicit positional bonuses. They’re still damage, just with a layer of separation like SAM/NIN had.

That said, combos are also overused and DoT interactions are under-utilized. That needs to change.

[Satarn]

And this is what I was trying to prove with this topic. If it was about positionals and positionals ONLY, having a speed boost would be very nice for monk and still lead to some big brain plays without costing dps, but letting skill still shine.

"Ah-hah! You don't see this worthless "reward" that I've offered you as valuable - clearly you only care about increasing your parse and looking down on other people! This is the proof, I was right all along! Ahahahah!"

Like, first of all, not a good look that you would make a thread specifically to "trap" people.
Second - it proves nothing, you've clearly made the thread with a conclusion already in mind and anything that could be said would "prove you right" due to your confirmation bias.
Third - if you and other anti-positional people only care about fun and not "the parse" then why was it such a problem that you did a bit less damage when not performing positionals? This is the proof - clearly you only care about increasing your parse and not feeling inferior to people who can be assed to do positionals!

[Arkavien]

Third - if you and other anti-positional people only care about fun and not "the parse" then why was it such a problem that you did a bit less damage when not performing positionals? This is the proof - clearly you only care about increasing your parse and not feeling inferior to people who can be assed to do positionals!

EXACTLY! Such a hypocrite.

[ssunny2008]

Pointless thread, but i´m going to answer...

I would play positionals for 1 potency, i would play them for movement-speed or even defense. It´s not about "getting rewarded", it´s about "what does the game force from me on a class in any content".
That said, if the game would hit so hard that i´m in a better state with more defense on positionals, give it to me. If the aoe´s are so big that i´m in trouble to head out, give me that movement speed. I´ll take it all. But the game doesn´t force it and MNK was the only class with

a) tons of positionals and
b) a 5-15% damage loss if you ignored them.

So far the game forced me to do them. It was no "extra damage", it was needed to compete with the rest, it was MNKs main mechanic. It has nothing to do with "an ego" or something too. It has something to do with being challenged and having fun with a bunch of movement. No matter how many ppl call "positionals are easy to hit", they never have been. It was a little challenge on top of the rotation any class has to play. And on the other hand i just love playing high-mobility and fast classes in any game.

Just look at SGE, it´s another braindead class. I dislike it for being so easy. I dislike it for being a purehealer with damage-reduction in the barrier-category. I don´t even want it to have the highest DPS because how easy it is to play compared to buttonbloat RNG AST for example. But i love SGE for being mobile af and that´s the only reason why i pick it over AST, who´ve been the mobility-healer before.

I straight up hate it to stand still while pressing some buttons. I do give af about hardhitters and QoL. All i want is a bit of self-sustain and high mobility to play around. I would´ve even played MNK if it would´ve the least damage of all classes, just because it was fun to play.
Of course i could still jiggle around the boss for no reasons, and indeed it´s what i´m doing on any melee / tank, but not because it´s fun, just because i´m bored pressing that 1 button every 2-2,5s...

MNK needs his positionals back. There are 4 other melees to play for those who dislike them. It´s an aweful decision to fck up all players who loved that mobility-play.

But I'm glad my trap worked. As I suspected, even when I spelled it out in my first post, they can't help but demand having positionals be the Ego boost THEY need. Who cares about other people's opinions right? I main (insert class here) despite having the ability to play every class on one character.

It sounds more like these people don't want to learn anything else and want everyone else to play the way they want. Gee, wonder why nobody likes replying to them.

Imagine a bunch of ppl play everything but still know what´s fun for them and it has nothing to do with "Play the way i want!". It´s about variety and uniqueness. MNK has been unique with being positional-heavy. I enjoyed it meanwhile i don´t enjoy the others melees that much (and current MNK). And i don´t enjoy playing caster or RDPS. Such classes are either too static, no challenging or too slow to play. But do you see me running around opening hundred threads aka "I don´t play BLM, but... I would play DRG, if... I hate play DNC, but..."?!

I guess not, noone here is. The most ppl just want to stay with the stuff they like and MNK has been the only choice for ppl like me when we talk about fun, not what i´m able to play. If MNK would be still positional-heavy, we would´ve our choice, our FUN back, while all other ppl could play around 4! other melees with way less positionals. Doesn´t sound it fair enough????
So far such guys like you, all the positional-hater out there are the ones that want to dictate others "how to play" and want to be catered with everything the game offers. You don´t want to leave 1 out of 5 melee- or even 1 out of 20 class-choices for those who liked it as it has been. It´s ridiculous.

[Canadane]

Seriously, the reply system here is very strange I still don't get how you quote multiple people.

It's pretty standard BBforums stuff. It's bare bones but it's not like it's not been around the Internet for decades now lol
I'll even quote someone else here, it's pretty easy.

If you want to move around and hit a mob from a particular position then just do it. Why do you need to be "rewarded" for it?

Higher skill ceilings to reward players who put in more effort than those that don't. We keep lowering it though there still needs to be something there, else nobody would have any motivation to do anything but stand there and press their attack over and over....

[wereotter]

The provided examples of bonuses aren't much of an incentive, and that really has a lot to do with the way the game is set up. Fists of Wind gave the monk a movement speed bonus, but we never used it except during the window where Greased Lightning 4 existed, because Fists of Fire was always more damage. Fists of Earth let the monk have higher defenses, but again we never used it because it was less damage. Even right now, Celestial Revolution used on its own will give you a lunar nadi, but you don't use it because... say it with me, it's less damage (compared to Elixir Field)

This isn't just monk either. Black mage, you don't spam Fire 1 because at max level, you have better options in your kit as your go-to damage dealing spell.

Everything in this game is built around rewarding you with more damage for playing your job properly. If people didn't like the direct damage increasing for properly executing them, perhaps decoupling Forbidden Chakra from critical hits and instead tie it to correctly landing positionals, if you want to make a change that's still rewarding. But even then, that's just more damage for doing your positionals, and someone will cry that they don't want to have to do it.

[HemlockEvergreen]

I'd rather have boss mechanics that require precise positioning and movement than having positionals be a "thing", TBH. Phasing out positionals as a mechanic entirely in return for having more complexity in boss encounter would lead to more interesting boss encounters.