Removal of Positionals

[Ransu]

Whilst that is true if you only count a striking dummy, the fun part comes when you have to try and hit them around mechanics.

99% of the time true north is available when a mechanic comes up and you can't hit a positional. True north also being an oGCD makes this a moot point along with the fact bosses are pretty static in nearly every fight minus a random turn here and there where they move to the edge of the stage for a mechanic...which again, true north...

I can use a similar case for cast times. You just stand there and not move. Hardly something I would call skill, might as well get rid of them. Obviously, this is a bad take as everyone knows, as soon as you have a mechanic that needs you to move, then cast times suddenly have a big impact on how you play.

Comparing caster play to positionals is straight up stupid. Sorry, not sorry, they are not comparable at all. Slide canceling, preplanning leyline placements etc... are massively different from whatever sklillset people seem to think comes from positionals (there are none)

Now, True North being as accessible as it is does nothing to help Positionals and the skill required to land them. Making Tue North more limiting, as backwards as it sounds, would make positionals more satisfying to land as you would be required to plan out your movement more. The same can also be said about old Riddle of Earth, making positionals something you didn't have to worry about.

It really wouldn't. All this would do is make boss fights even more limited in design as they try to maintain what little balance there is left between melee and ranged.

All this to say, positionals were not the issue, the issue was the multitude of ways to make positionals inconsequential. The same can be seen with Summoner. Many many people complain about the lack of cast times on Summoner, and rightfully so. You signed up for a caster, but it doesn't really cast. In the same way removing all cast bars makes a caster not feel like a caster, (effectively) removing most positionals makes them fell pointless.

Positionals are being made inconsequential because the devs are slowly seeing them as a problem and a limitation to boss fight designs. Its why so many boss fights now are having full circles that disable positional requirements. P2S was one of my favorite fights from the last tier because there was so many interesting mechanics and so much moving around and the boss jumping around etc... which made the fight a lot of fun and the devs had the freedom to do that because they didn't need to account for positionals. If that fight had to take positionals into account it would have been way more static and several mechanics would have been different. Would have likely been a boring fight.

If we can get better job designs (Tanks and Healers included), no ranged tax and better fights, i agree with positionals removal.

I'm fine with ranged taxed going away now that uptime for melee is basically 100% due to the massive hitboxes lol.