Quote Originally Posted by Ransu View Post
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 already stated that True North is one of the reasons why positionals seem pointless and that it should be more restrictive. With that, it also means you shouldn't necessarily be able to hit all positionals, however, a skilled player will be able to hit more and more as they learn the fight and so contribute more, just like how BLM has to plan all the instacasts so that they can keep casting.

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)
At the very core, it is about restricting movement options. Casters do this by having cast times, melees did this by having positionals. Since they are different limitations for the same problem, the player has to employ different mindsets for each, which is what made them a more unique experience. And, just to point out, even if you want to talk about bosses rotating randomly, you can predict when the boss is going to turn, fights are scripted after all, and for the most part, they will just turn and face a player, so anticipating this by moving to a more favourable position to react better is part of the fun, in the same way BLM plans out their movement tool usage.

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.

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.
In what ways does it limit fight design? What is it about bosses that have a full ring that means you couldn't have positionals be relevant in them? Considering what we have had in the past, I see no reason why it would limit fight design.

Now, for a fun take, does anyone expect to be able to keep a caster GCD rolling full time and lose no damage? No. Every time you clip the GCD, or have to move where you cannot cast, or even use a GCD on a weaker action (Reprise/Scathe), it is all potential damage loss. This is generally seen as accepted, however, if a melee misses a positional, suddenly, people start complaining. Hot take, you shouldn't necessarily hit every positional, in the same way casters won't necessarily be optimal in their GCDs. So why is it one is more accepted than the other?