Dragon Sight change - Just remove positionals already

[Shurrikhan]

Its just pointless movement and adds zero levels of engagement.

Uptime Optimization: Grants potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Positional Optimization: Grants potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Playing your damn job correctly: Grants relative potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Dodging Fire: Grants self (if otherwise killed or afflicted by Damage Down) and/or healer relative potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.

But hey, surely one of those layers of engagement is in fact no engagement at all, right?

[ForsakenRoe]

Uptime Optimization: Grants potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Positional Optimization: Grants potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Playing your damn job correctly: Grants relative potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Dodging Fire: Grants self (if otherwise killed or afflicted by Damage Down) and/or healer relative potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.

But hey, surely one of those layers of engagement is in fact no engagement at all, right?

Well, SE's removed number 1 pretty hard, and 3 seems to be less and less of a factor. I guess it's only a matter of time before they get round to fixing number 4 and making every orange ground AOE just a cosmetic visual that has no effect on the player

Positionals as a melee is, to me, the equivalent of managing MP as a healer, it's a skill that seems to be more and more forgotten as time goes on by the devs, to the point where the system feels vestigal. But if it were removed, the feeling of 'how much room for optimization' would be felt keenly by all, and there would be a massive outcry of how damn boring the role feels without said system. I don't want to just... stand there, doing my melee rotation against a boss, unmoving like it's a training dummy, it's boring as hell. If I wanted that I'd play tank

[Lyth]

Positional mechanics are fine as they are. There's a sweet spot around that really depends on the interaction between fight and job design, and I think they achieved it for both P11S and the P12S doorboss. It would be nice if they did away with wall bosses altogether, but I get that there are a lot of tanks who struggle with positioning mechanics and consistency around this.

[Stasya]

Uptime Optimization: Grants potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Positional Optimization: Grants potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Playing your damn job correctly: Grants relative potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.
Dodging Fire: Grants self (if otherwise killed or afflicted by Damage Down) and/or healer relative potency over the fight. May require pre-planning.

But hey, surely one of those layers of engagement is in fact no engagement at all, right?

Either make combos get broken if you miss positional or remove positionals completely. No other choices. I did 2 tiers as melee and the only fight that would mess with your positionals at random was p5s, this tier i can only see p12s p1 with constantly facing boss solution which probably resolved by true north already. I will gear sam/nin later on and i don't see i will have any problems with 10km wide wall bosses which plague EW.

Stop pretending that additional potency from positional matters in the current state of melees. Melees were turned into phys range but shorter range once they got rid of breaking combos.

[Shurrikhan]

Either make combos get broken if you miss positional or remove positionals completely. No other choices. I did 2 tiers as melee and the only fight that would mess with your positionals at random was p5s, this tier i can only see p12s p1 with constantly facing boss solution which probably resolved by true north already. I will gear sam/nin later on and i don't see i will have any problems with 10km wide wall bosses which plague EW.

Stop pretending that additional potency from positional matters in the current state of melees. Melees were turned into phys range but shorter range once they got rid of breaking combos.

Combo "breaking" was literally never a thing to begin with. It was on openers or finishers only, meaning one could only delay the combo or fail to get the bonus potency (identically to now).

And yes, additional potency matters for the simple fact that all relative potency matters. The only question is how large an impact it should have relative to other optimization factors. If positionals were to actually break combos, that impact would still ultimately be just that: relative potency consequent to the lowered average ppgcd and adjusted sync from the combo's delay.

[Aco505]

this tier i can only see p12s p1 with constantly facing boss solution which probably resolved by true north already.

P11S is one of the hardest fights to get all positionals in EW.

Also what Shurrikhan said, positionals matter because they are potency and all potency matters. Making them more punishing (breaking combo) is not different from, for instance, changing their potency gain from 40 to 100 for DRG while adjusting the non-bonus damage.

I still don't get people advocating for the removal of positionals. Remove cast times and MP then, since casters have tools to deal with those.

We should be asking for more nuanced combat, not less.

[Stasya]

one probably have never done savage and the other uses a no positinals buff from eye while insisting on positionals ....

rotations should have more high ceiling and positionals do not add difficulty there

[ForsakenRoe]

I still don't get people advocating for the removal of positionals. Remove cast times and MP then, since casters have tools to deal with those.

They did that for SMN (removing cast times), and it's the most divisive class design since BowMage. It'd be like removing range limits from healers too, making everything 50y so every AOE heal hits everyone on the arena. Sounds nice in theory (no more BRD standing in narnia issues), but playing around the fact your heals have a limited range is part of what makes the role have fun, if you can just slam Rapture from anywhere on the arena and hit everyone, with zero thought put into your positioning, it harms the combat design immensely. Same as removing positionals, if people want to fight a training dummy then Stone Sky Sea exists

It's all well and good saying 'oh they removed positionals for some fights and they were really creative designs, like P2S', but A: there's good designs that still have positionals, B: they've had some stinkers like P7S, and C: if they have 'some savage fights are more creative because positionals are not a consideration in the design phase', that doesn't help with making the other 98% of content more interesting, EX roulette/Trials/Alliance raids will all be less interesting because of the change, unless they use that P2S creativity on ALL of those too. And since we got P7S, I'd consider that as evidence that 'no, they don't have the creative juice to do EVERY fight better without positionals'

[Aco505]

one probably have never done savage and the other uses a no positinals buff from eye while insisting on positionals ....

rotations should have more high ceiling and positionals do not add difficulty there

While the Dragon Sight change does lower the skill ceiling in specific situations, thinking that it solves positional issues in every fight is quite telling of your lack of knowledge of DRG or positionals in general.

Please check the previous page in which I outline the sequence I follow to hit all positionals in P11S. DS only allows you to hit one at the end of each Lightstream and makes one after the first mirrors more comfy but that's about it.

In P12-1S, it covers Superchain Theory I and that's about it. It doesn't help anywhere else.

Or check a previous post of mine, probably in this thread but I don't remember, in which I talk about which situations benefit from DS and in which ones it reduces the skill ceiling.

Only when we actually get higher skill ceilings is when we can start pointing at specific things to prune to make such ceilings higher or better, until then asking for removals is dumbing down the game even more for no gain at all.

[TheDustyOne]

It's all well and good saying 'oh they removed positionals for some fights and they were really creative designs, like P2S'...

Even then, if Square really wanted a new fight like P2S where positionals don't matter, they can just, well, make another P2S. Removing positionals overall only hurts the fights that were designed with positionals in mind.

I'd like to see positionals have more relevancy in job kits again, I still do the old positionals on Monk out of habit, and currently melee jobs feel like they get bonus DPS simply for existing. Making positionals more important can at least justify why they get to do the damage they currently do.

RDM and SMN could do with buffs, especially RDM, to be more in line with melee.

Also, what would people think of Ranged jobs having their own positional requirements as a part of skill expression? Like having to be at least 10-15 yalms or whatever to get the most damage out of your Burst Shot, requiring the occasional melee range on Chainsaw or Saber Dance, etc.

Probably gonna have some pushback on that, but if Square wants to push "difficulty" as part of the reason that some jobs are as weak as ranged jobs are, having their own positional requirements could be a way to address that.