Wish there were melee DPS without positionals

[Renathras]

I don't want to take positionals away from anyone who loves them, but I do wish it wasn't a part of literally every melee DPS class. That way folks who like that kind of thing could enjoy it, but there would also be an alternative for those who don't.

Isn't that kinda what MCH is?

Unironically, most players in high end content are in melee/near melee most of the time as it is. MCH doesn't have a lot of stuff like party buffs (like DNC or BRD), and has an underlying combo 1-2-3 rotation mixed with various CDs. While it's somewhat slimmed down, that's the closest thing in the game right now to a Melee without positionals.

...well, that isn't a tank. But if you're wishing for a Melee here, my guess is that you want to be a DPS, not a Tank. So unironically, the best answer for you is probably MCH.

[Aco505]

Or, you know, they could just get rid of True North itself, in some way subtly correct for the gap between what the server sees and what the client sees in terms of relative positioning, and bosses jumping to the edge of the arena temporarily become omni-positional.

Voila, you keep the substantial amount of extra APM and means of player engagement, have a less problematic system in itself, and it'd have no extra button-cost.

Doesn't solve the issue of bosses looking at the party during mechs or similar situations like Act 4, Superchain Theory I or Letter of the Law. Removing True North is not the solution.

Also, RPR is already considered the easiest melee when it comes to positionals due to how much flexibility you have with when to use them. You can literally save one TN stack for every Gluttony and be absolutely fine.

That some people in this thread claim DRG is easy with positionals because you switch to the flank less is a bit concerning though. It tells me that you don't really play the job that much. It's the heaviest job positional-wise, with 50% of your GCDs being one and the only melee job that doesn't have extra non-positional GCDs (Mudras, Iaijutsus, Enshroud, Blitzes), which means that you cannot play around them. That's one of the reasons why they added a TN effect to Dragon Sight, because the other melees use less positionals (except SAM) during their burst.

[Shurrikhan]

Doesn't solve the issue of bosses looking at the party during mechs or similar situations like Act 4, Superchain Theory I or Letter of the Law. Removing True North is not the solution.

I didn't recommend removing it in isolation -- only after dealing with moments of inaccessible positional and visual discrepancies between server's snapshot and the relative angle visible to the player (e.g., by taking the best of a rapid triple-checking so that either predicting the sudden untelegraphed boss turn OR reacting in time would both count as a successful positional).

But seriously, look at the rDPS gap between melee/BLM and the other DPS. If we did miss some 60-120 potency per minute from a lack of True North... would we even be able to see how little the gap has shrunk? Even before TN, it wasn't expected that a Melee would hit 100% of positionals, and they were balanced accordingly. Now that we can, why is that gap still as big (if not larger) than it was before?

Part of the dependence now on True North, moreover, is simply caused by habits unlearned since True North was added. Before True North, for instance, you'd stack the whole-party-stacks mechanics directly under the boss, where melee could still access Rear and Flank positionals while splitting the damage, etc.

[Aco505]

But seriously, look at the rDPS gap between melee/BLM and the other DPS. If we did miss some 60-120 potency per minute from a lack of True North... would we even be able to see how little the gap has shrunk?

This has nothing to do with positionals though. Like, if you wanna make positionals the defining melee skill, then go ahead and have them be a 10% loss if you miss them all.

If we got a patch tomorrow buffing all non-BLM ranged jobs so that the difference between the highest DPS and the lowest is 5% or less, the problem would be fixed. However, I suppose things are not that simple and SE has its own idea of job balance.

BLM was buffed into an overtuned state due to it "needing to be balanced in relation to the other casters". No one knows what's their actual philosophy when balancing jobs but I sincerely doubt positionals are the main driving point behind having melee above ranged.

As a side note, they have no problem putting plenty of melee downtime mechanics in non-savage (and lately ultimate) content. The Criterion dungeons in particular have several of these. While people are right to be concerned about DPS disparities (and these should be fixed as best as possible), they can easily switch their design philosophy in the next expansion and not adjust numbers due to this... and then we could be in a reverse situation, thus not really fixing the issue at hand.

[Lyth]

DRG has the lowest potency loss on missed positionals, and MNK/RPR have the highest outside of TA. DRG is scheduled for a 7.0 rework anyways, so I wouldn't be surprised if they move it more towards being an entry level melee for people feeling anxious about positionals.

I think the core problem is that a fight designer has to be able to see what makes content interesting for different roles. Wall bosses are aesthetically exciting but boring for melee. Bosses with lots of movement, smaller hitboxes, and single pixel uptime spots are really fun for melee. I'll take the risk of a tank not knowing how to position correctly any day if it makes a fight more engaging. I think that if fights are appropriately designed, then the current positional mechanics are fine. True North won't be enough any more than Swiftcast is in an appropriately designed fight, as you've no doubt seen in the later fights of this tier.

DPS parity should be the standard across all subroles. The only reason that it isn't is probably to force the current 2/2/2/2 setup. I really think that they should just merge down ranged and sort out this raise business instead, so that they can level the playing field.

[Shurrikhan]

This has nothing to do with positionals though.

You're the one making a huge deal out of an occasional stacking mechanic or the like, if mismanaged, possibly costing a melee some positional potency... when, yes, that risk was an explicit factor, even as far back as ARR, in melee getting higher output ceilings.

Again, if there's no point at which a Melee and its party cannot through optimal play get all of its positionals, True North becomes unnecessary. Deal with the boss-spins snapshotting before they're even visible to the player and with the boss moving to the arena's edge, and the rest is on the party. At that point, True North would exist only to degrade positional gameplay, rather than serving any purpose in covering over the problems in that system.

Better, imo, to just fix the polish of positionals themselves than just to rely on that bandaid. If we really want to give players the options to frequently skip positionals like they can skip knockbacks per 2 minutes, so be it I guess, but True North should never have been the answer to player concerns about, say, self-repositioning and forced-spinning bosses or the discrepancies between what we see and what we get in terms of mob positions/facing and their impact on positionals.

DRG has the lowest potency loss on missed positionals, and MNK/RPR have the highest outside of TA. DRG is scheduled for a 7.0 rework anyways, so I wouldn't be surprised if they move it more towards being an entry level melee for people feeling anxious about positionals.

But DRG also has the greatest frequency of required re-positioning, so it's not as if it's less engaged with or less dependent on positionals overall than other melee dps. It doesn't therefore seem to be leading towards any sort of "baby's first melee (positionals-wise)"; its current state could as easily imply the exact opposite.

[Aco505]

You're the one making a huge deal out of an occasional stacking mechanic or the like, if mismanaged, possibly costing a melee some positional potency... when, yes, that risk was an explicit factor, even as far back as ARR, in melee getting higher output ceilings.

I'm not entirely sure what is making you think I'm making it a huge deal but it should be possible to get all positionals in optimized environments. Nothing matters in any other case because the DPS checks are usually not harsh enough to require you to squeeze that extra potency.

And bosses looking at the party during mechanics is not uncommon. It's strange that you would think it's a mismanagement thing. How do you hit them reliably in the mechanics I mentioned without TN? You might be able to greed one or two but if the sequence lasts around 15-20s, then it's simply impossible.

If we're going with the idea that positionals can be missed even in optimized environments, then should casts be dropped there as well? Should Swiftcast be removed for non-raise spells? No, because the entire point of both is to strive to have 100% uptime.

The more you're used to a fight, the less you should drop either of these. Besides annoying RNG, there should always be a way.

I liked it how in P3S, careful tank positioning would take care of that for the Shiva AoEs before the add phase, for instance.

[Lyth]

...

Repositioning every 10-12 seconds on average is pretty standard for melee jobs. Some jobs just have a greater variance around how frequently those are spaced (i.e. you could have three to four in a row and then a lot of downtime). The numerical count of 'positionals' doesn't necessarily always mandate movement on every melee job. DRG is pretty predictable in that regard, but I imagine it will be even more comfy after the rework.

I think the discussion around making 'guaranteed' positionals when the boss travels to an edge like Theos' Ultima or for a stack mechanic like Styx is unnecessary. Fight design should force you to burn TN and make you problem solve how to deal with boss spins. Repositions to centre facing north involve two jumps. You can anticipate this. Targeted snaps like Glaukopis can likewise be anticipated. They do become predictable when you learn the fights. Fight designers should go in with the mindset of actively making fights interesting for every role, and have the awareness of what each is looking for.

[Aco505]

DRG has the lowest potency loss on missed positionals, and MNK/RPR have the highest outside of TA. DRG is scheduled for a 7.0 rework anyways, so I wouldn't be surprised if they move it more towards being an entry level melee for people feeling anxious about positionals.

Repositioning every 10-12 seconds on average is pretty standard for melee jobs. Some jobs just have a greater variance around how frequently those are spaced (i.e. you could have three to four in a row and then a lot of downtime). The numerical count of 'positionals' doesn't necessarily always mandate movement on every melee job. DRG is pretty predictable in that regard, but I imagine it will be even more comfy after the rework.

Your wording suggests that it's an easy job for positionals, when it's not that at all. RPR is because it has a lot of flexibility and a single TN per minute is enough to take care of Gluttony in your average scenario.

And I sincerely hope they don't make DRG the easy job for positionals. It would make no sense whatsoever considering that the other jobs are already quite tame in their frequency. People have been asking in this thread and others for melees with a different amount of positionals, some with more, some with less, and some in between. If you make DRG the easy positional job, then there's nothing in the "more" end of the spectrum.

[Payadopa]

Yes. And while you're at it please remove healing for healers. Or how about we give phys ranged positionals. They do less damage unless they are 10 lalas away from the enemy.

In all seriousness, how about instead of removing something yet again to make the game even more boring we add to it? There is honestly not much left to remove.