Positionals just changing potency is lame. We used to have more interesting without even talking about combo discontinuation: SAM for instance used to reward you with kenki when positionals were met. I like this better, it's not that dissimilar to BRD back then for having your dots actually running giving you more procs and gauge to play with.

Quote Originally Posted by Malthir View Post
The problem with removing enmity is they didn't replace it with any other form of system, and it's removal has lead to the wall to wall dungeon rush meta that's rampant in the game.

For example, back in the day the AOE weaponskills for tanks, didn't give aggro. So every instance wasn't just wall to wall pulls, only people who were massively overgeared for content could do that. Generally you either had a tank that was great at switching targets constantly balancing the aggro alongside the dps, or you did smaller pulls. As opposed to now where tanks just press button their 2 button aoe combo and nothing will attack anything else, because this is how the game was played they had to make tanks stronger and stronger to survive the pull, which leads to the birth of the current incarnation of the warrior where healers aren't required. Which then means you need something for healers to do, well I guess we give them more damage, and then content becomes to easy so buff enemy damage numbers, but now tanks die, well buff them and so on and so forth.

Most of the games combat issues boil down to the removal of TP and enmity, while the original system wasn't great they shouldn't have ripped it out, they should have re worked it. imo.

Like positionals for DPS, they shouldn't have removed them they should have adjusted them so they weren't bad. For example instead of you do more damage with this move at the side. Make it so, if you use this move from the flank it does X if you use it from the rear it does Y, having DPS moving about and having to think about what they're doing is good and engaging, but punishing people because boss threw an attack so I either fail my combo or get hit is poor design.
I remember people mostly wall to walling in endgame roulettes even in HW personally. Less systematically than now, but it was still a majority of runs. Less so in leveling dungeons though yeah (since they always hurt more due to harsher syncs).

AoE weaponskills definitely gave aggro for WAR and DRK. PLD had none in ARR/HW, but had to rely on Flash (no damage) and Circle of Scorn for AoE aggro, and in SB they got Eclipse added but without aggro increase (so it dealt normal aggro damage), if that's what you refer to.

I don't disagree with what you're saying though, simplification has made the game more one dimensional and fixing problems now seems like a real conundrum because a lot of things have been left into a binary state where it's either 100% of something or 0%.