On the Removal of Positionals

[Kaedys]

The only issue I see is that viper does gains a lots of potency from hitting positional and you do need to hit them often. While fight knowledge and True north can somewhat fix this issues, they could just up the base skill damage and reduce positional extra potency. Also the class can be quite puzzling when you first unlock it, but that because IMO the viper tutorial you get in your job quest is just kinda bad, especially compared to Pictomancer one. Viper tutorial don't exactly tell you how to properly use it left/right side combo and that make it look way harder than it is actually to play. Making a better tutorial to make the job less confusing at first would help it a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I think people who are afraid of positional should just play other jobs if they really don't want to deal with it. Not every class should be for everyone IMO.

Let's say you just permanently stay in one of the cones. Maybe you move around, but let's assume for the sake of argument that you ignore positionals and just hit half of them entirely by accident (ie. what would happen if you just stood on the boss's butt the whole time). Per 2 minutes, Viper gets 6 positionals from Dreadwinder and, iirc from another thread, 8 from standard combos. The Dread ones gain 50p from positional, and the combo ones gain 60p. If you miss, on average, half of those, that's a total of 390p per minute, which is effectively the same loss as dropping 1.5 GCDs during that 2 minute period (or, equivalently, dropping 1.5 of your Death Rattle or Legacy follow-ups). Is it a loss? Sure, but it's not catastrophic.

[Kazimere]

Regarding Viper, I think more of the issue with positionals is the auto combo nature of things. I’m not a fan of it for the filler gcds, personally. The dash is absolute dogshit as well. Other than that, the class flows well

[RyuuZero]

My Point of the Removal of Positionals is backed by the fact that They removed Positionals from Monk! And Sorry but Monk is the Last Job to remove Positionals on.

Sadly, topics about removing positionals from mostly non-melee mains sprout from time to time. It's an endless struggle! Funnily enough, I don't see anyone advocating for the removal of cast times or Swiftcast.

Now that's an (false) accusation^^ like who asked Monk's Positionals to be removed? Not me, that's for sure. But isn't the the slow removal of Positionals an Indicator for maybe future changes? Hell! Viper has 2 One-Button 1-2-3 Combos! Stuff that should remain in PvP and hopefully only remains a Viper Gimmick in PvE.. like for me playing NIN, the Positional of Trick Attack is non-existent since Trick Attack gets completely covered by True North.. so what's the point?

Then simply teach the new vipers that the green buttons is for left or right of the enemy, and the red buttons are for behind the enemy.

..And that's helpful, thanks

I'm not necessarily for the Removal of Positionals.. but the Monk's Positional Removal sets off the alarm bells for a complete Removal of Positionals as a Possibility.. I mean.. if they remove Positionals, the Server/Game also would've less calculating to do which may free up resources +True North also could be removed freeing up buttons.. now what's with the Combos then? I'd say as a Direction would be that of Buff and Burst Combos.. But Hell! that New Kunai Stuff of NIN feels brutally useless! like why doesn't those Kunai Buff Raiju and stuff? Only Aeolian Edge?? huh...

[Aco505]

My Point of the Removal of Positionals is backed by the fact that They removed Positionals from Monk! And Sorry but Monk is the Last Job to remove Positionals on.

DRG had 50% of its GCDs as positionals and now it's 30%. MNK wasn't the only positional heavy job. Additionally, DRG cannot introduce extra GCDs in the rotation to move them around; they're static in the GCD loop.

Now that's an (false) accusation^^ like who asked Monk's Positionals to be removed? Not me, that's for sure.

There's a new discussion thread on removing positionals every once in a while both in the official forums and other platforms such as Reddit. It comes up often.

In fact, you actually made your own thread not too long ago asking players to choose what to remove: DoTs or positionals. Whether your intention was to actually remove them or not is another matter but you did open it up for debate.

This kind of talk does happen often.

Yet as I said you don't see this with cast times and Swiftcast, because no one would be asking for those to be removed from casters considering it's part of their identity and it becomes a point of contention amongst the player base when they have too little management (e. g. SMN).

Those against positionals tend to not play melee jobs and want them removed so that the jobs are more appealing to them, despite the fact that missing positionals is not a big deal when it comes to DPS.

Whether they should be a bigger deal or not is a different question but positionals provide a way of increasing engagement and APM without increasing button count.

Until SE gives melee jobs something else that makes their rotations more involved, positionals should stay.

And the reason is simple: every time they remove something, they don't give something else in return. The recent reaction to the proposed VPR changes for 7.05 should be proof enough of this.

[RyuuZero]

Until SE gives melee jobs something else that makes their rotations more involved, positionals should stay.

And the reason is simple: every time they remove something, they don't give something else in return.

I totally agree with that, which is why I am so brutally against the positional removal on Monks!
In the Past we had stuff that made Rotations more involved! Samurai had Kaiten, which introduced the Kenki Resource as a way to boost all Weaponskills and since 6.1 that aspect has been totally removed and Kenki is just a Burst Resource to sit on now..
btw what was that DRG Skill what you were talking about? Impaler? Good Times xD and back then the True North Skill was a MNK exclusive, right?^^
But I suspect as a future direction of the Combat Team is that they work towards to the Extinction of Single Target.
Again, I'm not necessarily against Positionals but the accessibility of True North and the frequency of usage make it for some jobs irrelevant to think about Positionals and with my DoT vs Positionals Thread, I just wondered how other ppl feel about it. Not help by the fact that they gutted the DoT DPS Job off all their DoTs.. speaking of Summoner. My Issue is that the Combat Design Team isn't as consequent or transparent as they should be. For example at the First Keynote of Endwalker the Removal of Belts was announced, which is why I wondered what's next on the Butchers chopping block.

[ItsMeZee]

Addressing the original post, I think it boils down to point number 2 (it feels bad to mess up a positional) and points 1 and 3—(people who main other rolws not liking how melee plays, and 'wall bosses')—grow out of point 2 as people try and justify why they think positinals should go.

And, like, I get it a little? I kick myself a bit when I miss a positional. But not too much, because more often than not, Its because I prioritized not getting murdered by the boss surprising me with a cleave, or getting caught in AOE spam.

Which brings me to a bit of an unkind observation: I'm not a top tier player by any stretch of the imagination, but I see plenty of people (tanks, DPS, etc) who just... kind of stink at the not dying part—even before you add positionals to the equation.

Do I think EVERYONE who thinks positionals should go are just bad at staying alive while playing 'optimally'? Not necessarily.

I DO think positinals make a good scapegoat for that particular problem though.

Removing them might make things easier, sure, but also... Not really? Because making jobs 'easier' or less busy won't help with having the sense to prioritize staying alive/doing mechs as their first priority, and hitting their buttons 'perfectly' as their second.

[Mikey_R]

btw what was that DRG Skill what you were talking about? Impaler? Good Times xD and back then the True North Skill was a MNK exclusive, right?^^

Whilst I don't know which DRG action is being mentioned, I can hazard a guess, with a bit of a history lesson for DRG.

Back in ARR, Dragoon had 2 positionals, Heavy Thrust (flank) and Impulse Drive (rear). If you missed the positionals on either one, you didn't get the benefit. Heavy Thrust didn't give it's damage buff and Impulse Drive didn't combo into Disembowel. Towards the end of ARR, this was changed. Heavy Thrust always gave the damage buff, just lost some potency and the rear positional from Impulse Drive was moved to Chaos Thrust, so Impulse Drive always comboed and Chaos Thrust is as it is now.

True North was not added for any job until Stormblood with the introduction of role actions.

[Aco505]

DRG has had 50% of its weaponskill string GCDs as positionals for years until Dawntrail removed the 5th positional. I wasn't talking about any old action.

[ValStormbreaker]

snip

Removing positionals actually makes the game harder for most players. Most players do them incorrectly, though.

Allow me to explain:

The way you're supposed to do positionals is to straddle the southeast or southwest intercardinal of the targeting circle, right where the double-line breaks, and hug that one position. Then, once every few moves, you either take a step to the left and then stay put, or a step to the right, and then stay put.

Melee DPS jobs are played most optimally when you move as little as possible to greed for as much DPS in a high-risk, high-reward kind of capacity. You have to learn the mechanics of the fight, and then move as little as humanly possible to avoid mechanics.

Old-school MNK mains know how to do this properly. However, we have also observed that on melee DPSes that lack a lot of positionals, many players actually move around too damn much, and think that "flank" and "rear" means moving from the east or west cardinal to the south cardinal and make these stupidly massive 90-degree movements that are likely to get themselves and/or their teammates killed by mechanics. They don't know how to stay put and straddle that edge, which makes the game a lot easier.


We see this most of all with Samurai and Dragoon players who don't get how these work, think they have the freedom to move more than they really ought to, and then scramble to reach their positions (which they often overshoot). Positionals are not as involved as people make them out to be, it's literally just a baby step to the left or right once every 3 or so moves (depending on the job), but people overthink them, underestimate how they actually do improve the power fantasy of some of the jobs as well as their rhythm and flow, do them poorly, and then blame their existence and advocate for their removal instead of taking personal accountability for bad player performance and moving more than they should.

Yes, the game is a terrible teacher. In other news, water is wet. We have asked Yoshi-P to give us Hall of the Intermediate so it could actually teach these things to players, and he said no.

[ShadowyZero]

Sadly, topics about removing positionals from mostly non-melee mains sprout from time to time. It's an endless struggle! Funnily enough, I don't see anyone advocating for the removal of cast times or Swiftcast.

i wanted cast times changed or removed on a melee but so many got butthurt over it lol