On the Removal of Positionals

[Valence]

Except they've never put positionals on ranged/casters (other than occasional boss mechs) and there are melee with casts and p. Ranged that had casts and casters with very few casts.

Like, sure, you're being technically correct, but I feel the point of what Aco505 is pretty clear.

Positionals have usually been a melee role thing in this game. Arguably tanks dealt with it before with old Raw Intuition and before they could block and dodge from the rear, but the design normalcy is there.

And my point that some things that were taken for granted as the core identity of some roles got extended to others, namely rng procs for example. Therefore, nothing prevents them to extend a positionaless kit to a new melee job someday. I dont really have a horse in this race though.

Which is exactly why they stated they were reducing the sizes of hitboxes this xpac. Which they largely did (save for the EX's, but those don't even require positionals anyway). I think most melee would agree in general that staying in range was a non-issue in SW and ShB. There were still mechanics that would keep you out of melee range of course, but I don't think anyone is really defending the enormous hitboxes they had before.

But one bad design choice doesn't make another bad design choice good.

They have reduced nothing so far. Dungeon bosses hitboxes are still as gigantic as well. I'm still waiting on those promises, but I guess we'll see tomorrow.

[Eudyptes]

They have reduced nothing so far. Dungeon bosses hitboxes are still as gigantic as well. I'm still waiting on those promises, but I guess we'll see tomorrow.

I do think they have reduced the hitboxes by a fair amount in dungeons, but keep in mind that they were so big that reducing them by half is still a pretty big hitbox in general. The EX's are just as they were were though.

This is working out so well for the game too, between the healer threads (and the scarcity of healers in a lot of DCs pfs since like two years ago), a lot of reworked/simplified jobs (like BLM and MNK) having abysmal play rates, and so on.
Let's not pretend that these weren't missteps by SE- they love to gut their jobs down to appease the lowest common denominator (which is low in this game), but that doesn't seem to be working too well if they're thinking that they need to revise their strategy (which has been publicly stated multiple times). Especially if the story content goes on the way 7.0 is going. No story and no good job design is sure to be a winning combination.

I feel like the healer strike was proof that what's on these forums and reddit means nothing to the actual player base. In game it's just as it's always been, with tanks typically being the most in need role, healers second, and the occasional rare dps in need for alliance raids. PF seems to be in the same boat in my experience. Besides, other than healers the complaints I hear about typically revolve around homogenization. Giving all melee positionals is just as much homogenization and removing them all. And afaik the only things SE has said about any of it was about that and the 2 min burst window.

The reality is the removal of positionals over the decade has not been causing a mass exodus of players. Most who complain about it even still play that role. Another reality is that if you slapped ARR or HW melees (esp mnk) into EW or DT's fights the role would almost instantly tank in damage. I mean that's literally why they made all the changes they did, because you can't have fights become more and more mobile/mechanic heavy while maintaining balance with the old system. Either they did noticeably inferior damage, or their max would have to be set so high to offset their lows that they would become utterly broken on an omni-positional fight.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against difficultly or class identity at all. In fact I'm a major proponent for it. I just do not think positionals specifically are the answer at all.

[Galvuu]

I feel like the healer strike was proof that what's on these forums and reddit means nothing to the actual player base. In game it's just as it's always been, with tanks typically being the most in need role, healers second, and the occasional rare dps in need for alliance raids. PF seems to be in the same boat in my experience.

Completely off-topic, but healer has been the most scarce role in both EU DCs in the pf since Abyssos. It's not even close. Even if you go ingame right now and check, it's always healers missing on 9/10 parties.
AIN doesn't actually reflect the numbers on the queue either (not gonna derail the topic to explain how that thing actually works, but the short version is that if a single party needs a tank, it stops there and slaps tank as AIN even if 20 need a healer or dps).