Positional requirement is inherently bad design

[ggrgg]

As the title suggests, I believe positionals are a inherently bad design. Even putting aside the lack of clear feedback for successful hits, this mechanic is problematic in a way that cannot be fixed.
Bosses can't turn frequently, and if they do, they have to do so in a predictable manner, or melee dps can't hit positionals consistently. There's a cap of how much a boss can move around (or force players to move around) before melee dps run out of true north uptime.
Unique positioning requirements (like facing a boss toward a stacked party for a extended period of time) are avoided because melee dps can't hit positionals.
In overland or solo instances, hitting positionals is inconsistent at best since enemies tries to face toward you most of the time.
How the game currently handle the abovementioned problems are to either limit boss movement, which doesn't have to be the case if there are no positionals, or make enemies ignore positionals, which renders it pointless anyway.

[StarryVera]

Its not positionals, its encounter design in general. There is literally no goal in a fight outside of "Do damage", and because positionals give more damage, they are always the correct choice. It's why we have melee uptime strats where they can 100% of the time hit their positionals. SE would need to change their design philosophy, which it very much seems like they are against.

[Mikey_R]

As the title suggests, I believe positionals are a inherently bad design. Even putting aside the lack of clear feedback for successful hits, this mechanic is problematic in a way that cannot be fixed.
Bosses can't turn frequently, and if they do, they have to do so in a predictable manner, or melee dps can't hit positionals consistently. There's a cap of how much a boss can move around (or force players to move around) before melee dps run out of true north uptime.
Unique positioning requirements (like facing a boss toward a stacked party for a extended period of time) are avoided because melee dps can't hit positionals.
In overland or solo instances, hitting positionals is inconsistent at best since enemies tries to face toward you most of the time.
How the game currently handle the abovementioned problems are to either limit boss movement, which doesn't have to be the case if there are no positionals, or make enemies ignore positionals, which renders it pointless anyway.

I disagree, especially when you take into account the changes with how positionals are going to be handled and looking at what we have seen of Dragoon.

First, they are adding proper visual feedback to attacks where you land the positional, the y are also adding in some leeway. While they didn't exactly specify what this meant, we can assume that, if a boss turns just before you hit your GCD, you will still get the positional bonus. Those random turns aren't going to hinder you.

For overworld and solo instances, noone cares about hitting positionals, especially if they are just a potency loss. These aren't hard enough that maximising damage in that way actually matters.

As for boss mechanics, this is where I want to now talk about evolved Dragoon and how the flexibility of it's rotation is now a blessing. Dragoon's positionals are not at a fixed part of your rotation, if you know a boss is going to stack mark the party, you can just, not use the positional. On top of that, Vengeful Jump allows you to ignore the positional requirement of the next GCD, which is a way you can circumvent the positional requirement, however, Vengeful Jump also adds a healing component to the next GCD, by combining Vengeful Jump with a positional GCD you can make full use of Vengeful Jump's effects. With the myriad ways this can be setup with different numbers of positionals and jumps available, you can tune it to how you want.

So really, this is a good example of showing how the flexibility of the evolved jobs help to provide many ways of getting through the same mechanic and it is now up to the player to adapt to the differing environment. Without positionals, you wouldn't have that extra layer of thinking.

[RaionKansen]

I disagree.

Sometimes its really fun to optimize and its just a tiny thing to separate your personal performance from other players that don't engage with the system optimally

[Carighan]

Uuuuh, but positioning requirements aren't functional?

They just add minor damage. That is the actual fix to the problem you're describing, and it's been in the game since ~forever. It's also the achilles heel, because indirectly like you say positional requirements are bad, but not because of the effect on bosses, but because of how they got trivialized. It's just some potency, and not even a lot. Your combo doesn't abort for failing to hit a positional, you don't fail to gain gauge, nothing like that. Which sadly makes rotations 100% predictable even if you fail to hit a positional.

I'd rather have the damage be equal overall, but the combo branches off based on whether I hit a positional or didn't hit it.

[Valence]

Combos used to break when positionals weren't met. Same for the weaponskill effects that came with it.
It was changed in SB+.

[Azurarok]

I'd imagine that made DRG's combos much more interesting back in HW, assuming the two combo paths were still separated and the blood of the dragon gauge had to be sustained like it did in ShB.

Combos in general seemed like a lot more than just filler

[Mikey_R]

Combos used to break when positionals weren't met. Same for the weaponskill effects that came with it.
It was changed in SB+.

Not entirely true and is only the case for Dragoon. Impulse Drive didn't combo into Disembowel without the rear and Heavy Thrust both did not give the buff or combo into Ring of Thorns. This was changed late into ARR an the rear positional on Impulse Drive was moved to Chaos Thrust, for just a potency loss and Heavy Thrust always gave the buff and combo into Ring of Thorns, but at a potency loss if you doidn't hit the flank.

Monk, however, always went through their forms and always gave the buff/debuff, they just had a heavy potency decrease when not hitting the positional.

When Ninja was released, it was a mix, Trick Attack only applied the debuff from the rear and lost potency, but Dancing Edge was just a potency loss, it still applied the Dancing Edge debuff.

I'd imagine that made DRG's combos much more interesting back in HW, assuming the two combo paths were still separated and the blood of the dragon gauge had to be sustained like it did in ShB.

Combos in general seemed like a lot more than just filler

If you made the initial assumption that positionals had to be met for combos to continue, that was gone before HW. In HW, Chaos Thrust and Full Thrust could randomly combo into either Fang and Claw or Wheeling Thrust, missing a positional just meant a loss in potency, it did nothing to affect the Blood of the Dragon timer.

When Samurai was released, it done potency loss slightly differently as it did not reduce the direct damage, but instead reduced the amount of gauge generated. This was changed to just be a potency loss with no change to the gauge generation, like we see it today.

Dragoon did also get another mechanic tied to positionals in ShB, where, if you hit the positional on the last hit of their 5 string combo (SB is when we saw the change to fixed combos and you done Fang and Claw > Wheeling Thrust and vice versa), it upgraded True Thrust into Raiden thrust. Now, Raiden is just automatically gained upon completion of a combo.

Positionals have gone through a variety of changes and iterations throughout the expansions and the one thing that has been consistent is, people did not like it when combos were tied to positionals, hence why it was changed and likewise, when it affected gauge generation, it started to affect how people played their burst windows, so again (ie. they didn't have enough), it was changed. With the new system, and the lack of having anything tied to a burst window, it might be interesting to see some of these ideas come back.

[Wildheaven182]

The savage raiders advocating for more job homogenization to save their perfect parses i see.

[RaionKansen]

The savage raiders advocating for more job homogenization to save their perfect parses i see.

Let them suffer. Not all raiders are brainrotted from parse obsession.

All I had to do was play GNB seriously on one tier during Endwalker to give up on parsing pretty much altogether.

I had pulls where my rotation and auto attack count were exactly the same as rank 1 parses and I'd get like a high 80, low 90 just because I didn't Crit+DH enough Double Downs.

Parsing is a lie. The best players get consistent parses. The best parses are just good players getting lucky