Should they remove positionals at this point?

[AxlStream]

Without positionals, you'd need to buff all melee DPS jobs. Monk in particular as everything on him has positionals and some special effects such as guaranteed crit on the back during bootshine. Also I feel like it'd make it just as boring as playing a tank minus the aspect of mitigating your damage properly which would make them the overall most bland jobs in the game. They would need more than buffs but they'd need another quirk to compensate and to make for more engaging gameplay.

[Arkdra]

I play the laziest positional melee dps and even I wouldn't want them scrapped entirely. That said, they need find a way to make all the other jobs like samurai where they aren't losing huge potency chunks if they can't hit their positionals. The positionals do make doing stuff out in the world a huge pain. Not that there's much to do there I suppose.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

I play the laziest positional melee dps and even I wouldn't want them scrapped entirely. That said, they need find a way to make all the other jobs like samurai where they aren't losing huge potency chunks if they can't hit their positionals. The positionals do make doing stuff out in the world a huge pain. Not that there's much to do there I suppose.

I see a lot of people saying SAM's positional's are mostly inconsequential but if you do the math, you find that 5 kenki roughly equates to 60 potency, which is much more than any other dps missing theirs. Just because it doesn't add a flat potency increase doesn't mean you aren't losing a lot, SAM tends to get a pass because their raw potency is very high, but the loss can be noticeable.

The biggest problem with positional's used to be if you missed them, you didn't get the buff they apply, like DRG missing Heavy Thrust meant you wouldn't get the buff, which in a fight like Demon Wall where you couldn't attack the flank, just absolutely sucked, even NIN as of now can miss applying Trick Attack, which is a massive chunk of DPS down the drain. I always wished they applied the debuff even if you miss the rear, but add more damage if you do hit it.

I dunno, I feel that positional's add some depth to melee and isn't something I want to see removed based on "I dun like it" because I think it adds just enough to make them more engaging than without. A lot of people express disappointment in missing positional's or how sometimes its impossible, but its not like you are expected to hit the positional every single time without fail, you learn to hit as many as possible as you learn the fight.

Take Pantokrator in 011s, I can't hit every positional when circling the boss, if I tried, I would die, so I save True North for it, minimizing the loss as much as possible but even then I can still miss some, it is all part of the dance and I enjoy that.

[Burningskull]

I think that if they don't get rid of positionals they need to make them more apparent on the targeting circle for new players and to let people know how little they need to move.

As is I just imagine a big X on the circle.

[CreinCrein]

Skill expression for both melees and tanks makes the game spicier, positionals are fine the way they are.

[Tigerlilley]

Stop trying to make DPS brain dead. Positionals are fine.

[Brightamethyst]

Positionals are fine.

Except that they're not really. They may not be completely broken and unplayable, but they're not ideal either.

Positionals are an interesting idea, but the reality is that they're often more annoying than fun or challenging. Boss has back AoEs, or spends a lot of time moving, or randomly turning, or whatever? That's not skill, just frustration.

[Tigerlilley]

Except that they're not really. They may not be completely broken and unplayable, but they're not ideal either.

Positionals are an interesting idea, but the reality is that they're often more annoying than fun or challenging. Boss has back AoEs, or spends a lot of time moving, or randomly turning, or whatever? That's not skill, just frustration.

Completely disagree. I've raided Monk through since T1 through all Savages and Ultimates. Positionals are both challenging and rewarding to get right as well as being an integral part of melee jobs. I swear to god no one on this forum is happy until everyone is a 1,2,3 rotation you can just faceroll and no one needs to be accountable for their own gameplay. Waaah, everything is too hard. Nerf jobs. Nerf savage. Nerf primals. Nerf story trials. Sigmascape Savage was hands down the worst raid tier in this game, boring, uninspired, clearable within a week. 2 of those fights were no positionals and it didn't make either of them better.

If the boss has back aoes or spends time moving, you learn the fight and where to optimise True North. If its randomly turning, talk to your tank.

No wonder dev's only listen to the Japanese. They actually take the time to learn and practice their jobs.

[Brightamethyst]

I swear to god no one on this forum is happy until everyone is a 1,2,3 rotation you can just faceroll and no one needs to be accountable for their own gameplay.

Literally no one has ever asked for that. The issue here is that there's a big difference between "challenging but fun" and "complicated for the sake of being complicated", and unfortunately a large part of the game's combat systems fall solidly into the second category.

[Tigerlilley]

If one skill per combo has a positional (nin drg sam)
or literally has a 123 flank 123 back repeat (monk)

is too complicated for you? Then the issue isn't the design.