Should they remove positionals at this point?

[Slirith]

Personally I agree with whoever says to just do positionals for the last bit of the combo(snap punch, demolish etc) like it is with samurai.

[Gemina]

If fight mechanics were more random instead of scripted, I would probably agree with you OP. But things like positionals still keeps fights interesting after you've learned it. Keeping up a optimal rotation while dodging mechanics and still landing your positional bonuses is quite challenging, so you're basically asking for an element of difficulty to be taken away. It's like me asking for no unavoidable AoE as a healer, or for no tank busters as a tank. These are elements for each role that the player controlling them can't do anything about; they can only handle them in the best way possible. Mechanics are meant to disrupt your flow, and punish you if you don't follow. If overlapping mechanics make it difficult to land positionals, then welcome to content that challenges you.

[Hugowulf]

Seeing this makes me sad. The worthwhile thing to do is positionals on melee, something to kill the boredom. If you really don’t like melee positionals then try a different job.

[wereotter]

I don't think positionals should be eliminated entirely, however, I do think more bosses that require a specific dance is a lot of "stand here" need to have the position-less target ring. Midgardsormr is a good example of this in this raid tier. Too much of his fight requires you to stand in specific points for elongated periods that really punishes melee jobs, and while all the fights of this tier do it to some degree, none are as much of an offender as that fight.

There is a degree of optimization that you learn as you play a fight more and more, and you'll still miss the occasional position due to how you need to do the dance of the fight (True North helps with this if you know you're going to miss for a while) but when you have an entire fight where the mechanics of beating it require the party distribute itself in certain patterns for the entirety of the encounter, then that's a boss that should just not have a positional ring so as not to make non-melee jobs more powerful simply because they don't have to worry about where they're standing in relation to the boss's hit box.

[Arkdra]

I'm not saying it's ok to miss positionals on sam, just that missing out on 5 kenki feels less bad, even if by the numbers it isn't.

[Tint]

I think they could remove positionals from NIN and SAM, but MNK and DRG keeping theirs.

They feel tacked on for NIN and SAM - and actually they are. NIN originally didn't had positionals (on their combos) and SAM only gets them later with the addition of the Kenki gauge. Does every melee job needs positionals? If you like them pick a job with them - if you don't pick one without.

I honestly never missed them when playing my tank in dps-mode. Why not cater to different preferences with different jobs?

[Jijifli]

I think they could remove positionals from NIN and SAM, but MNK and DRG keeping theirs.

They feel tacked on for NIN and SAM - and actually they are. NIN originally didn't had positionals (on their combos) and SAM only gets them later with the addition of the Kenki gauge. Does every melee job needs positionals? If you like them pick a job with them - if you don't pick one without.

I honestly never missed them when playing my tank in dps-mode. Why not cater to different preferences with different jobs?

No comment on SAM, but NIN has always had a positional at the end of their combo and for trick attack. SAM is the only case of an ability not having a positional, then suddenly getting one.

[wereotter]

No comment on SAM, but NIN has always had a positional at the end of their combo and for trick attack. SAM is the only case of an ability not having a positional, then suddenly getting one.

Sneak Attack, when it used to exist, was also a frontal positional, so just adding onto it, ninja always had that as part of its job.

[Jijifli]

Sneak Attack, when it used to exist, was also a frontal positional, so just adding onto it, ninja always had that as part of its job.

I left sneak out since it was never used I thought outside of below 50, but yes, that's another one.

[Tint]

No comment on SAM, but NIN has always had a positional at the end of their combo and for trick attack. SAM is the only case of an ability not having a positional, then suddenly getting one.

Yes, Sneak- and Trick Attack always had positionals. But the other positionals were added with the release of Heavensward, originallay NINs combos didn't had them.

Sadly it's not stated in detail in the 3.0 patchnotes, but they were talking about it in a Liveletter:

Furthermore, we have added positioning to several weapon skills. Current ninja doesn't have much positioning and was able to attack from any direction freely, so we included positioning for some.