Positionals

[IruruCece]

Honestly i think the dev's removed management of GL because once you learned how to maintain it it became a non mechanic since it was actually easy to maintain at max level and even at level 70 and so now are laying the ground work for next expansion that leads to less restrictions when it comes to their abilities

It's legitimately hard for me to be excited about whatever supposedly future mechanic Monk is going to get when they didn't know what to do with the mechanic it had for the better part of a decade. The changes to the job from HW to SB to ShB have only been consistent in their inconsistent understanding about what the kit has ever needed.

Hell, for a good chunk of ShB, positionals WEREN'T a concern for Monk, on top of maintaining GL being a non-issue until the boss did something that prevented us from using ANY of the existing tools in the kit to maintain it! It was practically in the state people have been demanding it to be in, and yet despite also being one of the best DPS in the game, it was underplayed and people complained it was still "too hard."

People have said that if GL was part of the identity of the job, then it "wasn't ever interesting," and honestly I cannot understand that mindset in the least. I played Monk from HW, when I came to the game, all the way until ShB, when I dropped the job out of frustration over how little SE seemed care for it. So many other jobs in the game are more or less "feature complete." Monk is not, arguably never has been, and removing something from it is nowhere near exciting, much less a "good start" when said "good start" left the new additions to our kit looking preeeeeeetty sus still.

It's a similar situation to the complaints over positionals in this and other threads they've cropped up in, and the argument is still made in poor faith every single time. If you don't like positionals, there are jobs where they aren't a factor. The absolute worst thing the devs could do to melee DPS right now would be to remove positionals entirely under the "guise" of accessibility. Not every job needs to appeal to every player, especially when the game offers so many options as is.

[Payotz]

I get accessibility is good for an mmo, but sometimes the devs go too far, and make the class so dull that said people won't play it.

True. A lot of the jank that jobs used to have made for some really interesting gameplay options, and a lot of the old systems made it so that there's a lot of little things you can learn about a job while you're playing it.
Sure, GL is a easy to maintain, but so is BoTD, but that didn't result in Dragoon losing BoTD, they built on top of it and made it a core mechanic of the job. Same as Enochian.

And the worse thing is, the community actually figured out a way to actually build on top of it last expansion with TK Mnk, but they only ever implemented the concept officially in PvP(and damn that was fun). They're literally aware that it existed, but they just went "Oh well" and removed it entirely. Why couldn't they just build on top of that? It definitely adds a lot more gameplay depth to Mnk compared to Launch Mnk and current Mnk.

I understand that they removed GL from the job because they wanted to add more things to it blah blah blah. But, I'm not holding my breath for it.
I severely doubt that they'll do anything more complex than ARR Mnk with the way their job design philosophy is.
I'd love to be wrong, but from what the Famitsu interviews imply, they're not going to add another system to Mnk to replace GL. This is the current state of 6.0+ Mnk.

[Kabooa]

True. A lot of the jank that jobs used to have made for some really interesting gameplay options, and a lot of the old systems made it so that there's a lot of little things you can learn about a job while you're playing it.
Sure, GL is a easy to maintain, but so is BoTD, but that didn't result in Dragoon losing BoTD, they built on top of it and made it a core mechanic of the job. Same as Enochian.

I'm going to disagree a bit here. They did kind of remove Breath of the Dragon. The current state is a passive, and the only way to drop it is through the same things that dropped Greased Lightning.

The relationship between Gierskogul and BOTD in HW was, to me, a great dynamic. It's the kind of positive feedback needed in a few of the jobs today, such as TK Monk, like you mentioned. The change in Stormblood is not all that different to what they did to GL in this patch.

Same with Enochian. They basically just made it a button that upgrades AF/UI rather than be its own thing to maintain, and if they're looking to cut space, it would 100% not surprise me that after consolidating BTL/Leylines that Enochian is just baked into AF/UI and removed as a button.

[Wyakin]

Ok so before I get started I main a tank and have been leveling a dragoon. Ff14 is based around dodging aoes, boss position aoes, avoiding eye blasts etc etc its all aoes. Positionals are incredibly awkward and bad when the mechanics are based around avoidance. Let's not kid ourselves and start talking about how "well the tank needs to do xyz and position xyz" when 95% of players do not run with statics and only guild members and even then a lot of aoes in this game spawn at random spots around the boss. Take the second boss in dohn mheg for example. As a DRG you have no choice but to eat the lower potency of your abilities regardless of where the tank has him facing because of the tethers. Its a really bad idea for melee to have positionals in a game that clearly doesn't support it. As a caster I can slam everyone and everything from any angle but melee I have to hike around and pick sides? Yes as a tank main and with tank changes in 5.0 the vast majority are terrible and can't even use mitigators let alone position the boss for melee so thats also a huge problem. In big pulls tanks need to jump around aoeing and avoiding aoes so what does that do for melee? Ruins your dps contribution and that effects your whole group. Please get rid of positionals, theyre garbage.

So let me get this straight. I just want to be clear. The only thing that makes melee anything that resembles a challenge you want to remove? The very reason they’re the more powerful jobs you want to remove? Because you’re incapable of learning how to use true north or do positionals? Please... stop

[Cetek14]

From my point of view positionals are pure annoyance. Ranged jobs can move freely, and often output higher damage per second, while melees are tied to very tight spot. Most of the time you are forced to ignore them, because newer fights are more "action combat" focused, so you can't just stand wherever you want.
For me they can be removed without changing rotation of any melee job. Only some potency changes would be required.

[ssunny2008]

From my point of view positionals are pure annoyance. Ranged jobs can move freely, and often output higher damage per second, while melees are tied to very tight spot. Most of the time you are forced to ignore them, because newer fights are more "action combat" focused, so you can't just stand wherever you want.

That´s not correct.

If we talk about trash-adds in dungeons, of course physical range will out-dps others, they can move and attack freely with their bunch of aoe abilities. But if we talk about real endgame bosses, it´s up to the players and the boss mechanics.
Overall caster and melees are pretty even in damage if they´re played well and the player behind it is able to adjust to the boss mechanics. Physical range are slightly behind in damage, BECAUSE they´ve the freedom to move anytime anywhere and dancer + bard are more "raid-supports" anyway. Blackmages are the strongest right now, but that is up to the actual content and they clearly can´t move as they want. Mostly the raidgroup have to adjust for them.

When a phys. range out-dps a melee with even equip, then it´s mostly a skill-difference between both players and in really really rare cases boss mechanics depended. But the top players will proof the 2nd part wrong every time probably even without uptime strategies.

[IruruCece]

From my point of view positionals are pure annoyance. Ranged jobs can move freely, and often output higher damage per second, while melees are tied to very tight spot. Most of the time you are forced to ignore them, because newer fights are more "action combat" focused, so you can't just stand wherever you want.
For me they can be removed without changing rotation of any melee job. Only some potency changes would be required.

Three of the top 5 ranked DPS, per FFlogs, are melee. It currently goes BLM (no surprises), SAM, NIN, SMN, and MNK. And the changes to Monk have affected it's position on that site throughout the expansion. There was a short point in time where it competed for top DPS in the game.

What hasn't changed, however, is that the vast majority of ranged jobs, magical or physical, have regularly been outperformed by every physical DPS. The price of being able to just fire off whatever from any angle without real restrictions comes in the form of reduced output. That's math, that's the game's intended design, that's how it actually is right now. And in a sense, BLM does have it's own movement restrictions due to its LACK of mobility during DPS phases. The difference between mediocre BLM and great ones is knowledge of a given fight. A good BLM knows where they can safely stand to minimize the amount of movement they need to do to survive. That is why fights that are designed to force movement are a source of frustration for them, because they deny them a comfort zone.

In a sense, that is what fights that make it difficult to land positionals do to jobs that have them. They take a basic operation of the job, and expect the player to adjust to circumstances beyond their control. A good MNK, NIN, or SAM knows that they can't always land every positional, but they can land MOST of them, and consistently more with every attempt at a fight. That's the game's design. That's part of the challenge, reacting to things the game throws at you that disrupt the intended or expected flow of your gameplay.

If you don't like positionals, play a job that doesn't have them.

[Mavrias]

From my point of view positionals are pure annoyance. Ranged jobs can move freely, and often output higher damage per second, while melees are tied to very tight spot. Most of the time you are forced to ignore them, because newer fights are more "action combat" focused, so you can't just stand wherever you want.
For me they can be removed without changing rotation of any melee job. Only some potency changes would be required.

If a ranged physical job is out dpsing you as a melee, there's more wrong with what you're doing than just positionals.

[CKNovel]

If a ranged physical job is out dpsing you as a melee, there's more wrong with what you're doing than just positionals.

I don't remember it quite well, but I believe someone tried to measure their DPS striking a dummy only on the frontside as a DRG.
The DPS difference was about 500 if I remember well, but that was during the beginning of the expansion.

[Wyakin]

From my point of view positionals are pure annoyance. Ranged jobs can move freely, and often output higher damage per second, while melees are tied to very tight spot. Most of the time you are forced to ignore them, because newer fights are more "action combat" focused, so you can't just stand wherever you want.
For me they can be removed without changing rotation of any melee job. Only some potency changes would be required.

Ranged DPS are massively under performing and SE needs to stop burying their head in the sand and figure out what they want the role to be. Melee are significantly more powerful