Positionals

[Burningskull]

As someone who use to main melee jobs and plays on controller, and who doesn't savage / ultimate raid, I don't think positionals add much to gameplay. I flick the control stick left or right once every few button presses. There's not much skill in that. The skill comes from memorizing a fight and knowing when the boss is going to turn or jump away or any of that type of stuff. Which you would still need to do even without positionals. I will say that until they remove positionals I wont personally even consider maining something other than Dancer. Unless they really mess up Dancer next expansion.

[Satarn]

As someone who use to main melee jobs and plays on controller, and who doesn't savage / ultimate raid, I don't think positionals add much to gameplay.

In harder content, you can't just move however you please all the time due to mechanics requiring more precise positioning from everyone. That means if you want to maximize your positionals as a melee DPS, you often need to take them into account while planning your movement and rotation, the tanks need to take them into account while positioning the boss and the group needs to take them into account while planning the strats.

No, removing positionals wouldn't completely cut movement, rotation, positioning and strat planning, but it would remove some depth from them, which many of us consider a loss. It's the same with any other aspect of the game and positionals play a part in many of these aspects. If you remove a part of something, you take away some of the depth with it, which in turn makes it less engaging to many.

Besides, if you don't even do content where dps matters, I don't see why would you be so turned off by positionals being required for best performance - it's not like they will matter at all in the content which you do. You can play a melee while ignoring positionals and perform well enough to clear in any dungeon or normal/alliance raid, even in extremes.

[Undeadfire]

In harder content, you can't just move however you please all the time due to mechanics requiring more precise positioning from everyone. That means if you want to maximize your positionals as a melee DPS, you often need to take them into account while planning your movement and rotation, the tanks need to take them into account while positioning the boss and the group needs to take them into account while planning the strats.

That's how uptime strategies come into fruition and keep an open area on flanks/rears for melee plus True North. They're very hardly used in pugs due to their larger dangers of wiping the group.