Positionals

[Fendred]

Positionals worked back in 2.0 because the bosses were designed with the limitations of the melee jobs in mind. This unfortunately made things very bland, so they gave up on that design relatively quickly as we went into Heavensward. The hardest hit by this is the monk due to its speed and omnipresent directional requirements.

Even within the raiding community, their own combat metrics websites like FFLogs show that the least played jobs among raiders are monk, black mage, and bard. The melee jobs most common among the raiders are the two most straight forward with the least directional requirements: Samurai and Dragoon. This is the same even after the monk rework.

Being fast and having omnipresent directional requirements means the monk will always lose damage the second the boss moves. This isn't the same for other melee jobs. On top of which, the speed at which it attacks assures more missed damage. Boosting monk's overall damage to compensate will just make them incredibly swingy.

Given how people seem to fair okay with samurai and dragoon, I'd say directionals should be limited to two per class at most. Something like ninja probably doesn't need them as it already has mudras to reward/punish the player.

The positionals are one of the aspects of playing a melee dps that makes it fun. Some people like thinking about creative ways to stay within boss attack range and adjusting for the boss turning, and tanking is also more fun because you can think of ways to make it so that the boss turns as little as possible.

That being said, I wouldn't be opposed to a melee dps that doesn't have positionals since I'll always be an advocate for offering a healthy range of jobs with varying degrees of difficulty to optimize. coughs in Shadowbringers Healer changes

Well, yes. However, too much of that is not good, and the person still needs to be able to reposition themselves before the ability is up for use again. Most people complaining about directionals are coming from the perspective of the monk, who even after the rework is one of the least played jobs.