Positionals

[IruruCece]

They've been constantly lowering the cooldown and even added charges to true north. They even gave monk, essentially a second true north. Its almost to the point that true north just serves as an additional button for something so inconsequential. They've also lowered the potency differences.

It's almost as though they've been repeatedly catering to people who expect to be catered to rather than accepting they need to get better and practice more, which still hasn't made Monk more popular as a DPS job. If nothing else, SE should make successful positionals hit harder again, because it's clear that catering to people who start threads admitting they don't even play the job but think its hard to play hasn't actually fixed a single problem with the job or attracted more high-end raiders to it.

The currently existing True North is a downgrade from what it was prior to this patch, and it previously allowed Monks to ignore positionals for a solid minute when well timed with Earth's Reply. It's almost as if SE doesn't want people to not engage with these mechanics, but rather they want True North specifically to be used in short bursts when a boss makes landing some positionals more difficult. It's meant to be used in a pinch, not something that allows you to ignore boss mechanics for almost an entire burst phase all the time.

So... what's your solution here, boss? Double melee range? Triple it? People will still complain about encounters making it hard to do the things expected of them anyway, ignoring that this is the entire point of those mechanics in the first. Like you helpfully point out, every job has a "comfort zone" in a boss fight, but these typically come with PRACTICE and a better understanding of the fight's mechanics. I can't tell you how many times I've entered raids with BLM friends who complain, ad infinitum, about how unfriendly an encounter is to their DPS, how hard it is to find time and space to cast in. There have been plenty of encounters where I've asked myself how am I going to consistently "get in there" and do the damage I need to be doing.

The solution in both cases has been to practice, get better, and accept that sometimes there's too much out of your control to safely DPS properly in. But a living DPS that is still doing damage where and when they can is still more valuable than a dead one. You cannot and will not be able to hit every single positional in a raid. A caster will not always get every cast in on their burst phase. A DOT might fall off. A self-buff might fall off. Mechanics that force these challenges on the player are intended, and players are expected to work around them by design.

If you don't like positionals, Monk isn't for you. Not every job is for everyone. It is kinda sad that positionals are pretty much all Monk has going for it in terms of both identity and as a marker of player skill, though. SE should do something about that.

[Nothv13]

If you don't like positionals, Monk isn't for you. Not every job is for everyone. It is kinda sad that positionals are pretty much all Monk has going for it in terms of both identity and as a marker of player skill, though. SE should do something about that.

Did yo know BLM have more tools to deal with their dps downtime issues than MDPS do along with a much simpler rotation? Did you know all MDPS have positionals? Hell, DRG has an ability that requires you to hit 2 positionals to even activate it. I'd expect that on the Monk, nope shoved onto DRG for some stupid reason instead of tying it to their current mechanical focus.

[IruruCece]

Did yo know BLM have more tools to deal with their dps downtime issues than MDPS do along with a much simpler rotation? Did you know all MDPS have positionals? Hell, DRG has an ability that requires you to hit 2 positionals to even activate it. I'd expect that on the Monk, nope shoved onto DRG for some stupid reason instead of tying it to their current mechanical focus.

You seem to not understand that BLMs have their own challenges forced onto them by mechanics outside of their control. Every job does. That's the point.

You do make one valid point: Monks SHOULD have more interactions between their buttons to make the positionals more rewarding. If there is a single thing from DRG I'd like to see on Monk, it'd be more of that. Successful positionals should result in more powerful variants of moves, it'd be easier visual (and numerical) feedback on pretty much every level. It might tick off people who think they are being harshly punished by SE for failing one or several, but I don't really care too much about what they think anymore.

[Nothv13]

You seem to not understand that BLMs have their own challenges forced onto them by mechanics outside of their control. Every job does. That's the point.

You do make one valid point: Monks SHOULD have more interactions between their buttons to make the positionals more rewarding. If there is a single thing from DRG I'd like to see on Monk, it'd be more of that. Successful positionals should result in more powerful variants of moves, it'd be easier visual (and numerical) feedback on pretty much every level. It might tick off people who think they are being harshly punished by SE for failing one or several, but I don't really care too much about what they think anymore.

Again though, BLM have more tools to deal with those challenges than MDPS do.

I'd be good with that. DRG, the positionals were always bonuses, nice to hit, never required, yet were given a skill that required positionals, doesn't fit. Let monk have that type of stuff as it has always been Monks wheel house. I'm not against positionals that are meaningful and or fit the design of the class, I'm against positionals that are added simply for sake of complexity like raiden thrust with minimal benefit. Either make them meaningful and fit the classes or just remove them.

[IruruCece]

Again though, BLM have more tools to deal with those challenges than MDPS do.

I'd be good with that. DRG, the positionals were always bonuses, nice to hit, never required, yet were given a skill that required positionals, doesn't fit. Let monk have that type of stuff as it has always been Monks wheel house. I'm not against positionals that are meaningful and or fit the design of the class, I'm against positionals that are added simply for sake of complexity like raiden thrust with minimal benefit. Either make them meaningful and fit the classes or just remove them.

Frankly, if I were a serious progression raider, I wouldn't want to go into a savage/extreme with anyone, regardless of their chosen melee DPS, who thinks of their positionals as something that's "nice to hit" when they feel like it. Yes, all content is clearable with minimum effort. Better groups of players who hit their positionals more often will clear faster and more consistently than people who don't even bother to get everything out of their job that they can. It's not even asking for perfection, it's simply asking for effort, and your posts have consistently been about whining that some additional effort is required for some of your weaponskills.

If SE balanced the game entirely around people who just want to be able to hit buttons on the boss without worrying about potential interruptions to their rotation, the game wouldn't have made it past Heavensward. I'm convinced if they did make landing positionals more meaningful by giving them a serious damage buff, the complaints in this and other recent threads about them would barely change, because at the end of the day there's a lot of players who don't want to do them and don't want to feel "punished" for not doing them.

[Nothv13]

Frankly, if I were a serious progression raider, I wouldn't want to go into a savage/extreme with anyone, regardless of their chosen melee DPS, who thinks of their positionals as something that's "nice to hit" when they feel like it. Yes, all content is clearable with minimum effort. Better groups of players who hit their positionals more often will clear faster and more consistently than people who don't even bother to get everything out of their job that they can. It's not even asking for perfection, it's simply asking for effort, and your posts have consistently been about whining that some additional effort is required for some of your weaponskills.

If SE balanced the game entirely around people who just want to be able to hit buttons on the boss without worrying about potential interruptions to their rotation, the game wouldn't have made it past Heavensward. I'm convinced if they did make landing positionals more meaningful by giving them a serious damage buff, the complaints in this and other recent threads about them would barely change, because at the end of the day there's a lot of players who don't want to do them and don't want to feel "punished" for not doing them.

Yet that is what they are for pretty much all the melee classes but monk. Nice to hit. They account for such little dps. The SAM for example, the positional account for less than a percent of the dps, so small crit variation can and will completely hide it.

[ItMe]

Yet that is what they are for pretty much all the melee classes but monk. Nice to hit. They account for such little dps. The SAM for example, the positional account for less than a percent of the dps, so small crit variation can and will completely hide it.

Oh my god is it really that little?
Has SQEX been nerfing positionals all this time and I'd never noticed?
They reduced Protect's mitigation down to about 2% before fully phasing it out in Shadow Bringers.
I'm kind of alarming myself with this train of thought but should I/we consider the possibility we're losing positionals in 6.0?

[IruruCece]

Yet that is what they are for pretty much all the melee classes but monk. Nice to hit. They account for such little dps. The SAM for example, the positional account for less than a percent of the dps, so small crit variation can and will completely hide it.

Except you're wrong about Samurai's positional contributions yet again (by ignoring other people's posts, no less), because you're ignoring that landing positionals results in more Kenki, which results in more use of Kenki, either during burst phases or mixed in throughout their combos, which adds up to more than "just" "less than a percent" of our DPS.

If I could choose, every time, I would still have the Samurai who uses positionals to maximize their meter gain and use more of their OGCD skill than the Samurai who thinks they're ONLY "nice to hit", doesn't try to hit them at all, and then complains about them on the forums.

I'm hardly the best Samurai, I don't even raid for Savage/Ultimate, and I still try to hit those positionals whenever I can because I understand that they help me do that little extra bit of damage. If I'm helping the boss die that little bit faster, I'm helping contribute to the team that little bit more. It's not about my own numbers alone, there are 3 or 7 or 23 other players whose own time in the game is as valuable to them as mine is to myself.

In my mind, there are two types of selfish DPS. There's the Jobs that contribute little to others mechanically beyond hitting hard, and then there's the DPS player that slums it because they know someone else will pick up the slack and they want the game to conform to their preferences every patch. The game shouldn't be catering to or balanced entirely around the latter.