Dragon Sight change - Just remove positionals already

[Arohk]

Positionals are okay, but bosses constantly turning in different directions for mechanics is not.

[Shurrikhan]

So the only constraint... is that bosses are less likely to jump to the edge of the arena as often if they have positionals?

First... that's hardly worth mentioning, especially in any context with True North. Moreover, they could literally just temporarily guarantee positionals while bosses are moved to areas where only their front can be attacked, removing that 'constraint' entirely.

And no, T9 was not impossible to get positionals on. It wasn't even impossible to maintain the old 10s GL on except during the pre-meteors boss jump. You could land every positional as long as you kept track of the tank's movement relative to where he jumped from and predicted the stack-turns (which, yes, were telegraphed).

You just had to not be bad at doing them / know positionals for what they were, instead of assuming they can only ever be 'one foot left/right' or 'impossible'.

[Taranok]

So the only constraint... is that bosses are less likely to jump to the edge of the arena as often if they have positionals?

First... that's hardly worth mentioning, especially in any context with True North. Moreover, they could literally just temporarily guarantee positionals while bosses are moved to areas where only their front can be attacked, removing that 'constraint' entirely.

And no, T9 was not impossible to get positionals on. It wasn't even impossible to maintain the old 10s GL on except during the pre-meteors boss jump. You could land every positional as long as you kept track of the tank's movement relative to where he jumped from and predicted the stack-turns (which, yes, were telegraphed).

You just had to not be bad at doing them / know positionals for what they were, instead of assuming they can only ever be 'one foot left/right' or 'impossible'.

You appear to have completely missed the point of how positionals force the designers to make fight more static. And I literally can't even begin talking to you if you think T9 was anything other than impossible for melee DPS. That fight by itself almost completely killed Dragoon because the fight demanded that most of the party be in X position, take specific mechanics to Y position (usually the back of the boss,) and if you failed a single positional, your entire rotation shut completely down. Dragoons for the most part died out from T9 parties because of how obscenely intolerant that fight was of allowing classes to get positionals.

This is at a time where you had to nail positionals on multiple GCDs in a row or you lost the entire combo. A little under half of all Dragoon GCDs required it. Part of the reason they changed positionals to not break combos was because of how supremely intolerant it was. Hell, it's the reason Raiden Thrust no longer has a positional requirement.

Hell, you even bring up true north, as if trying to emphasize the point I'm trying to make. How many resources, how many restrictions, are placed on the developers to enable melee positionals? From my perspective, it's a hell of a lot more than you're willing to admit.

[Shurrikhan]

You appear to have completely missed the point of how positionals force the designers to make fight more static.

Because you would have at most a loose correlation of a degree of one thing the developers might otherwise like to do that positionals would be punished by -- the boss moving to past the edge of the arena while still being attackable. That is, if we ignored that we already have fights where the same boss can be positional at some points and non-positional at others.

And I literally can't even begin talking to you if you think T9 was anything other than impossible for melee DPS.

And that's according to your... having played since HW? I actually played Monk through T9 and T9S. Again, T9 was not impossible for melee DPS. The worst that can be said for them was that T9 forced one PB-less return from Greased Lightning (which you'd lose at each end of meteor/adds phase). But given that Monk actually pumped back then, it was plenty worth it (especially up until hugely overgearing and blitzing through the fight).

and if you failed a single positional, your entire rotation shut completely down.

All you are proving with this is that you clearly did not play the game anywhere around that time.

What you are describing applied solely to two skills in the entire game: Heavy Thrust and Impulse Drive (and only on DRG). Neither are mid-combo, and therefore could not reset your combo; they'd simply delay it by 1 GCD per failure. Back then, a standard rotation would clip Chaos Thrust, so no, your rotation would not somehow "be completely shut down" by repeating a single skill every so often if you screwed up.
Monk did not fail to shift forms nor fail to gain buffs from failing to hit a positional; it just lost potency, identically to now.

This is at a time where you had to nail positionals on multiple GCDs in a row or you lost the entire combo. A little under half of all Dragoon GCDs required it.

Please have at least checked a damned gameplay video before commenting on a period of time you haven't played.

Two. Two Dragoon skills required positionals, out of 8 native single-target skills. Out of Heavy Thrust, Impulse Drive, Disembowel, Chaos Thrust, Phlebotomize, True Thrust, Vorpal Thrust, and Full Thrust... only those first two had positionals. That's... 25%.

Heck, the next GCD threshold used a loop of that brought the portion of positionals GCDs by rotational frequency down from that 25% to just over 18%.

:: Chaos Thrust didn't gain a positional until it was removed from Impulse Drive. And since only DRG buffs were ever dependent on positionals, it meant those previous sole outliers then worked identically to what we have today.

Hell, it's the reason Raiden Thrust no longer has a positional requirement.

Raiden never had a positional requirement. It simply doubled the value of the positional requirement already attached to the final dragon skill of either combo. Though it said it required that both Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw's positionals must succeed in order to generate Raiden Thrust, that effect was actually bugged for the entirety of its lifespan and actually required only the second positional.

We'll never know whether making Raiden Thrust (Draconian Fire) generate independently of the combo-ender's positional was done because (A) they felt it'd make that GCD have too much positionally-dependent potency (despite leaving MNK with ~193 potency every Bootshine tied behind a positional over that period), (B) because they planned to add an additional means of generating Draconian Fire, or simply (C) to save face when they continued to be unable to fix the bug.

__________

Tl;dr: Please get your facts straight before using parts of the game you clearly never played as if they warranted any part of your conclusions. Also, they don't; if anything, they disprove them.

[Avenheit]

Positionals encourage players to move. It's a great learning tool for new players as well instead of just standing there treating each enemy like a lifeless training dummy.

Combat is getting bland and boring as is, I really don't want positional to leave.

2 minute rotations as a combat design were bad enough.

[Aco505]

Tl;dr: Please get your facts straight before using parts of the game you clearly never played as if they warranted any part of your conclusions. Also, they don't; if anything, they disprove them.

Sadly, opinions on topics not based on relevant experience or previous reading from trustworthy sources are too common.

Might this mean you don't get 100% positionals? Probably, but noone expects you to hit everything anyway, plus, as they are now, hitting 99/98% of them as opposed to 100% isn't going to make or break a fight.

There should always be a way of hitting them all (or almost all, perhaps missing 1 if RNG is involved) even in duties like P11S. The entire point of the fun in positionals is to optimize them in fights where they are harder to hit.

Missing them all is a 4% DPS loss so it's no big deal but the challenge of perfecting their use is great, even going so far as to predict the turns of the boss. However, I do understand that in PF or with inexperienced tanks, it can be a bit bothersome due to each player handling movement differently.

[ForsakenRoe]

Something to remember is that missing every positional takes effort. As much effort, in fact, as hitting them all. If you stood at the boss's rear for the whole fight, you wouldn't be 'missing every positional' because you'd still get the rear ones. Additionally the effective loss from 'missing a positional' is different between each job. Standing on the rear the whole time as a DRG loses you a 40p posi bonus from Fang and Claw twice per GCD loop. Doing the same as NIN only loses you the Armor Crush bonus, once per 30s. Positionals are the one thing that we can point to that still justifies melee having higher damage than the other classes, if they were removed, I'd expect that melee take a 5% dps loss across the board. Then every class can be roughly equal in potency output, except BLM who somehow is like 8% ahead of everyone else

[IronCheeks]

Getting rid of positionals would make combat so boring

[Ransu]

Getting rid of positionals would make combat so boring

It wouldn't change a damn thing.