Dragon Sight change - Just remove positionals already

[ZiraZ]

hitting positionals in FFXIV (moving 1mm left/right)

When those situations come up, you literally have buttons to press that let you ignore the situation. Which again, I brought up....Which invalidates the entire point of the positionals as a mechanic being a challenge when the "skill" of performing them is to in fact know when you don't need to do them by pressing a single button.

moving 1mm left/right

Still waiting for anyone that posts drivel like this to show proof of positional being this simple and boring, come on show 100% positionals done on P9S, P11S, P12S or EX6 fights, nobody has provided any while saying it's easy at the same time yet, they just go dark after asking them or just becomes excuse city.
and no the target dummy is not proof. neither is normal

[Shurrikhan]

but just playing a ninjutsu style button game every 60 seconds just isn't enough.

Tbf, that's only half the optimization that goes into Blitzes. The actual, original point of Perfect Balance is still alive and well -- more so than ever before, actually, as 3 GCDs on a 40s recast timer is pretty much exactly the sweet spot.

But, agreed that Blitzes should not have, and absolutely did not need to, cost us our greater number of positionals.

Food for thought, though: Those virtually always pairing DK with Twin and Boot with True, per the 'standard' rotation / simplified macrorotation, were already re-positioning little more than now.

[VentVanitas]

PB itself is fine, 2 charges with 3 stacks would have been a feature I would've loved to have in previous iterations of the job. I however don't like how barebones Blitz itself feels in anything that isn't speedkilling.

But, agreed that Blitzes should not have, and absolutely did not need to, cost us our greater number of positionals.

What had always bothered me about this decision is that I distinctly remember a lot of us MNK players being disappointed by the removal of raptor form positionals in the EW media tour build, but willing to accept it even if it was still unnecessary- only for EW's release to come out of nowhere with the steel chair. Raptor positionals being removed wouldn't have been enough to compromise the job's playstyle, but they felt the need to overcorrect anyway.

[Shurrikhan]

PB itself is fine, 2 charges with 3 stacks would have been a feature I would've loved to have in previous iterations of the job. I however don't like how barebones Blitz itself feels in anything that isn't speedkilling.

I could agree with that. What I'm satisfied by most is actually the +1 GCD following PB and the impact that it and the 3-GCD PB (4 fluid forms) have on the rotation surrounding those Blitzes.

Personally, I really wanted to see more lengths of Blitzes and/or at least two Blitz options per PB, with Blitzes having synergies with one another that could lead to different branching decision paths of sorts. Would have loved to see Flint Kick stay as just a fast-af burst damage (maybe just after 1 PB GCD) option, Tornado Kick remain even at max level as some alternative, Phantom Rush to be changed to an actual blink-move with i-frames against non-raidwide physical AoEs rather than *just* another identical form of damage, Meteor Stream (with suppression and CC, as redundant as that might typically be), and maybe even getting access to Phantom Flurry / Phantom Kick (w/e the Suzaku channel was called), etc.

What had always bothered me about this decision is that I distinctly remember a lot of us MNK players being disappointed by the removal of raptor form positionals in the EW media tour build, but willing to accept it even if it was still unnecessary- only for EW's release to come out of nowhere with the steel chair. Raptor positionals being removed wouldn't have been enough to compromise the job's playstyle, but they felt the need to overcorrect anyway.

Yep. I wouldn't have felt too bad if Demolish and True Strike didn't have positionals. True Strike's original positional bonus was worth only 2.5% damage, iirc (was 5% added crit chance), and I could have sworn Demolish started with less of a positional bonus than Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes, Snap Punch, or obviously Bootshine, and as the seemingly hard-slaps-faces-with-one's-feet DoT... I wouldn't hate to see it lose a positional, especially in a context that'd still have GL (since we'd then be opening with it).

Twin, though? It honestly looks like it's meant to strike kidney and lung together like some manner of 'chi strike', so the flank looked appropriate for it.

[Taranok]

But, again, in what way does that have to do with positionals? Looking at the results of myriad factors and then saying that all but one point in difference must be irrelevant isn't terribly convincing, especially given that we've had even more intricate fights than P10S that nonetheless had positional and show no signs of having been constrained by them.

We've had positional bosses, for instance "jump around the arena, shape the arena, and in general restrict movement". What we see far less often is non-positional bosses being anywhere but on one side of a massive rectangle, being punchable practically from outer space.

When you have positionals, every time a boss has to simply rotate, it makes the experience of playing a class with positionals that much more tedious, annoying, and frustrating. If a boss jumps to the edge of the arena, as seen with Cloud of Darkness Savage (E9S,) it means you cannot get any back positionals, meaning the devs will use mechanics like this less often. It means if you have to shape the arena, melee has to have access to positionals or they will fail at their basic class mechanics.

And, you know, when you have a boss like Nael (T9,) it doesn't completely shut down melee rotations as it did back in ARR.

When you have positional requirements, bosses are severely restricted on things like turning, jumping around, and denying access to specific sides of the boss, but primarily the back. When you lack these requirements, bosses across the board start denying access to specific parts of the arena, especially by forcing melee away from the boss, or jumping from 1 position to a position outside of melee that requires a reaction from the player to follow up on. Admittedly, this is only true if the devs also aren't basically trying to boost melee DPS numbers by specifically catering to melee, as they have been doing in literally all of endwalker.

All of which start fundamentally breaking down once you require melee positionals.

[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'.

[wereotter]

Tbf, that's only half the optimization that goes into Blitzes. The actual, original point of Perfect Balance is still alive and well -- more so than ever before, actually, as 3 GCDs on a 40s recast timer is pretty much exactly the sweet spot.

But, agreed that Blitzes should not have, and absolutely did not need to, cost us our greater number of positionals.

Food for thought, though: Those virtually always pairing DK with Twin and Boot with True, per the 'standard' rotation / simplified macrorotation, were already re-positioning little more than now.

Except you're not using Perfect Balance every 40 seconds. You use it twice in the 2-minute cooldown and hold it to use it again once in the 60 second cooldown, lining up your blitzes with Riddle of Fire. So even if it feels like it *could* be more engaging to use a blitz, because it stacks and, you're incentivized to hold those big attacks until you can buff the damage.

Old positionals, when every skill had one, you'd have to move back and forth a lot more. Dragon kick, twin snakes, sure you'd pair them, and bootshine with true strike, again you'd pair. But you'd still have to move back and forth to get your bootshine and true strike rear position even if you were finishing it up with a snap punch for your third skill rather than just sitting on the flank now and getting the full potency from bootshine and true strike from the boss's flank. Monk rotation now you can sit on the flank for 8/9 skills only moving to the rear now to reapply demolish.

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

Except you're not using Perfect Balance every 40 seconds. You use it twice in the 2-minute cooldown and hold it to use it again once in the 60 second cooldown, lining up your blitzes with Riddle of Fire. So even if it feels like it *could* be more engaging to use a blitz, because it stacks and, you're incentivized to hold those big attacks until you can buff the damage.

I never said otherwise. 12 Form-fluid GCDs per 120s, though, is still considerably more than, say, 5 per 90s. (Old PB didn't grant Formless Fist at its end, while modern PB grants one more form-fluid GCD than its number of stacks.)

On average, one per 10s vs. one per 18s. Moreover, even were they the same average frequency, there's more you can rotationally leverage from a smaller number of fluid GCDs at a time, at greater frequency, than a larger number at a time at lesser frequency.

Old positionals, when every skill had one, you'd have to move back and forth a lot more.

That's was my point, though I should have said it more clearly:

Depending on your rotation, non-contextual movement could be very similar to what it is today, because repositioning against, say, a striking dummy is only a matter of the forced moves from flank to rear or from rear to flank, not the number of positionals themselves.

But because fights are NOT actually just "move left one step, move right one step," it made a considerable difference in practice.

If you were using a rotation that was essentially R->F-F-F->R-R->F-F-F-F->R-R-R, etc., the non-contextual repositioning required is surprisingly similar to the current R->A-A-F->A-A-F-A-A-A->R-A-A rotational flow we have today. Though positionals were reduced by two-thirds, repositioning not caused by the target was only reduced by about one-quarter.

Now, if we were still back in Stormblood with its more varied rotations pre-Leaden Fist and slow-downs from TK usage... yeah, then the noncontextual repositioning could be nearer to what you'd expect from the portion of positionals. (Personally, I ran enough SkS to double-Boot/True, so... I often had less forced repositioning between triple TKs than most ShB Monks.)