Positionals

[Mikey_R]

Tanks (9 role + 4 general)
PLD: 27 job, 40 total.

Just to ask, what are you counting as 'General' actions and do they need to be easily accessed at all times?

Higher Cast SPD should make them tick faster or do more damage or something, but they don't.

More Skill/Spell Speed does increase DoT potency (which means more damage).

I do think there are some changes they could make to positionals that would make them more generally popular though:

1) Update the tooltips from:
"Delivers an attack with a potency of 300. 400 when execute from a target's rear." to:
"Delivers at attack of potency 300 (400 from target's rear)."

2) Add additional signals that you hit them (per many people's request).

3) Make it more intuitive if an attack is from behind or the flank. Right now, it's difficult to remember which attacks are flank and which are rear, especially if you change jobs a lot.

4) Reduce random boss turns. In a 2.5 second window, it feels bad to miss because you're on the wrong side of a boss turn.

5) Grant positional bonuses if you have threat or using some other mechanism when you're soloing.

1. I don't see how that changes anything. Wording on a tooltip isn't going to change whether someone likes or dislikes positionals or not.

2. Agreed, one example that does pop in my head is Monk's old positional on Bootshine, which auto crit from the rear. Very clear indicator there. Of course, you cannot make everything auto crit just from a positional.

3. How would you go about this?

4. This is where fight knowledge comes into play and used to be a much bigger factor in how good a melee DPS was. True North solves most of those issues now though.

5. Sure, if it really matters that much. Pretty sure most don't care that much about solo though and most content that has some degree of difficulty already has omni directional enemies anyway.

[Sjol]

Just to ask, what are you counting as 'General' actions and do they need to be easily accessed at all times?

Sprint, Limit Break, Duty Action 1, Duty Action 2

They don't need to be accessed at all times, but they need to be frequently accessed and have space reserved on the bar since they are time sensitive. LB is one of the ones I don't have on my bar but would like it to be.

[ZiraZ]

There are reasons for a lot of these. Nuanced reasons, even that aren't really getting addressed.

Button bloat has to do with human ergonomics and the limits of what fits on a keyboard. MMO mice are not a solution for everyone. Nor are controllers. I have ready access to 16 buttons with a single modifier, leaving 32 for the keyboard, plus another 2+2 for the mouse, for a total of 36. Beyond that I'm hunting for the thing with a mouse. Thirty-six buttons ought to be enough for any job, but there are plenty that require more than that.

Here are some baseline numbers:

Tanks (9 role + 4 general)
PLD: 27 job, 40 total.

Melee DPS (6 role + 6 general)
NIN: 26 job, 36 total.

Ranged Magical (5 role + 4 general)
BLM: 26 job, 35 total.

I would love to see a hard cap of 32 buttons needed for any job just for the human ergonomics. If you can't create meaningful jobs with 32 buttons, I don't know what they're doing. PvP manages to do it with under 12, and BLU hard-limits you to 24 job buttons.

Moreover, I think that what the jobs need is more uniqueness and less reliance on role-abilities and standards. That fact that all tanks get the same 9 abilities causes way more feeling of homogeneity than anything else.

And lastly, as an aside, I think the main argument against DOTs is that SE's implementation of them is broken. Higher Cast SPD should make them tick faster or do more damage or something, but they don't. I like DOTs, but the implementation needs work.

PLD doesn't have 40 keys with roles, pretty sure you're counting extra on all other jobs too
PVP gets it done well with so few keys because it's a fast paced minigame against players, it plays like absolute garbage anytime you are hitting something relatively immobile that won't fight back or respond to your actions in a non-script manner, you simply get bored in less than 15 seconds, so if anything it proves to me that you absolutely need a significant amount of keys to get past a healthy threshold of complexity in a slow paced scripted PvE setting.

BLU hard limit is unique because it needs to add difficulty with choices, has nothing to do with ergonomics, you don't want 1 blue to bring everything into a fight, additionally 80% of a functional blu kit is cooldown based abilities and I would absolutely not call it a ergonomic posted boy, I personally love the blu burst but a ton of people hate it since it's so APM intense and tight, you could play 2 SMNs at the same time you do a blu opener,
While I do think 32 keys is the perfect spot I don't have any issues with PLD and I still got room for a few more keys before I'm strapped and I do not think we should hard cap any of the regular jobs, they seem to be doing a great job right now (except SMN) .
It's specially perfect for jobs like DRG that need a great amount of oGCDs, not a single one is bloat no matter how many people who don't have a clue about the job like to parrot.

[Sjol]

PLD doesn't have 40 keys with roles, pretty sure you're counting extra on all other jobs too

While I do think 32 keys is the perfect spot I don't have any issues with PLD and I still got room for a few more keys before I'm strapped and I do not think we should hard cap any of the regular jobs, they seem to be doing a great job right now (except SMN).

You're right, I counted the tank roles jobs wrong. It's 7 instead of 9. I updated the original post. However, 38 is still a lot and I reconfirmed the totals for NIN and BLM.

[Avoidy]

they should add some kind of satisfying feedback when you nail a positional. like, make the hit sound meatier when it lands or something. it feels so garbo right now.
besides that though, i'd like if they stayed. it's something to think about while playing. if you don't like them, just use true north. you get 2 stacks of it now.

[Aravell]

I don't see how positionals hinder any form of improvement to melee gameplay. If anything, it serves as a reward more than a necessity.

The mentality of the community has changed, people view bonuses as baseline now.

Energy Drain is a nice bonus when you don't have to use Aetherflow on anything else? No! 3 ED is baseline and Soil/Indom are a loss!
Hitting positionals gets you a nice little damage boost? No! That potency is baseline and I lose damage if the boss turns!

The funniest part is that everyone has dps brainrot, they point and laugh at the high-end players, saying that they're optimising the fun out of the game, not knowing that they're doing the same thing, except they want the optimisation to come to them.

You want to know what a real damage loss is? If you missed the Trick Attack positional in HW, the debuff didn't even apply.

[SDaemon]

You want to know what a real damage loss is? If you missed the Trick Attack positional in HW, the debuff didn't even apply.

Back in ARR, DRG needed their positional or Heavy Thrust wouldn't apply. DRG needed rear or Impulse Drive wouldn't work. Neither exist anymore but the point is pretty much the same.

[VeolE]

If positionals were removed the difficulty could be tuned better and re-allocated to more meaningful parts of the game. Nobody called people who use addons to pretend they are better than others because they can be at flank or rear more optimally while their rotation happens perfectly with one button spam pathetic though. Sounds like an insecurity issue due to being that demographic.

Also, not once did I say kaiten was difficult to use. It has an obnoxious animation and was button bloat.

My brother in Christ, just say you hate third party tools. And stop color coding it in about everything you dislike.

[ZiraZ]

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Positionals