On the Removal of Positionals

[RyuuZero]

Until SE gives melee jobs something else that makes their rotations more involved, positionals should stay.

And the reason is simple: every time they remove something, they don't give something else in return.

I totally agree with that, which is why I am so brutally against the positional removal on Monks!
In the Past we had stuff that made Rotations more involved! Samurai had Kaiten, which introduced the Kenki Resource as a way to boost all Weaponskills and since 6.1 that aspect has been totally removed and Kenki is just a Burst Resource to sit on now..
btw what was that DRG Skill what you were talking about? Impaler? Good Times xD and back then the True North Skill was a MNK exclusive, right?^^
But I suspect as a future direction of the Combat Team is that they work towards to the Extinction of Single Target.
Again, I'm not necessarily against Positionals but the accessibility of True North and the frequency of usage make it for some jobs irrelevant to think about Positionals and with my DoT vs Positionals Thread, I just wondered how other ppl feel about it. Not help by the fact that they gutted the DoT DPS Job off all their DoTs.. speaking of Summoner. My Issue is that the Combat Design Team isn't as consequent or transparent as they should be. For example at the First Keynote of Endwalker the Removal of Belts was announced, which is why I wondered what's next on the Butchers chopping block.

[Mikey_R]

btw what was that DRG Skill what you were talking about? Impaler? Good Times xD and back then the True North Skill was a MNK exclusive, right?^^

Whilst I don't know which DRG action is being mentioned, I can hazard a guess, with a bit of a history lesson for DRG.

Back in ARR, Dragoon had 2 positionals, Heavy Thrust (flank) and Impulse Drive (rear). If you missed the positionals on either one, you didn't get the benefit. Heavy Thrust didn't give it's damage buff and Impulse Drive didn't combo into Disembowel. Towards the end of ARR, this was changed. Heavy Thrust always gave the damage buff, just lost some potency and the rear positional from Impulse Drive was moved to Chaos Thrust, so Impulse Drive always comboed and Chaos Thrust is as it is now.

True North was not added for any job until Stormblood with the introduction of role actions.

[CKNovel]

Then simply teach the new vipers that the green buttons is for left or right of the enemy, and the red buttons are for behind the enemy.

The Coil (hunter & swiftskin) have side and back positionnal but are both green.
To be fair I'm being massively skill checked by the positionnals I wish at least it would be easier to read if we're going to end on a side or back positional. I know it depends on the GCD you start but after a burst, you can easily forget with what you started.

Viper feels completely different between Extreme 1 and 2, but I'm fine with not playing perfectly.

[Melethron123]

"careful positioning" can simply refer to avoiding AOEs while staying close to the boss

[Arkrayven]

"careful positioning" can simply refer to avoiding AOEs while staying close to the boss

Every class gets a DPS increase by standing close to the boss, and "avoiding AoEs" could be considered harder on hard casters.

[Kaedys]

Every class gets a DPS increase by standing close to the boss, and "avoiding AoEs" could be considered harder on hard casters.

Wat? If you mean raid buffs, every single one of those has a 30 yalm range, which is further than the maximum range of any ranged attacks. People stand close to the boss because it's safer, mostly for staying in range of heals, but also for dodging things like cone attacks. It has utterly zilch to do with doing more DPS, for ranged jobs.

Also, that magical ranged DPS tooltip says their movement is restricted by spell casts. Um...summoner? Heck, Red Mage also spends less than half their time using abilities with cast bars.

Honestly, I don't think that tooltip is really going to be a terribly persuasive argument. The existence or removal of positionals must, and will, hinge on whether gameplay on the whole benefits or suffers for their existence, not whether a random tooltip mentions "careful positioning".

[Magikazam]

The only issue I see is that viper does gains a lots of potency from hitting positional and you do need to hit them often. While fight knowledge and True north can somewhat fix this issues, they could just up the base skill damage and reduce positional extra potency. Also the class can be quite puzzling when you first unlock it, but that because IMO the viper tutorial you get in your job quest is just kinda bad, especially compared to Pictomancer one. Viper tutorial don't exactly tell you how to properly use it left/right side combo and that make it look way harder than it is actually to play. Making a better tutorial to make the job less confusing at first would help it a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I think people who are afraid of positional should just play other jobs if they really don't want to deal with it. Not every class should be for everyone IMO.

[W00by]

The problem is, I'm not sure how much they could reduce the additional skill potency and retain meaningful skill expression on Viper. With the exception of Dragoon and Samurai, all melee lose 60 potency when they miss a positional -- Dragoon on the other hand loses 40 and Samurai loses 50. Viper loses 60 on the Hinds/Flanks combo enders and 50 on the Dreadwinder Coils, so it's in line with other melee DPS as far as how much it loses when it fails to hit a positional.

Now, given Viper's personal haste buff, Swiftscaled, you could argue that it's performing positionals more frequently than a job like Dragoon or Reaper, but Ninja's Aeolian Edge still loses 60 potency, as does Monk's Snap Punch, and those abilities are on recast times similar to Viper's, and no one is asking for a reduction of positional reliance on Ninja or Monk because they have had time to get used to it (that is, assuming they aren't for the removal of positionals entirely).

That's what's so frustrating about the Viper situation; some players new to the job (and that means everyone right now) are trying to change Viper into something it is not because they want to play the new flashy job without feeling like they aren't performing well, without any consideration for its longevity as a job. Positionals have survived six expansions because they are integral to melee DPS engagement, and Viper's should not be done away with like a candle in the wind because some players haven't completely mastered the job in a week. As the OP suggests, Viper is completely in line with all 5 other melees and should remain as it is if they want the job to be fun not just right now, but in one year, or two, or five.

[Kaedys]

The only issue I see is that viper does gains a lots of potency from hitting positional and you do need to hit them often. While fight knowledge and True north can somewhat fix this issues, they could just up the base skill damage and reduce positional extra potency. Also the class can be quite puzzling when you first unlock it, but that because IMO the viper tutorial you get in your job quest is just kinda bad, especially compared to Pictomancer one. Viper tutorial don't exactly tell you how to properly use it left/right side combo and that make it look way harder than it is actually to play. Making a better tutorial to make the job less confusing at first would help it a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I think people who are afraid of positional should just play other jobs if they really don't want to deal with it. Not every class should be for everyone IMO.

Let's say you just permanently stay in one of the cones. Maybe you move around, but let's assume for the sake of argument that you ignore positionals and just hit half of them entirely by accident (ie. what would happen if you just stood on the boss's butt the whole time). Per 2 minutes, Viper gets 6 positionals from Dreadwinder and, iirc from another thread, 8 from standard combos. The Dread ones gain 50p from positional, and the combo ones gain 60p. If you miss, on average, half of those, that's a total of 390p per minute, which is effectively the same loss as dropping 1.5 GCDs during that 2 minute period (or, equivalently, dropping 1.5 of your Death Rattle or Legacy follow-ups). Is it a loss? Sure, but it's not catastrophic.

[Kazimere]

Regarding Viper, I think more of the issue with positionals is the auto combo nature of things. I’m not a fan of it for the filler gcds, personally. The dash is absolute dogshit as well. Other than that, the class flows well