Just for fun: Imagining the Dragoon re-rework

[Reldhir]

Positionals cannot be punishing without tools to deal with them, especially on a job like DRG who has zero besides TN. Every other melee can introduce non-positional GCDs, particularly in burst, to delay or control them but not DRG.

Missing a RT would mean losing a huge amount of potency from a lost scale, too, so in a situation in which DRG can hit them all, will it mean the job will be rewarded or will the damage be the same as any other melee?

Positionals being a bigger loss (e. g. from 40 to 80 for DRG) is definitely a point to consider but RT cannot go back to the way it worked in ShB if it's going to give scales because that would be like returning to ARR levels of punishment for something that you do all the time.

I agree! Reintroducing the 5th GCD positional (and even the more punishing variant discussed) was a means of compensating the buff to the burst phases which nullify positional requirements. The concept is when in burst, the stress comes from oGCD faceroll spam and managing to keep time during it, while the stress from non-burst phases comes from managing the positional dance without the intense button mash~ I think it's a fair trade! TN is a backup for moments where we're truly locked out from a positional~

As far as reward vs punishment for losing the scale, I mostly wanted to stay away from specific numbers in the idea because it can be super tedious to math everything out to balance and we're only doing this for fun xD. That being said, I would imagine the baseline to be somewhere in between, where you are expected to land most of them, while 100% is "reward"

(I'd love a melee job that has face positonals).

:O I just had a light bulb moment.

What if... Dragoon had a unique TN skill...

AND the reason for this was because Lance barrage and Spiral Blow now ALSO have positional requirements?? BUT... and here's the lightbulb part... Instead of damage gains for landing the positional, they simply reduced the cooldown of the unique TN skill??? :OOOOOO

There would be no direct downside to DPS for missing those new positionals, but landing them means we can build up a resource to nullify them all together during more intense or position locked phases :O

It could also be a charge/stacked resource rather than a CD~ I dunno that would be a pretty unique take on positionals and help to set DRG apart from the others even more! *

[Carighan]

If you actually played DRG in EW (or now but the frequency is lower in DT), you would know that you cannot control them because your GCD combo string happens all the time without interruption. So such a punishment would have to come with some leeway, as otherwise you would easily miss some unless your party was helping you hit those TN couldn't cover.

That makes no sense. True North is that leeway. Beyond that, you end up missing positionals. Yes. That's intended. Much like missing uptime.

That was my point, though maybe I explained that badly: Melee DPS as a concept don't work if there's no downside attached to it. The whole idea of the job balance in FFXIV is (or was?) that compared to Physical Ranged as the baseline Melee gets more damage output because they lose uptime and might not always make their positionals, likewise Casters get to do more damage because they might have to abort/miss casts when they run out of movement tools (of which they have a lot, not just Swiftcast, but in fact you actually hit the point kinda, yeah) and still need to move.

That's kinda the whole idea. You win output when you can actually do it, in return you lose some damage overall from not always being able to hit it.

Or, in other words: Winning loses all meaning if you never fail. You got nothing to contrast it against then. Modern fight and job design seems to want to essentially make positionals and melee uptime a forgone conclusion, they are designed for and baked into the encounter design. The devs control them for you. Which just sounds weird to me. Or maybe I'm just way too old and too used to how older MMOs did it, granted. But the idea that positionals being hit correctly are the expectation, not a bonus that I feel great about actually achievement, that just feels so wrong to me.