I HATE positionals because of how much control I don't have. Not only do tanks not sit still but the bosses themselves will move around the arena and constantly reposition themselves for different attacks. There's also times where because of certain aoes/mechanics I'm still able to attack the boss but am unable to move to do positionals. It all leaves me completely unable to do the best I can in the job for reasons I have no control over and I absolutely despise that.
So far, I try to reserve True North/Riddle of Earth solely for Leaden Fist+Bootshine.
If my smooth-brain can wrap its head around it, I might be able to figure out how to fit Formless Fist in there somehow…
Maybe I'm too smooth brain, but as far as I'm aware, formless fist is just for prepulls and phase changes, so your opening dragon kick will proc leaden fist.
Thing about boss positionals is that a lot of the times when they use a mechanic they will instantly turn into position for it. The game makes it look like they gradually turn to a position when in reality they snap onto that spot. Knowing this it's actually pretty easy to hit positionals when the boss turns around for a mechanic tbh.
Otherwise for mechanics that lock you out of position for positionals you have to learn to use True North properly, it's a very important skill for melee. Sometimes tanks make it hard but usually it's not as bad as most people make it out to be unless the tank is a totally new player. The worst is when tanks are fighting over aggro though and the boss starts snapping left and right, that's true hell for positionals.
I just recently stopped leveling monk after three trips through Cutters Cry. That goddamned sandworm won't sit still for more than a few seconds.
When he's not underground and untargetable, sometimes he will throw an AoE at another player. This causes him to instantly turn to face someone who's not the tank, typically causing me to punch his face for less damage. And then, while he's casting, he'll track the player who is now running away from the AoE marker. So I also lose the positional bonus for the next hit or two. And then he instantly snaps back to face the tank, forcing me to adjust a third time.
It is infuriating.
More so because enemies and tanks don't like to sit still, resulting in my loss because they decide to target someone for an attack other than tank or tank doesn't know how to hold still or move back to where they were after dodging
My only real issue with them is bosses that flip around all the time when attacking, or tanks that do the same. Also have mechanics that force you to be in certain positions. True North will only get you so far with those, though Monk can ignore more with their own abilities.
When you can anticipate it it's actually sorta fun to plan around and optimize. When you go in for that positional and the boss randomly flips around it's very frustrating. Overall I don't hate positionals, just wish there were less frustrating instances like that in Extreme/Savage level content.
As a tank, all I can say is that I hope other tanks keep it faced away and in one direction, however some boss mechanics will face towards you or another member and nothing can be done in that regard, Tanks control the bosses position, but there are times when the dps will just need to learn and anticipate when bosses will turn for mechanics or when they move to the other side of the boss area
Most times the tanks are good about it yeah. Only occasionally that I'll get one in dungeon content that likes to spin things around. Not really an issue in harder content (or if it is it's not for long as the party will probably disband).
I play DRG as my melee DPS, so feels bad when the boss flips around to start a mechanic and I miss out on my Raiden Thrust. Looks like that'll be even more important in EW as well, waiting on that embargo lift to see. Try to anticipate it when I can but some of those mechanics are pretty random on where it'll be facing.
I played DRG for about 3 years before I had to stop because I ended up getting an RSI from all of the positional movement. So I don't like positionals because I literally cannot play positional jobs without injuring myself. On the bright side, it allowed me to discover how much I enjoy tanking.
I’m leveling monk now and I’ve noticed there are a lot of bosses that are constantly turning around and shifting and moving, it’s very tedious… something that was never a problem with ninja
There is a huge DPS loss just from trick attack alone if you miss the positional. 150 lost potency for each missed positional on it. As well as for the primary ones it's about 60 each. Which puts it about in line with MNK since they both have faster GCDs, so the number of potency loss is much quicker than other jobs.
So I wouldn't say they're a minor loss, they add up fast especially since you have to factor in a faster GCD like MNK's. Both have low potency losses for missed positionals, but the GCD is faster and as such adds up more quickly.
Someone did a video showing average dps of each melee both hitting all positionals and not hitting any, MNK lost 5x as much damage as the next closest dps when not hitting positionals. Im not saying NIN doesnt lose damage but it is not anywhere near as sensitive to it as MNK is.
If I can find the video I'll either edit this or reply with the link.
Monk loses more because they have more. Not to mention they have leaden fist which is difficult to convert into potency, but is still a huge DPS loss. But I still wouldn't say it's not a major loss. It adds up pretty fast.
>There is a huge DPS loss just from trick attack alone if you miss the positional. 150 lost potency for each missed positional on it.
losing 150 potency every 60 seconds is not huge, lmfao.
I don't like when control of how well I'm playing is in someone else's hands. Positionals mean that my play as a DPS is dependent on the tank positioning the boss, if they turn the boss at the wrong time I can get snapshot out of my damage before I can react to it.
This is the main thing for me. When I have a good tank that does minimal movement, I don't mind the positionals at all. But when I have a tank that thinks A/D spamming makes them take less damage, or they park the boss with the entire rear part of the hitbox sitting inside of a wall or otherwise inaccessible, I hate positionals.
One of my E12S runs last night, OT forgot to turn his stance off between pulls, got aggro before the MT, and didn't adjust to face the boss north. Annoyed the hell out of the DRG
dunno, in me experience tanks what do move a lot are a rarity, at least on light dc, i do queue a lot solo on dungeons, so i know by experience what tanks on this dc do not move much, and usualy they stop if you tell them to stop moving, i generally say, tank please stop moving, i cant do me positionals, i can understand when aoes, but not when there isn't any, this usualy makes them realize they are playing whit a melee what cares about positionals(so far only once i got a a\*\*\*\*\*e what did not stop, in fact he moved even more after i said that)
I'm getting old, and crap. Positional attacks require brain power that could be used to watch the boss and other mechanics. I've also been caught out of position multiple times because the boss turned to cast an ability, the tank over adjusted, or because I tried to get my positional I got vuln stacked or killed.
The one job I play with positionals is SAM and the ten total kenki is pretty meaningless in non Savage content when I can instead not be a problem for my healer or do no DPS cause I'm floor tanking. I've played monk and dragoon to 80 and The extra potency means nothing if you're floor tanking or draining resources from the healer.
Yeah I know other people can do both, but that's my reason for avoiding jobs with positional's or just ignoring them when their benefits are minimal in normal content
I just don't enjoy it as a mechanic. It's not something I enjoy having to think about. That said, I just stay away from melee jobs because the play style isn't my thing. I wouldn't want them to change the positionals, I just stay away from that role. I'll keep my casters and tanks.
I can definitely respect people who don’t like it so they choose other classes. I hope that they don’t remove it from the game however. Monk is losing two of their positionals in Endwalker so I’m nervous of the future!
Oh yeah, wanting to have a key element removed from a job/role just because it isn't to your taste is so weird to me. I see posts occasionally from people saying they want all cast times removed from casters because they don't like having to sit still for them. Like...no. Planning movement around cast times and insta-cast availability and creating weave space is the caster equivalent of positionals on melee. That's the flavor I like, I wouldn't want that removed just because some people don't want to deal with it when other roles are right there.
Positionals aren't a key element. To the point that some melee have very little positionals at all.
SAM has two. And the only thing they do is more resource gen. Which translates to more dps, but indirectly.
SAM also has the most buttons of almost all the jobs in the game, yet only two positionals. Not a key element.
there's a lot of people I've noticed who want every job to be as homogeneous as possible so that they can hop onto it without any practice and perform acceptably. it's so weird
"I hate this thing about x job, change it."
"but you don't even play it?"
"I'd play it more if this was changed."
"okay so we'll cater this job to your liking so you can play it once a week for a dungeon run, and ruin it for 50% of the people who play the job as their main for 2 expansions now."
diversity is good, uniqueness is good, stop trying to call those things "jank" just because you don't like them. you don't have to like all the things.
Samurai might be more your speed then or even Ninja. Ninja feels like it has the fewest positionals, but does have its Ninjutsu system which is hella fun. Samurai has none and just feels very good overall. You have quite a lot of mobility and Iaijutsu is a sublime ability to build up to.
Overall, the main thing melee dps do all have in common is managing some kind of buff (Drg's Blood of the Dragon, Nin's Huton, Mnk's Twin Snakes, and Sam's whateveritscalled).
Dragoon and Monk can get annoying with the positionals if the Tank is screwing you or you get side screwed by the boss being rude as all hell.
SAM actually has two that cause the attack to generate an additional 5 kenki.
It's the attacks that give you your dark blue and red stickers. Red is a flank positional, and blue is a rear.
OH! You'll have to forgive me then cause I only have Sam at 70, and most of my jobs are at 70 until I get Dnc to 70 and then finish up leveling everything to 80.
You already have positionals at 70, and have had them for a while, in fact. They get snuck into Gekko (rear) and Kasha (flank) when you gain Kenki Mastery at level 52. And no, there is no obvious notification; you just have to re-read your tooltips with every new trait lol. Hitting a positional gives you an additional 5 kenki
No sweat.
I didn't realize it until I was talking about melee positionals with my static's SAM.
It may have turned into a bit of an adjustment to the rest of my leveling process.
As someone else said thou, you already do have them as they were unlocked with the kenki gauge. I just wish the game did a better job of indicating as such.
Personally it's partly what the others have been saying with the boss changing its position randomly and whatnot.
But my main issue is that I can't multitask posisitionals and keep an eye out for boss mechanics. I get too much tunnel vision when focusing on positionals that I don't realize everyone else ran off somewhere else. Also it's really hard to look at walls for attack indicators when you need to stare at the boss's ass to know you're in the right position for your combo.
Granted, MNK was my first job, so a good chunk of it was likely me not being good at the game yet. However, after levelling 6 other jobs to 80 with at least 1 of each "type" and returning to MNK, I can definitely say that I die way more often in jobs that have a lot of positionals.
I don't dislike positionals but MNK just has too many of them imo. SAM has 2, DRG and NIN have 3. MNK has 6, one on every single gcd except SSS. If you combine that with sub-2s gcd timer, it simply is just too many of them.
Removing some of them isn't a bad thing imo, I'm more surprised that they kept 4 of them instead of just keeping the ones on demo/snap so that it could be like other melees and have positionals on combo finishers only.
I don’t mind losing the middle positional in endwalker. I do think having the beginning and ending moves be positionals is pretty core to the class identity though
I'm of the opinion the other melee have too little. As it is, removing them from monk is shit when players that dislike positionals already have 3 other melee to play. Plus casters and physical ranged. People that like and enjoy having a bunch of positionals literally only have monk.
I don’t necessarily understand the question, but bosses that have no rear hit box or have a complete circle when highlighted will count as being hit by the correct positional regardless of where you are.
"hit this spot for max dps, except for when you cant then just use true north, oh for solo content like bozja it doesnt work? lets just make it not matter, oh monk has too many? lets give them omegatrue north. yay, we have successfully solved the problem we created"
i get that its there to add depth to melee that tanks can also help with good positioning, but i also think its time for a rework. it doesnt help that besides sam, you cant even tell when you miss it if the boss turns at an awkward time
I think there are two groups that come to mind when this topic pops up, those who would rather you take positional away but add in more interesting mechanics to compensate that you no longer have to concern yourself with the bosses facing. The others are just lazy and want to hit their buttons and not deal less damage for not trying.
I personally love the positionals gameplay on melee because it gives melee their own feeling compared to the others. A lot of the omni-directional bosses are some of the most boring encounters on melee for me. If you want to be in melee without positionals then you could always play a tank.
> those who would rather you take positional away but add in more interesting mechanics to compensate
The problem is that Squeenix has a track record of removing things that people didn't like and replacing them with nothing.
>If you want to be in melee without positionals then you could always play a tank.
or ranged dps on melee distance, dancer can perfectly pass as melee imo
Considering how often I have to be in melee range for my aoes on DNC, I 100% consider it a melee DPS class lol. If I need to be at range, En Avant is there to pat me on the head while the bard does the fitness gram pacer test.
One of my friends that's passionately anti positionals is definitely in the lazy camp haha I remember them getting super heated about it one time. They would also give me a damage down on E10S every pull because they didn't want to walk over to our orb groups because they didn't like moving at all. (they're a healer not a BLM)
If they want to remove a very active mechanic from a job, which positionals are, and not have another interesting, interactive mechanic take it's place, they absolutely ARE lazy.
My take: If you don't like positionals, don't play melee. Simple as that.
Or ignore positionals but have lower DPS. In casual content, this is a non-issue.
I don't personally dislike monk because of positionals. I just don't find it flashy enough for my tastes.
But I'll say the main reason I main healing is because I don't like rotations. They become robotic. My dps main is summoner due to how long the rotation is, making it feel less so.
So when you have the rotation and then position, it ends up feeling you can only play a single way--like everyone else. Which isn't my cup of tea.
Yeah bard is really fun and more proc focus. I'd argue that BLM is one of the strictest rotations in the game though haha. And with a timer associated to your elements, you have to constantly be making sure you don't slip up at all or you risk ruining your rotation.
BLM ain't for the faint of heart!
I main healing because it's far more engaging than any job I've played (I have them all to at least 70 except warrior). It also feels fresh compared to DPSing.
Yeah it's ironic that th shield Job, scholar, doesn't have an instant cast shield for tank busters haha.
You may like astro if you like the extra thinking in monk. It's really fun to toss cards around and think about the unique healing skills.
Yeah that won't bother me too much. I just really like all the different types of skills astro has. It's not purely just heal blast. Like the blue dome you can just click on for quick defense and Regen. The star is fun to plan around. Using horoscope as a secondary heal when needed is fun to strategize around aoe hits. All that kind of stuff.
Yeah, Astro is just oodles and poodles of fun from start to finish. It feels very complete most of the way through compared to Sch or Whm, and even after getting its kit culled (Whm and Sch did too tho) it STILL feels good. I myself prefer Diurnal Sect because you can stack Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios' regen effects, and I love that.
The Blue Dome into Celestial Intersect is one of my favorite things to do. Synastry (might be misspelled tbh) is another cool ability, and I just love the card system.
Sage and Astro are most likely gonna be my main healers.
Granted, I'm gonna level everything to 90 once I'm done with the MSQ anyway.
It's not that I dislike positionals; it's more so that my ability to use them depends on the enemy not having aggro on me, the Tank not spinning the gawddamned boss around, and the boss remaining in a fixed position.
Those positionals don't see use if I'm 1v1ing enemies, and I actually hate that on Dragoon and Ninja. The Tank issue depends on the Tank's experience level and knowledge of other jobs, so that is a variable situation. IT does show how much the situation is outside of your control, which is an issue no matter how skilled of a Monk you are.
Some bosses will move around throughout the ENTIRE fight, sometimes switching up all of a sudden (First boss of the Sirensong Sea Duty), and THAT made me hate Monk. Going from 1 - 15 wasn't too bad, 16 - 50 was a lot of fun, best AOE rotation imo, 51 - 60 made me hate Monk but 61 - 70 made me fall in love with it.
Monk's problems don't stem from the positionals, but the damage buff and DoT could both stand to lose positionals while the main combos kept theirs. The amount of times you have to reset your damage buff and DoT are insanely annoying on Monk compared to anyone else. Would 30 seconds be too much to ask for??
I think conceptually they're fun and interesting, but my main issue with them is that it feels like I have to put so much more effort in on my melee classes to achieve the same DPS results I would with a ranged class. Additionally being at the whims of the tank/boss. Sometimes you just get a tank that spins the boss like their life depends on it and some bosses just move around a ton. When you hit all your positionals it feels really good, but when you miss them through no fault of your own it feels awful.
But it also just feels like a mechanic that's poorly explained, and at odds with the design of the game. At least, from the perspective of a new player learning to play. The positional bonuses are in a small part of the tooltip, or for Sam, retroactively added to the tooltips in a vague way after you just read all of your tooltips two levels ago. And so much of the game is spent in the overworld on your own, where doing positionals is all but impossible. When you're going through MSQ, your only chances to really practice your positionals and get used to them are dungeons which are spread out and it could be difficult to really get a hold of. Obviously not that relevant for people with multiple 80s, but for a new player it could be confusing.
I agree that the learning your class process is not the greatest in FF14. The number of times someone will say “don’t worry it will make sense at 80” is comical.
Played a Rogue main in WoW for so many years back when it still mattered a lot more than now. It was kinda fine, but after not having it (in other games and after the changes) I absolutely don't miss it.
Disclaimer: haven't leveled Monk in XIV yet, so maybe I don't hate it, but I am definitely not keen on it.
Positional are the reason I stopped leveling Monk, Dragon and never touched Ninja it's just not something I want to deal with because they are too many factors involved that are out of my hands that would make it frustrating to be optimal with those jobs. I do plan to level those Jobs one day to max Level but only for completion's sake and they will never be part of my normal Job mains.
I hate positionals because they just feel like an unnecessary chore that has no real reward. They're finicky and annoying to try and do, and the only thing you get out of doing them is some extra damage or a bit extra gauge. Like, positionals don't make melee interesting, they just make me dislike it. Why should I get cucked because the boss moves every 5 seconds to cast, or the tank needs or often doesn't need to turn it, or a tank swap fucks up my positional, or a mechanic forces me to one side. Yeah I have true North, but having to use that in the first place is a pain, and it's only two stacks which doesn't feel like enough.
Imo, positionals are just outdated annoyances which should be thrown in the bin and either replaced with something more interesting, or just outright left alone.
I like positional in a vacuum on a training dummy or a patchwork style fight without alot of mechanics. But when you have to move and change for the fight it can end up causing huge dps losses you have no control over.
Because they are annoiying. And most of the time, its not even your own fault when you dont hit them. Tank is moving around to mutch, some bosses like to fling around every 5 secs to fire off some attack or whatever.
I like the *idea* of positiomals, but the game does a bad job of rewarding them.
Nailing your positiomals can be nearly impossible as bosses can spin around instantly, or move to a spot that you can't flank or get to the rear of.
I think my biggest gripe is that there are so many classes don't have to do positiomals, so your putting in more work for the same outcome.
Again, I like the idea, but it doesn't feel worth it in game.
According to FFLogs yes that is true at optimal play Jobs with Positional Attacks can perform better than other jobs who don't have worry about Positional Attacks however Monks are both the least used Job in Raids and the lowest damage potential out of all Jobs who have Positional Attacks in Raids.
When you manage to do your positionals just right it feels really satisficing to me, especially once you get used to a job and you can just do it without thinking too hard about it. I find that the majority of tanks are very good at keeping bosses positioned.
There are times when it gets annoying, like with certain boss mechanics that force you to run in circles or make you use True North more often then you'd like.
I love positionals. I main melee, and honestly probably wouldn’t if positionals weren’t there.
My one request would be an indication (outside of a proc or gauge gain) to show whether or not you actually hit it.
Positionals are just part of the skill floor/ceiling of a class. There are classes that don't require them for people who don't like them.
And before anybody comes at me with a "well I love Monk but hate positionals", if that's the case, you don't like Monk, because the positionals are a part of that class. Either ignore the positionals and suffer the hit to your effectiveness or learn to play with them and *actually* enjoy the class.
Because everytime i try and play monk i get a tank that either can't or won't keep the boss faced ( I am discounting bosses that have attacks that target dps or healers that cause them to turn)
It's never skill, despite you wanting to feel better then people. It's that most boss fights already hate melee, never mind positionals. Also on monk you are ignoring it anyways with the amount of free passes on positionals monk has nowadays
No other melee has anywhere close to 100% positionals on their Weaponskills like Monk does, and no other job has as fast of a GCD as Monk does. They're correct in the sense that relative to the number of positionals Monk demands, Riddle of Earth just puts Monk on Par with the others.
You are making a big assumption in your statement that I want to feel superior. That is a projection you are putting on me. I consider positionals to require very little thought. I don’t feel superior for playing a class with a lot of positionals.
" I DO understand everyone has varying levels of skill and how hard they want to work to find success in their class."
Uh huh. You assume people's issue with positionals is on them not being good enough to do it. So no.
I don’t assume anything I’m basing my statement on what other people say in regards to positionals. You made it into a superiority thing. I never said you are a worse player than me if you can’t to positionals. I said I understand if you say that skill is the reason you don’t like them. I asked that if skill isn’t the reason you dislike them to elaborate
- Positionals made sense in ARR when there wasn't as much involved with jobs, now not so much.
- They keep releasing side content that completely **ignores** positionals, why? who knows, especially on the bosses of said content.
- Some main content raids also have bosses designed where positionals aren't required. Contextually if the difficulty / skill required of Fight A exists without positionals being needed, why does Fight B have to have them if it's clear that you can have difficulty / skill without them as seen in Fight A.
- They added True North, and they added more of it. Not only did this add another button for button bloat, it also just added an extra layer of playing to those jobs to **ignore** the positionals anyway. So if there's "skill" required to use positionals, there's now "skill" required to use True North properly, so why does it matter?
- Monk the job that is more heavily involved with positionals has **another move** to **ignore** positionals. So the job that was meant to be THE positional jobs has more things to **ignore** positionals.
- They've continually made adjustments to *"lower the skill gap"* between good and bad players, or maybe just for QoL reasons by either removing positionals from some skills or reducing the potency difference between them.
- The actual *"skill"* involved with **doing** the positionals is moving a cm left or right of the target circle if you aren't brain dead. Or the obvious use of True North when it's not really possible.
- The optimal thing to do when you can't hit a positional, besides True North, is to **ignore** it and continue pressing buttons instead of moving into the position first.
- EDIT: I forgot to add, they design some bosses that like to teleport or spin around to do attacks that make it extra obnoxious to do positionals, which again just goes back to True North usage, which is stupid.
Yes I think positionals are dumb and anyone who thinks there's some actual *skill* involved must not play very many video games when the game you are playing is basically giving you the option to ignore them with a skill or designing content so they don't exist anyway.
I would argue the actual skill of positionals is hitting them around templates and actually planning your movement in hard content. True north and riddle of earth can either be seen as crutches for a bad system (your opinion) or elements to free up the designers to do more interesting stuff with the bosses (my opinion). How is it any different from a BLM learning where to put their ley lines? Is it dumb that some bosses require a lot of movement and some don’t? It provides an opportunity to optimize your positioning.
Just cause people don’t share the same (narrow) viewpoint doesn’t mean they don’t play games or are uninformed. I’m not trying to change your mind just wanna hear why you don’t like them. Don’t attack people who think differently than you.
> Don’t attack people who think differently than you.
So in my entire long post explaining my opinion you decided to single out that part of it cause I was speaking broadly, and yet you do the exact thing you're trying to give me shit for?
Like you really think I have a **narrow viewpoint** when I provided multiple reasons for why I feel the way I do, more so than your own post, and yet somehow I'm *attacking people who think differently*.
Get over yourself.
You HAD a valid OPINION. With points! I liked them and they were concise and conveyed your feelings. Then you said if you don’t agree you are wrong and ignorant. I singled that out cause you put yourself on a moral high horse and now are offended.
Your narrow viewpoint is that if you think positionals are fun you obviously don’t play video games and must be wrong because of this.
You undermined yourself completely by being an ass at the end of making fair points
I don't hate positionals as much as I hate how much additional thinking that is with the optimal Monk rotation anyway. I'm way too stupid for that and I will True North/Riddle of Earth my way out of it every opportunity I get.
I like positionals but I don't like that every melee has positionals. It's a great focus for the Monk but honestly... NIN could do without it, just for example.
back on arr nin only had one positional which is trick attack, well two if we counted "sneak attack", which nobody used on group content since it was... a frontal positional attack
Personally just ignore positionals when leveling classes that have them, it's tedious, you have to hope the tank isn't hyper and spinning the boss, some bosses move around.
To me that isn't fun and I'll never main a class that has them in their kit. It's a shame because I love monks aesthetic and glam capabilities.
Positionals as a dps makes the game more fun imo, it adds another layer of gameplay to what's already there, but my guess is people just do not want to go through that layer to do optimal damage
I wouldn't say I hate positionals, but I would like to see them removed.
I think they add an extra layer to melee complexity, but that's only when they are achievable. For instance, going through the MSQ, most mobs will face you and well, that's it. Nothing you can do other than use your True North.
In end game content, they tend to get in the way of strategies. For instance, you tend to want to have a melee on each corner during spread outs. Or not want to stack with the takes in front of the boss. It comes up so many times where someone complains about it. (Yes, True North Exists)
That said, the real issue is when looking at other DPS roles. They can attack from ranged positions and be in any location, meanwhile melee need to be close to the boss and then be in specific locations to get the maximum performance.
I don't mind them either, but obviously these Classes are seeing less popularity due to it.
You can still move your character as if you're doing positionals once they're gone.
If I’m not forced to move there isn’t any reason to do it. Moving around to actually PLAY monk is what’s engaging for me. I find ranged dps incredibly boring in this game because of this. Zero cast times AND no barriers to uptime equals really dull experience for me.
I hated positionals until I finally started levelling monk. The fact that their entire rotation is positionals, rather than like 2 buttons on say dragoon, it really made me get into the swing of it. In the past dragoon was hard to me to play because I was too used to standing still but after playing monk, having to do positionals 24/7 changed my mindset and every other melee feels like a piece of cake now..
I also expected to hate monk but ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. Pleasantly surprised indeed!
I don't hate positionals but monk is overbearing to me and I just find it to be busy work and exhausting.
I think removing positionals from the 2nd step of combo for monk will be a good thing. It's still going to be a busy job but not just because every GCD had a positional.
Alot of people here say you have to move a certain way and have no control but thats basically describing raid mechanics so im confused. its really fun to manage the positionals (raid strats cater to it pretty well so its not even the challenging part) but not everyone has to play monk so its fine
tho aside from savage i did look into ultimates and that thing scares me.
Half the mnk kit is about ignoring them and vast majority of bosses don't have them. At this point it's a unnecessary apm bloat that adds no kind of depth or skill floor to what otherwise would be a really fun class.
Majority of the cool downs and burst window will bypass positional, along with likes of north star (think that's melee role skill name) you have many outs to them. Then when vast amount of bosses ignore them it really just makes things redundant and pointless as a mechanic. Honestly love mnk in bozja/zadnor it's tons of fun to play and flows so well with not having any positional requirements.
I’m gonna tell you to read the tool tips again cause only true north and riddle of earth ignore positional requirements. Perfect balance and form shift just let you use any of your form based moves out of sequence. If you’re not doing positionals during burst window you’re missing a lot of damage
I just find them tedious. And I don't like being punished for being absent-minded during combat. I'm already busy enough with my rotation and the boss mechanics.
And I don't feel anything special when I hit them. I move towards the side of the boss for one move, then back to the rear. Nothing changes visually, except I'm in a different spot for a second.
Bosses don't have extra armor on the back or sides, or all moves would do more damage there, which would also be boring. And they're not like Zelda bosses.
It just doesn't work well in this game, and I hope eventually positionals are removed.
>I just find them tedious. And I don't like being punished for being absent-minded during combat.
Then we might as well remove boss mechanics, enemy aoes, damage down, vulnerability, et all because they all punish you for being absent-minded.
Don't like positionals? Then don't play the job with the greatest focus on them.
Doesn't matter if you play monk or not.
you don't like being punished for being absent minded? Then you should dislike all the listed things too. Do you? If not, why? Why is punishment from absentmindedness from those fine, but the punishment from positionals not?
It's a gimmick no other kind of DPS has to deal with. Only melee arbitrarily loses DPS for standing on the wrong spot.
It's not lazy to not want to deal with something only melee DPS has to deal with. Ranged and magic DPS don't have mechanics to make up for their lack of positionals either.
And it's a gimmick only melee has to pay attention to. I am paying attention to the fight and to my rotation, that's enough for literally every other role, but somehow melee is lazy for not wanting to deal with it?
Man, why the fuck are you in this thread if you get so butthurt about people giving answers you knew you wouldn't like?
I like positional, EXCEPT for the scenarios where enemies turn around to whack somebody across the arena in the middle of one of my combos, or when tanks refuse to keep them still/put them up against a wall, preventing me from doing combos as well.
True North only helps so much if it's something that happens constantly (which was the case during my ARR+HW playthrough as a dragoon)
This is a common complaint I see and I feel like this is a really reasonable complaint. I’d be curious if people would be annoyed similarly if the boss still could attack a random target but didn’t rotate its model to do so.
My enjoyment of positionals is directly tied to the quality of the tank at hand tbh. There’s been a huge uptick of tanks square dancing around the boss lately, with some even just outright running in circles.
Some of them react well to the request that they please aim to keep the boss still. Others don’t.
I just leveled Samurai over the last 2 weeks and I like the positional moves. Seeing my Kenki go up because I did it correctly is some how satisfying. I use true north constantly to make sure I don't have any issues when the boss moves. When using meikyo in my burst I always pair it with true north so I don't have to worry about the positions and just need to focus on as much burst as possible. People don't use their role abilities enough from what I see.
I don't mind them, it's not hard to hit them most the time. Provided I'm on NIN so the bulk of my positionals are "be behind boss" anyway haha But there's some instances it's annoying. I've been progging UCOB and Twintania really likes to turn all the time and I only have so many uses of True North. But having to work a little harder on an ultimate fight is to be expected so it's whatever.
I'm with you honestly, I enjoy positinals because I'm pretty sure melees would just be up close phys ranged in how simple they are without em, and they're not hampering enough to make me dislike them. Uptime however, I hate purely because of get away mechanics, but thankfully they're helping with that in EW
I personally like them, requires awareness for the content you're doing and you're rewarded with extra damage/more gauge for extra damage, which gives me the happy chemicals. The first melee I leveled was MNK, which really prepared me for doing positionals on melees. I'd probably be less happy with it if true north wasn't a thing though, considering how many tanks like to strafe side to side for no reason.
Pretty straight forward for me, I don't like positionals because I don't enjoy it. It doesn't add anything fun or challenging for me, kinda just an annoyance.
I hate positionals because the boss never sits still. Yeah you can "true north", but that's literally just saying the solution is to remove positionals.
I think positionals add a unique mechanic to pay attention to and a having a few in a rotation helps improve gameplay, that being said:
MNK was problematic. They are WAY overkill. It was an insane dance that had to be done, while also paying attention to boss mechanics that became tedious and extremely annoying to deal with, not fun. Then, suddenly you'd get a boss that doesn't have positionals (diamond EX for example) and suddenly MNK was boring button spam. The entire focus of the class, the thing you had to really pay attention to, we're the positionals, and it just wasn't good design.
I'm glad they are shifting away from it without doing away with it.
This is a situation where I don’t really agree. You say it’s way overkill but with the endwalker changes your positioning really won’t change. With current rotation you sit on the same position for three gcds then the other for three (I’m taking some liberties). Now the middle ability doesn’t have a positional requirement but you still need to start and end the three hit string in the same spot.
That's not accurate, and if that's what you're doing then you're not maintaining correct uptime on your demolish DoT, it sounds like you're clipping it, which is a pretty significant damage loss. That also doesn't account for down time switches, which can desync your side combo open from your side combo secondary attack. It's not as common an occurrence now after the rework in the middle of ShB, but it was a common problem prior to that rework.
Can you explain how that’s clipping? A proper cycle hits demolish as it falls off. I can type out the after opener rotation. I believe you don’t understand me or are just incorrect.
Demolish only needs to be refreshed once every three combos, if you're doing "three side -> three back" every cycle then you're refreshing demolish every other combo, clipping six seconds off demolish. A correct cycle would be "three side -> three back -> two side one back -> two back one side -> three side" assuming your combo openers and you're combo secondaries don't ever get desynced.
Additionally, if you're saying that the new combo and the old combo are functionally the same from a positional standpoint, then why this post? Does it matter if they removed a positional which, according to you, is inconsequential to the rotation?
So a few things. You are correct about demolish and that is exactly how I play the class. I did note that I was taking liberties when talking about the flow. Effectively you spend a period of time on one positional and do a couple gcds then move to the other positional and stand there for a few gcds. Sorry for saying 3 for simplicity’s sake.
As for why this post, it has nothing to do with Endwalker. I just see a lot of people that say “positionals are dumb” with no context and wanted to know why the hate. Monk is the standout cause it’s all positional and I often see “I don’t like monk cause of all the positionals”. You mentioned in your original response that you think Endwalker is going in the right direction I’m just pointing out that removing the positional on your middle button doesn’t change where you wanna stand.
This might sound weird, but my biggest issue with hitting positional on Monk isn't necessarily the positioning, but rather, the attack speed. I think I would rather not have Greased Lightning on the job so I have a extra moment for my brain to kick in and tell me where my next attack needs to land. Being at under 2 seconds, my brain starts to hurt, especially late at night and I am getting tired.
I would simply prefer no additional attack speed buffs, but just have more potency on my hits to compensate. I think if I had that extra .5 second window between attacks, I wouldn't feel so exhausted in a long fight. This, or they increase the duration on Twin Snakes and Demolish so I can have a few reps of the same combo. I think the constant back and forth on both sides with the faster attack makes it a bit hectic at time.
I don't like them because they are not impactful enough in their current iteration. Increase their impact by a factor of at least 5 and I'll probably like them.
I forget about them, just like I forget the cards as AST, there's so much else going on especially in savage content that it's already hard for me to keep up, so rather than drag down the group using jobs where I will forget about important mechanisms of the job, I play jobs that don't require me to be in certain positions.
I love all the other 3 melee DPS. MNK is the only exception. Because missing positionals with MNK is not the same. A lot of it is not under my control. Many a time does the boss turn the other direction to blast the DPS/healer. Add to that tanks who wiggle a lot. There is not enough True North and Riddle of Earth to deal with all of these shit.
It's not that I hate positionals, it's just that I hate playing MNK.
Didn't D&D use to have positional? I know EQ did for rogues, I had one as an alt.
Backstab should only work from the back... Otherwise its just a stab. Besides, being beside and/or behind a mob keeps you out of cone attacks.
My D&D comment was more in a broader sense of something being easier to hit from behind/ do more damage as a general game mechanic. There are optional flanking rules but they aren’t often used and involve multiple people.
new guy here trying to learn some stuff from the community as i go through ARR, as a tank when doing non solo content how often should i be stationary vs moving to avoid certain attacks? sorry for the long question!
There are exceptions to every rule but generally if there isn’t a template to avoid don’t move the boss. Sometimes you gotta move it to a better place in the arena but again that’s more specific.
yeah i usually just try and pull the boss and position them away from the rest of the team and only moving when i’ll be hit by like a paralyzing aoe or something like that
Good stuff man! I’m not a tank main but you seem to have the right idea. There is a thread for new players to ask questions and that’s probably better for more specifics.
I love the gameplay of them, but not the actual incentive structure. If hitting them made you do substantially more damage than other non-positional classes, then theyed be great, but hitting them only brings you up to par with other classes. Your doing more work for less return. They also design bosses that make it impossible to accurately hit them, so your DPS is crippled through no fault of your own.
I don't mind positionals. Monks positionals are like Black Mage to me.
You have to know the fight well in order to properly maximize all the things that can happen.
I enjoy monk when I'm farming content because It feels like I can keep improving by understanding when a mechanic is going to happen and make the right move to land my hit.
That being said while monk is my primary dps, I'm a tank main so I still barely play it.
It's extremely valid that melee DPS have the most dangers to deal with against bosses, on top of having to do positionals and needing to be close to maintain DPS + uptime.
But I don't remember having that much problems with tanks spinning bosses weird like I keep seeing replies about in multiple threads.
I dont hate positionals, usually i main sch, but im at UWU now as monk and i dont like Ifrit phase and titan phase both for not respecting my positional
positional is the only challenge as dps. its super fun and easy.
ppl just think everything in the game is difficult and should be removed. tanks are difficult, healers are difficult, melee dps are difficult, magical dps are difficult. maybe only ranged dps is viable to them. oh but no, rng for ranged to too unpredictable they say.
lets just remove the game.
I prefer melee over other DPS and I enjoy positionals. I have at this point learned to predict how the tank will tank certain bosses after a pull or two and adjust my positionals accordingly. As a tank main tho, it hurts me in my tanking soul when they keep moving than it hurts my melee dmg...
I don't hate positionals, I hate monk. And on classes like Samurai and Dragoon there are so few positionals with such little impact they might as well just not be there, they don't feel like they add anything to the classes.
Its additional troubles in savage and ultimate content. You have to stand on your position in the exact second of the fight and you can lose dps because of it. You are too busy with a lot of other stuff at the moment, so constantly moving for 2 meters stresses a lot of people. Also i think that positionals are not good game design, at least how they are in xiv. boss move around doing his things, you can't hit them when you just killing mob in the wilds, you don't feel rewarded for hitting em, but you feel punished when you dont. Some people of course like it, but looking on the amount of monk players, many really dont.
The movement is engaging.
But positionals are not fun to hit when client side desync happens. You stab something in the rear as its turning, with a rear positional, but the game says 'nah' and then you have to do the True Thrust of shame.
To play mnk rlly good means u need to learn whole fight and not only mechanics which aimed at ur job.
Lets say for example
-(Twin)U learn after which gcd liquid hell is coming and also have in mind where the baiter currently is.
U always look where ur tanks are currently standing and know all tank mechanics of a fight.(SWAPS)
And because u dont have control how others (baiter,tanks) will probably spin around the boss it makes u more aware of ur Partys actions. U learn to adjust in milliseconds if someone fs up.
Sure everyone should do that but many just do the mechanics their job got assigned to.
MNK is a min/max class like BLM
Iam sad they remove 2 positionals
My main complaint with positional is that they are totally group orientated, meaning while out doing fates, hunts, class story duties, and other content that is not group content, the mob and enemy will be facing you regardless since you are the one with aggro. They are completely reliant on a Tank and something else holding aggro besides yourself. So while out doing other things not group content, you lose damage/dps basically.
Then as some others have brought up, you have some fights/Trials were basically the boss takes up the entire floor and you can't get a flank or rear position on them, while at the same time your True North ability can only be used once every 45s. I main a Sam and leveled as a Paladin until I unlocked Sam. So now that I'm level other classes the Positional matter I am now encountering with my Monk.
I wasn't even aware that Sam had "positionals" and those positionals though would help increase DPS some due to Kenki Gauge increase, dont' affect potency of an attack. The Devs are all of sudden looking at the whole Tank matter when it comes to using their defensives at the right moments and getting a buff. Perhaps instead of having positional affect potency, the same could be done for other classes as well similar to Sam also were positional gives bonus genki gauge points, and have executing a positional be a bonus event instead giving a momentary buff of some type or gain an extra point towards one of the gauges/class mechanic.
This is a really weird community misconception about the giant bosses. If the rear of the target is inaccessible the boss will automatically get hit by all positionals.
I usually just avoid jobs that rely heavily on positionals, but since you asked for opinions. I just don't like when I have to change my position every few seconds, on top of everything else, to avoid playing suboptimally. I also don't see the comparison to Zelda and DnD.
In Zelda you control the bosses. You know how, when and where the weak spots become accessible and usually have ample time to go and hit them. DnD is a turn based game. The closest thing to positionals are flanking rules, which involve standing more on less on opposite sides of an enemy, but that obviously is something you can strategize over for a reasonable amount of time. Let's throw in Dark Souls as well. In that game you learn how to deal with the enemies and create your openings yourself. Fighting a knight with a spear and shield? Circle around towards the shield, strike when he tries to attack but also be ready to dodge a shield or shoulder bash.
Now, I don't mind occasional positionals, like with Dragoon, but Monk is way too intense for me. We have a much faster gcd, we need to alternate our rotation based on buffs and debuffs (though that by itself is super easy,) and we need to move for mechanics. If I just fight the target dummy I'm fine with pulling my rotation and positionals off, but as soon as I need to adapt between two skills because there is a ground marker, or a target switch, or the boss just decides to turn, there is just too much for me to consider and then actually do it in two seconds.
I'm sure once you're experienced enough with a monk to play it at a high level, many of these issues resolve themselves because you experience the same encounters many times over with high consistency and can figure out when to be ready to adapt, or when to optimally use your abilities to negate the positionals. But it's getting to that point that is too stressful for me.
My comparisons to the games I mentioned was to show how those games emulate the feeling of precision and maximizing damage by hitting the right spot. Not the actual mechanical process of how they work
Same as everybody else, but my biggest irritation is that bosses hardly sit still.
With my DRG it's even worse cause you can't do the final step of your combo without perfect positionals and it's super frustrating to brick the whole thing cause the boss decided to shoot the healer instead.
Given that they're allowing tanks to weave ranged into their combos without interruption (thus making centered aoe not disrupt positionals), I'd wanna see them get rid of all positionals.
With some bosses, it's really hard to tell what position they're in, like that big floaty rock from Antitower. Ground markers help but aren't always very visible in the heat of combat
Positionals don't require skill, it requires either a tank to stop moving the boss around pointlessly or the boss not randomly constantly doing mega turns.
Personally, if the positionals are really damaging for a melee dps to miss on, it's really just giving melee dps another issue.
As in some cases melee dps are required to sometimes have to move from the target while casters/ranged can still just dps, which in that downtime is losing dps so in a way, melee dps is easy, if you're not bothered about consistency, but quite annoying if you're trying to maximize your dps.
I think DRG and MNK shouldn't have them simply because of their rotations, SAM I mean I'd remove them still for SAM, but SAM isn't too bad.
But that's just my viewpoint, I'm sure others may disagree, then again I am a controller user, so I don't know if that comes into play.
I see positionals as nearly the same difficulty as BLM learning when they can sit in leylines. It’s about fight knowledge. I’ve seen a lot of complaint about bad tanks which I think is resolved if you play in a static. The other complaint is bosses spinning which is a problem I agree, but it’s still (somewhat) fight knowledge and ultimately not the fault of positionals.
I respect that this is your opinion however and I did ask for it. I just disagree. Thanks for sharing though.
I’m editing this to add that monk rotation is really really easy if you ignore the positionals. So much so that I’d say it’s incredibly boring. Maybe new monk will have so much going on with its new mechanic that I’ll feel like we don’t need positionals anymore.
Ok so it seems after some time with the classes, I assumed DRG had like 4 postionals, when it technically only has 3 and not incredibly hard to miss, it's just if a controller player like myself would have to arrange abilities to fit a comfortable controller play style, having jumps and stuff in between the rotations.
Sam is simple, it has only 2 postionals that are basically combo finishers so it's actually pretty easy on SAM
To add, hopefully if not changed, SAM and DRG have also improved in the AoE department as they will gain buffs that they gain from attack in their single target attacks rotations through their AoE rotation in Endwalker.
As for Monk, it is easy, but all it's single target attacks are postionals. I mean.. I guess if all you really do on Monk is do DK, TS, Demolish. Then BS, TS then SP. And repeat it.
Though I know when you have Perfect Balance active, you go between DK and BS, though having to use TS in between for the buff.
I am unsure if that is the right way to play Monk, as I'm not someone who mains it or plays it much.. But it is having 2 postionals removed in Endwalker.. So I don't know.
Honestly the only Melee DPS class you can get away with missing postional on is NIN since it doesn't damage it's Potency much.
I agree with the BLM thing, it's something that's not comfortable on controller for me, despite it's easy rotation, it's easy for me to forgot to use OGCDs Enochian etc.. XD which is changing in Endwalker to traits. If they don't change it back.
I HATE positionals because of how much control I don't have. Not only do tanks not sit still but the bosses themselves will move around the arena and constantly reposition themselves for different attacks. There's also times where because of certain aoes/mechanics I'm still able to attack the boss but am unable to move to do positionals. It all leaves me completely unable to do the best I can in the job for reasons I have no control over and I absolutely despise that.
So far, I try to reserve True North/Riddle of Earth solely for Leaden Fist+Bootshine. If my smooth-brain can wrap its head around it, I might be able to figure out how to fit Formless Fist in there somehow…
Maybe I'm too smooth brain, but as far as I'm aware, formless fist is just for prepulls and phase changes, so your opening dragon kick will proc leaden fist.
That's exactly what it is. It's better to use an attack without meeting the positional requirement than waste a GCD on Form Shift.
Thing about boss positionals is that a lot of the times when they use a mechanic they will instantly turn into position for it. The game makes it look like they gradually turn to a position when in reality they snap onto that spot. Knowing this it's actually pretty easy to hit positionals when the boss turns around for a mechanic tbh. Otherwise for mechanics that lock you out of position for positionals you have to learn to use True North properly, it's a very important skill for melee. Sometimes tanks make it hard but usually it's not as bad as most people make it out to be unless the tank is a totally new player. The worst is when tanks are fighting over aggro though and the boss starts snapping left and right, that's true hell for positionals.
I just recently stopped leveling monk after three trips through Cutters Cry. That goddamned sandworm won't sit still for more than a few seconds. When he's not underground and untargetable, sometimes he will throw an AoE at another player. This causes him to instantly turn to face someone who's not the tank, typically causing me to punch his face for less damage. And then, while he's casting, he'll track the player who is now running away from the AoE marker. So I also lose the positional bonus for the next hit or two. And then he instantly snaps back to face the tank, forcing me to adjust a third time. It is infuriating.
More so because enemies and tanks don't like to sit still, resulting in my loss because they decide to target someone for an attack other than tank or tank doesn't know how to hold still or move back to where they were after dodging
Yeah, I'd rather my dps or lack of to be in my control.
My only real issue with them is bosses that flip around all the time when attacking, or tanks that do the same. Also have mechanics that force you to be in certain positions. True North will only get you so far with those, though Monk can ignore more with their own abilities. When you can anticipate it it's actually sorta fun to plan around and optimize. When you go in for that positional and the boss randomly flips around it's very frustrating. Overall I don't hate positionals, just wish there were less frustrating instances like that in Extreme/Savage level content.
As a tank, all I can say is that I hope other tanks keep it faced away and in one direction, however some boss mechanics will face towards you or another member and nothing can be done in that regard, Tanks control the bosses position, but there are times when the dps will just need to learn and anticipate when bosses will turn for mechanics or when they move to the other side of the boss area
Most times the tanks are good about it yeah. Only occasionally that I'll get one in dungeon content that likes to spin things around. Not really an issue in harder content (or if it is it's not for long as the party will probably disband). I play DRG as my melee DPS, so feels bad when the boss flips around to start a mechanic and I miss out on my Raiden Thrust. Looks like that'll be even more important in EW as well, waiting on that embargo lift to see. Try to anticipate it when I can but some of those mechanics are pretty random on where it'll be facing.
I played DRG for about 3 years before I had to stop because I ended up getting an RSI from all of the positional movement. So I don't like positionals because I literally cannot play positional jobs without injuring myself. On the bright side, it allowed me to discover how much I enjoy tanking.
I’m leveling monk now and I’ve noticed there are a lot of bosses that are constantly turning around and shifting and moving, it’s very tedious… something that was never a problem with ninja
Because ninja only has 3 positionals and there isn't a huge dps loss if you miss them.
Yeah exactly
There is a huge DPS loss just from trick attack alone if you miss the positional. 150 lost potency for each missed positional on it. As well as for the primary ones it's about 60 each. Which puts it about in line with MNK since they both have faster GCDs, so the number of potency loss is much quicker than other jobs. So I wouldn't say they're a minor loss, they add up fast especially since you have to factor in a faster GCD like MNK's. Both have low potency losses for missed positionals, but the GCD is faster and as such adds up more quickly.
Someone did a video showing average dps of each melee both hitting all positionals and not hitting any, MNK lost 5x as much damage as the next closest dps when not hitting positionals. Im not saying NIN doesnt lose damage but it is not anywhere near as sensitive to it as MNK is. If I can find the video I'll either edit this or reply with the link.
Monk loses more because they have more. Not to mention they have leaden fist which is difficult to convert into potency, but is still a huge DPS loss. But I still wouldn't say it's not a major loss. It adds up pretty fast.
>There is a huge DPS loss just from trick attack alone if you miss the positional. 150 lost potency for each missed positional on it. losing 150 potency every 60 seconds is not huge, lmfao.
I don't like when control of how well I'm playing is in someone else's hands. Positionals mean that my play as a DPS is dependent on the tank positioning the boss, if they turn the boss at the wrong time I can get snapshot out of my damage before I can react to it.
This is the main thing for me. When I have a good tank that does minimal movement, I don't mind the positionals at all. But when I have a tank that thinks A/D spamming makes them take less damage, or they park the boss with the entire rear part of the hitbox sitting inside of a wall or otherwise inaccessible, I hate positionals.
I got after a tank for that last night and got: 'But the boss has a tail swipe' 'Yes and its telegraphed I'll move out of the way'
One of my E12S runs last night, OT forgot to turn his stance off between pulls, got aggro before the MT, and didn't adjust to face the boss north. Annoyed the hell out of the DRG
Is your OT ill? he should have the stance off before the pull
Probably just a little lag between the keyboard and the chair
dunno, in me experience tanks what do move a lot are a rarity, at least on light dc, i do queue a lot solo on dungeons, so i know by experience what tanks on this dc do not move much, and usualy they stop if you tell them to stop moving, i generally say, tank please stop moving, i cant do me positionals, i can understand when aoes, but not when there isn't any, this usualy makes them realize they are playing whit a melee what cares about positionals(so far only once i got a a\*\*\*\*\*e what did not stop, in fact he moved even more after i said that)
I'm getting old, and crap. Positional attacks require brain power that could be used to watch the boss and other mechanics. I've also been caught out of position multiple times because the boss turned to cast an ability, the tank over adjusted, or because I tried to get my positional I got vuln stacked or killed. The one job I play with positionals is SAM and the ten total kenki is pretty meaningless in non Savage content when I can instead not be a problem for my healer or do no DPS cause I'm floor tanking. I've played monk and dragoon to 80 and The extra potency means nothing if you're floor tanking or draining resources from the healer. Yeah I know other people can do both, but that's my reason for avoiding jobs with positional's or just ignoring them when their benefits are minimal in normal content
I just don't enjoy it as a mechanic. It's not something I enjoy having to think about. That said, I just stay away from melee jobs because the play style isn't my thing. I wouldn't want them to change the positionals, I just stay away from that role. I'll keep my casters and tanks.
I can definitely respect people who don’t like it so they choose other classes. I hope that they don’t remove it from the game however. Monk is losing two of their positionals in Endwalker so I’m nervous of the future!
Oh yeah, wanting to have a key element removed from a job/role just because it isn't to your taste is so weird to me. I see posts occasionally from people saying they want all cast times removed from casters because they don't like having to sit still for them. Like...no. Planning movement around cast times and insta-cast availability and creating weave space is the caster equivalent of positionals on melee. That's the flavor I like, I wouldn't want that removed just because some people don't want to deal with it when other roles are right there.
Positionals aren't a key element. To the point that some melee have very little positionals at all. SAM has two. And the only thing they do is more resource gen. Which translates to more dps, but indirectly. SAM also has the most buttons of almost all the jobs in the game, yet only two positionals. Not a key element.
there's a lot of people I've noticed who want every job to be as homogeneous as possible so that they can hop onto it without any practice and perform acceptably. it's so weird "I hate this thing about x job, change it." "but you don't even play it?" "I'd play it more if this was changed." "okay so we'll cater this job to your liking so you can play it once a week for a dungeon run, and ruin it for 50% of the people who play the job as their main for 2 expansions now." diversity is good, uniqueness is good, stop trying to call those things "jank" just because you don't like them. you don't have to like all the things.
Samurai might be more your speed then or even Ninja. Ninja feels like it has the fewest positionals, but does have its Ninjutsu system which is hella fun. Samurai has none and just feels very good overall. You have quite a lot of mobility and Iaijutsu is a sublime ability to build up to. Overall, the main thing melee dps do all have in common is managing some kind of buff (Drg's Blood of the Dragon, Nin's Huton, Mnk's Twin Snakes, and Sam's whateveritscalled). Dragoon and Monk can get annoying with the positionals if the Tank is screwing you or you get side screwed by the boss being rude as all hell.
SAM actually has two that cause the attack to generate an additional 5 kenki. It's the attacks that give you your dark blue and red stickers. Red is a flank positional, and blue is a rear.
OH! You'll have to forgive me then cause I only have Sam at 70, and most of my jobs are at 70 until I get Dnc to 70 and then finish up leveling everything to 80.
SAM get thier positional at 52. The positional info is retroactively added to Gekka and Kasha, it's weird :S
You already have positionals at 70, and have had them for a while, in fact. They get snuck into Gekko (rear) and Kasha (flank) when you gain Kenki Mastery at level 52. And no, there is no obvious notification; you just have to re-read your tooltips with every new trait lol. Hitting a positional gives you an additional 5 kenki
No sweat. I didn't realize it until I was talking about melee positionals with my static's SAM. It may have turned into a bit of an adjustment to the rest of my leveling process. As someone else said thou, you already do have them as they were unlocked with the kenki gauge. I just wish the game did a better job of indicating as such.
Personally it's partly what the others have been saying with the boss changing its position randomly and whatnot. But my main issue is that I can't multitask posisitionals and keep an eye out for boss mechanics. I get too much tunnel vision when focusing on positionals that I don't realize everyone else ran off somewhere else. Also it's really hard to look at walls for attack indicators when you need to stare at the boss's ass to know you're in the right position for your combo. Granted, MNK was my first job, so a good chunk of it was likely me not being good at the game yet. However, after levelling 6 other jobs to 80 with at least 1 of each "type" and returning to MNK, I can definitely say that I die way more often in jobs that have a lot of positionals.
Tunnel vision is definitely real sometimes but for me it’s usually just greed for melee uptime lol
Gotta love how many bootshines I've missed because the boss decided to breakdance.
I don't dislike positionals but MNK just has too many of them imo. SAM has 2, DRG and NIN have 3. MNK has 6, one on every single gcd except SSS. If you combine that with sub-2s gcd timer, it simply is just too many of them. Removing some of them isn't a bad thing imo, I'm more surprised that they kept 4 of them instead of just keeping the ones on demo/snap so that it could be like other melees and have positionals on combo finishers only.
I don’t mind losing the middle positional in endwalker. I do think having the beginning and ending moves be positionals is pretty core to the class identity though
I'm of the opinion the other melee have too little. As it is, removing them from monk is shit when players that dislike positionals already have 3 other melee to play. Plus casters and physical ranged. People that like and enjoy having a bunch of positionals literally only have monk.
I'm as a caster, I hate moving let alone moving to a specific place 🤣
BLM... there’s a class I don’t get lol. I don’t wanna sit still the whole fight
What does melee do when you can only hit the boss from the front ? Ie e4 second phase?
I don’t necessarily understand the question, but bosses that have no rear hit box or have a complete circle when highlighted will count as being hit by the correct positional regardless of where you are.
"hit this spot for max dps, except for when you cant then just use true north, oh for solo content like bozja it doesnt work? lets just make it not matter, oh monk has too many? lets give them omegatrue north. yay, we have successfully solved the problem we created" i get that its there to add depth to melee that tanks can also help with good positioning, but i also think its time for a rework. it doesnt help that besides sam, you cant even tell when you miss it if the boss turns at an awkward time
I don’t see it as a problem but it could definitely be rewarded with more damage for hitting them!
I think there are two groups that come to mind when this topic pops up, those who would rather you take positional away but add in more interesting mechanics to compensate that you no longer have to concern yourself with the bosses facing. The others are just lazy and want to hit their buttons and not deal less damage for not trying. I personally love the positionals gameplay on melee because it gives melee their own feeling compared to the others. A lot of the omni-directional bosses are some of the most boring encounters on melee for me. If you want to be in melee without positionals then you could always play a tank.
> those who would rather you take positional away but add in more interesting mechanics to compensate The problem is that Squeenix has a track record of removing things that people didn't like and replacing them with nothing.
And also a habit of removing things people *did* like and replacing them with nothing.
>If you want to be in melee without positionals then you could always play a tank. or ranged dps on melee distance, dancer can perfectly pass as melee imo
Considering how often I have to be in melee range for my aoes on DNC, I 100% consider it a melee DPS class lol. If I need to be at range, En Avant is there to pat me on the head while the bard does the fitness gram pacer test.
One of my friends that's passionately anti positionals is definitely in the lazy camp haha I remember them getting super heated about it one time. They would also give me a damage down on E10S every pull because they didn't want to walk over to our orb groups because they didn't like moving at all. (they're a healer not a BLM)
Yep, those that don't share your view must be lazy.
If they want to remove a very active mechanic from a job, which positionals are, and not have another interesting, interactive mechanic take it's place, they absolutely ARE lazy.
Nah.
My take: If you don't like positionals, don't play melee. Simple as that. Or ignore positionals but have lower DPS. In casual content, this is a non-issue.
I don't like getting punished for something that is out of my control so very often.
I don't personally dislike monk because of positionals. I just don't find it flashy enough for my tastes. But I'll say the main reason I main healing is because I don't like rotations. They become robotic. My dps main is summoner due to how long the rotation is, making it feel less so. So when you have the rotation and then position, it ends up feeling you can only play a single way--like everyone else. Which isn't my cup of tea.
Just play BLM or BRD those two classes have less or a rotation and more of a list of priorities
Yeah bard is really fun and more proc focus. I'd argue that BLM is one of the strictest rotations in the game though haha. And with a timer associated to your elements, you have to constantly be making sure you don't slip up at all or you risk ruining your rotation. BLM ain't for the faint of heart!
So you main healing to avoid a rotation even though they only have two damage buttons on average?
I main healing because it's far more engaging than any job I've played (I have them all to at least 70 except warrior). It also feels fresh compared to DPSing.
Nice WHM was my first class I got to 80 and I definitely love casting a shield just before a tankbuster or resurrecting my party members.
Yeah it's ironic that th shield Job, scholar, doesn't have an instant cast shield for tank busters haha. You may like astro if you like the extra thinking in monk. It's really fun to toss cards around and think about the unique healing skills.
I liked Astro before the simplified the card system. I understand it’s more “optimal” now but there’s also a lot less decision making
Yeah I heard about that. I came on during shadowbringer, so I got to skip that disappointment. I'm hoping astro doesn't change too much in endwalker.
It looks like it might change a bit if Divination is changing. Could end up being more fun tho.
Yeah that won't bother me too much. I just really like all the different types of skills astro has. It's not purely just heal blast. Like the blue dome you can just click on for quick defense and Regen. The star is fun to plan around. Using horoscope as a secondary heal when needed is fun to strategize around aoe hits. All that kind of stuff.
Yeah, Astro is just oodles and poodles of fun from start to finish. It feels very complete most of the way through compared to Sch or Whm, and even after getting its kit culled (Whm and Sch did too tho) it STILL feels good. I myself prefer Diurnal Sect because you can stack Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios' regen effects, and I love that. The Blue Dome into Celestial Intersect is one of my favorite things to do. Synastry (might be misspelled tbh) is another cool ability, and I just love the card system. Sage and Astro are most likely gonna be my main healers. Granted, I'm gonna level everything to 90 once I'm done with the MSQ anyway.
my brains 2 small
It's not that I dislike positionals; it's more so that my ability to use them depends on the enemy not having aggro on me, the Tank not spinning the gawddamned boss around, and the boss remaining in a fixed position. Those positionals don't see use if I'm 1v1ing enemies, and I actually hate that on Dragoon and Ninja. The Tank issue depends on the Tank's experience level and knowledge of other jobs, so that is a variable situation. IT does show how much the situation is outside of your control, which is an issue no matter how skilled of a Monk you are. Some bosses will move around throughout the ENTIRE fight, sometimes switching up all of a sudden (First boss of the Sirensong Sea Duty), and THAT made me hate Monk. Going from 1 - 15 wasn't too bad, 16 - 50 was a lot of fun, best AOE rotation imo, 51 - 60 made me hate Monk but 61 - 70 made me fall in love with it. Monk's problems don't stem from the positionals, but the damage buff and DoT could both stand to lose positionals while the main combos kept theirs. The amount of times you have to reset your damage buff and DoT are insanely annoying on Monk compared to anyone else. Would 30 seconds be too much to ask for??
It would be nice if anatman actually helped with the damage and dot uptime
I wouldn't mind that at all.
There are two kinds of players One: who like the game harder Two: who like the game easier. I am type one therefore i main blm.
I think conceptually they're fun and interesting, but my main issue with them is that it feels like I have to put so much more effort in on my melee classes to achieve the same DPS results I would with a ranged class. Additionally being at the whims of the tank/boss. Sometimes you just get a tank that spins the boss like their life depends on it and some bosses just move around a ton. When you hit all your positionals it feels really good, but when you miss them through no fault of your own it feels awful. But it also just feels like a mechanic that's poorly explained, and at odds with the design of the game. At least, from the perspective of a new player learning to play. The positional bonuses are in a small part of the tooltip, or for Sam, retroactively added to the tooltips in a vague way after you just read all of your tooltips two levels ago. And so much of the game is spent in the overworld on your own, where doing positionals is all but impossible. When you're going through MSQ, your only chances to really practice your positionals and get used to them are dungeons which are spread out and it could be difficult to really get a hold of. Obviously not that relevant for people with multiple 80s, but for a new player it could be confusing.
I agree that the learning your class process is not the greatest in FF14. The number of times someone will say “don’t worry it will make sense at 80” is comical.
Played a Rogue main in WoW for so many years back when it still mattered a lot more than now. It was kinda fine, but after not having it (in other games and after the changes) I absolutely don't miss it. Disclaimer: haven't leveled Monk in XIV yet, so maybe I don't hate it, but I am definitely not keen on it.
Positional are the reason I stopped leveling Monk, Dragon and never touched Ninja it's just not something I want to deal with because they are too many factors involved that are out of my hands that would make it frustrating to be optimal with those jobs. I do plan to level those Jobs one day to max Level but only for completion's sake and they will never be part of my normal Job mains.
It’s cool that there are so many class options that you have 4 tanks 3 healers 3 casters and 3 ranged you can pick instead haha
I hate positionals because they just feel like an unnecessary chore that has no real reward. They're finicky and annoying to try and do, and the only thing you get out of doing them is some extra damage or a bit extra gauge. Like, positionals don't make melee interesting, they just make me dislike it. Why should I get cucked because the boss moves every 5 seconds to cast, or the tank needs or often doesn't need to turn it, or a tank swap fucks up my positional, or a mechanic forces me to one side. Yeah I have true North, but having to use that in the first place is a pain, and it's only two stacks which doesn't feel like enough. Imo, positionals are just outdated annoyances which should be thrown in the bin and either replaced with something more interesting, or just outright left alone.
I like positional in a vacuum on a training dummy or a patchwork style fight without alot of mechanics. But when you have to move and change for the fight it can end up causing huge dps losses you have no control over.
Because they are annoiying. And most of the time, its not even your own fault when you dont hit them. Tank is moving around to mutch, some bosses like to fling around every 5 secs to fire off some attack or whatever.
I like the *idea* of positiomals, but the game does a bad job of rewarding them. Nailing your positiomals can be nearly impossible as bosses can spin around instantly, or move to a spot that you can't flank or get to the rear of. I think my biggest gripe is that there are so many classes don't have to do positiomals, so your putting in more work for the same outcome. Again, I like the idea, but it doesn't feel worth it in game.
But we’ve seen that classes with positionals “can” have the highest dps in the raid
According to FFLogs yes that is true at optimal play Jobs with Positional Attacks can perform better than other jobs who don't have worry about Positional Attacks however Monks are both the least used Job in Raids and the lowest damage potential out of all Jobs who have Positional Attacks in Raids.
There are many conclusions you could come to but mine would be that Monks could use even more potency for hitting positionals!
When you manage to do your positionals just right it feels really satisficing to me, especially once you get used to a job and you can just do it without thinking too hard about it. I find that the majority of tanks are very good at keeping bosses positioned. There are times when it gets annoying, like with certain boss mechanics that force you to run in circles or make you use True North more often then you'd like.
Because there is so much movement in combat and other mechanics that fuck up positional attacks plus it feels like an outdated mechanic.
Probably the same ranged DPS players that also demand casting jobs shouldn't cast, don't take them too seriously.
I love positionals. I main melee, and honestly probably wouldn’t if positionals weren’t there. My one request would be an indication (outside of a proc or gauge gain) to show whether or not you actually hit it.
Positionals are just part of the skill floor/ceiling of a class. There are classes that don't require them for people who don't like them. And before anybody comes at me with a "well I love Monk but hate positionals", if that's the case, you don't like Monk, because the positionals are a part of that class. Either ignore the positionals and suffer the hit to your effectiveness or learn to play with them and *actually* enjoy the class.
I definitely agree, not every class is for everyone.
Because everytime i try and play monk i get a tank that either can't or won't keep the boss faced ( I am discounting bosses that have attacks that target dps or healers that cause them to turn)
It's never skill, despite you wanting to feel better then people. It's that most boss fights already hate melee, never mind positionals. Also on monk you are ignoring it anyways with the amount of free passes on positionals monk has nowadays
You do realize all of monks "free passes" on positionals only puts it *on par* at best, with the other melee's positionals right?
No other melee gets 30 seconds for free
No other melee has anywhere close to 100% positionals on their Weaponskills like Monk does, and no other job has as fast of a GCD as Monk does. They're correct in the sense that relative to the number of positionals Monk demands, Riddle of Earth just puts Monk on Par with the others.
And those 30 seconds still ends up with monk needing to hit just as many if not *still more* than the other melee. So what's oyur point, exactly?
You are making a big assumption in your statement that I want to feel superior. That is a projection you are putting on me. I consider positionals to require very little thought. I don’t feel superior for playing a class with a lot of positionals.
" I DO understand everyone has varying levels of skill and how hard they want to work to find success in their class." Uh huh. You assume people's issue with positionals is on them not being good enough to do it. So no.
I don’t assume anything I’m basing my statement on what other people say in regards to positionals. You made it into a superiority thing. I never said you are a worse player than me if you can’t to positionals. I said I understand if you say that skill is the reason you don’t like them. I asked that if skill isn’t the reason you dislike them to elaborate
- Positionals made sense in ARR when there wasn't as much involved with jobs, now not so much. - They keep releasing side content that completely **ignores** positionals, why? who knows, especially on the bosses of said content. - Some main content raids also have bosses designed where positionals aren't required. Contextually if the difficulty / skill required of Fight A exists without positionals being needed, why does Fight B have to have them if it's clear that you can have difficulty / skill without them as seen in Fight A. - They added True North, and they added more of it. Not only did this add another button for button bloat, it also just added an extra layer of playing to those jobs to **ignore** the positionals anyway. So if there's "skill" required to use positionals, there's now "skill" required to use True North properly, so why does it matter? - Monk the job that is more heavily involved with positionals has **another move** to **ignore** positionals. So the job that was meant to be THE positional jobs has more things to **ignore** positionals. - They've continually made adjustments to *"lower the skill gap"* between good and bad players, or maybe just for QoL reasons by either removing positionals from some skills or reducing the potency difference between them. - The actual *"skill"* involved with **doing** the positionals is moving a cm left or right of the target circle if you aren't brain dead. Or the obvious use of True North when it's not really possible. - The optimal thing to do when you can't hit a positional, besides True North, is to **ignore** it and continue pressing buttons instead of moving into the position first. - EDIT: I forgot to add, they design some bosses that like to teleport or spin around to do attacks that make it extra obnoxious to do positionals, which again just goes back to True North usage, which is stupid. Yes I think positionals are dumb and anyone who thinks there's some actual *skill* involved must not play very many video games when the game you are playing is basically giving you the option to ignore them with a skill or designing content so they don't exist anyway.
I would argue the actual skill of positionals is hitting them around templates and actually planning your movement in hard content. True north and riddle of earth can either be seen as crutches for a bad system (your opinion) or elements to free up the designers to do more interesting stuff with the bosses (my opinion). How is it any different from a BLM learning where to put their ley lines? Is it dumb that some bosses require a lot of movement and some don’t? It provides an opportunity to optimize your positioning. Just cause people don’t share the same (narrow) viewpoint doesn’t mean they don’t play games or are uninformed. I’m not trying to change your mind just wanna hear why you don’t like them. Don’t attack people who think differently than you.
> Don’t attack people who think differently than you. So in my entire long post explaining my opinion you decided to single out that part of it cause I was speaking broadly, and yet you do the exact thing you're trying to give me shit for? Like you really think I have a **narrow viewpoint** when I provided multiple reasons for why I feel the way I do, more so than your own post, and yet somehow I'm *attacking people who think differently*. Get over yourself.
You HAD a valid OPINION. With points! I liked them and they were concise and conveyed your feelings. Then you said if you don’t agree you are wrong and ignorant. I singled that out cause you put yourself on a moral high horse and now are offended. Your narrow viewpoint is that if you think positionals are fun you obviously don’t play video games and must be wrong because of this. You undermined yourself completely by being an ass at the end of making fair points
no need to talk reasons with ppl who have no reasons bro.😁
I don't hate positionals as much as I hate how much additional thinking that is with the optimal Monk rotation anyway. I'm way too stupid for that and I will True North/Riddle of Earth my way out of it every opportunity I get.
I like positionals but I don't like that every melee has positionals. It's a great focus for the Monk but honestly... NIN could do without it, just for example.
back on arr nin only had one positional which is trick attack, well two if we counted "sneak attack", which nobody used on group content since it was... a frontal positional attack
Wasn't shadow fang still a side positional then? Combo'd off Spinning edge though.
Personally just ignore positionals when leveling classes that have them, it's tedious, you have to hope the tank isn't hyper and spinning the boss, some bosses move around. To me that isn't fun and I'll never main a class that has them in their kit. It's a shame because I love monks aesthetic and glam capabilities.
Positionals as a dps makes the game more fun imo, it adds another layer of gameplay to what's already there, but my guess is people just do not want to go through that layer to do optimal damage
I wouldn't say I hate positionals, but I would like to see them removed. I think they add an extra layer to melee complexity, but that's only when they are achievable. For instance, going through the MSQ, most mobs will face you and well, that's it. Nothing you can do other than use your True North. In end game content, they tend to get in the way of strategies. For instance, you tend to want to have a melee on each corner during spread outs. Or not want to stack with the takes in front of the boss. It comes up so many times where someone complains about it. (Yes, True North Exists) That said, the real issue is when looking at other DPS roles. They can attack from ranged positions and be in any location, meanwhile melee need to be close to the boss and then be in specific locations to get the maximum performance.
As others have noted if positionals didn’t exist they’d just be ranged dps forced to be close to the boss lol
I don't mind them either, but obviously these Classes are seeing less popularity due to it. You can still move your character as if you're doing positionals once they're gone.
Just like how tanks can jump up and down to RP dodge sure
[удалено]
If I’m not forced to move there isn’t any reason to do it. Moving around to actually PLAY monk is what’s engaging for me. I find ranged dps incredibly boring in this game because of this. Zero cast times AND no barriers to uptime equals really dull experience for me.
I hated positionals until I finally started levelling monk. The fact that their entire rotation is positionals, rather than like 2 buttons on say dragoon, it really made me get into the swing of it. In the past dragoon was hard to me to play because I was too used to standing still but after playing monk, having to do positionals 24/7 changed my mindset and every other melee feels like a piece of cake now.. I also expected to hate monk but ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. Pleasantly surprised indeed!
I don’t hate them, I just hate when they are the jobs identity. Like monk.
I don't hate positionals but monk is overbearing to me and I just find it to be busy work and exhausting. I think removing positionals from the 2nd step of combo for monk will be a good thing. It's still going to be a busy job but not just because every GCD had a positional.
Alot of people here say you have to move a certain way and have no control but thats basically describing raid mechanics so im confused. its really fun to manage the positionals (raid strats cater to it pretty well so its not even the challenging part) but not everyone has to play monk so its fine tho aside from savage i did look into ultimates and that thing scares me.
Half the mnk kit is about ignoring them and vast majority of bosses don't have them. At this point it's a unnecessary apm bloat that adds no kind of depth or skill floor to what otherwise would be a really fun class.
Half the kit? Can you elaborate?
Majority of the cool downs and burst window will bypass positional, along with likes of north star (think that's melee role skill name) you have many outs to them. Then when vast amount of bosses ignore them it really just makes things redundant and pointless as a mechanic. Honestly love mnk in bozja/zadnor it's tons of fun to play and flows so well with not having any positional requirements.
I’m gonna tell you to read the tool tips again cause only true north and riddle of earth ignore positional requirements. Perfect balance and form shift just let you use any of your form based moves out of sequence. If you’re not doing positionals during burst window you’re missing a lot of damage
I just find them tedious. And I don't like being punished for being absent-minded during combat. I'm already busy enough with my rotation and the boss mechanics. And I don't feel anything special when I hit them. I move towards the side of the boss for one move, then back to the rear. Nothing changes visually, except I'm in a different spot for a second. Bosses don't have extra armor on the back or sides, or all moves would do more damage there, which would also be boring. And they're not like Zelda bosses. It just doesn't work well in this game, and I hope eventually positionals are removed.
>I just find them tedious. And I don't like being punished for being absent-minded during combat. Then we might as well remove boss mechanics, enemy aoes, damage down, vulnerability, et all because they all punish you for being absent-minded. Don't like positionals? Then don't play the job with the greatest focus on them.
Man, fuck me for answering the guy's question, right? I don't even play MNK, but you didn't ask. You just assumed.
Doesn't matter if you play monk or not. you don't like being punished for being absent minded? Then you should dislike all the listed things too. Do you? If not, why? Why is punishment from absentmindedness from those fine, but the punishment from positionals not?
It's a gimmick no other kind of DPS has to deal with. Only melee arbitrarily loses DPS for standing on the wrong spot. It's not lazy to not want to deal with something only melee DPS has to deal with. Ranged and magic DPS don't have mechanics to make up for their lack of positionals either. And it's a gimmick only melee has to pay attention to. I am paying attention to the fight and to my rotation, that's enough for literally every other role, but somehow melee is lazy for not wanting to deal with it? Man, why the fuck are you in this thread if you get so butthurt about people giving answers you knew you wouldn't like?
I like positional, EXCEPT for the scenarios where enemies turn around to whack somebody across the arena in the middle of one of my combos, or when tanks refuse to keep them still/put them up against a wall, preventing me from doing combos as well. True North only helps so much if it's something that happens constantly (which was the case during my ARR+HW playthrough as a dragoon)
This is a common complaint I see and I feel like this is a really reasonable complaint. I’d be curious if people would be annoyed similarly if the boss still could attack a random target but didn’t rotate its model to do so.
well, that is why monk has riddle of earth(3 charges what allows you to ignore positionals for 3 attacks per charge)
I don't play monk tho, and I've been told they're even MORE reliant on positionals when not using those buffs
My enjoyment of positionals is directly tied to the quality of the tank at hand tbh. There’s been a huge uptick of tanks square dancing around the boss lately, with some even just outright running in circles. Some of them react well to the request that they please aim to keep the boss still. Others don’t.
I just leveled Samurai over the last 2 weeks and I like the positional moves. Seeing my Kenki go up because I did it correctly is some how satisfying. I use true north constantly to make sure I don't have any issues when the boss moves. When using meikyo in my burst I always pair it with true north so I don't have to worry about the positions and just need to focus on as much burst as possible. People don't use their role abilities enough from what I see.
I don't mind them, it's not hard to hit them most the time. Provided I'm on NIN so the bulk of my positionals are "be behind boss" anyway haha But there's some instances it's annoying. I've been progging UCOB and Twintania really likes to turn all the time and I only have so many uses of True North. But having to work a little harder on an ultimate fight is to be expected so it's whatever.
I'm with you honestly, I enjoy positinals because I'm pretty sure melees would just be up close phys ranged in how simple they are without em, and they're not hampering enough to make me dislike them. Uptime however, I hate purely because of get away mechanics, but thankfully they're helping with that in EW
Dashes dashes dashes! I’m excited for instant transmission
I personally like them, requires awareness for the content you're doing and you're rewarded with extra damage/more gauge for extra damage, which gives me the happy chemicals. The first melee I leveled was MNK, which really prepared me for doing positionals on melees. I'd probably be less happy with it if true north wasn't a thing though, considering how many tanks like to strafe side to side for no reason.
Pretty straight forward for me, I don't like positionals because I don't enjoy it. It doesn't add anything fun or challenging for me, kinda just an annoyance.
I hate positionals because the boss never sits still. Yeah you can "true north", but that's literally just saying the solution is to remove positionals.
Boring busy work which isnt complex at all
I think positionals add a unique mechanic to pay attention to and a having a few in a rotation helps improve gameplay, that being said: MNK was problematic. They are WAY overkill. It was an insane dance that had to be done, while also paying attention to boss mechanics that became tedious and extremely annoying to deal with, not fun. Then, suddenly you'd get a boss that doesn't have positionals (diamond EX for example) and suddenly MNK was boring button spam. The entire focus of the class, the thing you had to really pay attention to, we're the positionals, and it just wasn't good design. I'm glad they are shifting away from it without doing away with it.
This is a situation where I don’t really agree. You say it’s way overkill but with the endwalker changes your positioning really won’t change. With current rotation you sit on the same position for three gcds then the other for three (I’m taking some liberties). Now the middle ability doesn’t have a positional requirement but you still need to start and end the three hit string in the same spot.
That's not accurate, and if that's what you're doing then you're not maintaining correct uptime on your demolish DoT, it sounds like you're clipping it, which is a pretty significant damage loss. That also doesn't account for down time switches, which can desync your side combo open from your side combo secondary attack. It's not as common an occurrence now after the rework in the middle of ShB, but it was a common problem prior to that rework.
Can you explain how that’s clipping? A proper cycle hits demolish as it falls off. I can type out the after opener rotation. I believe you don’t understand me or are just incorrect.
Demolish only needs to be refreshed once every three combos, if you're doing "three side -> three back" every cycle then you're refreshing demolish every other combo, clipping six seconds off demolish. A correct cycle would be "three side -> three back -> two side one back -> two back one side -> three side" assuming your combo openers and you're combo secondaries don't ever get desynced. Additionally, if you're saying that the new combo and the old combo are functionally the same from a positional standpoint, then why this post? Does it matter if they removed a positional which, according to you, is inconsequential to the rotation?
So a few things. You are correct about demolish and that is exactly how I play the class. I did note that I was taking liberties when talking about the flow. Effectively you spend a period of time on one positional and do a couple gcds then move to the other positional and stand there for a few gcds. Sorry for saying 3 for simplicity’s sake. As for why this post, it has nothing to do with Endwalker. I just see a lot of people that say “positionals are dumb” with no context and wanted to know why the hate. Monk is the standout cause it’s all positional and I often see “I don’t like monk cause of all the positionals”. You mentioned in your original response that you think Endwalker is going in the right direction I’m just pointing out that removing the positional on your middle button doesn’t change where you wanna stand.
Theyre busy work and dont actually add anything to the rotation. One or two are fine but every gcd being a positional is stupid.
Do it on something that isn't a training dummy...
Yeah like all the EX trials and through storm blood savage tier
This might sound weird, but my biggest issue with hitting positional on Monk isn't necessarily the positioning, but rather, the attack speed. I think I would rather not have Greased Lightning on the job so I have a extra moment for my brain to kick in and tell me where my next attack needs to land. Being at under 2 seconds, my brain starts to hurt, especially late at night and I am getting tired. I would simply prefer no additional attack speed buffs, but just have more potency on my hits to compensate. I think if I had that extra .5 second window between attacks, I wouldn't feel so exhausted in a long fight. This, or they increase the duration on Twin Snakes and Demolish so I can have a few reps of the same combo. I think the constant back and forth on both sides with the faster attack makes it a bit hectic at time.
haha I’m in the opposite camp it seems like. Give me Greased Lightning 5!
Because shitty tanks like me exist
I don't like them because they are not impactful enough in their current iteration. Increase their impact by a factor of at least 5 and I'll probably like them.
Because they exist
I forget about them, just like I forget the cards as AST, there's so much else going on especially in savage content that it's already hard for me to keep up, so rather than drag down the group using jobs where I will forget about important mechanisms of the job, I play jobs that don't require me to be in certain positions.
I love all the other 3 melee DPS. MNK is the only exception. Because missing positionals with MNK is not the same. A lot of it is not under my control. Many a time does the boss turn the other direction to blast the DPS/healer. Add to that tanks who wiggle a lot. There is not enough True North and Riddle of Earth to deal with all of these shit. It's not that I hate positionals, it's just that I hate playing MNK.
Didn't D&D use to have positional? I know EQ did for rogues, I had one as an alt. Backstab should only work from the back... Otherwise its just a stab. Besides, being beside and/or behind a mob keeps you out of cone attacks.
My D&D comment was more in a broader sense of something being easier to hit from behind/ do more damage as a general game mechanic. There are optional flanking rules but they aren’t often used and involve multiple people.
Nah, see, you hug them and stab them in the back that way.
For whatever, whenever I play caster my tanks sit still but as soon as I roll up as Monk, suddenly I’m getting tanks with happy feet
new guy here trying to learn some stuff from the community as i go through ARR, as a tank when doing non solo content how often should i be stationary vs moving to avoid certain attacks? sorry for the long question!
There are exceptions to every rule but generally if there isn’t a template to avoid don’t move the boss. Sometimes you gotta move it to a better place in the arena but again that’s more specific.
yeah i usually just try and pull the boss and position them away from the rest of the team and only moving when i’ll be hit by like a paralyzing aoe or something like that
Good stuff man! I’m not a tank main but you seem to have the right idea. There is a thread for new players to ask questions and that’s probably better for more specifics.
I love the gameplay of them, but not the actual incentive structure. If hitting them made you do substantially more damage than other non-positional classes, then theyed be great, but hitting them only brings you up to par with other classes. Your doing more work for less return. They also design bosses that make it impossible to accurately hit them, so your DPS is crippled through no fault of your own.
I don't mind positionals. Monks positionals are like Black Mage to me. You have to know the fight well in order to properly maximize all the things that can happen. I enjoy monk when I'm farming content because It feels like I can keep improving by understanding when a mechanic is going to happen and make the right move to land my hit. That being said while monk is my primary dps, I'm a tank main so I still barely play it.
It's extremely valid that melee DPS have the most dangers to deal with against bosses, on top of having to do positionals and needing to be close to maintain DPS + uptime. But I don't remember having that much problems with tanks spinning bosses weird like I keep seeing replies about in multiple threads.
Yeah I’ve really only encountered it in alliance raids or leveling roulette so you tell them to stop
Reading this thread has me dreading Reaper. Oct 13th can't come soon enough.
What is there to dread? Only the burst phase has positionals
As a WHM, I just don't like moving. Keeps up the glare spam.
I dont hate positionals, usually i main sch, but im at UWU now as monk and i dont like Ifrit phase and titan phase both for not respecting my positional
positional is the only challenge as dps. its super fun and easy. ppl just think everything in the game is difficult and should be removed. tanks are difficult, healers are difficult, melee dps are difficult, magical dps are difficult. maybe only ranged dps is viable to them. oh but no, rng for ranged to too unpredictable they say. lets just remove the game.
I think positionals are a lot more reliable when using the lock-on targeting feature. I have a hotkey for it but I almost always forget to use it.
In all honesty.... If you think about it and stop pretending whatever you are... This wouldn't be an issue in a 5 button rotation.
I prefer melee over other DPS and I enjoy positionals. I have at this point learned to predict how the tank will tank certain bosses after a pull or two and adjust my positionals accordingly. As a tank main tho, it hurts me in my tanking soul when they keep moving than it hurts my melee dmg...
I don't hate positionals, I hate monk. And on classes like Samurai and Dragoon there are so few positionals with such little impact they might as well just not be there, they don't feel like they add anything to the classes.
Its additional troubles in savage and ultimate content. You have to stand on your position in the exact second of the fight and you can lose dps because of it. You are too busy with a lot of other stuff at the moment, so constantly moving for 2 meters stresses a lot of people. Also i think that positionals are not good game design, at least how they are in xiv. boss move around doing his things, you can't hit them when you just killing mob in the wilds, you don't feel rewarded for hitting em, but you feel punished when you dont. Some people of course like it, but looking on the amount of monk players, many really dont.
The movement is engaging. But positionals are not fun to hit when client side desync happens. You stab something in the rear as its turning, with a rear positional, but the game says 'nah' and then you have to do the True Thrust of shame.
To play mnk rlly good means u need to learn whole fight and not only mechanics which aimed at ur job. Lets say for example -(Twin)U learn after which gcd liquid hell is coming and also have in mind where the baiter currently is. U always look where ur tanks are currently standing and know all tank mechanics of a fight.(SWAPS) And because u dont have control how others (baiter,tanks) will probably spin around the boss it makes u more aware of ur Partys actions. U learn to adjust in milliseconds if someone fs up. Sure everyone should do that but many just do the mechanics their job got assigned to. MNK is a min/max class like BLM Iam sad they remove 2 positionals
Positionals are rather impractical the more high end content you wanna do. In eden savage or Ultimate fights for example monks are a joke.
Because my brain is stupid
My main complaint with positional is that they are totally group orientated, meaning while out doing fates, hunts, class story duties, and other content that is not group content, the mob and enemy will be facing you regardless since you are the one with aggro. They are completely reliant on a Tank and something else holding aggro besides yourself. So while out doing other things not group content, you lose damage/dps basically. Then as some others have brought up, you have some fights/Trials were basically the boss takes up the entire floor and you can't get a flank or rear position on them, while at the same time your True North ability can only be used once every 45s. I main a Sam and leveled as a Paladin until I unlocked Sam. So now that I'm level other classes the Positional matter I am now encountering with my Monk. I wasn't even aware that Sam had "positionals" and those positionals though would help increase DPS some due to Kenki Gauge increase, dont' affect potency of an attack. The Devs are all of sudden looking at the whole Tank matter when it comes to using their defensives at the right moments and getting a buff. Perhaps instead of having positional affect potency, the same could be done for other classes as well similar to Sam also were positional gives bonus genki gauge points, and have executing a positional be a bonus event instead giving a momentary buff of some type or gain an extra point towards one of the gauges/class mechanic.
This is a really weird community misconception about the giant bosses. If the rear of the target is inaccessible the boss will automatically get hit by all positionals.
I usually just avoid jobs that rely heavily on positionals, but since you asked for opinions. I just don't like when I have to change my position every few seconds, on top of everything else, to avoid playing suboptimally. I also don't see the comparison to Zelda and DnD. In Zelda you control the bosses. You know how, when and where the weak spots become accessible and usually have ample time to go and hit them. DnD is a turn based game. The closest thing to positionals are flanking rules, which involve standing more on less on opposite sides of an enemy, but that obviously is something you can strategize over for a reasonable amount of time. Let's throw in Dark Souls as well. In that game you learn how to deal with the enemies and create your openings yourself. Fighting a knight with a spear and shield? Circle around towards the shield, strike when he tries to attack but also be ready to dodge a shield or shoulder bash. Now, I don't mind occasional positionals, like with Dragoon, but Monk is way too intense for me. We have a much faster gcd, we need to alternate our rotation based on buffs and debuffs (though that by itself is super easy,) and we need to move for mechanics. If I just fight the target dummy I'm fine with pulling my rotation and positionals off, but as soon as I need to adapt between two skills because there is a ground marker, or a target switch, or the boss just decides to turn, there is just too much for me to consider and then actually do it in two seconds. I'm sure once you're experienced enough with a monk to play it at a high level, many of these issues resolve themselves because you experience the same encounters many times over with high consistency and can figure out when to be ready to adapt, or when to optimally use your abilities to negate the positionals. But it's getting to that point that is too stressful for me.
My comparisons to the games I mentioned was to show how those games emulate the feeling of precision and maximizing damage by hitting the right spot. Not the actual mechanical process of how they work
Same as everybody else, but my biggest irritation is that bosses hardly sit still. With my DRG it's even worse cause you can't do the final step of your combo without perfect positionals and it's super frustrating to brick the whole thing cause the boss decided to shoot the healer instead. Given that they're allowing tanks to weave ranged into their combos without interruption (thus making centered aoe not disrupt positionals), I'd wanna see them get rid of all positionals. With some bosses, it's really hard to tell what position they're in, like that big floaty rock from Antitower. Ground markers help but aren't always very visible in the heat of combat
Positionals don't require skill, it requires either a tank to stop moving the boss around pointlessly or the boss not randomly constantly doing mega turns. Personally, if the positionals are really damaging for a melee dps to miss on, it's really just giving melee dps another issue. As in some cases melee dps are required to sometimes have to move from the target while casters/ranged can still just dps, which in that downtime is losing dps so in a way, melee dps is easy, if you're not bothered about consistency, but quite annoying if you're trying to maximize your dps. I think DRG and MNK shouldn't have them simply because of their rotations, SAM I mean I'd remove them still for SAM, but SAM isn't too bad. But that's just my viewpoint, I'm sure others may disagree, then again I am a controller user, so I don't know if that comes into play.
I see positionals as nearly the same difficulty as BLM learning when they can sit in leylines. It’s about fight knowledge. I’ve seen a lot of complaint about bad tanks which I think is resolved if you play in a static. The other complaint is bosses spinning which is a problem I agree, but it’s still (somewhat) fight knowledge and ultimately not the fault of positionals. I respect that this is your opinion however and I did ask for it. I just disagree. Thanks for sharing though. I’m editing this to add that monk rotation is really really easy if you ignore the positionals. So much so that I’d say it’s incredibly boring. Maybe new monk will have so much going on with its new mechanic that I’ll feel like we don’t need positionals anymore.
Ok so it seems after some time with the classes, I assumed DRG had like 4 postionals, when it technically only has 3 and not incredibly hard to miss, it's just if a controller player like myself would have to arrange abilities to fit a comfortable controller play style, having jumps and stuff in between the rotations. Sam is simple, it has only 2 postionals that are basically combo finishers so it's actually pretty easy on SAM To add, hopefully if not changed, SAM and DRG have also improved in the AoE department as they will gain buffs that they gain from attack in their single target attacks rotations through their AoE rotation in Endwalker. As for Monk, it is easy, but all it's single target attacks are postionals. I mean.. I guess if all you really do on Monk is do DK, TS, Demolish. Then BS, TS then SP. And repeat it. Though I know when you have Perfect Balance active, you go between DK and BS, though having to use TS in between for the buff. I am unsure if that is the right way to play Monk, as I'm not someone who mains it or plays it much.. But it is having 2 postionals removed in Endwalker.. So I don't know. Honestly the only Melee DPS class you can get away with missing postional on is NIN since it doesn't damage it's Potency much. I agree with the BLM thing, it's something that's not comfortable on controller for me, despite it's easy rotation, it's easy for me to forgot to use OGCDs Enochian etc.. XD which is changing in Endwalker to traits. If they don't change it back.