Positional Damage Woes

After playing Lancer and Pugilist a bit more in dungeons. I've decided the positional damage thing in ffxiv is a PITA so far...

I have lancer & Pugilist to 17 so I will review the positional skills they have at that point.

Pugilist:

• True Strike - Delivers an attack with a potency of 150. Chance for critical damage increases by 5% when dealt from behind target. Can only be used when in raptor form.
• Snap Punch - Delivers an attack with a potency of 140. 180 when delivered from a target's flank. Can only be used when in coeurl form.

Lancer

• Impulse Drive - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. 180 when delivered from behind target.
• Heavy Thrust - Delivers an attack with a potency of 100. 170 when delivered from a target's flank.

Flank & Behind:

These skills are on the 2.5 sec GCD. So you are weaving these skills into your normal rotation very often. you swing to the flank, execute skill, swing to the back, execute skill. Simple? Not really.

The "window" to get the bonus effect/damage is very small.

• Flank literally means flank, not diagonal. Not slightly towards the front or back. You have to be at 3 or 9 o'clock with the person with threat as 12 o'clock.
• Behind means basically your facing the person who has aggro with the mob directly between both of you. If you use the mobs back or rear as an indicator, its often tilted to the side a bit, you'll miss much of your positional bonuses.

You must use the person with threat as your indicator of where to stand, if you use the literal graphical polygons as an indicator, you will miss out on damage. The difference in damage is quite a lot.

The Tank:

My last 3 groups with these two classes had a tank that had WoW pvp-itis...maybe it stems from counterstrike? Tanks need to stay still when possible to get the most out of your skill rotations! My last 3 tanks jumped around and strafed the mobs just because they could. I understand movement is necessary to avoid damage or pickup loose mobs, but unnecessary movement will lower DPS significantly from these classes because your fishtailing the mob non-stop since each class has one side attack and one back attack. I missed 1/3rd of them naturally because of the small window and I was trying to find what the minimum angles I could be at to get the bonus damage (there really is no minimum its 90 and 180 respectively). If you tank has a jimmy leg, it will cause you to lose even more. 

I would love to see this positional damage window open up a little bit, since they were fun classes to play, but I was getting frustrated watching skills hit for half damage. I will probably improve over time however =) 

Positional damage isn't knew to Final Fantasy. In FFXI the thief had SATA or Sneak Attack Trick Attack and it was used a lot with a Ninja tank. I played a NIN and it really helped keep aggro on the NIN.
It required precise lining of people to pull off. If someone was a bit off the attack wouldn't work and the thief had to wait for the CD to try again.
I played both lancer and pugulist in beta as well and as long as the tank kept aggro positioning wasn't a problem. I especially liked it with lancer.
Also in FFXI certain mobs required you to stand in certain areas in order to kill them and not kill you. For example in Nazul fighting a dragon you needed to stand on the feet of the dragon during rage mode to get in attacks.
Only time I've found positional attacks to be a PITA is when the mob is being kited or the tank can't keep aggro.
In FFXIV they've made it much easier than FFXI so far from what I've seen. Instead of getting 3 people to stand in one spot for SATA you need the tank to keep aggro and do your thing as it's difficult to do positional damage solo.
There is a learning curve and it takes skill but I think that is the fun part of learning to play your job, rather than just button mashing damage.
Also positional damage, if done correctly will slow or have an added effect. Which is different than FFXI. They've given DD more of a role in helping kill the mob besides punch or skewer. Lancer has leg sweep which is great for stun. In FFXI shoulder tackle was used as a short stun in a pinch. Now skills are meant to be used for stun, slow, silence and so on.
Kittara

» Edited on: 2013-07-24 04:08:26

Sorry for the wall of text. Seems my paragraph breaks didn't get into the post. :(

I recall playing a Valewalker in Dark Age of Camelot - seems like all he DID was have positional damage. And it's pretty tough when you're soloing to get a side attack in (though you could do it if you were persistent!).

As far as FFXIV goes, I agree that positional attacks can be an issue, and a pain in the you know what. However, I think that with experience, tanks will learn to position the mobs where people want them and will hold them still (within reason). So to me it's as much an education thing as anything else.

There will always be the issue of server and client lag, and that's just something that you have to learn to live with, IMHO. So for me it always boils down to whether the payoff (i.e., the fun factor, the utility of the character) is worth the pain (i.e., missing some attacks because you're not positioned correctly). That said, I really like the feel of Lancer, so he's still on the list of classes I'm considering making my first class (it's between him and Archer).

Well...apparently there was lag to the server when calculating your position for flank or behind attacks, and that was probably part of the issue.