Revocation and replacement of item level system

[Rubeus]

If I were willing to agree that the top 3 body pieces favor MND/INT/CHR and the bottom piece favors STR/DEX/VIT, you're ignoring that your RDM would already be ~+21 to all stats, and so would the thief. Left without the stat fluff, the top 3 pieces would then have INT+11, MND+11, CHR +7. Assuming your HP/MP values also would rise with these changes, that leaves the bottom piece with HP+5 and no MP bonus, being the bottom of the bunch. But that's just the body piece; what about your head/hands/legs/feet? If you take the combined stats of all 5 pieces as a norm and combine them and then apply that to what the job should have, along with the relevant amount of MDB and EVA/MACC/MEVA, you're left with just the extra MACC and MAB. The atrophy tabard would therefore have +10 MAB/MACC, 17 enfeebling skill, 3 haste, and 2 refresh. Oh, and obviously its defense. That's still a great body piece. That it has +14 MP is just icing; but that said, the piece would only read "+14 MP, +11 int, +11 mnd, +7 chr, the 10 MACC/MAB, the enfeebling, haste, and refresh." That's still an easier read than the whole thing, and if your job naturally had the combined stats of the 5 armor pieces and the weapon fluff (including what skills should've brought our accuracy and parrying and so on up to at 119)... what I'm saying is, if you took the unnecessary slag off of the weapon slot, can you really tell me it'd beat out a Magian elemental staff?

Put more simply: I don't think THF would get the short stick on the bottom piece if all the slag was removed. Keep in mind that with said THF having, naturally, the "baseline" combination of 5 armor slots at 119, for 6 haste and maybe +3-7 points here or there? I'd rather keep my Sigyn's Cuirie. Does that make more sense? If you think the extra defense makes that much of a difference, go do a salvage on SMN naked vs as SMN in full wayfarer gear. I typically go from maybe ~40 damage to maybe ~16 damage per hit after unlocking all the Pathos. I couldn't care less about the paltry stats if I had the stats of a 119; I'm more concerned with my DPS. As anyone would be in a DD position. 11 str adds, what, 4 attack? 11 dex adds maybe a single % to critical hit rate, of which all the THF reforged deals with anyway?

Take the baseline of 5 slots + weapon at 119 and add them up, and then add that to your base stats and remove them from the gear. Suddenly, all the adoulin gear looks a lot less appetizing.

edit: not to mention GEO, BRD, BST, PUP, DRG, SMN, and certainly a number of other jobs would have the freedom to then use the gear they wanted to use, not ilvl gear for pet stats (which fail terribly. Ask anyone.) and don't take into consideration more +Summoning/geomancy/singing/whatever skill. That's the problem. It isn't just that ilvl is a ghetto way to raise our levels. It's that the systems they've put in place to deal with it are absolute garbage. Nobody's particularly happy with it, and being encumbered shouldn't mean game over.

You're right in that RDM has spells coming up, and the relic/mythic people eventually got their update (with the promise that those weapons won't always be on top, from Matsui himself), and that SMN eventually got cait sith. You're right that it'll affect every job in every way. But so what? You're right that it'll probably take awhile to dig into their spaghetti code to fix the level display function to go beyond 99 and we'd suffer dead updates as a result. But so what? We're already losing people and the people who genuinely like specific jobs are already unhappy. What has the game got to lose by publicly apologizing and fixing it? That's like the PS2 support argument. I bet you if SE actually did the math and decided to kill ps2 support, yes the Japanese audience would suffer for it, but how much money would they stand to gain by updating the graphics and algorithms and register space in ARM code to meet PC standards instead? They'd lose X number of PS2 Japanese customers but in turn gain X number of international PC accounts. It's a no-brainer.