Quote Originally Posted by Volkai View Post
OP: great post. It's nice to see people running the numbers so that others can learn why certain stats are so valuable.

Unfortunately, gear elitists tend to come off in a poor light - you might say you feel sorry for them, but more often than not a new or average player's experience with a gear elitist is being denigrated for their less-than-optimal gear.

Gear elitists, in my experience, don't care where you're coming from -- if your gear is not the best possible (which at this point in time generally means a full set of Emp +2 armor and a lv.90 Emp weapon unless you're using Twilight gear) then you will be treated as someone who does not deserve to be breathing air, much less playing FFXI, and that gear elitist is likely to instruct you to either die in a fire or take a short walk off of a tall building.

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This thread should be sticked. It is very informative and is done in a very friendly manner. I agree with you that most (elitists) are regarded with the stigma of being very rude and condescending. If more took the time to explain common misconceptions about game mechanics in a straightforward non-insulting way, these forums would be alot more enjoyable. You always run into the classic (noob) that will insult you and rant about playing their own way, but that's an inevitability. When the data is presented like this with clear citations and test results listed, you do reach the ears of the uninformed/misinformed. When you talk about horribly geared players to their face about how badly they fail in a rude manner, you sometimes cause those players to continue to play bad out of a defense mechanism.

tl;dr: Would be nice to see more of this over (troll) / (omg se how could you do this) / (demand) / (outright idiotic) threads.