I'm all for the progress slowing to slow but steady upg0rades, and differences between the casual and hardcore being whiteboxes and a few big and rare status pieces. It's stupid to keep making new events that each clearly outshines the other, because you kill content that way. Ideally they'd make the absolute best gear for each situation come from a different set of events and then people will have to spread out and content will have a much longer shelf life.

However, I think the expansion should be where this leveling off happens, not before it. It's like climaxing before you put it in.

That's also why I think it was a horrible move to release neo-salvage now. Even if the rewards were worth a damn, people would complain if SoA didn't blow it away, and if SoA blows it away, then the event is essentially done and dead.

The best thing they could have done is maybe added to meebles, and saved the Salvage update for the update that puts out the first good batch of SoA gear, with gear that has comparable stats. As of right now, they blew the the salvage update.

All is not lost however. If they want to save Salvage instead of letting it die in a in a corner curled into a fetal position, they can wait for SoA gear to come out, then add an Augment system to Salvage gear. The augments would need to be be strong enough to make the gear comparable and situationally stronger than the SoA gear. The augments can't be random either or they'll kill the event again.

Simply make a requirement that falls in between building a new armor piece and +1ing the old piece, and when you complete it, you can choose 1 augment from a table. Make it so you can repeat the augment trial it as many times as you want, but can only have 2 augments on the piece of armor at any given time. Suddenly Salvage is popular, worthwhile, and has an incredibly long shelf life.

Another easy way to guarantee that new SoA gear is good and desireable while not completely crushing existing 99 cap gear, is to create gear that augments and enhances JA and JT, kind of like empyrean gear, and preferably in conjunction with a new set of decent abilities, but that's not necessary as long as it stacks with existing pieces or focuses on abilities with have now.

Examples:

WAR Hands: Augments "Blood Rage"
Effect: Adds a Double Attack bonus of 5-10%

MNK Head: Enhances Chi Blast
Effect: Ignores monster damage resistance to spiritual damage, increases damage by 100%

THF Body: Augments Sneak and Trick Attack
Effect: Makes Sneak and Trick attack affect all hits of the next attack round or WS.

WHM Body: Enhances "Divine Caress"
Effect: Makes the target Immune to the removed enfeeble for 3 minutes.

BLM Body: Augments "Manawell"
Effect: Makes Manawell a 10' AoE around the target.

RDM Head: Enhances Saboteur
Effect: Magic Accuracy +200

PLD hands: Augments "Divine Emblem"
Effect: Forces he mob to attack the PLD for a set number of attacks based on Divine Magic skill. (Similar to provoke in ballista.)

DRK Head: Enhances "Scarlet Delirium"
Effect: Adds a base 25% damage enhancement to effect.

BST Legs: Augments "Spur"
Effect: Pet instantly receives 100-300TP

BRD Head: Augments "Requiem"
Effect: Grants a defense down effect to spell based on damage dealt.

RNG Head: Enhances Sharpshot
Effect: Ranged Attacks cannot miss while active.

SMN Head: Augments "Blood Pact: Rage"
Effect: Grants a tier II skill chain property to lvl 70 BPs.

SAM Body: Enhances "Seigan"
Effect: Reduces Third Eye Recast to 25 seconds, down to 20 seconds with merits.

NIN Hands: Augments "Migawari"
Effect: Migawari blocks the effects of Death and Doom.

DRG Body: Enhances the effect of Wyvern Breaths
Effect: Will use a Healing breath when magic is cast, without a trigger point. 25% boost to breath potency.

BLU feet: Enhances Duration of Enhancing Blue Magic
Effect: Increases duration of spells by 50/100%

COR Hands: Enhances "Quick Draw" TP bonus
Effect: Doubles TP from Quick Draw

PUP head: Enhances "Maneuver" Effects
Effect: Doubles the potency of Maneuvers and effects triggered by them.

DNC Hands: Enhances "Step" effects
Effect: Doubles step potency.

SCH Legs: Augments "Adloquium"
Effect: Adds +25 Store TP for duration of spell effect.



The effects I just made up on whims, but it gets the idea across. Even if the enhances/augments were the only stats on the gear, as long as they were only required at activation, the gear would be highly desirable without killing the desire for gear from any other event, for the most part at least.