Quote Originally Posted by Rubeus View Post
@DemonJustin: I think in terms of the Buremte Gloves example you gave, you're missing a crucial element of the "remove the stat-vomit" argument. I'll use the thief's Assassin +2 set as an example: the gloves have CHR +7, acc +9, eva +9, and enmity +5 on them. There's no reason why if you removed the stat vomit, those stats shouldn't still exist on the Plunderer's set, or even be further enhanced -- so armor like the Buremte Gloves would still find usage even without the "fluff" of stat vomit. I'm not asking for all the ilvl gear not to provide +stats, I'm asking for them to provide the +stats they'd have if they didn't have enough cover-up on them to make a Maybelline commercial. I've seen you on the forums a lot and you've always been a crusader for the RDM cause, so you of all people should appreciate the need for the removal of ilvls. Chatoyant staff for example would be worth using again if your natural magic accuracy and damage met the demands of current content, and you'd get the added benefit of affinity.
There's a side to that you're not seeing. Buremte and Umuthi give us +stats for a Light DD piece, stats we don't get from normal mage pieces. This follows with items like Lithelimb and Karmesin Vest. If you take the stats off these then RDM's stats will likely go down. I understand what you're saying and the easiest way to look at it is that with every item level if you compare a piece to other pieces that have the same jobs they almost always have the same stats, an example would be...



from these pieces we can assume that by default at 119 a RDM likely gains 54 HP 59 MP 21 STR/DEX/VIT/AGI, 29 MND/INT/CHR, 41 EVA, 80 MEVA, and 6MDB.

This changes however when you look at this body...

for RDM these stats are outside of the norm. That said, for other job on this body the stats really aren't, they're something you might see on a THF's gear. So you couldn't change this body to give -MND/INT with +STR/DEX without THFs ending up with a different outcome on what should be gained or lost most likely. That means one job is probably going to get the short end of the stick here, and since it's a melee piece, it's probably RDM. Comparing it to other gear only works so long as the pieces you're comparing them to are all for the same jobs, pieces like these would likely end up worse for some jobs like I was saying. Though admittedly I think it's somewhat a confusing comparison to make in the end.

As far as your faith in the development team goes in "learning from their mistakes," I do agree with you that they do seem to have gotten better about it. But SE's mantra is and has been "your stuff isn't always going to be the best!" -- and having ilvl119 until seekers wraps up (which will hopefully include empyrean equipment additions) isn't the same as saying "the system can't go beyond these values to a higher ilvl." At this point they've laid the brickwork for ilvl3,000,000 if they so choose to, so what's to stop them? Our whining? Hasn't worked so far; I refer you to pretty much every summoner asking for cait sith for 3 years and your very own RDM threads.
While you are correct, there's a key difference. The difference being that we've made an impact on this front and the fact this is a much larger scale. The scaling was going much quicker before and we complained a ton, we also complained about RME weapons going out of date, and we did actually influence change on both aspects. RMEs were brought back and the progression speed when it comes to item levels was slowed down if not halted. The scale is another important one and in my opinion the key one. Changes to RDM and SMN will only change 2 jobs, 2 jobs which they likely think are unpopular due to the few people who play them these days(even if it's due to the job's being weak, caused by their lack of updates, which is a cycle). A change to item levels is something that impacts the entire game as a whole, not a single job but every single job and as such they can't make that change unless the players agree to some extent. With SMN or RDM if they don't do anything then sure people will be upset but there are other jobs to play and chances are people will play them. If they change item levels it's an entirely different story.