Should Alexander hard drop highest item level gear?

The problem with making Alexander hard gear a step above all other gear is the same issue that crafting had from around 2.1 through 2.5; the top tier is difficult to get to, and once you get there everything is easy.

If you can beat it with lowbie gear, and it rewards uber gear, the raid becomes a joke pretty quickly.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Silly rabbit

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LOL :)

/10char

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Originally Posted by Karen_Cerfrumos

I find it absolutely fascinating how one unconfirmed interview from some Japanese guy's lodestone was enough for the entire community to start calling Alexander normal "baby mode" or "CT tier" and devise long-lasting implications out of that even though it directly contradicts previous interviews published by other sources.

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I think they been pretty obvious that the normal mode was going to be the mode for the masses. The masses include those that make threads about how Steps of Faith is too hard.

So for it to be accessible to everyone, it can't be much harder than steps of faith or world of darkness. Especially considering people still wipe on world of darkness pretty often.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

I think they been pretty obvious that the normal mode was going to be the mode for the masses. The masses include those that make threads about how Steps of Fatih is too hard.

So for it to be accessible to everyone, it can't be much harder than steps of faith or world of darkness.

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I thought the intent was to provide mid-core content.
Are extreme primals content for masses? JP DF would probably suggest a yes. EX primal level would be a pretty decent point. Or at the very least HM primals as they were in 2.0.
If it's just a faceroll joke raid why even put any rewards in?

Besides, beating it in 1-2 days is still very undescriptive. The first time I queued for WoD the moment 2.5 went live, we beaten it. In one lockout. That's not even "1-2 days", that's literally go in and win. If there's mechanics to figure out and discern, but they're somewhat forgiving, then it could take 2 days. But that's not at all a faceroll level people seem to expect now.

One way or another it's all speculation though.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

I think they been pretty obvious that the normal mode was going to be the mode for the masses. The masses include those that make threads about how Steps of Fatih is too hard.

So for it to be accessible to everyone, it can't be much harder than steps of faith or world of darkness. Especially considering people still wipe on world of darkness pretty often.

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The masses? "The masses" don't even frequent the forums. Those complaining about Steps of Faith on the forums are a minority of a minority.

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

LOL :)

/10char

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I don't get it, glad you agree I guess?

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

I don't get it, glad you agree I guess?

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Not at all. ;)

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Originally Posted by Yamimarik

Source? I never heard them say that at all! The Devs said Alexander NM(or HM w/e people call the easier one now days.) Is going to be on par with current coils with echo. Alex. HM(or Savage) will be like FCoB if it was Savage mode.

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I still kinda find this hard to believe, given that they also said that they're taking clear percentages into account. Not to mention the huge amount of people that have made it known that they find locking story content behind difficult raid content to be unacceptable. I dunno. I'm just waiting to see an official announcement and translation rather than stuff picked from interviews that may or may not be exactly what's on the tin.

Esoterics tomes comes out at the same time as the hard mode of alexander, this leads me to believe that you can buy esoterics gear and upgrade it with an alexander hm drop to the same level as alexander hm gear.

Heh. I will admit you got me there. I cannot find the interview I read about how it is expected the easy version of Alexander will be beaten within 1-2 days. Honestly that is why the NA servers have such low BC turn out. They have no reason too since they can be as strong as people who do go through the song and dance with jump rope death mechanics that is the high end of ff 14. If tome gear remained 15-20 i level below the high end raid gear then it would be a better incentive for people to start raiding more often.

I believe half of alexander raid should be assumed your team has high end starter 60 gear+crafted then geared up enough in alexander gear in order to advance to the final parts of the raid. And you should not be able to adequitely gear up multiple jobs at once. The system should work that it takes you enough time to gear up your main job with enough time to use the weaker gear for your alts. 3-4 ish months to fully BIS gear up a job is a good pace in line with how fast SE puts out new tiered items. If I play a bard for 3 months and focus mainly on that one job I should be better geared then someone who constantly swaps around jobs. I understand that the end of ARR that most people have 1-3 jobs all fully maxed out in 130 gear but the system should be set up with a person having a main job in mind and 2-3 alt jobs that are a good tier in gear below.

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Originally Posted by Karen_Cerfrumos

I thought the intent was to provide mid-core content.
Are extreme primals content for masses? JP DF would probably suggest a yes. EX primal level would be a pretty decent point. Or at the very least HM primals as they were in 2.0.
If it's just a faceroll joke raid why even put any rewards in?

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The fact they are limiting the amount of rewards you can get should be a pretty good indicator of it's difficulty to me. What other gear has weekly limits? Poetics (easy) and Crystal Tower (also easy).

Ex Primals never had limited gear because they were more difficult to beat. But you are right. Its pretty much just speculation and people will decide for themselves how difficult they find the content.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

Heh. I will admit you got me there. I cannot find the interview I read about how it is expected the easy version of Alexander will be beaten within 1-2 days. Honestly that is why the NA servers have such low BC turn out. They have no reason too since they can be as strong as people who do go through the song and dance with jump rope death mechanics that is the high end of ff 14. If tome gear remained 15-20 i level below the high end raid gear then it would be a better incentive for people to start raiding more often.

I believe half of alexander raid should be assumed your team has high end starter 60 gear+crafted then geared up enough in alexander gear in order to advance to the final parts of the raid.

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If that were the case, players who don't raid would simply stay at gear 15-20 ilvls below. All you would effectively do is throw glitter on the players with special snowflake syndrome.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

The fact they are limiting the amount of rewards you can get should be a pretty good indicator of it's difficulty to me. What other gear has weekly limits? Poetics (easy) and Crystal Tower (also easy).

Ex Primals never had limited gear because they were more difficult to beat. But you are right. Its pretty much just speculation and people will decide for themselves how difficult they find the content.

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Coils has always had a weekly lock-out (both the instance and the loot) until it was placed in DF. With your train of thought that indicates that Coils was always easy.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

The fact they are limiting the amount of rewards you can get should be a pretty good indicator of it's difficulty to me. What other gear has weekly limits? Poetics (easy) and Crystal Tower (also easy).

Ex Primals never had limited gear because they were more difficult to beat. But you are right. Its pretty much just speculation and people will decide for themselves how difficult they find the content.

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What? Coil lockout was also weekly. What does that have to do with anything...

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

Not at all. ;)

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So...explain?

Because nothing I said was wrong to my knowledge.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

So...explain?

Because nothing I said was wrong to my knowledge.

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Seeing as it was your opinion, you are right in that you weren't technically wrong. Your stance is just a toxic one that I found humorous.

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

Seeing as it was your opinion, you are right in that you weren't technically wrong. Your stance is just a toxic one that I found humorous.

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Well no, not entirely, as it was backed up with facts. You actually don't need gear if you aren't raiding, and there's nothing 'toxic' about that. I'm sorry you took it that way though.

Honestly if you consider that toxic, I don't know what to say, that was really tame lol.

Nope coil was not easy, and 1 person could theoretically walk away with 12 pieces of loot each week. If the rest of the group passed on it.

The only restriction was on entering coil, not on loot. Later they allowed ppl to clear more than once, but only able to roll on loot the first time. But the loot itself was never restricted.

EDIT: but i guess to answer the original post, I don't neccessarily see anything wrong with having a hard difficulty option for top gear and a time consuming option for top gear. But i don't think the best gear should be easy to obtain, ever.

Facts? What facts?

You talked about the story only needing i90. Fabulous, do Shiva EX with i90...wait to even do the DF of it you need i95. Though even with i95 you are going to be hard pressed to down her unless you are in a premade.

You don't even need the gear FCoB drops to down FCoB. Its a gear treadmill MMO, so players enjoy getting progressively stronger gear to have progressively stronger characters. You said those that work hardest should get the best rewards and they do.

Adding the upgrade materials to hunts and a weekly and the end of a raid's life cycle isn't lazy its a smart and helpful move to allow players to progress their characters outside of raid content. Dreadwyrm weapons are i135, other than Zetas you can't get that anywhere else. For months i130 gear was restricted to Coils. Then only for the main bodies pieces and finally i130 can be obtained 1 at a time through a weekly, with FCoB unlocked to allow those raiders capable of it to farm i130 and i135 weapons to their hearts content through raiding.

So yea, I found what you wrote humorous.

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Originally Posted by Whocareswhatmynameis

Nope coil was not easy, and 1 person could theoretically walk away with 12 pieces of loot each week. If the rest of the group passed on it.

The only restriction was on entering coil, not on loot. Later they allowed ppl to clear more than once, but only able to roll on loot the first time. But the loot itself was never restricted.

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The fact that you could only enter a Turn once made the loot restricted. You could only loot once a turn because you could only do the turn once, but it doesn't change the fact that you were locked from getting loot from that turn again. The means of the lock-out don't matter.

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

If that were the case, players who don't raid would simply stay at gear 15-20 ilvls below. All you would effectively do is throw glitter on the players with special snowflake syndrome.

Coils has always had a weekly lock-out (both the instance and the loot) until it was placed in DF. With your train of thought that indicates that Coils was always easy.

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No it simply puts the gear where it should be. If you want the gear of raiders then raid. This is not the days of ff 11 with 30+ hours killing one raid boss or EQ days requiring 1000+ hours to farm faction in order to by pass deadly parts of temple of veeshan and 40-50 people in certain resists gear. Raiding in FF 14 is more casual then any mmo ever has been in the history of online mmo gaming. I was never in the high end of FF 14 and I should not deserve the gear of those who raided coils when it was its toughest.

But I did not have gear envy as well as the multitude of threads that pop up on these forums demanding that gear be as powerful as raid gear but easy to aquire from people who end up leaving the game after gaining said gear and being upset that there is nothing else to do. Leave the raid gear for the raiders. I do not mind if I am 15 I level below the people who deserve it. We are getting our tourist mode of Alexander already.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Well no, not entirely, as it was backed up with facts. You actually don't need gear if you aren't raiding, and there's nothing 'toxic' about that. I'm sorry you took it that way though.

Honestly if you consider that toxic, I don't know what to say, that was really tame lol.

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i don't think your opinion was "toxic" but there was nothing factual about it other than that FFXIV caters to the lazy. many many many many MMOs let you get the best gear in the game a lot easier than this one. in TERA for example the best gear is crafted. and then must be upgraded also with money. you can legally make money in that game with RMT through the publishers. so yeah..... and that is but one example

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Originally Posted by Galdous

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Where it should be? How so?

You are right, these are not the days of 11 or EQ, that it is 14 and in 14 this is the gearing paradigm and it works wonders for everyone. That includes those of us that raid and those that do not.

There is no reason expect glitter coated epeen to have the already present gap, wait time and then catch up replaced with an even further gap. When FCoB launched i130 was only attainable through Coil, including the i135 weapon. As the raid wore out its lifespan the Ironworks gear was slowly allowed to be upgraded to i130, starting with the accessories and now the body pieces through the weekly and hunts.

Also this:

FF 14 is more casual then any mmo ever has been in the history of online mmo gaming. is a hilariously gross exaggeration.

Are you good at video games? Good raid awareness, reflexes, skill and know 7 other people who are as good as you then you basically finish all your content in about 1 hour. Meaning you can just play this game casually for 1 hour a week if you are skilled.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Are you good at video games? Good raid awareness, reflexes, skill and know 7 other people who are as good as you then you basically finish all your content in about 1 hour. Meaning you can just play this game casually for 1 hour a week if you are skilled.

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the problem is for most ppl that they dont have those 7 other ppl to raid with even if they would want to do the raids (ever tried df those raids ?)

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Originally Posted by Galdous

It always puzzled me as to why SE allowed purchased gear to be the same item level as bahamut coils when considering risk vs reward that has always been a staple in MMO's. I understand that range is an issue in drops and sometimes people have very bad luck but I hope the new tomes do not let you buy the same item level gear that drops in Alexander raids. At minimum only let you aquire the new high end tomes from alexander hard mode only.

You should not be able to churn out easy 20 minute dungeons for tomes that let you purchase gear on par with a much harder raid requiring more time and energy. Even casual people I know always managed to get far into the bahamut coil runs.

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I thought Yoshi-P already said Alex HM would drop the highest ILVL gear you could get in game when 3.0 Launches ?

Alex HM gear should at least be 10 ilvls higher than the easy way of getting gear. It needs to have an incentive for people who wants that lvl of gear sooner than later. I've seen people not bothering with coil because they can get the same or better ilvl gear when the new tier of tome gets introduced. Additionally, if the tome gear is upgradable with materials (which i still think should still be lower in ilvl than the raid gear) should stay out of alex hm. They should another venue of acquiring it at medium level difficulty instead.

My personal preference would be, in 10ilvl jumps:

law < esoteric and alex nm < esoteric+ and hw 24 main raid < alex hm

I put alex nm at only esoteric lvl because it's supposed to be very easy even with the weekly lockout and once the 24 man raid comes out, players can still do it to gear alt classes. There will be 20+ ilvls gap between the player and the raid when it opens but I dont think that would be much of an issue considering we raided bcob early with a mish mash of dark light (20 ilvls lower) and a couple of myth (some ilvl boost) and even some ak drops. I don't think that too far off from what yoship wants (slow down the global first progression).

That formula you suggest, in particular about best currency being restricted to max content, is only really seen in games that solely focus on hardcore endgame. Fact is, we never see those anymore for a number of reasons.

A few reasons: 1) They're bad business practice in keeping the player base thriving, which explains why you never hear of them being around... or if they are, they've pretty much been kicked to the curb. 2) This game has never stated it will tailor exclusively to hardcore raiders. In fact, Yoshi-P repeatedly stressed since alpha how he wants to keep the game open to everyone to progress in some way. 3) The content they do create involves gearing up to beat. In many cases, the already low endgame percentage would drop to the low single digits if things were treated as a crawl to how games like vanilla WoW was. Days/weeks/months spent farming for gear just to beat one entry/mid-point boss, then another couple months to beat the last. With the content schedule and the goal of this game, such things are not a viable option.

The truth is, if that's the sort of game anyone is looking for here, you'll not find it. Elitism expressed through raid gear acquisition gets squashed in this game. That's something the larger populous actually appreciates these days. I'm not entirely sure if you saying "Even casual people I know always managed to get far into the bahamut coil runs." implies you think that's good or bad. I'm going to assume you think that's bad, given the subject lol. If you, for whatever reason, think that's good, then you kinda invalidate your entire argument simply because you're overlooking the fact that they get far because they have access to on-par gear elsewhere.

I think gear progression in the expansion will go like this. Tomestones of Law > Tomestones of Esoterics / Alexander NM Turns 1-4 / 24 man raid 1st dungeon > Alexander HM Turns 1-4 > Alexander NM Turns 5-8 (just guessing) / New Tomestones (again guessing) / 24 man raid 2nd dungeon > Alexander HM Turns 5-8, repeat as needed... They said they wanted to add different ways to gear for the HM if I remember right. So end the end Alexander HM probably will drop the highest Ilvl gear, it's just that you wont need that Ilvl to clear the content, just kill things faster.

But meh. What do I know. This is just a guess. I don't personally raid as I hear you can get brain damage from beating your head against a wall for to long. (Joking)

As long as tome gear and relic weapons allow me to do ex primals, dungeons, story content, and the 24 man raids I'll be happy.

Ugghhh how about no OP gear progression works fine as is and benefits both raiders and non raiders

Seems like we don't know what the balance is yet so this really seems premature. Any balance in the current incarnation likely is not going to change right now no matter what we say. They are polishing the expansion with a hard release date. What they have in mind will release as is no matter what.

Was in a extreme group so I could not respond. Compared to every other mmo on the market this game is very well casual to people who wish to raid. I know successful groups on Balmung who raid about 9 hours a week and have beaten every fight pre echo. I am just hoping that Yoshi P. does not break down and give in to the instant gratification players who emerged in the market over the last 5-6 years. FF 14 can be a great game that appeals to casuals without giving in to demands that some people feel they must be given the best gear in the game without having to put in much play time because they pay a sub.

And considering it seems he listens more so to the Japanese crowd he will not buckle so easily from reading the few japanese forum topics I see about input about the end game. Japanese forums are a whole seperate beast then the NA forums which we are for the most part a instant gratification/give me now and if i do not get what I want I will unsub mentality of pressure.

^ LOL

10/char

Oh, looks like he finally edited it over an hour later.

The biggest problem with the Final Coil system is that upgrade items came from the Hunt. Hunts are basically just FATEs and shouldn't reward anything but glamour gear. A good way to do the system would be something like

Dungeon gear is at level X-5

Tomestone gear is at level X
Normal mode dropped gear is X
Hard mode dropped gear is X+20
Upgrade items drop off of boss 2 (accessory upgrade), 3 (armor/weapon upgrade), and 4 (both upgrades)
Weekly quest to clear raid boss 1 (accessory upgrade item) and 2 (armor upgrade item)

24 man raid drops X+10 and has a weekly quest for accessory upgrades

Dungeon gear becomes more relevant, and it gives real incentives to do the introductory bosses for non-raiders (PUGs start accomplishing this pretty fast). They've said there's going to be more of an item level spread and that kind of implies more options, so I'm hoping for something like that. Also it'd be great if 24 man gear was upgradable with 8 man hard mode drops.

Basically everybody here who thinks tome gear deserves to be on par with coil gear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8I9pYCl9AQ

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Originally Posted by Wobi

The staggered system worked perfectly and they should very well stick with it, OP seems to want to lock out decent gear to anyone but the most elite of the elite.

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You can acquire 130 upgrade items without even having to see the final turn of FCoB. How is that the "Elite if the Elite"? Even extremely casual raid groups will down bosses before the following patch.

Instead of thinking about locking out gear to the elite, how about locking out raid level gear to people who actually raid. It makes no sense that someone can get a raid iL 130 set of gear without ever setting foot inside of Coil.

To make matters worse, in most cases, the poetics upgraded gear can be better than the equivalent gear piece from coil, devaluing further the incentive to actually kill the bosses and do the raid content. Tome gear should be supplementary gear used to help upgrade and fill in pieces that you haven't managed to acquire yet. By no means should it ever be best in slot.

If you worried about casual players never being able to do the raids to see them tomes and get the gear, than that is what the whole point of moving raids into duty finder and giving them echo buff is for.

I dunno if this has been mentioned yet, but...

Another point of having two end-game gear sets is to have the ability to mix and match (aka stat builds). This is mostly important for DPS and Tanks who have to hit a certain accuracy requirement as well as having favored stats (for example, BLM is more likely to favor SpSpd, while SMN is more likely to focus Crit and even though they share gear-sets, the values preferred on each class are different).

Personally, as a WHM, I like to avoid Crit on my gear, as I find it generates a lot of aggro in older content and I like my heals to be constant (as a heal isn't always going to 100% crit), so I like to know that if I heal my PLD he's gonna get about 2.6k HP back every single time. I also favor SpSpd over Pie as I trust my static enough not to die (most of the time). Because of this my current build is high Det (337), medium SpSpd (566), and lower Pie (416), and lowest Crit (341). This build is only possible with 4 Coil items and 7 Poetic items (I have a second set with slightly more Pie and less SpSpd that is 6 Coil and 5 Poe, but the 4/7 is my preferred set).

If Poetic armor were stuck at i120 and I was forced to get all Coil armor to be i130 I would have pretty decent Crit (451), low Det (270), medium SpSpd (557), and low Pie (409). Which isn't too much of anything and not really ideal for either healer (at i130 SCH's can get easily 580 Crit between Poetics and Coil gear, so even though 451 is a lot of crit, it's not anywhere near the max).

Having 2+ armor sets for the end-game level/ilevel/whatever is actually super common in MMOs and some are easier to get than others (and I think FFXIV does a good job of making it accessible to everyone without being overwhelming, so even those with children and/or crazy jobs can keep current with the end-game content if they desire).

I even think the current weapon system works quite well. Max ilevel weapons drop from the hardest boss in the current game, that makes sense. But I also like that I can go out and acquire a weapon of the same level, but with my preferred stats on it. Even though the t13 Cane offers me 40 Pie and 37 SpSpd, my Zeta weapon offers me those (though valued less), as well as Det. As for the i130 weapons... I like that my side classes can have a nice weapon that helps them (eventually) reach that i130 number, but I really dislike how much of the weekly capped tome it costs on top of needing a twine. It makes it really hard to gear 9 (soon to be 12) other classes with armor, weapons, and accessories.

TL;DR I think the armor system is fine, and I actually quite like it. I like having the freedom to mix and match the items I want to get a build I like as my play-style is different from a SCH and even a bit different from other WHMs. But I do think that needing a ton of Poetics, and a Tome, and a Twine to get an i130 weapon is kind of ridiculous, especially when I have 9 other classes that are still using i110 weapons and I would much like to upgrade them.

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Originally Posted by HaiHai

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Because we're at the end of the content cycle. I've brought this up in my own post if you've skipped over it. When FCoB came out (in 2.4), the only way you could get ilvl130 items (whether it be dreadwyrm or augmented) was only through FCoB. It was only until 2.5 that they made augmented obtainable outside of FCoB, and even then that was staggered to only be acessories, body pieces 3 weeks later, then allow the ilvl 120 weapons to be obtained without touching FCoB. If you're against the idea that obtaining gear or getting stronger as the content gets older, then I'd disagree with you complete.y

Whether it's BiS or not is a completely different issue because of stat weights and the itemization on some of the pieces (esp for classes like BRD and SMN). Some augmented pieces are better than dreadwyrm, some dreadwyrm pieces are better than augmentation (and hell, some of them are straight up bad compared to demon or even crafted)

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

I still kinda find this hard to believe, given that they also said that they're taking clear percentages into account. Not to mention the huge amount of people that have made it known that they find locking story content behind difficult raid content to be unacceptable. I dunno. I'm just waiting to see an official announcement and translation rather than stuff picked from interviews that may or may not be exactly what's on the tin.

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Oh no, I concur with you honestly. I'd rather have an official Mod or Yoshi-P announcement on the forums or in an official LL or something myself. It was more just towards the OP as to where he'd heard what he was talking about, and I knew what I had said was easily found in various sources.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

Because we're at the end of the content cycle. I've brought this up in my own post if you've skipped over it. When FCoB came out (in 2.4), the only way you could get ilvl130 items (whether it be dreadwyrm or augmented) was only through FCoB. It was only until 2.5 that they made augmented obtainable outside of FCoB, and even then that was staggered to only be acessories, body pieces 3 weeks later, then allow the ilvl 120 weapons to be obtained without touching FCoB. If you're against the idea that obtaining gear or getting stronger as the content gets older, then I'd disagree with you complete.y

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I skipped over nothing. The whole point of my post was to say that you should not be able to obtain 130 upgrade tomes outside of Coil. To which, you and others would suggest that that would make it too hard for casuals or that it makes it hard to upgrade your gear, and I reminded that the whole point of adding coil to duty finder and giving it echo was to do those things already. Making 130 gear obtainable without even going inside Coil is unnecessary and ridiculous.

In order to obtain raid level gear, you should have to raid.

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Originally Posted by HaiHai

I skipped over nothing. The whole point of my post was to say that you should not be able to obtain 130 upgrade tomes outside of Coil. To which, you and others would suggest that that would make it too hard for casuals or that it makes it hard to upgrade your gear, and I reminded that the whole point of adding coil to duty finder and giving it echo was to do those things already. Making 130 gear obtainable without even going inside Coil is unnecessary and ridiculous.

In order to obtain raid level gear, you should have to raid.

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Then we'd have to disagree there. I personally do not see a reason to have to gate augmented ironworks behind content that is essentially at the end of the cycle (7 months). And even then, as I've mentioned before, the augmented ironworks pieces aren't even that good for some classes, and it's not like they'll ever get dreadwyrm (which is still considered the best piece of equip for some classes) without stepping into FCoB.

And here's two side questions that's probably unrelated to the topic. Do you feel it's any different to clear FCoB with full augmented ironworks pieces, versus clearing when echo is out?
Should relic weapons never be ilvl 130+ unless it requires the raiding scene directly (not light farming out of FCoB that is)

Don't take either of these questions the wrong way, I just make sure that I understand your viewpoint correctly when you want to keep ilvl 130 gear behind raiding content.