To some degree, yeah. I agree with that. But not to the levels it is currently.
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Probs one of the things that compelled them to implement a stat squish.
Though as I understand it the ease of old duties is not because of your gear. Crystal Tower was easier in ShB than SB despite the game synching you down to the same level. Why? Potency creep making our attacks just legitimately better. Your kit simply pumps out more damage.
I've noticed that exploding skeletons in Labyrinth of the ancients can still wipe parties if they all go off at the same time and the healers aren't prepared. If gear creep were behind it we'd all just feel a tickle and keep moving. We're not more tanky, we just output damage like nothing else because the primary culprit is our kits.
It doesn't matter if your crit is 9000 or 99999999, it'll synch down to the same value when you enter the Crystal Tower.
Coming in with a larger number means nothing so long as you reach the cap your stats can synch down to (which for Crystal Tower I think you can do with level 55-58 gear).
While the ARR rework helps, it's still the worst part of the game. Jobs have so few skills to use, the voice work frankly sucks (at least, the English voices are terribly directed), and there's a lot of stuff set up plot-wise that doesn't pay off until an expansion or two later (or three, in the case of the Crystal Tower).
Also, some of the early dungeons are......weird, looking back. We have Copperbell, the only dungeon in the game where enemies will leash back if pulled too far; Toto-rak, where two bosses are identical except that the second has some adds, and that long tunnel full of slowing goo that serves no real purpose; Brayflox and Dzemael Darkhold, with long enemy-filled side paths for useless treasure boxes; the Sunken Temple of Qarn, with the stone pedestal puzzle; and Aurum Vale, which needs no elaboration. Plus the trio of four-player primal fights, and the mess that is the two MSQ Roulette dungeons.
Overall, ARR is just really not a great indication for how the rest of the game goes. It's a weird pile of design anachronisms.
It doesn't really matter if you disagree, or even if I disagree. It's SE that seems to think this. That's the reason why you don't get certain abilities at lower levels even on new jobs.
Even when a new job releases if you look at their kit you can see they have carefully given them things that other jobs have at that level so that it has about the same potency and the same capabilities.
I don't disagree with you that gear is an issue that makes things too easy, but if you examine the kit of each job you'll notice some patterns in what they have available at each 10 levels.
Examples of what isn't available at level 50 include party heals by non-healers, party area damage buffs by non-healers, damage increasing buffs that you apply to other players, area mitigations, most off-globals and a lot of gap closers, even on new jobs.
That's been the problem with the system from the start. They actually have a button bloat issue at end-game that really pushes the limit on what people can rote memorize with some jobs, so it turns into how do you get enough to make the job interesting without breaking it. Melee DPS is absolutely the worst due to also having to manage positionals and it really shows in savage with all the deaths they keep accumulating to boss mechanics.
Being in discord it feels like back seat driving with the melee to make sure they get call outs and don't die to things.
Unnerf everything and make ilvl sync less generous, I've so seen many new players just quit because the game was boring easy trash until max level.