I did a very detailed list of every piece of gear for DRG..
AF2 Chest and AF2 Legs are BIS as well as Choker and Waist.
AF2 just has different itemization than Coil drops.
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It's not so much about casuals getting good gear. I don't think anyone sane is going to argue that they shouldn't.
There IS a major problem of the risk/reward with getting iLevel 90 gear as a reward from a dungeon that drops iLevel 60 gear though. This type of itemization breaks progression and I expect we are going to see the consequences of this in a major way when Crystal Tower is released and everyone from casuals to hardcores are running it in mostly iLevel 90 gear because it was so easy to get previously. Even more so if they ease the cap here and people are able to get it even faster.
May I have a link to these patch notes please?
LOL at people complaining about casual gamers getting ilvl 90 gear AND in the same threat complaining that 6 chests per week for 8 people is bad. How about running molten core for a year to get 40 people geared, when people got 1-2 drops per boss for 40 people not 8. Better yet the days of EQ when entire server had to compete for a boss kill that spawned once per week for entire server. You think you are hardcore gamer? You are an elitist scrub. Hardcore is eve online were your alliance can loose $50,000 in a 30 minute battle. FFXIV is a casual mmo for casual gamers, being "hardcore" in FFXIV is like being hardcore in riding a 5 year olds tricycle.
lower AF2 item level to 80.
I don't think risk vs reward is relevant seeing as everything in this game especially easy, coil only being tough because lack of proper entry gear due to the crystal tower being held off on release. Thats the major flaw in this game as a whole, no challenge in any field.
It's still more of a challenge than teleporting around the map opening chests.
Let's assume you do 8 AK a week to hit the 300 cap. It takes 3135 tomes to get all AF+1 gear (not including belt and accessories, and completely ignoring relic+1). That's 11 weeks of capping out your mythology tomes doing 8 runs a week and let's say you spend 40 minutes every time you do the dungeon. How long is that? 3,520 minutes which is almost 59 hours. Doesn't seem so 'welfare' now, does it?
It is a time sink by design, which is a form of 'earning', it still requires more effort than AF gear did.
Charlie Sheen would like to have a word with you. He likes "winning" all the time. He's got tigers blood running through.
And yes, hardcore in this game isn't really hardcore. 11 was way more hardcore. Hardcore in this game is basically playing double dutch jump roping as compared to having a single rope. Not that much harder. <--- Double Dutch World Champion 10 years running.