Endgame gearing in FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Well, you could encourage job diversity while still retaining the LB penalty for doubling up on jobs. They ain't mutually exclusive.

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True. What I'm saying is if a meta forms, break it before it lasts multiple expansions. Stormblood was dumb.

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Originally Posted by vanaii

True, but the other side of the coin is an entrenched meta needs to be broken. The old XIV meta was garbage for players that weren't running a meta job. See also: Machinist.

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I hope 6.28 will help remedy this issue

So I've searched through the thread to see if anyone has mentioned it, and I'm surprised no-one has. Eurekan Armor & Resistance Armor. These tend to get added in the .35 patch of an expansion, and are uncapped pieces of gear that are Max iLvl -10. (Tomestone level gear effectively). These are the EXACT kind of things that I believe is very relevant when talking about catchup gear, and they already exist in the game! The problem is that they are added in that .35 patch. Because Alliance Raid gear is also the same iLvl, they have to delay these uncapped versions to make Alliance Raid gear enticing, which it still may not be if you've spent enough time in game as you may already have full tomestone. This means right at the end of our patch cycle we then have 3 sets of gear that are all Max iLvl - 10, one of which is uncapped, and the other allows for the collection of an upgrade for a piece of the 3rd set. It's incredibly backloaded, and makes the current section we're in rather boring. I'd note this is the exact same moment of the cycle that Shadowbringers got stuck on due to COVID delays, of which I remember many people felt very pained during that time because there was not a lot to do.

How to fix this? Both OP and many replies in this thread have the right idea. Move the first stage of "Relic" gear to 5.25. In this example the best place to have it would've been Criterion dungeons, and this would be uncapped 520 iLvl gear you could obtain. This would then require the Alliance Raid gear to be upped to 525 iLvl gear. That way AR gear is still better, so you're not just grinding it out for the weekly coin, and the weekly piece cap actually still feels reasonable. This then means that you have a very solid foundation gear to work off of for every class, while still making the future gear sets appealing.

I think this is where you can fit in a tomestone replacement as well, without upping the rate of tomestone acquisition. Make the .35 patch instead give gear at the same iLvl as upgraded tomestone, so any alt job has an easy way to get gear.

TL-DR of my suggestion, patch cycle should be as follows:
.01 - Savage 1-4 drops
.1 - Alliance raid 1 drops
.15 - Left alone (Could have raid gear added, but most players may not have every job fully levelled by here).
.2 - Savage 5-8 drops
.25 - Relic Weapons & Uncapped tome level gear
6.3 - Alliance raid 2 drops ( 5 iLvl higher than tome)
6.35 - Relic Weapon upgrade & uncapped savage level gear

Situation repeats for future patches, with of course the final patch being doubled in tome acquisition to allow full BiS to be obtained before the new expansion.

Agreed with OP's points.

Related ideas I've had for making it easier to gear alt jobs:

- After you spend XXX tomes on a piece of gear for a particular job, buying the same piece of gear for any other job should be cheaper. For example, if you buy the Lunar Envoy's Ring of Aiming for 375 tomes, it should not cost you 375 tomes to buy the Lunar Envoy's Ring of [Other Jobs]. How much cheaper is up for discussion, but giving a price break for alt gear would 100% make this process easier.

- Same with spending 4-8 books on a piece of raid gear. If you buy the Abyssos Ring of Aiming for 4 books, it should not cost you 4 books for the Abyssos Ring of [Other Jobs]. This is especially true for the weapon/chest - IMO if they kept the initial price at 8 books, but reduced the price of buying further weapons/chests to 2 books/piece, it would really incentivize continuing to do weekly reclears, even as a PF-er.

- If they are going to continue releasing Criterion Dungeons 8 weeks after Savage (which I think is perfect timing), they could give a weekly reward for doing them, which earns you tome gear upgrades. The exact reward would be up for discussion but I'd suggest something like "3 weeks of criterion normal = 1 upgrade, or 1 week of criterion savage = 1 upgrade".

Speaking of PF players though:

I 100% agree with anyone who complains about the difficulty of gearing alt jobs in this game, but it should really be kept in mind that the situation is far worse for people who do their raiding in PF, rather than in statics. Sure static players might be frustrated with the situation too, but at least you are getting some fairly equitable amount of gear. The amount of time and effort PF players need to go through to get any gear at all is already ridiculous, even without considering alt jobs. The gearing system should be somehow tweaked so that people on PF can't get so lucky/unlucky depending on loot rolls. I have no idea what this solution would be, though.

Personally, the system they have now is too rewarding given the effort necessary. However, given that the times have changed from 2013, I'd just say the loot system for savage is "about right." Consider the following:

If you are clearing P6S, it means you are seeing 7 pieces of loot per week (3 accessory, 2 of head/hand/feet and 1 tomestone weapon and 1 accessory upgrade). That's nearly 1 upgrade per week even if we discard the weapon tomestone (6 pieces, 8 players). Let's say a player clears those 2 turns for 4 weeks. They've also earned an accessory and head/hand/feet piece of their choice. So, in 4 weeks that player has seen:
- 12 accessory drops
- 8 head/hand/feet coffers
- 4 accessory upgrades (as good as a drop)
- 4 weapon upgrades (which by week 7 has less value since they are obtainable by way of normal abyssos)
- and 8 manifestos

With average luck rolling on those drops (or a static evenly distributing gear), that's 1.5 accessories, 1 head/hand/feet, 0.5 accessory upgrades and a guaranteed accessory and head/hand/feet of their choice. Or to put it another way, 4 weeks into clearing just those 2 turns a player has:

- 3 i630 accessories
- 2 i630 head/hand/feet

That's over 1 piece per week.

Now, let's think about the barrier to entry to run this content. There is no doubt you have to be skilled to clear this content. That goes without saying. Consider the following:

- About 1/3 of the playerbase has opened up this raid (as per achievement trackers)
- Players can pick when they want to fight these enemies on their own schedule
- You can try as many times as you want
- There is 0 exp loss
- There is negligible gil loss
- There is no travel time to raid
- There is no competition

Compare this to the games of the 00s where:
- a tiny fraction of the playerbase could get to the raid zones since they were locked behind difficult missions
- Banding together with dozens of other players to take down these enemies took a lot of organizing
- You had to compete to claim these enemies (or to get the items to pop these enemies)
- If you failed, the enemy either despawned or was claimed by another raid group
- Exp loss
- Travel time
- Very little loot per kill, if any
- Loot spread among dozens of players present

Personally, the system they have in place is very reasonable. However, we are over a decade removed from MMOs with systems like what I described above. So, it could just be that we have a generation of players that isn't accustomed to that sort of adversity.

do this in real life

Why cant we have a tome cap for role, I mean you cap it once (450) then you can spend, 450 on casters, healers, tanks and P ranged. Since they do not share gear anyway

Takes too long to gear a single job, the gear is boring and lacks gearset bonuses or unique effects. ilvl seems to be the only thing that matters longterm.

Game is pidgeonholing most jobs to stack crit and either DH or Det. Some cases spellspeed but that's rare. Jobs like SMN or RPR feel pain if their Mega Flare/Communio doesn't crit and then their next auto attack does.

Hitting for 25k-30k instead of anywhere between 40k-60k+ feels bad.

I think devs are gonna screw players and shove auto crit down everyone's throats.

So basically every class runs the same build and does the most DPS by following a rigid 2 minute burst. Leaves little room for optimization and improvement and no build variety.

Underwhelming IMO.

I agree with the OP's post. I think Sfia puts the thoughts of players at all skill levels in a cohesive way.

It would be nice to have more avenues of gearing even from my super casual perspective.

I feel come the odd number patch is when Savage should be unlocked not the .8 patch. Most groups have cleared the new tier before the odd number patch drops and having it unlocked will help with gearing alt jobs for those intersted.

Need more horizontal gearing options that are added at the same time. Trials should drop more than just weapons and those drops should be on par with tome gear with an upgrade item that can be bought with X number of tokens. A new dungeon difficulty could be added that drops gear on par with tome/savage. Alliance raids should copy the tome system as well, drop on par with tome gear + upgrade item. Just need more options everywhere.

Talking about stats; I would like the Guild Wars 2 approach to substats because it is so fun, but that is too much for FF14 balance. Especially when damage difference can vary from up to 10x from people saying they are dps in GW2 vs about 2x in this game from skill ceiling to skill floor due to build diversity.
Adding more options for people will confuse them more.

Regardless, one example we could simulate is adding new stats and have these stats exclusively increase duration of DoT timers to gain more value in snapshooting buffs under the DoT. Similarly a new stat for increasing Buff timers. These 2 stats are called "Expertise" for increased DoT times and "Concentration" for increased buff duration in GW2, so in FF14 we could have the interaction of rDps jobs favoring "concentration" stats vs the other types like samurai/blm to focus on "Expertise" just enough to not throw their rotations off. Or the rDps might prefer to go for an "Expertise" build if it is 2 targets. The only way a samurai/blm would want these "concentration" stats could be to build more kenki gauge by increasing the amount by 1 on every gcd according to stat tiers; which in turn would make their rotations different from other samurais by having extra Shinten uses. Similarly a phys ranged like Bard with 2 Dots would find a balance between "expertise" and "concentration" though this all varies on fight phase durations. Then a phys ranged like dancer with no DoTs could benefit "expertise" from increasing the proc chance of fan dance 3; etc these are just examples.

I do not see the devs making the game more complex after seeing the job reworks, though they do listen to players eventually so who knows. I'm not sure if something like the example I mentioned would be fun, but it would make getting BiS a lot more vague to acquire while the math wizards do their part. I personally would think it would be fun, but that is just me.

Regarding gear, I would like the cap of 450 for the whole patch cycle to slowly increase over time every week. For example +50 tomes can be acquired the following weeks until we hit a 2k cap or 1500 cap. So by week 8 we could have an extra ~1,400 tomes to help gear a side job to help fill in other friend statics if for example they need a healer/tank. I would not have the best set of gear for BiS but that is about 1 chest and 1 pants worth of tomes by week 8-9.

FFXIV has a "you can play every job on one character" but does that mean you don't have a main job and that players should just easily be able to gear up every job to have available at all time for any situation? I see this would help prepare some players for ultimate so they could have the flexibility to clear the content with whatever job is best for the fight but I don't see how SE could achieve this without heavily impacting the gearing system for everyone else.

As for making substats more impactful, personally I find FFXIV's gearing system refreshing in that it is more straightforward. I may be wrong, but do we really want a situation where every piece of gear needs to be run through a simulator to see if it's actually an upgrade or not? Already most probably rely on BIS lists made by others to determine what gear to use and materia to put on. I'm not sure how many people really consider that fun.

Ultimately I don't really mind what they do with these systems as long as it doesn't start to impact normal players in a negative way, but I think the way the gear system is now is most likely carefully thought out by SE to create the right incentives so the content is enjoyable by the most players. When thinking about things like this it's important to consider the entire game and not just one specific pain point.

Another gripe I have with gearing is the fact that the gears you obtained through savage and tome are "One of a kind". Why is there a need to restrict how many copies of that same items in your inventory, when it is already "Unique" and can only equip one of them at a time?! Just to help prevent accidently getting the same item twice?

By just lifting that one single thing off the item. It allows for quick swapping between different class in the same role without having to meld new materia every time, as long as you are willing to put in the time to obtain the item. It doesn't break the game or suddenly let you wear tome or raid ring at the same time. All it is a simple quality of life.

I feel that it's time to allow us to have a lockout based on role, not on character. Alternatively you could change it based on the monthly activity.

Currently we are looking at a full 8 month cycle.

Break it up into 2/4/6/8.

At the 8 week mark you can make it so that tome cap increases to 600. (.X5 patch)

At week 16 make it so that loot drops from savage add additional tokens. (Odd Patch, 24 man unlocks)

At week 24 make it so that overall tome prices are reduced to a 'next patch' cost. 345/510/280. (Odd .X5)

The goal of this is to make it so that you can gear 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 ranged physical, 1 melee dps, and 1 caster into an 8 month period. Currently it's around 2.5. (Based on 5,135 tomes/job) (14,400 total tomes over a 32 week period)

Going in the direction of the PvP rewards system might be something they could think about. A PvE savage XP reward system instead of having to get specific chest drops. Or the chest drops are just extras on top of it.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

Going in the direction of the PvP rewards system might be something they could think about. A PvE savage XP reward system instead of having to get specific chest drops. Or the chest drops are just extras on top of it.

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That actually sounds fun

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Originally Posted by Sighearth

Why cant we have a tome cap for role, I mean you cap it once (450) then you can spend, 450 on casters, healers, tanks and P ranged. Since they do not share gear anyway

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Not a bad idea honestly.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Takes too long to gear a single job, the gear is boring and lacks gearset bonuses or unique effects. ilvl seems to be the only thing that matters longterm.

Game is pidgeonholing most jobs to stack crit and either DH or Det. Some cases spellspeed but that's rare. Jobs like SMN or RPR feel pain if their Mega Flare/Communio doesn't crit and then their next auto attack does.

Hitting for 25k-30k instead of anywhere between 40k-60k+ feels bad.

I think devs are gonna screw players and shove auto crit down everyone's throats.

So basically every class runs the same build and does the most DPS by following a rigid 2 minute burst. Leaves little room for optimization and improvement and no build variety.

Underwhelming IMO.

I agree with the OP's post. I think Sfia puts the thoughts of players at all skill levels in a cohesive way.

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No thanks to gear set bonuses.

I do agree auto crit sucks and I don't want to see more of it.

I agree but Coming at this as a Casual the way things are is way to slow Gear wise I have 3 out of the 18/ 21 Jobs at 610 ilvl and I'm going it's Nice I have a Ninja at ilvl 610 but So much a waste when the other Melee Jobs are going their own way Monk/Samuri Dragon/Reaper Ninja? Oh right Ninja doesn't share with anyone maybe Dancer, Bard on Rings and stuff but that's if it's being nice enough too. That isn't helping on Gear wise at all. I heard that the Producer wanted us to Get all our Jobs top Gear and all I could think was yeah see you in 7.0 There is no way I will be able to gear up fast enough and Please don't ask me to check the Broker (Dancer weapon $200,000 Plat, Bard weapon $187,000) is there a bank in the Game that I can Rob. It's been that way or high since 6.2 Release since the Crafters have there Sights set on High end Raiders only and everyone else well Good luck. Believe it or not there was a few days where the Gear was below $100,000 Plat then it went right back up but at least by 6.3 it'll be cheaper when it's more easier to get and not needed while everyone else be gear up to 630 or 640 ilvl :( . Believe it or not I am Trying but why does it have to take 4 Month to get to where thing are easier to get. I can understand 2 Months but 4 Months?

I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but and idea that sprang to mind enough for me to come to the forums and actually make an account to spread is thus.

What if instead of receiving a piece of gear for a job when you purchase it with tomes / obtain it from books / drops, you instead received a character bound reward item that allowed you to purchase said slot of said gear for all jobs?
Say you roll and obtain a chest piece from savage, you then use the chest piece item and go to the vendor to claim a chest piece for all of the jobs.

I understand the issue then becomes people not wanting to do savage once they've obtained a full set of gear, but honestly if the game is supposed to support one player having every job, I don't see why this hasn't been the system we've been working with the whole time in the first place.

I'd just like to see sensible improvements to alt-friendliness and reduced currency bloat. That comes down to primarily two things:

1. Allow anyone who's acquired a given slot piece of Savage / Week-stone gear to then buy that slot's Savage / WS gear with the uncapped tomestones on all other jobs.
   
2. Simplify raid currency into a single item per tier and instead restrict what's available to be purchased via the floors' clear achievements.

   First floor unlocks Accessories, Boots, and Coat. Second unlocks Gloves and Helm and Twine. Third unlocks Pants, Chestpiece, and Solvent. Fourth unlocks the Savage Weapon.
   If someone wants to save up all the currency they won from clearing 1-3 to buy the weapon on week 2 for 8 clears' worth of raid tokens, so be it.
   Loot can still drop directly as before; there's just no need for a ton of separate coffers or Pages 1-4 nonsense.

Complementary adjustments may include...

• Normal Raid and Alliance Raid can now also be upgraded. Moreover, you can directly upgrade via uncapped tomestones any piece of gear from the given tier (normal raid gear, weekly currency gear, or alliance raid gear) to the tier's max ilvl once you have completed the given Savage floor or acquired a tier-maximum-ilvl item by other means (using Hunts for Twine and then upgrading your chestpiece, etc.).

It is slightly cheaper to upgrade a WS or AR item than to buy a Savage piece directly, but considerably more expensive in total to buy the base WS item and then upgrade it than to buy the unlocked Savage piece. This works simply as a combination of bad luck protection and a way to more quickly reach BiS from mixed weekly/raid gearsets and to increase itemization choices.

SE killed this game for me when they took Kaiten away from SAM and never gave a good reason as to why. The classes are the biggest problem I have with this game, if the classes were more fun or weren't so homogenized then I would care more about the gearing system. Till they (copium) revert SAM, I could care less. The rewards from Criterion dungeons are straight up garbage though, what a pathetic launch for one of their probably reoccurring pieces of content. Yes SE, please take everything I said to heart. Your team is spending more time on FF16 than the game that made you who you are.

I think a tome cap per role makes the most sense. I also think they could take the concept of "Job in need" bonus that they have in Duty Finder and apply it to PF, which either provides and extra drop roll exclusively for the people who fill those roles or an extra book / currency they can use to also purchase savage loot.

Boom, literally fix the job shortage in PF and make gearing slightly faster in one go.

I never understood the argument of having a slightly easier time of obtaining gear for alts is this evil thing that would drive players to get bored and unsub when this game already operates on the model that if you are bored and don't have stuff to do you should just go play other stuff until there's new stuff that you would be interested in at a later point.

If anything, it is the opposite - people will stay subbed longer if they can play alt jobs. It is week 9 right now, after playing my main role for 8 weeks I want to play other roles. But so many parties are locked to 615+ that I can't, so I'm just checking out instead.

Last tier, I kept playing but it was miserable, I had to play another 8 weeks before I had a weapon/chestpiece for one alt role I wanted to play, it was just really annoying how long it took, and even then I needed longer to get enough gear to have one tank/one healer/one DPS all fully geared. It wasn't fun, and by the time I had the BiS and could join BiS parties I didn't even wanna play anymore. That's why I told myself in the future to just give up on alt jobs and check out after week 8.

Of course, the crux will always be that gear is not as much "time gated" as much as "scheduled".
You could count in weeks, but you could also count in ... months. 8 months, the figurative lifespan of any raid tier.
You have three groups of players, passive casuals, active casuals and active raiders. I think it is fairly easy to assume that players are .. 1-3 jobs they like enough to "main". Gearing is not about collecting one source set only but mix and match anything that you can. Passive casuals are wearing something to the mix of dungeon gear and outdated tomestones, active casuals are in crafted gear mixed with current tomestones and active raiders are dressed in mix of current tomestone and raid rewards. Currently the numbers are somewhat like -600, 610-620 and 620-630.

I am a producer. My team cannot make a new savage raid for each patch AND create enough non-savage raid content at the same time. I need to do this even and odd patch shifting.
I know some people are attracted by gear rewards. Thus I cannot de-value the coming up odd number patch by just fulfilling any leftover gearing desire, thus even number patches cannot have easy gearing.
And that is why you cannot gear faster.
I know this is preaching to the choir somewhat, but I wanted to rant it out anyway.
We live in capitalism.

It has always been crappy feeling wanting to properly gear multiple jobs in a tier and knowing you simply cannot do so. For a game that encourages playing more than one job they do not allow you to do so at higher end and it sucks.

if some mention about giving early tome upgrade items:
when it comes to gearing, the biggest gate is always the stupid weekly 450 cap.
even if you have other means to get the upgrade item, you still get hold hostage by the 450 gate.

now with patch cycle officially going on a 4month + holiday cycle, the way to get like 620 gears from 24man is much further away.
doing the first 2 floors on the min ilv 610 crafted or normal raid gears are fine but the 3rd and 4th is a step up on dps/heal checks. casual will have a hard time. folks thats wants to help and like fill the 3rd and 4th flr pf with unplay jobs(especially healer role) cant help much because they dont have better gears. ie, casual pug + vets with min ilv gear = hard to carry dps.

also coffers are still a rng luck to roll against other players in savage. and while you may be lucky to gear up a 2nd job, it will cuck others from gears as their main job. so my point is, the 620 tome is the one way to not cuck some1 to gear up. but that low 450 weekly cap...

there either needs to be a way to get like 615 gears or 620 and the 24man should bump to 625 ilv if thats the case etc.

or might as well, give players the upgrade item for the crafted gears if they clear the criterion dungeon. it still consider harder content even if its not the savage version. so like how the past crafted upgrade goes, you need 3 clears for acc, 5 for head, hands, foot and 7 or 8 for body, pants and weap.

I feel bad when I see detailed critiques written like this, on a forum where there hasn't been a devpost in like 6 years.
The first reply to it is a damn meme image from someone who was too lazy to even read a game related post on a game forum, and it's stayed up this entire time too. No moderation, no staff presence. Just shut this place down. What's the point. All we do is argue with each other while nothing changes. What a shame. What a waste.

OP, solid post. I have nothing to add to it. I hope someone relevant reads it.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

I feel bad when I see detailed critiques written like this, on a forum where there hasn't been a devpost in like 6 years.
The first reply to it is a damn meme image from someone who was too lazy to even read a game related post on a game forum, and it's stayed up this entire time too. No moderation, no staff presence. Just shut this place down. What's the point. All we do is argue with each other while nothing changes. What a shame. What a waste.

OP, solid post. I have nothing to add to it. I hope someone relevant reads it.

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This one actually looks promising with the fact that it's so well written and there's all the support showing up for it.

Isn't from the same group that sells content clears. Yea, idgaf what content sellers have to say. Ban them to the shadow realm forever.

Hmm that's a good point. Maybe faster gearing for alts would make it easier for them to sell content clears?

I don't recall Sfia being a member of any content selling teams. They are/were a member of Thoughts Per Second who hold multiple world firsts in this game however, so maybe that's what you're thinking and extrapolating further from that.

Either way, provide proof if you're going to try and rile up a crowd like that and derail a thread.

Agreed. I stopped raiding after killing P8S twice because of how shitty the gearing loop is (in addition to static problems and pf raiding being a waste of time).

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Originally Posted by Ransu

No thanks to gear set bonuses.

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Oh I can understand the mentality but it would make gear less boring. Could have a bonus for wearing a full set but no bonus for wearing mixed sets. Or have Grand Company gear(why is GC gear stuck at 50?) have a bonus but you can't meld materia on it.

Variety is the spice of life.

Or even just getting gear that did not require tomes. Just seems rather restrictive no?

Your character can play on all jobs but can only realistically gear up one job at any given time.

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Originally Posted by MaaryZeleste

Agreed. I stopped raiding after killing P8S twice because of how shitty the gearing loop is (in addition to static problems and pf raiding being a waste of time).

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But to be fair, what's the point of gearing further if you already cleared it? To be ready for the next tier when pentamelded crafted gear will replace it all?

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Originally Posted by dspguy

But to be fair, what's the point of gearing further if you already cleared it? To be ready for the next tier when pentamelded crafted gear will replace it all?

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Post-tier content like Criterion Savage or Ultimate require or are more viable in BiS.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

But to be fair, what's the point of gearing further if you already cleared it? To be ready for the next tier when pentamelded crafted gear will replace it all?

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So you can clear the same fight but 20 seconds faster(oh boi). Or have a ilvl to meet super endgame requirements. IMO there is no point.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

So you can clear the same fight but 20 seconds faster(oh boi). Or have a ilvl to meet super endgame requirements. IMO there is no point.

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Tell that to the Skip Soar or Disband memes x3

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Tell that to the Skip Soar or Disband memes x3

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Skip the phase so I can get my mount faster. It will DEFINITELY drop this time!!

Or wait a few years and solo it on a lvl 90 DPS for 2 minutes a run and desynth weapons for free Carapaces.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯