Spiritbonding, aka slowing the run down for everyone else so you can farm materia

As I understand it, the spiritbonding system encourages players to equip sub-optimal gear while grinding dungeons with other players. Is that about right?

Needless to say this can be frustrating when one is trying to minimize run time and other players are intentionally equipping gear that makes them take more and do less damage/ less healing. Needless to say this can be infuriating when you are wiping while members of you party are not wearing their best gear.

The idea of gear gaining a sort of 'experience' so that it can be broken down to enhance other gear is an interesting idea, but I can't help but feel it has been poorly implemented. It would be nice if the spiritbonding system could be reworked in a way that didn't encourage players to make group activities slower/more difficult for everyone else by equipping suboptimal gear.

Personally, when I spiritbond in an instance, I always ask the group first if that is acceptable for them. Almost always they say yes since the content is not that difficult. (I've never been told no, anyway.) However, I am doing it the correct way. I am level 50 so I spiritbond ilvl 55 gear. I feel that if people are going to spiritbond, like me, they need to be respectful to the rest of the group by first asking, and then using appropriately leveled gear. When SE does implement the gear check to content I'm guessing this issue will be resolved.

Edit: Also, if you do as many castrums and AKs as I do, you are gimping yourself financially if you aren't at least spiritbonding some accessories or something. That is my opinion, anyway.

If a run is jeopardized by 49-50 whites in Castrum, then it's all part of the lack of skill, not the gear being worn. Castrum is meant to be run in quest gear/crafted whites. You MIGHT be able to make an argument for AK or WP, but a couple pieces won't make a difference, and if it does, they need to go back to Castrum anyway.

For CM/Prae the iLVL 55 stuff is more than sufficient unless you are in one of those Relic only groups in which case I would not risk anything more than a lvl 49 ring. The 55 stuff seems to have a somewhat decent chance of churning out a Tier IV materia if you get lucky so buy a few off items off the market and spiritbond away. Materia is a great way to make some extra gil if crafting/gathering are not your thing.

I SB all my accessories in each dungeon(not the coil). swap out generally for bosses if I'm feeling generous. Nothing wrong with it.

Although i can see it being a problem if people SB'd every piece of gear they could. but.. it's DF, people are free to gear up how ever they want, and you're also free to leave if you don't like people doing it.

I'm okay with it, but its pretty unfair that in places like AK, its 100x more difficult for the tank to do so compared to healers or dd classes (even if they change back on bosses) T_T

*from my one experience trying to in AK (with friends, not just randos) anyroad. Went in full cobalt stuff I made and was getting ate up by trash, FAST. Healers can seemingly breeze through in almost a full set of SB trash gear, in my experience.

Honestly if your only complaint about running PUG groups are the fact that some wear SB gear, you are doing something horribly horribly right.

First World Problems.

If you want Speedruns, make your own damned group. Don't come into the DF expecting to find a super amazing full Relic+1 Coil geared group.

Also, wearing whites in farming runs is not only a good source of (Materia) Cash, it also minimizes my damn repair bill. So yeah, I'm going to wear some level 50ish whites in AK/WP, its not that hard and I'm not going to blow gil on repairing ilvl 60 - 70 gear if I don't need to.

I think the whole system needs a rework because I can understand both sides of this. Where 1) yes I wear less optimal gear in cm/ak to spirit bond to make gil (an alchemists life sucks) but 2) I can understand it can be frustrating for those who want to just haul threw the grind content. Theres no real win/win sadly without a totally different system. :/

In the end I think 1) wins for player who dont want to craft and obviously need a way to make gil

I'm a culprit of this, but I rarely (if ever) do it on DF groups. Usually just run a group with people from my free company so everyone knows what the deal is beforehand.

That being said, if I feel that someone spiritbonding is slowing down the progress of everyone in a group, I try to tell them politely, although I've never felt like it was that bad. And this includes doing Castrum with both healers in crafting gear xDD