Higher level rod is a downgrade in stats?

So now that all my gear is "dated" I decided to check the markets and find some new stuff. Upon searching through the fishing rods I discovered something annoyingly odd.

There's no question that the Rosewood Rod is better than my Dated Horn Rod, with the Hold Rod only beating it with some measly higher Perception; but when it comes to Gathering, my Dated rod is BETTER than the Gilded Rosewood!
And as a matter of fact, when it comes to Gathering, the PLAIN Rosewood is better than the Gilded one! Whats up with that!??

I bet if there was a red one it would be vastly superior to anything on the market

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Originally Posted by Razor

I bet if there was a red one it would be vastly superior to anything on the market

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Agreed. Going from plain to gilded probably means it's now intended for a marauder.

Exactly. We cant have ALL the fishermen and women using all the rods. there have to be specially designed ones for the casual Marauder or Lancer to use. Clearly without dye any equipment is inferior. The purple ones should be gender locked too.

I've noticed this with some of my crafting gear as well. The higher level and newer crafting head/gloves don't have stats comparable to my Dated Linen Wedge Cap or the Linen Short Gloves. I know we are supposed to embed materia into the newer items but considering I have yet to to see anyone put more than 1 materia into an item without it exploding, well lets just say I'm sticking with my Dated gear.

The new gears should have stats comparable to what they are replacing and only if a person wants to make their gear better than what they had and currently have should they go embed materia into it. Not all of us wish to take part in this Materia craze but it seems we are all forced to unless we want to deal with being considered gimped or having less stats from what we had before.

The only thing that I'm happy about with Materia is the fact that I can now take some decent All Classes gloves and dump the T4 MP+ materia into them and get some mage hands for my Conj. Before that there were only decent mage hands for THM (mitts) and nothing for Conj!

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Originally Posted by Razor

I bet if there was a red one it would be vastly superior to anything on the market

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Oh man, I laughed a lot at that! Thank you!

No, what makes the new one better is adding materia to it. That is the whole point.

What you are comparing are base stats, which yes, the old is better.

However, you cannot add materia to the old one. You can with the new one and make the stats hugely better.

The new one is all about the materia. I put a +6 Gathering on my Gilded Rosewood Rod.... It's sexy.

IMO, the Gilded has REALLY high Output which means you get more items per gathering attempt. By the time you are high enough to equip the gilded you are probably high enough to not need Gathering to succeed, and the output will make amassing large amounts of items like Catalysts less of a chore.

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Originally Posted by Estellios

IMO, the Gilded has REALLY high Output which means you get more items per gathering attempt. By the time you are high enough to equip the gilded you are probably high enough to not need Gathering to succeed, and the output will make amassing large amounts of items like Catalysts less of a chore.

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Aye, the gathering stat itself isn't as strict as it was before. You can get away with about 3/5 of what you previously had, and still garner the full effects per node.