How would people feel about the melees getting to share the same gear

With there now being 4 tanks, 3 ranged physical, 3 casters and 3 healers who can can all share both their left and right sides, I think SE could acknowledge the possibility that the melee having 3 sets of left side and 2 sets of right side is a bit much. I just wonder what people think the pros and cons are of this system

The only reason I can think of for wanting to keep it how it is is that, for instance, with the tanks all having the same gear, it can make melds frustrating, especially for WAR mains who would also like being able to play other tank jobs and having no crit or DH melds in their BiS which makes playing the other tanks quite frustrating. This is a problem that the melee don't really have considering the Drg, Sam/Mnk, and Nin all have different left sides, so if you wanted a 440 SS drg, you can also have a 1021 SS Mnk

On the other hand, having to regear every different melee jobs comes with lots and lots of time, especially if you want to gear up a job that isn't a melee DPS. For me, I've been a Drg main since 3.X although I like Mnk and Sam and as much as I think 5.1 Nin is gunna be great, I like Drk/Gnb and Mch more, so having to wait until after I get my tanks and ranged physical to 470 before I can really start to focus on getting any of the other melee past 457 is frustrating.

Personally, I'd much rather start playing with 470 Sam/Mnk/Nin now than having to wait until almost the end of the tier to have them at 470 even if it means sacrificing perfect melds.

The thing is that it's not even a melding issue, currently every melee has a completely different need in terms of substat. Some will like SkS on multiple gear piece, others will avoid it like the plague because it mess their rotation, and some don't need as much crit as others because they already got autocrits in their rotation, or have procs tied to crit. This could work in theory if Skillspeed wasn't such an inherent bad stat atm. If it didn't screw some rotations over, then it would be less of a pain to share the same gear, because we wouldn't need as much different pieces in order to reach a specific SkS breakpoint (as an example you need a GCD of exactly 2.14sec on Sam otherwise it mess your rotation, so gear is adapted in order to reach that breakpoint but on other class it's a completely different story).

But that's my two cent on the subject.

My inventory says please do this.

My stat totals say don't you dare do this.

So i'm conflicted but the latter takes precedent over the former since the former has some space leftover so not as bad.

Only if we get rid of some of the restrictions on glamour. Non-relic armor should be usable by everyone!

Dragoon gear could easily be moved to share with monk and samurai since they share the same primary stat. They were seperate before so that monk gear had higher magic defense and dragoon gear had higher physical defense. However they changed that several years ago where now dragoon gear has the same magic defense as other melee jobs but retained its higher physical defense.

That said, having three different types of armor has the benefit that when future melee jobs get added, they can slot into existing gear sets depending on how they want the jobs to be statted out. And as a more minor issue, it allows for developers to create more unique glamor sets for the three melee jobs. (not that they always do, but they can)

This system stems from the design of the jobs at launch, when the number of jobs was significantly less. As they added on jobs, they did it in a way that made sense at the time, but has resulted in a big mess today since SOOO many classes have been added on.

2.0 Jobs:
WAR/PLD: Shared all gear except weapons
SCH/WHM: Shared all gear except weapons
BLM/SMN: Shared all gear except weapons
DRG/MNK: Shared right side, but not left, because DRG was designed to have higher armor values than MNK
BRD: Only job to use this gear

Jobs added on to the game, their gear and why:
NIN: When it was added, nothing shared accessories with BRD, and it made more sense as a Dex job, so this was chosen. Made decent sense at the time.

3.0
DRK: Easy to just have it share with tanks
AST: Easy to just have it share with healers
MNC: Easy to just have it share with BRD

4.0
SAM: Easy to just have it share with MNK
RDM: Easy to just have it share with Casters

5.0
GNB: Easy to just have it share with Tanks
DNC: Easy to just have it share with physical ranged dps


I write all of this out to show a point: For the most part, the devs have taken the path of least resistance with new classes once they were added on to the game. Once we hit 3.0, the design for adding classes and determining their gear was simple and easy to predict. Unfortunately, 3/4 of our melee dps were all added prior to 3.0, and the result is that their gear requirements are quite a bit different. I agree with the OP that the current melee gear design is unpleasant.

Fortunately, updating this would be relatively simple, just do the following:
Have NIN share gear with MCN, BRD, and DNC. This would be kind of odd aesthetically, but glamour fixes this easily anyways.
Have DRG share gear with SAM and MNK, and give DRG's a passive that increases their defense to offset the loss from this change. Again, this would be odd from an aesthetic standpoint, but glamour fixes it easily.

This would mean that there are only 5 gear archetypes in the game, instead of 7 (Tank, Healer, Caster, Ranged DPS, and Melee DPS). This would make it simpler to produce later classes, and reduce the burden of multiple gearsets for players.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

And as a more minor issue, it allows for developers to create more unique glamor sets for the three melee jobs. (not that they always do, but they can)

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You nailed this one on the head, they rarely create new sets, they mainly just do color palette swaps.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

Fortunately, updating this would be relatively simple, just do the following:
Have NIN share gear with MCN, BRD, and DNC. This would be kind of odd aesthetically, but glamour fixes this easily anyways.
Have DRG share gear with SAM and MNK, and give DRG's a passive that increases their defense to offset the loss from this change. Again, this would be odd from an aesthetic standpoint, but glamour fixes it easily.

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I actually would beg to differ on this, not because the Aesthetic could fit but because the aesthetic is already muddled and has been muddled in the past. Outside of Artifact gear no job or role avoids its gear being a recolor of another set. Case in point from this very tier, the Edengrace Striking gear is a palette swap of the healer robes. In the past it's ended up being the same model as the tank gear (Ifrit set Heavy Armor) and the same is true for other gear types as well.

The only real benefit to this is that it means melee don't have to remeld their left side if the flex between roles at the cost of clutting up the loot pools with two sets that are exclusive to two jobs of the same role. It'd be much better to just fold the melee into one role (or fold DRG into Striking and Ninja into Aiming).

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

The only real benefit to this is that it means melee don't have to remeld their left side if the flex between roles at the cost of clutting up the loot pools with two sets that are exclusive to two jobs of the same role. It'd be much better to just fold the melee into one role (or fold DRG into Striking and Ninja into Aiming).

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My exact suggestion was to fold DRG into striking and NIN into aiming, thus removing the NIN and DRG only sets. The only additional change was to give DRG a passive defense buff because they would lose some defense when folding into striking.

This is likely an unpopular opinion but i personally would like long run to see melee broken up into two roles similar to how casters and ranged divided.

There are many reasons i want this, most not pertinant to this thread.

But my hope is to see melee (and consequently melee gear) broken up as such minus some class specific gear and glamours

Core melee
-Samurai
-Monk
-Dragoon

Hybrid melee (has some casting or ranged elements
-Ninja (with our gcd to ninjutsu now and charges allowing for more casts we have more effective ranged fluidity )
-Beastmaster/animist (using a one handed axe or whip + animal attacks with a fusion form based on ranjeets dragon hybrid)
-one of these (juggler, mage knight, paravir,or trickster)

Core melee would all have str gear

Hybrids would have dex gear and have three classes available.

All roles would be balanced with right side hybrid and right side ranged being the only overlap.

By that time id hope we also had chemist released for healers making role to slot selection decently balanced too.

4 tanks 4:2 / 4:1 dependant on content
4 healers 4:2 / 4:1 dependent on content
3 melee 3:1
3 hybrid 3:1
3 ranged 3:1
3 magic 3:1
Dungeon scenario 12:2 being the only bad ratio.