Unique equipment that lasts.

What's the deal with items in this game? Most armor sets are repeating tiers with slightly higher stats of the same type and all the recent NM drops seem to be immediately replaceable. I'll probably get flamed for mentioning XI but If you managed to get leaping boots, a lv7 item, it could last you to lv60. Ochiudo's kote was a lv34 item that could last to lv75 and (previously) rare craftable items like Haubergeon/Scorpion Harness were useful way up until the level cap increase. As far as I know items like that don't really exist in FFXIV. Truly rare and valuable equipment that isn't part of recolored/tiered armor set which gives you a significant buff over the regular items while lasting long enough for it to be worth getting. Even the rank 50 NM armor are obvious reskins and their stats aren't all that great. It's all DEX/STR/HP/etc but what happened to pieces that give haste or augment job traits and abilities? Part of the reason MMOs are so addicting is that drive to get the best gear available. I checked out the new rank mid level NM weapons and not one of them will last 10 ranks. Let's see some serious equipment from now, both as straight drops from NMs/bosses and as hard to craft luxury gear.

All the NM's, items, stats, gil, races, will be worked out and balanced with time but they need to first make up their mind with battle system and major parts of the game. But I agree with you the items could be a little more diverse.

I'm wondering if those items you mentioned were in the original game of XI, or if they were part of expansions, or additions years later when everyone could get to rank 75 in a matter of hours? At any rate, the mid-range gear dropped by the NMs are not just toss aways. Depending on what you want your characters to do they could be better than the gear we had before the patch. I know I'm certainly using that Thalassian Targe on my rank 50 mages. Some people are doing similar things because those items actually give you + stats and not just + attributes.

Everything he mentioned was part of the game WAY later when Zilart etc came out. The original game had the exact same way of gearing up players as XIV has right now. Same equip with higher tiers and higher stats. That's it.

Stuff like Leaping Boots, Emp Hairpin, Scorp Harness etc was not in the game when it released and came more than 6 months later.

Plus you seem to fail to see the use of the new NM items for all classes except Tank/s(if there are really MRD, PUGs out tanking). Conquistador Helm is the best DMG helm you can get as MRD, LNC now. Venerers Bracers are the best Gloves for RNG atm. A lot of the casting stuff is better then any R40-50 equip as well. There would be nice equip for GLA tanks as well, if it wasn't for the R of the equip...R35 has just not enough Def etc to really be useful as tanking gear. I would love to wear the Engineers Leggings, since they are way better then Iron Sabatons...but they got way less Def...so meh...I'm screwed.

Does it matter WHEN they came out during FFXI? That isn't even the point.

All I'm saying is that for the most part, stuff like that doesn't exist in FFXIV but it would be nice if it did. I guess they'd have to fix the stats first and actually add buffs to armor besides basic STR/DEX/HP/MP/etc huh?

I have to agree, all the armor is way to tiered atm. Which leads to gear being replaced every expansion/level increase negating all the previous work the devs did. It is the major problem with most mmos in my opinion. Aion had this issue big times and even WoW with its masses of content honestly only have Catacylsm gear now since everything else is worthless, ffxi for the most part escaped this until abysea came out now that has the same problem... I feel FFXIV needs to copy FFXI(pre-abysea) in this respect by not making everything tiered armor. Keep the rarest stuff that took you awhile to get worthwhile for a very long time... this is what gave the feeling of accomplishment in XI finally obtaining what you been working towards for so long. Currently there is no feeling of accomplishment from any gear in XIV.

I am fine with some tiered gear but there needs to be some hard to obtain gear which last for 20-30 Ranks if not more. Maby something at the end of a long quest line, or a really rare drop off a mob that can take weeks to get.

I would love to see something rank 10 armor with +5 dex and +5 agility on it, that is hard to get. Or a rank 30 armor which takes days/weeks to get with +20-25 attack or 3% haste(faster stamina regen) on it. These kinds of armor take time and effort to get and give people something to work for besides grinding non-stop. Can add them to instance like the BCNM/KSNM fights in XI or spawn NMS (non-camped) if you want to avoid the botting. Just need to make them rare enough and hard enough to get that it does not only take 1hr to get them... like the other nms drops currently. Make the Work = the reward another words. SE needs to make what we have feel meaningful, and replaceable armor every 2-3 levels/every expansion is not going to cut it.