Suggestion: make materia melds give a small boost to iLV

Given that iLV is not just a cosmetic/bragging measuring stick but serves an actual in game purpose (of limiting certain content and participation in certain groups), I believe that materia melding should appropriately reflect an added increase in item's potency by increasing its iLV.

Crafted iLV70 gear penta melded with two-three Materia IV and the rest in materias III or II are almost always superior to dropped iLV80 and can sometimes rival iLV90 gear.
If you deck yourself out with all 5 accessories like that, your overall iLV rating really does not reflect the quality and effectiveness of your gear set, capping you at iLV80 even if your entire left side is at iLV90.

Could we have a system that appropriately adjusts the iLV of an item as you slot more and more materias into it?

they made the gear have a stat cap to prevent a item becoming a high ilvl then it was this would do the opposite of what they want.

I think they shoudl just make gear have materia slots in it too. Tailor encounters to not only be around bis gear as you level, but also to tailor preferred gameplay via materia slots (imagine Allagan gear with 3 materia slots)

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Originally Posted by Flyojumper

Given that iLV is not just a cosmetic/bragging measuring stick but serves an actual in game purpose (of limiting certain content and participation in certain groups), I believe that materia melding should appropriately reflect an added increase in item's potency by increasing its iLV.

Crafted iLV70 gear penta melded with two-three Materia IV and the rest in materias III or II are almost al....

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unfortunately ilvl is based off the primary stats and not the bonus ones. and those are capped.

I am aware of caps to stats, but you can more than make up for the 2 pts in main stat that you lose by using an iLV70 instead of an iLV80 by slotting materia IVs and boosting secondary stats by 12+, without counting the added benefits of adding vitality or an extra stat into the mix. Penta melded crafted iLV70 gear are a hell of a lot better than darklight (and very often better than iLV80) yet their iLV does not reflect their effectiveness.
It sounds silly to equip some iLV80 accessory just to be able to join that Bahamut Coil party you see on the board that requires overall iLV83 to join, only to switch back to your superior iLV70 crafted gear when you have joined the party.

it's simple ilvl 80 is better then ilvl 70 no matter how much you meld it. yes it gives the stats you specifically want but it does not make it better then ilvl80 no matter how much you meld it.

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Originally Posted by Musashidon

it's simple ilvl 80 is better then ilvl 70 no matter how much you meld it. yes it gives the stats you specifically want but it does not make it better then ilvl80 no matter how much you meld it.

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Here's an example:
BRD Ultima Necklace: iLV80
11 dex
14 crit
10 accuracy

I can meld an iLV70 necklace and penta meld it which will have these stats:
10 vit
9 str
9 dex
12 crit
8 det
9 skill speed
9 accuracy

(I actually have one of those)
You trade off 2 dex, 2 crit and 1 acc for 8 det, 9 skill speed, 10vit and 9 str.
You can plug in the +2dex and +2 crit you get on the iLV80 in the damage formula all you want, it will not overpower the 8 det and 9 skill speed you get from the iLV70 crafted. And that's without the extra benefits of 10 vit and 9 str.

Another example just for kicks:
Ilv80 Ultima BRD ring:
11 dex
10 det
10 accuracy

VS

Crafted iLV70 ring:
8 vit
9 str
9 dex
12 crit
8 det
9 skill speed
12 accuracy

By using the iLV70 you give away 2 dex and 2 det and you get in return: 8 vit, 9 str, 12 crit, 9 skill speed, 2 accuracy. How can you even consider the iLV80 to be superior? The dps on the iLV70 is higher, the accuracy is higher, you get more vit and even some uneeded str.

It is a slight oversight with the ilevel requirement for events and also makes the crafted ilevel70 gear even more useless since you are stuck to being ilevel 70 even if you had a full set of ilevel 70 gear that had 5 melds on every piece possible.

It would make sense for materia melds to effect the item lv for those pieces of armor, all they would need to do is have the "base item level" which would be the attribute limit of said item and then the "Materia item level" which would be the current item level that would effect the players item lv rank.

At least this way players using ilevel 70 gear with 5 melds on it will be able to have a realistic item level rather than the one represented as the base.

You could just ask the leader of the party finder to manually invite you if he set the ilvl too high and say you have penta melded gear and see if he takes you.

So, melding 5 resistance materia, or 5 materia that give +0, will just become incredibly common and will be used to game the system.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

So, melding 5 resistance materia, or 5 materia that give +0, will just become incredibly common and will be used to game the system.

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Who in their right mind would waste 200k+ a slot to "cheat" the system and getting a useless item?

Besides, this is no different from people using say, their Allagan tank accesories on mages and whatnot. It's not like its a new "problem".

The ilevel limits for the quests have been set too low in my opinion. When I imagine people inserting Wind protection Materia III just to raise their ilevel, it is not something I look forward to. Already now people are using PVP gear to meet ilevel requirements and seek to be carried through content. It is just a matter of time to equip yourself with DL gear. And ilevel 65-70 is more than enough to enter all the quests we have right now.

I did a few parse on my brd using the following

ilvl 70 wrist
9 dex, 8 vit, 12 crit, 12 skill speed, 6 det

ilvl 90 allegan wrist
13 dex 16 skill speed, 8 det


And I did not notice any difference in my dps....

Please increase the ilvl of items when fused with materia.

I would prefer if the ilvl was boosted based on the amount of stats added by the materia. However, if this is too complicated, boosting the gear's ilvl by 1-2 per meld would be ok too.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

So, melding 5 resistance materia, or 5 materia that give +0, will just become incredibly common and will be used to game the system.

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Who cares. A DRG can wear caster ilvl90 rings and it will boost their ilvl the same as wearing melee dps ilvl 90 rings if they want to be stupid about it. I think many more people will be using their pentamelds properly than the few that abuse it. And for the few that abuse it, that's what kick/vote kick is for.

Sufficient to say, ilvl70 crafted gear that has been melded multiple times (with anything that's not junk) is always going to be better than ilvl70 darklight gear that can use no melds. Yet they are given the same value in the gear level system. This does not seem right.

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Originally Posted by diulalasing

I did a few parse on my brd using the following

ilvl 70 wrist
9 dex, 8 vit, 12 crit, 12 skill speed, 6 det

ilvl 90 allegan wrist
13 dex 16 skill speed, 8 det


And I did not notice any difference in my dps....

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I'd say the extra VIT provided by the melded wrist is likely to prove more useful in a hard fight.

To be honest, I support this idea, because I use crafts myself on WHM and they usually outweigh the benefits I'm getting from the ilvl80 equips and sometimes i90. The only advice I can recommend for this is to get some i90 accesories from the EX Primals and trick out all the party finder runs by equipping those first i90 first. Then after your in the group swap to your normal gear.

Begs the question - why even have Materia and melding as part of the game if its going to rarely be of any use?
That combined with the fact that it is an expensive and time consuming means of upgrading inferior gear, just demonstrates SE's lack of foresight in gear progression and scaling.

Why spend hundreds of thousands of gil on melding your Philosophy crafted gear when you can simply get a superior drop in CT or Coil?

Maybe melding and philosophy crafted gear is ok for your first job, to enhance your ability to get coil drops. But after that, its pretty redundant.

Its a shame because Materia Melding has the potential to really keep us occupied with fine tuning our characters and equipment. If coil and Mythology equipment had Materia slots, we would still be busy today instead of wondering what to do after we've cleared everything on monday, 2 hours after servers have reset.

Introduce an item that uses 2,000 Philosophy tomes and 100k gil that grants 1 materia slot per Coil or Mythology drop, with a max of 5 materia slots and watch the trailblazing community members suddenly return with a vengeance.

SE needs to get creative. Its not that they just haven't released enough content, it is that they haven't managed the content wisely.
The above change wouldn't require gigabytes of patches. Just a simple tweek and the game would suddenly have months of life injected into it.

I was thinking the same.

ilevel should increase by the level of the materia attached to it

level 1: no increase
level 2: 1 ilevel increase
level 3: 2 ilevel increase
level 4: 3 ilevel increase

An ilevel 70 accessory that has 2 tier 4 materias on it would then become i76.

This ilevel increase would not increase the stat cap of the item. It's only to show that the item is now far better. average item level is now important, so melding should increase the ilevel to prevent inaccuracies.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

I was thinking the same.

ilevel should increase by the level of the materia attached to it

level 1: no increase
level 2: 1 ilevel increase
level 3: 2 ilevel increase
level 4: 3 ilevel increase

An ilevel 70 accessory that has 2 tier 4 materias on it would then become i76.

This ilevel increase would not increase the stat cap of the item. It's only to show that the item is now far better. average item level is now important, so melding should increase the ilevel to prevent inaccuracies.

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That would work, but only if the materia is

a) fully in effect
b) it is a useful stats

Or people can meld 5x lightning IV and just use it to bypass ilvl limit of encounters

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Originally Posted by diulalasing

That would work, but only if the materia is

a) fully in effect
b) it is a useful stats

Or people can meld 5x lightning IV and just use it to bypass ilvl limit of encounters

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Or you know I can already equip my tanking and DoW accessories on a caster class to bypass the ilvl requirements. We all know str, dex and parry are soooo important for casters XD

I agree with the OP.

So what would be better? A caster with a caster accesories with 5 resist materia or same caster with parry/str accessories?

What they should do is allow you to meld an additional little bit of your main stat into pieces with slots. Nothing crazy mind you but an extra 2-3 INT/STR/DEX or whatever would do alot to making the materia market viable again. Otherwise 'nobody aint got time for dat!'

i do find it strange that a nq vanya robe with no materia is considered the same piece of gear as a hq vanya robe with 5 high end max melds.

Is there anything that even limits you from iLvl? A few pieces of DL gets you above the cap anyway right?

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Originally Posted by C-croft

Is there anything that even limits you from iLvl? A few pieces of DL gets you above the cap anyway right?

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the cap for df yes, but as people are saying the pf groups require higher ilvl. say you have a full nq vanya set on your blm with no melds at all. as far as party finder is concerned you are just as geared as another blm that has the full set of vanya gear that's hq and every piece 5 melded. sure that other blm can do twice the dps you do because of being so much better geared, but the system doesn't take the overall stats into account at all.

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

sure that other blm can do twice the dps you do because of being so much better geared

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Some extra materia isn't going to suddenly double a person's DPS. If anything, they gain maybe 15-30 DPS if they get really good damage RNG (not counting things like Thundercloud procs, since the person with no melds can out-dps even someone Full i90 if they get really lucky with those and the better-geared person gets nothing) over someone with no melds, same rotations. If the non-melded person has bad rotations and the melded guy has good ones, then yeah, that makes a difference. But gear alone on the same ilv range is not going to make a big difference.

Gear without skill is worse than someone with "poor" gear but lots of skill. Don't know how many times I've been in a party with someone with good gear but bad rotations (like an i80-85 BLM barely doing 150 DPS on Turn 4, while an i70-75 BLM was pulling over 250 DPS; same group, same attempts)

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Originally Posted by PArcher

Some extra materia isn't going to suddenly double a person's DPS. If anything, they gain maybe 15-30 DPS if they get really good damage RNG (not counting things like Thundercloud procs, since the person with no melds can out-dps even someone Full i90 if they get really lucky with those and the better-geared person gets nothing) over someone with no melds, same rotations. If the non-melded person has bad rotations and the melded guy has good ones, then yeah, that makes a difference. But gear alone on the same ilv range is not going to make a big difference.

Gear without skill is worse than someone with "poor" gear but lots of skill. Don't know how many times I've been in a party with someone with good gear but bad rotations (like an i80-85 BLM barely doing 150 DPS on Turn 4, while an i70-75 BLM was pulling over 250 DPS; same group, same attempts)

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incorrect. you can get much more than 15-30 dps more with melds and that's not even taking into account the good boosts from the hq gear main stats over the nq version. sure the 2x the dps is an exaggeration to state just the gear, but not once you take into account someone that took the time to 5 meld their gear will be more likely caring for that class over someone with basic nq gear. it's not a far stretch to think someone with good melds and hq gear will have taken more time to learn their rotations over someone with nq gear with 0 melds.

you mention a 70-75ilvl doing 250 dps, but didn't take into account if it was nq/hq melded/non-melded gear. if it was hq melded gear it is comparable to ilvl90 stats wise and parsing wise.

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Originally Posted by Royze

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What YOU are hinting it is short sighted. There is a reason that DL, Myth, and CT gear don't have materia slots. Penta-melded HQ crafted gear is equivalent or superior to CT gear. It is also the reason why iLVL requirements on content is so low, to allow crafted gear users into them.

Honestly, the crafting and market issues have been caused by the players. Simply because crafted gear isn't BiS, everyone has completely missed the point of their advantage. It's really quite sad.

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

you mention a 70-75ilvl doing 250 dps, but didn't take into account if it was nq/hq melded/non-melded gear. if it was hq melded gear it is comparable to ilvl90 stats wise and parsing wise.

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Except that's not true. Melds alone will not boost DPS by a lot unless a person is really lucky, especially on accessories where people will meld Accuracy and Vitality (acc is only useful in Coil, and VIT has no direct effect on DPS except in fights with unavoidable DPS).

The difference between NQ and HQ i70 is similar to the difference between i70 and i80...and no, crafted i70 (with very specific exceptions) is not near i90, just thanks to the primary attribute difference. Especially BiS i90. The only way it becomes somewhat comparable is if you ONLY have properly pentamelded i70 HQ and nothing else, and even then it falls short.

I own several properly melded i70 HQs. And they're slowly getting replaced as I get the i90 I want. And everytime I replace something my damage or healing only gets better.

Also, just because someone has pentamelded stuff doesn't mean they know what they're doing. You can buy melded equipment off the market or pay people to make the "best" i70 they can, especially now since materia and philo mat prices are really low.