Increasing stats and ilevels

Not sure if there's been a post/official reply on this yet. But I wanted to know if anyone/rep could tell us what SE plans to do with stats and ilevel increases in upcoming patches and level cap increase.

It seems like some of the stats that are %-based like Block Strength, Defiance, and crit rate are eventually going to get to a point where it needs to be capped.

For example, how much mitigation will an ilevel 150 shield block? 45-50%? Right now with the Noct Hoplon and higher strength is it around 30-35% block? That seems like it would be hard to balance with boss fights unless we eventually get special stats on items. (will we? I hope so.)

i150? That's to assume that there will be no expansion set until after Sept 2015.

In Mar 2014, 2.2 was introduction with item cap i110 that is to last for 6 months, which is to Sept 2014. Assuming no expansion till then, patch 2.4 will probably introduce i130 that will last through Mar 2015. And this comes with the Third installment of the Binding Coil, which some of us already can tell who the final boss would probably be.

Yoshida says he aims for the expansion to happen within 2 years form ARR launch. Personally I think patch 2.6 doesn't seem possible, because he would have to introudce the forth installment of Coil with i150 by then.

So I doubt there will be any major changes on how gears would go until expansion set. So I don't think we will see some i150 shields with some crazy blocks.

It's probably way too optimistic to hope they take a page from Blizzards book and change things so that any % based stat (mitigation, acc, evade etc) be based upon your characters level and not necessarily the amount of any given stat.

That is to say, 500 parry to a 50 tank might equate to a 50% parry rate, but 500 parry to a 55 tank might only be 20% parry rate, essentially forcing you into better gear to bring your rate back up to "endgame" levels. Otherwise we'll eventually just cap out on everything with "crap" gear and stats will become even more mundane as the only thing you need to worry about is your main stat.

Or, perhaps they just have a hidden mob stat that your parry (or w/e stat) will need to roll against, which is a lot simpler, but think about who we're talking about here.

I kind of hope they don't raise the level cap too soon. The problem I have with raising the level cap (If done WoW-style) is that a ton of gear and content instantly becomes obsolete. I almost am tempted to say that the level cap should be gated behind some kind of content & quest that requires say iLvL 80-90 so you have to spend some time on the current level 50 content before moving onto 50+ content. Until you complete that quest you can't level past 50. Otherwise future new players will just be trying to skip all of the current 50 content as fast as they can in the future. They shouldn't need to spend months on it as we have but it would be nice to have it still have a reason for existing in the future. It's one thing I really don't like about WoW.

As long as they don't follow Xis route and add limit break, I think a lot will rage quit if maat suddenly appears in mor dhona.

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Originally Posted by Gerolan

As long as they don't follow Xis route and add limit break, I think a lot will rage quit if maat suddenly appears in mor dhona.

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I'd like limit break quests. It would be nothing like FFXI's LB difficulty. And Maat (+ Aht Urghan/WotG job fights like Laila) was a pushover for some jobs. If they make it as difficult as the RDM Maat fight I'd probably rage quit, but I don't see that happening at all.

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Originally Posted by File2ish

I'd like limit break quests. It would be nothing like FFXI's LB difficulty. And Maat (+ Aht Urghan/WotG job fights like Laila) was a pushover for some jobs. If they make it as difficult as the RDM Maat fight I'd probably rage quit, but I don't see that happening at all.

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RDM LB was the bane of my XI existance for a long time lol, ended up just leveling WHM up and doing it on that instead, was easier lol

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Originally Posted by Fuddy

I kind of hope they don't raise the level cap too soon. The problem I have with raising the level cap (If done WoW-style) is that a ton of gear and content instantly becomes obsolete.

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Every major patch, gear is made obsolete, its is no different.

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I almost am tempted to say that the level cap should be gated behind some kind of content & quest that requires say iLvL 80-90 so you have to spend some time on the current level 50 content before moving onto 50+ content. Until you complete that quest you can't level past 50. Otherwise future new players will just be trying to skip all of the current 50 content as fast as they can in the future. They shouldn't need to spend months on it as we have but it would be nice to have it still have a reason for existing in the future. It's one thing I really don't like about WoW.

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I really don't want to see limit break/genki style quests like in 11.

One thing WoW does right IMO is it allows new content to be open to all players something this game is failing at pretty badly, especially with the most recent patch.

They might drag back the ilvl, scale down the damage formulas, completely remake the damage formulas...anything really.

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Originally Posted by Gerolan

RDM LB was the bane of my XI existance for a long time lol, ended up just leveling WHM up and doing it on that instead, was easier lol

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I did Dancer lol. I probably would have quit FFXI had I taken RDM up to 75 for my first job like I had originally intended. But being delegated to refresh/haste/off heals onry in groups really rubbed me the wrong way, so to DNC I went so I could be DD/support. I'm glad that Yuhtunga Jungle mandragora EXP party made me switch jobs lol.

It's impossible to do RDM Maat with how strict some players were towards RDM without A TON of skill grinding outside of parties (something I was never very willing to do, especially for magic). RDM can't beat Maat with 140 sword skill, 50 elemental magic, 120 enfeebling, 200 healing, and 180 enhancing. He hit way too hard and could do everything we could, which was pretty much everything-- except better. It was a one sided fight unless all skills were capped and you do the enfeeble/sleep/nuke/kite method.

I never beat RDM Maat.

block % is not simply based on your stats, it is also about the mobs level and stats. If it is not done this way it will need to be adjusted this way in the future. It can have a cap, and the number you need to reach capped percent (say 50%) will be much higher for new content past level increase than it is for our current content, thus we do not simply keep getting better and better.

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Originally Posted by File2ish

I did Dancer lol. I probably would have quit FFXI had I taken RDM up to 75 for my first job like I had originally intended. But being delegated to refresh/haste/off heals onry in groups really rubbed me the wrong way, so to DNC I went so I could be DD/support
It's impossible to do RDM Maat with how strict some players were towards RDM without A TON of skill grinding outside of parties (something I was never very willing to do, especially for magic). RDM 140 sword skill, 50 elemental magic, 120 enfeebling, 200 healing, and 180 enhancing. He hit way too hard and could do everything we could, which was pretty much everything-- except better. It was a one sided fight unless all skills were capped and you do the enfeeble/sleep/nuke/kite method.

I never beat RDM Maat.

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Reason I kept failing maat, is been in refresh haste duties for so long, my sword skill was low, elemental was low, one sided fight lol, least whm you just has to heal yourself

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Originally Posted by File2ish

I did Dancer lol. I probably would have quit FFXI had I taken RDM up to 75 for my first job like I had originally intended. But being delegated to refresh/haste/off heals onry in groups really rubbed me the wrong way, so to DNC I went so I could be DD/support. I'm glad that Yuhtunga Jungle mandragora EXP party made me switch jobs lol.

It's impossible to do RDM Maat with how strict some players were towards RDM without A TON of skill grinding outside of parties (something I was never very willing to do, especially for magic). RDM can't beat Maat with 140 sword skill, 50 elemental magic, 120 enfeebling, 200 healing, and 180 enhancing. He hit way too hard and could do everything we could, which was pretty much everything-- except better. It was a one sided fight unless all skills were capped and you do the enfeeble/sleep/nuke/kite method.

I never beat RDM Maat.

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I found RDM Maat to be pretty easy (CoP just launched, iirc), all you needed to do was treat it like blm Maat with sleep/nuke method. It was necessary to have at least capped enfeebling and near cap elemental skill as well as having at least NQ dark/ice/wind staves. After failing DRK Maat several times costing over 2m (DRK was still a blind man with a cannon at this time), I bought some cheap staves and a few potions and took out RDM first try, I was both happy and confused why people had such a hard time with this fight.

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Originally Posted by Gerolan

As long as they don't follow Xis route and add limit break, I think a lot will rage quit if maat suddenly appears in mor dhona.

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IDK why people had trouble with this fight...I beat it on my 2nd try way back in the day before Aht Urgan was released. Yea the fight was challenging but that's what made it good. I wish there were more fights similar to this level in FFXIV.

...........um........... wtf is a maat?

not with gearscore, your gear is garbage in 3-6 months so theres no need when the game is so simplified. old content will be useless to do at cap when you could equip your ilv130 gear and do that updates content.

i see alot of content becoming ghost towns soon already having signs of that, and if SE waste dev time on adjusting old stuff you get less new stuff.

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Originally Posted by TurboSol

...........um........... wtf is a maat?

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In Final Fantasy XI, you needed to do a series of quests to break your level cap. The level cap started at level 50 and you had to do a quest to raise the level cap to the next five levels. The level 70 cap was broken by doing a solo fight against Maat, an old (but very talented) man who mimic'd your class (but used hand-to-hand instead of your normal weapon). Depending on your class at the time, this could be an extremely difficult fight or an extremely easy fight.

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Originally Posted by Skull_Angel

It was necessary to have at least capped enfeebling and near cap elemental skill well as having at least NQ dark/ice/wind staves.

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That was the issue most of us had. We got delegated to refresh/heal/haste in groups and had no room to skill up other magic, particularly elemental. You had to be dedicated to skilling it up if you couldn't get parties that would let you nuke.

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Originally Posted by Nabian

IDK why people had trouble with this fight...I beat it on my 2nd try way back in the day before Aht Urgan was released. Yea the fight was challenging but that's what made it good. I wish there were more fights similar to this level in FFXIV.

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The challenge depended on the job really (RDM is generally accepted as the hardest, and is the most hated/complained about), and how much you skilled up before attempting the fight. Laila (DNC 75 LB) was a pushover for me, but I never beat RDM Maat because of magic skill levels.

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Originally Posted by File2ish

That was the issue most of us had. We got delegated to refresh/heal/haste in groups and had no room to skill up other magic, particularly elemental. You had to be dedicated to skilling it up if you couldn't get parties that would let you nuke.


The challenge depended on the job really (RDM is generally accepted as the hardest, and is the most hated/complained about), and how much you skilled up before attempting the fight. Laila (DNC 75 LB) was a pushover for me, but I never beat RDM Maat because of magic skill levels.

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Dia (II) for enfeebling cap, everyone loves the hell out of Dia (II) for quicker kills and it didn't destroy your MP (and never got resisted at that point of the game, iirc). Nuking was another matter, but easily remedied by soloing the high-level enemies that dropped the testimony needed for the fight per-requisite (which was also good practice for the fight it's self).


edit: sorry if what I'm saying is coming off like an attack, I'm just trying to point out the way things could have been easily done pre-abyssea (know nothing about post-abyssea).

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Originally Posted by Taei

Not sure if there's been a post/official reply on this yet. But I wanted to know if anyone/rep could tell us what SE plans to do with stats and ilevel increases in upcoming patches and level cap increase.

It seems like some of the stats that are %-based like Block Strength, Defiance, and crit rate are eventually going to get to a point where it needs to be capped.

For example, how much mitigation will an ilevel 150 shield block? 45-50%? Right now with the Noct Hoplon and higher strength is it around 30-35% block? That seems like it would be hard to balance with boss fights unless we eventually get special stats on items. (will we? I hope so.)

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Weathered Noct Shield mitigates 38% damage. Friend tells me non-weathered is 40% on the nose.

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Originally Posted by Skull_Angel

Dia (II) for enfeebling cap, everyone loves the hell out of Dia (II) for quicker kills and it didn't destroy your MP (and never got resisted at that point of the game, iirc). Nuking was another matter, but easily remedied by soloing the high-level enemies that dropped the testimony needed for the fight per-requisite (which was also good practice for the fight it's self).

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I soloed the enemies that dropped the testimonies, but I never had enough MP to spare on nukes since they hit rather hard, even at 75 and with slow/paralyze/etc. on the mob. That said, I didn't have /NIN with both utsusemis so only having blink for shadows made me need to heal much more often since composured stoneskin only had so much protection before it broke.

I could probably beat him now, I got 99 RDM before I quit FFXI (level cap raised after Abyssea expansions came out) lol. Maybe I should resub to XI for a month just to beat him xD.

EDIT: Yeah I probably could beat him as 99 RDM if a 99 BLM can 1 hit Maat xD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zib2Atv_eHc

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

In Final Fantasy XI, you needed to do a series of quests to break your level cap. The level cap started at level 50 and you had to do a quest to raise the level cap to the next five levels. The level 70 cap was broken by doing a solo fight against Maat, an old (but very talented) man who mimic'd your class (but used hand-to-hand instead of your normal weapon). Depending on your class at the time, this could be an extremely difficult fight or an extremely easy fight.

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Paladin was insanely easy. Warrior was easy, and WHM was easy. RDM was insane, BLU and DRK could be difficult too.

On topic, I really hope that they do add something like this... there needs to be some kind of gating that keeps older stuff relevant while also allowing access to new content.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

Every major patch, gear is made obsolete, its is no different.

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You're missing my point.

iLvL 70 gear is NOT obsolete right now to somebody who JUST turned 50. They need to do dungeons to get iLvL70 stuff so they can move onto the more difficult dungeons and get better gear to advance onto next content. This is called a progression. In WoW they release a new expansion and suddenly you can skip nearly 10 levels of content and you don't even have to think about any of the gear or content in those 10 levels. It is more like a leapfrog in the progression. Basically ignore 99% of the content of an expansion. There should remain a progression that keeps this content and these items at least somewhat relevant to the progression.

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Originally Posted by indira

not with gearscore, your gear is garbage in 3-6 months so theres no need when the game is so simplified. old content will be useless to do at cap when you could equip your ilv130 gear and do that updates content.

i see alot of content becoming ghost towns soon already having signs of that, and if SE waste dev time on adjusting old stuff you get less new stuff.

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This is why I think when the level cap is raised there should be some kind of gate (a la FFXI style Limit Breaks) to keep players from skipping certain content. There is some content that I'm sure will become like this but it should be prevented in as many areas make sense. The level cap limit breaks don't need to be super hard. Just require a mediocre iLevel to show that you participated to a degree in the LvL 50 content up to that point.

edit: sorry double post...

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Originally Posted by Fuddy

You're missing my point.

iLvL 70 gear is NOT obsolete right now to somebody who JUST turned 50. They need to do dungeons to get iLvL70 stuff so they can move onto the more difficult dungeons and get better gear to advance onto next content. This is called a progression. In WoW they release a new patch and suddenly you skip nearly 10 levels of content and you don't even have to think about any of the gear or content in those 10 levels. It is more like a leapfrog in the progression. Basically ignore 99% of the content of an expansion. There should remain a progression that keeps this content and these items at least somewhat relevant to the progression.

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The reason this happens in WoW is because when they (Blizzard) release an expac with new levels, they basically hand every player raid level gear from previous content (through new quests or vendors); there's no real transition or overlap, old lower-level content just gets phased out. Even if you consider making old raid level gear viable as entry level dungeon gear for new level-cap content, it's still very hard to make old content viable because of other options of gear progression (crafted gear comes to mind).

Ugh, please no Maat. Took me 4 tries on Dragoon -_-

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Originally Posted by Skull_Angel

The reason this happens in WoW is because when they (Blizzard) release an expac with new levels, they basically hand every player raid level gear from previous content ... it's still very hard to make old content viable because of other options of gear progression (crafted gear comes to mind).

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Yes I'm aware of how it works in wow. However, I think a possible solution to this would be to gate players from skipping over a lot of content by forcing them to gear up to complete a quest that allows them to move to the next level cap. It shouldn't need to be full raid gear, unless it's made much easier to get I suppose, but just require iLvL 80-ish or something or maybe iLvL 90 once myth is even quicker to get. A modest iLvL players have to work for to move to the next content. If you did this then new players leveling up in the future will have a reason to do the large amount of level 50 content we're all doing right now.

The only pitfall I can think of right now might be players could buy expansion crafted gear to skip that content but if SE just makes it require level 51+ then it wouldn't be an issue.

I am in no way advocating something has hard or as tedious as FFXI and I didn't mean to turn this into a thread where everyone can reminisce about how awful it was.

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Originally Posted by Taei

For example, how much mitigation will an ilevel 150 shield block? 45-50%? Right now with the Noct Hoplon and higher strength is it around 30-35% block?

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Right now it's blocking 40%. (i110 version.)

Nothing holding this game back to add the Ilevel or stats back like the old FFXI. Like the ps2 version was holding it back. You Seen that maxed stats from the brews for that client on aby it was like a test for them. To see the maxed damage they could allow and not crash the client. On this game nothing holding them back when the time comes to increase the maxed stuff to 999%+ caps. So they do got a lot of leverage now and hopefully they learn there lessons and as time go on. The old content will be one shot kills down the road in a few years , and the new stuff will just grow.

So in the long run , they will not need to spend a year or two on old content to get the players to play the game again if they have been afk for years or months , and just keep adding the newer stuff.

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Originally Posted by Fuddy

Yes I'm aware of how it works in wow. However, I think a possible solution to this would be to gate players from skipping over a lot of content by forcing them to gear up to complete a quest that allows them to move to the next level cap. It shouldn't need to be full raid gear, unless it's made much easier to get I suppose, but just require iLvL 80-ish or something or maybe iLvL 90 once myth is even quicker to get. A modest iLvL players have to work for to move to the next content. If you did this then new players leveling up in the future will have a reason to do the large amount of level 50 content we're all doing right now.

The only pitfall I can think of right now might be players could buy expansion crafted gear to skip that content but if SE just makes it require level 51+ then it wouldn't be an issue.

I am in no way advocating something has hard or as tedious as FFXI and I didn't mean to turn this into a thread where everyone can reminisce about how awful it was.

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This is exactly what they do right now, content has both a level requirement and a gear level requirement, also it has a story requirement on top of that.

I really don't think we need anything more to inhibit players progression.

I see no reason why it matters about leap frogging old content anyway, if a developer/publisher is happy to throw their old content away then that's their choice, I don't see any reason to make new players do everything I did, as long as they are enjoying the game is all that matters.

Some content will always be there in the form of quests and class based content.

One of the biggest issues I have with this game right now is how some content (Titan ex) has cut off a large part of the player base from new content, obviously an elitist minded person would say well good we don't want them in Ifrit, moogle and Levi extreme, however it can be pretty frustrating to have 70% of the 2.2 content (this is including Coil2) behind a closed door.

If they keep this up they will end up with no players left because lets face it large group of players can't get past Titan let alone Twintania.

Edit:- This has nothing to do with the OP's post really so sorry about that.

I'm thinking about how far they will allow us to go with crit. A 50% adloquium makes me want to forsake all MND and just go trigger happy with a warrior.

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It's probably way too optimistic to hope they take a page from Blizzards book and change things so that any % based stat (mitigation, acc, evade etc) be based upon your characters level and not necessarily the amount of any given stat.

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It's already done this way. It's just that the level is not moving right now. But you'll notice it pre-50. Your -0.10s amount of spell speed is not the same at lv 10 and lv 50. Your VIT gives more HP at lv 50 too (about 8 HP at lv 10 and 14.5 at 50).

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Originally Posted by SchalaZeal

It's already done this way. It's just that the level is not moving right now. But you'll notice it pre-50. Your -0.10s amount of spell speed is not the same at lv 10 and lv 50. Your VIT gives more HP at lv 50 too (about 8 HP at lv 10 and 14.5 at 50).

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Yup which highlights another issue, the character stat sheet tooltips don't go into enough detail, it doesn't say how much 300 int adds to your characters damage or how much crit increased your percentage to crit, doesn't say how much def mitigates damage or accuracy increases hit rate of a monster of the same level etc.

I hope when addons are released we will get a bit more information behind the stat calculations of this game. (without the need of hitting things for hours and looking at a parser)

I would like to have seen similar limit break quests implemented in XIV on the way to level cap, but I know it's not going to happen. There's too much leeway and opportunity for "carrying" in this game.

(Am I the only one who liked facing Maat? I even did it as RDM for my first time.)

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Originally Posted by Fuddy

Yes I'm aware of how it works in wow. However, I think a possible solution to this would be to gate players from skipping over a lot of content by forcing them to gear up to complete a quest that allows them to move to the next level cap. It shouldn't need to be full raid gear, unless it's made much easier to get I suppose, but just require iLvL 80-ish or something or maybe iLvL 90 once myth is even quicker to get. A modest iLvL players have to work for to move to the next content. If you did this then new players leveling up in the future will have a reason to do the large amount of level 50 content we're all doing right now.

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Here's how I think it will play out.

Whenever someone joins the game, their goal is to acquire awesome loot and join their Free Company buddies in tackling the toughest game content. Right now, the progression for this isn't unreasonable:

Level up -> AF -> do dungeons for level 60 through 80 gear while grinding myth for 90 gear -> do primals for level 75 to 90 weapons -> do coil and save soldiery for higher level gear

It's not a horrendously long progression right now. A casual player could get it done in a couple months, while a hardcore player could do it in a couple weeks.

But years down the road, when FFXIV has three or four expansions under its belt, endgame ilvl is in the thousands, and characters cap at level 99? Each step of the way, more content and higher ilvl gear is added. If it takes months now to get a casual from ilvl 1 to ilvl 100, it will take YEARS for a new player to get from ilvl 1 to ilvl 1000 if they're forced to take all the same steps along the way that the rest of us did. A lot of folks will be turned off by that.

So, SE will add shortcuts to allow new players to catch up to old players more quickly. It's already started; while not as easy as picking up Darklight gear used to be, getting Myth armor is tons easier than it used to be. Players can grind dungeons for Myth and more or less bypass the level 60-80 stuff. Retainers are walking home with Primal hard mode weapons.

It may seem kind of sad to imagine a future where players outright skip content that we see as mainstays now, but that's just how it goes. Getting from 1 to 1000 in ten-level increments will just be too much of a chore to attract new players.