Item Level - How high will it go?

So I just wanted to make a thread to discuss a curiosity I'd been having lately.

With 4.0 and Stormblood will come an increase of our Character Level to 70. But of course, item level long since surpassed character level in almost exponential values. By the time A Realm Reborn 2.X had come to an end, item level had reached 135. And now with the closing of Heavensward 3.X, that number has more than doubled to reach 275.

So, how high do you think item level will go by the time 4.X's lifespan is nearing its close? Think it'll go slightly over double again? Level 70, Item Level 555 Gear?

I doubt it would double over, but rather follow similar increments. By that rule....

....starting dungeon gear would be 260.
....fresh 70s would be close to 300.
....70s nearing 5.0 would be no higher than 520.

I think it will increase by 200 tops, so top tier armor being iLvl 470 with weapons being 475, I doubt the iLvl will be much higher than 1000 when the level cap is 99

It frankly wouldn't surprise me to see them essentially "reset" ilvl. There are multiple ways they could do it, including just dropping a digit and rounding where necessary. So top gear at the end of Heavensward would be maybe 28 or 30 ilvl max.

Or they could simply divide by some other number to reduce the ilvl.

That being said, they can continue with the pace they've been going for quite awhile before they have to consider resetting or restructuring the ilvl system. Between ARR and now, we've only gained ~140 ilvl I think. So if Heavensward ends at 280 or 300, that would still only put us at ~430 right before the next expansion after Stormblood.

Well, I'd not be surprised if it doubled again. The more stats you have, the less small stat increases matter when it comes to making you feel empowered. Either that, or we'll get exponentially more stats per item level.

We'll see!

Eventually they will have to stop using this system to identify gear power. The numbers keep rising and in the end we gonna end up talking about i1010, i960, etc. It doesn't look very nice. It was a nice system when it started and we had gear ilvl close to player's lvl but now it went too far off. It will not be easy to remove it as it has implications with dungeons, DF, PF etc. A way to deal with this will be to simply remove and replace the minimum ilvl requirements with minimum stat numbers like critical 800, min accuracy etc. It can also open the door for more horizontal gear progression. In other MMORPGs you judge the power of gear by the color of it (icon color) and simply the stats it gives. Here we just go for bigger ilvls overlooking stats in the process.
ofc it will not be that simple but maybe devs already thought on this.

You guys have this weird notion that item level has to match character level, it doesn't, that's like saying they should reset STR or DET so it doesn't go into the far hundreds because we will be level 70, pears and apples.

You can call it "item power" or "item rank" instead of item level if you want, the point is that it's just a number that denotes item A is stronger than item B and nothing else. We could get into item level 5000 and it still wouldn't matter.

I don't think it'll double again, it'll just be another 130-135 on top (as that's how much it's gone up both times so far). So ~400 ish.

At this rate, it wouldn't be until end of 8.0/start of 9.0 (!) that we started getting into 4 digits and even if we did... does that matter? It's not related to our job level.

At 2 years per expansion, 9.0 would be around 2026, we have some time :P

Thread title is so tempting

I know I shouldn't

but I have to


https://68.media.tumblr.com/16d82694...c18mo1_500.gif

I do not expect item level to continue doubling. I would not be surprised, however, if it keeps going up, over the course of a 10 level expansion, by around 140 points or so.

And given that the item level display has 4 digits, I do not expect them to do anything regarding it (pruning it down or anything of that sort) until it is approaching the 10,000 mark. And at 140ish ilevels per expansion, I don't believe the game will have enough expansions to reach that mark.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SilkaN

Thread title is so tempting

I know I shouldn't

but I have to


https://68.media.tumblr.com/16d82694...c18mo1_500.gif

---

Damn you got first...lmao!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaedan

It frankly wouldn't surprise me to see them essentially "reset" ilvl. There are multiple ways they could do it, including just dropping a digit and rounding where necessary. So top gear at the end of Heavensward would be maybe 28 or 30 ilvl max.

---

Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear. They would have to nerf every content into the ground for that.

ilevel have nothing to do with character level. it only say how good the base stats of the gear are.

How high the ilevel will be at 4.5? It depend on the ilevel steps at lv 70. It can be the same like in 3.x (+20 ilevel), reduced to how it was in 2.x (+10 ilevel) or even higher than it was in 3.x (+30 or even +40?).


I favor the +10 steps from 2.x
Fast enough to feel stronger, but not too fast so the content of the last patch will be still a bit challenging with current gear of the new patch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Felis

Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear

ilevel have nothing to do with character level. it only say how good the base stats of the gear are

---

Huh?

The ilvl numbers are arbitrary. They could label the power level of the items however they wanted. And I find it both confusing and somewhat amusing that in your first sentence you claim a connection between level and ilvl, then in your next sentence you say there's no connection... quite contradictory.

They could label item power with whatever the hell they feel like. But eventually the system they are using now will end up with large numbers that are unwieldy. Thus they will likely do something like drop a digit and round or divide by some other number to consolidate and "reset" them.

Character level and ilvl already don't match after level 50. So it doesn't matter what they end up labeling item power as long as they keep the system reasonable. But as I said, we have have a long ways to go before they even have to think about re-labeling ilvl. At least until 6.0 or even 7.0.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaedan

Huh?

The ilvl numbers are arbitrary. They could label the power level of the items however they wanted. And I find it both confusing and somewhat amusing that in your first sentence you claim a connection between level and ilvl, then in your next sentence you say there's no connection... quite contradictory.

---

A ilevel 32 MNK weapon have str 7. Do you think that is enough for Void Arc, Alexander and the triads without nerfing them to the ground?
Because that is what i mean with "Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear"

Of course the devs can label it how they want it, and they labeled it item level, like "level of the item"
They can hide the label so nobody will see it and nobody will argue about it, even if the stats still increase at the same speed each patch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Felis

A ilevel 32 MNK weapon have str 7. Do you think that is enough for Void Arc, Alexander and the triads without nerfing them to the ground?
Because that is what i mean with "Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear"

Of course the devs can label it how they want it, and they labeled it item level, like "level of the item"
They can hide the label so nobody will see it and nobody will argue about it, even if the stats still increase at the same speed each patch.

---

*sigh*

Okay, let me work this through with you step by step, since you're not quite getting it. Let's start with if they dropped a digit (divide by factor of 10):

Current 270 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 27. Same stats. Same power. Just a different label. By comparison, current 20-30 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 2-3. Same stats, same power.

Now, let's say they reduced by a factor of 3 instead of 10:

Current 270 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 90. Current ilvl 90 gear would then be ilvl 30.

Do you get it now? It would just be a re-labeling to keep numbers from getting unwieldy. Though they won't have to do it for at least another two expansions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kaedan

*sigh*

Okay, let me work this through with you step by step, since you're not quite getting it. Let's start with if they dropped a digit (divide by factor of 10):

Current 270 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 27. Same stats. Same power. Just a different label. By comparison, current 20-30 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 2-3. Same stats, same power.

---

then why not just hide it? Would be better than 3 different base stats on the same ilevel (new ilevel 3, that would be old ilevel 31-39)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Felis

then why not just hide it? Would be better than 3 different base stats on the same ilevel (new ilevel 3, that would be old ilevel 31-39)

---

Because their system with the Dungeon Finder has ilvl requirements. So ilvl has to be visible.

But where are you getting that there would be 3 different base stats? There would only be the base stats of the item, which wouldn't change (+7 str gear would always remain +7 str gear) and the ilvl. It wouldn't display the old ilvl if and when they "reset" the ilvl counter. It would only display the new ilvl.

All I know is to expect tanks to start having or getting close to 70k+ HP. As for Ilv, I really don't know. Am expecting to see ilvs of 400-500 in this expansion but seeing as it was such a slow and overtime progress I won't mind as much. Better than some games where you start at level 1 and already doing 1000s of damage from your basic level 1 attacks.

Who knows, maybe at some point we'll have 55 trillion iLv gear and 60 trillion iLv weapons. What really needs to change is the vertical growth this game offers and focus more on horizontal stuff.

I think the per patch ilvl increments are in stone so by 4.5 we will hit exactly ilvl415

If we assume two things, one that it will work like it did going from A Realm Reborn to HW, and that 270 (for armor, 275 for finished Anima Weapon) is the highest ilvl of HW...

130/135 was the highest for ARR, 115 was the lowest in HW, this would mean Stormblood gear starts at 245, rising 5 ilvls per level and reaching 270 at 64 (275 at 65 for Anima Weapon) and Maxing out at ilvl 300 from the first Level 70 dungeons.
First tomestone gears (ones bought with Allagan Tomestone of Law) were 10 ilvls higher than the gear from the first dungeons loot (Neverreap and Fractal Continuum) so Stormblood's would be ilvl 310.

If we assume 3 new sets of Tomestones, ones that worked like HW, their Ilvls would be 340(350 upgraded), 370(380 upgraded) and 400(410 upgraded).

We have four digits of ilvl in our character info.
So maybe 9999? One day...

Asuming they will use the same system as now.

For stormblood:

First gear set will have around 255 (higher than Lore but less than Scripture), just as 115 on first HW set (higer than soldiery, less than Poetics).
Poetics was useful till level 55-56, so, probably 270 Scripture gear wil lbe useful till 65-66.
Last Stormblood leveling dungeon will have around item level 285
First crafted gear will have 290, 20 more than Scriture gear (first HW crafted gear was 150, 20 more than poetics).
First end game dungeons will drop item level 300 maybe.
First Tomestones gear will be around 310-320
Now, HW tomes and raid gear jump between tiers are +30.
Second tier gear will be around 340-350 (355 weapon), 330 Omega normal
Third tier gear will be 380-390 (395 weapon), 370 Omega normal
Fourth and last tier wil lbe 420-430 (435 weapon), 410 Omega normal

But. I'm sure, probably, the level jump wil lbe even more than +30 per tier. This is just asuming the same progress as HW gear.

I think the op should be asking the question "how much more of of a crutch will ilvl be in 4.0?". We've already seen it in ZEX where people expect to skip soar phases. I'm sorry but unless everyone in the party has 270 weapon at minimum and not including the other gear they won't be pushing anything but their luck. SE really needs to ease up on the ilvl as it really has made it apparent to me that a majority of the player base use it as a gauge of player skill. Which is wrong and will continue to degrade the party finder. I'm 3 weeks into 3.5 and I still can't find a party that can handle soar without a death and I made it to 19% on the first day with TWO tanks.

wow hadn't though about it but i has only been 140 ilvls =D not too shabby for a 10 lvl gap, in wow think you see 140 ilvls from one raid to the next lol. The ilvl creep in wow is so damn monstrous lol.