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.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

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.

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Nin in aiming gear would look garbage style wise imo...

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Originally Posted by Vendalwind

Nin in aiming gear would look garbage style wise imo...

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A big chunk of their gear already is palette swapped aiming stuff.

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Regarding materia, maybe something like a materia version of a glamour plate? A materia plate, you bond it to your gear and then meld materia to the plate instead. Lift the plate off to open the slots, put the plate back on to reapply the materia.

Granted, it's a bit convoluted, but given FFXIV apparently has a rather awkward and convoluted way of storing item data I struggle to think of another way.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

A big chunk of their gear already is palette swapped aiming stuff.

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Regarding materia, maybe something like a materia version of a glamour plate? A materia plate, you bond it to your gear and then meld materia to the plate instead. Lift the plate off to open the slots, put the plate back on to reapply the materia.

Granted, it's a bit convoluted, but given FFXIV apparently has a rather awkward and convoluted way of storing item data I struggle to think of another way.

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Materia plate isnt a bad idea!

Just keep the same number of "Fighter" sets but make them shared by all physical DPS...and fuse STR/DEX stats into a single "Power" stat.
Technically, you can also put MND and INT into the same power stat, and have several "Mage" set shared between healers and magical DPS.

This way, you'll have multiple sets with different melds if you want to optimize several jobs, but if you only want to have them at level cap for casual play, you'd save a lot of armory slots.

I think they could put NIN together with MNK and SAM. They all wear cloth. Of course NIN has to be changed into a strenght job, but I don't see a problem with that.

DRG wears plate, so it would destroy his style to let him share the gear with the other meeles. But I would welcome a new meele job with a heavy weapon who will share the plate armor with DRG ^^

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Originally Posted by Vendalwind

Nin in aiming gear would look garbage style wise imo...

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That's also a problem with dancer. Most of the stuff designed with BRD and/or MCH in mind don't really seems like something you would dance in it. But then again, if you think about outfits for DNC they wouldn't be probably fitting a BRD/MCH.

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Originally Posted by Tint

DRG wears plate, so it would destroy his style to let him share the gear with the other meeles.

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If you look at the ronkan body, for example, DRG shares the same skin as MNK. And with the mirage system, you're free to chose the style of your DRG anyway.

You've never met a DRG in a swimsuit ? ;)

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Originally Posted by Pepsi_Plunge

That's also a problem with dancer. Most of the stuff designed with BRD and/or MCH in mind don't really seems like something you would dance in it. But then again, if you think about outfits for DNC they wouldn't be probably fitting a BRD/MCH.

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Red Mage is almost perpetually stuck fencing in robes :shrug:

My opinion is somewhere between 'I would rather not' and 'Heck no!'. Not out for any practical reason, no, but simply because I don't like their usual choices for striking gear. And I'm entirely convinced that's the style they would stick to after the merge, so I'm not interested in a merge of any sort.

The current glamour system makes all issues with gear aesthetics a trivial complaint. It doesn't make any sense to have 3 different melee dps gear sets any more.

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Originally Posted by Tint

I think they could put NIN together with MNK and SAM. They all wear cloth. Of course NIN has to be changed into a strenght job, but I don't see a problem with that.

DRG wears plate, so it would destroy his style to let him share the gear with the other meeles. But I would welcome a new meele job with a heavy weapon who will share the plate armor with DRG ^^

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Or the gear would just have both strength and dexterity main stats. All the gear that's shared by monk and ninja below about item level 115 have both main stats to accommodate this sharing of gear. Though it's easier to just delete the maiming set than to move ninja to using striking, especially if any new melee job can also use scouting gear.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

The current glamour system makes all issues with gear aesthetics a trivial complaint. It doesn't make any sense to have 3 different melee dps gear sets any more.

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Not necessarily, because if all future melee gear would be striking gear which I generally dislike, it means I would be stuck with either old sets or Artifact Armour from that point onward. I want to be able to look forward to seeing future gear, instead of being like "what sort of bleh did they go for this time?"

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Originally Posted by Vallerie

Not necessarily, because if all future melee gear would be striking gear which I generally dislike, it means I would be stuck with either old sets or Artifact Armour from that point onward. I want to be able to look forward to seeing future gear, instead of being like "what sort of bleh did they go for this time?"

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Glamour should probably be less restricted anyway.

Armor mastery traits would be a nice reward for leveling jobs I think.

For example, level 80 Paladin with a 'Fending armor mastery' trait that lets you glamour fending gear as if you can wear it, no matter what job you're on.

Even if Dragoon was decked out in Striking gear moving forward you'd still be able to get that old fashioned maiming look by glamming Fending stuff (seeing as Maiming is nearly always just palette swapped Fending or Striking.) Same deal for Ninja and aiming gear.

only let accessories be share-able..., for glamour reasons Drg should never share left sided gear with Mnk / Sam

I frequently wish I could have separate sets for RDM, SMN and BLM so I could at least invest in melding some spell speed for my black mage without having to worry about mix'n'matchimg different ilevels.

A perfect situation would be allowing different melds on a single piece of gear. GW2 has this with its end game gear and is even releasing an update this week to have equipment sets that you can switch between that automatically change the stats between different versions.

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Originally Posted by Reynhart

You've never met a DRG in a swimsuit ? ;)

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You rang?

https://i.imgur.com/JBIlSOB.png

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Originally Posted by wereotter

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.

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Back in 2.0 Coil of bahamut raid nobody want dragoon cause drg Magic def is same as DoH and DoL and easy to die from normal magic damage AoE lol.

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Originally Posted by Tex_Mex

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.

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Why not just offer Strength DPS both a Striking and Maiming set each time, but just remove the equipping restrictions? Meanwhile, Dexterity jobs get to use either Scouting or Aiming? DPS typically have the most worthwhile fine-tuning over their secondary stats, so the extra options could go a long way as well. We'd still want to make SpS less terrible for non-BLMs on the caster side, though, ofc...

Next expansion, give an extra melee (since we currently have 8 melee and 9 ranged all in all), an extra caster, and an extra healer, and you'd have 4 jobs per armor class.

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Originally Posted by Sawamura

Back in 2.0 Coil of bahamut raid nobody want dragoon cause drg Magic def is same as DoH and DoL and easy to die from normal magic damage AoE lol.

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Exactly. Dragoon kept its higher HP over the other three melee along with higher physical defense.... yet they still manage to die all the time ;)

Though in more seriousness, it doesn't make sense to keep the separation of the gear sets when they already felt the need to change the magical defense issues between the two strength sets.

It could do with some tidying. For example, the Facet Plate Belt of Aiming and Scouting are completely identical in every way, except for the class tag.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It could do with some tidying. For example, the Facet Plate Belt of Aiming and Scouting are completely identical in every way, except for the class tag.

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That, if I'm not mistaken, is also a relatively recent change. If I recall correctly Aiming and Scouting gear used to have differing levels of vitality or defenses.

Though the main benefit to having scouting separate from aiming is the fact that you don't have to compete for left side gear with three other jobs. This is especially important when it comes to the 24-man raids. If you, as a ninja, have to compete for drops with dancer, machinist, and bard, then you will have to do more runs to get an item than other players. Tanks, on paper, have this problem, however in the example of the 24-man raid, while there are 4 tanking jobs, there is only ever one tank on the team. And at worst, and healer will only ever have to roll against the other healer. If anything, the ranged jobs should get more set options than the melee jobs getting less.

If nothing else, that is the main reason to keep so many separate gear sets for melee jobs.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

That, if I'm not mistaken, is also a relatively recent change. If I recall correctly Aiming and Scouting gear used to have differing levels of vitality or defenses.

Though the main benefit to having scouting separate from aiming is the fact that you don't have to compete for left side gear with three other jobs. This is especially important when it comes to the 24-man raids. If you, as a ninja, have to compete for drops with dancer, machinist, and bard, then you will have to do more runs to get an item than other players. Tanks, on paper, have this problem, however in the example of the 24-man raid, while there are 4 tanking jobs, there is only ever one tank on the team. And at worst, and healer will only ever have to roll against the other healer. If anything, the ranged jobs should get more set options than the melee jobs getting less.

If nothing else, that is the main reason to keep so many separate gear sets for melee jobs.

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While your observations are technically correct, your conclusions are not. Because there's always 2 tanks or 2 healers competing with each other in raids, albeit gearing for raids is no longer remotely close to an actual problem now because chests drop that guarantee an item for any class that gets it.

There is one reason, and only one reason, that gear like Ninja is kept separate from Bards. Class Identity. The devs don't want bards wearing stealthy eastern clothing, or ninjas wearing flamboyant performer clothing. They want classes to have a different aesthetic from each other, even if it sometimes leads to confusing things like Machinists getting performance attire or Red Mages using bulky robes.

The best solution will be to find a way to let classes share gear without letting them share aesthetics, but that's a topic for another day.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

While your observations are technically correct, your conclusions are not. Because there's always 2 tanks or 2 healers competing with each other in raids, albeit gearing for raids is no longer remotely close to an actual problem now because chests drop that guarantee an item for any class that gets it.

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The most notable gear competition has been for the 24-man raid for a long time. Since Alex normal, drops are not gear but items to obtain them, and I think Savage raid is tackled most of the time by premade groups, that have time to discuss gear disbtribution.

But who knows, maybe the YoHra raid will also use the chest drop system, making everyone compete with each other for everything.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

There is one reason, and only one reason, that gear like Ninja is kept separate from Bards. Class Identity. The devs don't want bards wearing stealthy eastern clothing, or ninjas wearing flamboyant performer clothing.

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Except that "flamboyant performer clothing" are very rarely "Ranged" gear but BRD gear. Specific job gear would still be job-specific, but role gear can be spread without any issue since they bear much less class identity. If you look at what the dev used for Elemental gear in Eureka, they didn't have any issue using the same skin for Tanks and Dragoons, or a single skin for all "light clothed" physical DPS.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

The best solution will be to find a way to let classes share gear without letting them share aesthetics, but that's a topic for another day.

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Glamour. The aesthetic is what you want it to be anyway. My heavy bulky Gunbreaker tank...wears Squall's outfit.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

While your observations are technically correct, your conclusions are not. Because there's always 2 tanks or 2 healers competing with each other in raids, albeit gearing for raids is no longer remotely close to an actual problem now because chests drop that guarantee an item for any class that gets it.

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24-man raids, which is what I was referring to, only have one tank per team, and two healers.

If you have four DPS jobs sharing left side gear, especially with as popular jobs like ninja and bard have historically been, then you are sentencing those jobs to running more times than other players who have less competition for drops they can use when they appear. In 24-man raids, tanks get whatever gear their job needs and they want since there's no competition. Healers are only competing against their co-healer. DPS jobs have no built-in security to getting items, you might end up in a team as a bard with another bard, and machinist, and a dancer meaning you already have three other players to compete against for drops.

Having more jobs, especially DPS jobs who already deal with more potential for competition for raid gear, share just will further this frustration.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

While your observations are technically correct, your conclusions are not. Because there's always 2 tanks or 2 healers competing with each other in raids, albeit gearing for raids is no longer remotely close to an actual problem now because chests drop that guarantee an item for any class that gets it.

There is one reason, and only one reason, that gear like Ninja is kept separate from Bards. Class Identity. The devs don't want bards wearing stealthy eastern clothing, or ninjas wearing flamboyant performer clothing. They want classes to have a different aesthetic from each other, even if it sometimes leads to confusing things like Machinists getting performance attire or Red Mages using bulky robes.

The best solution will be to find a way to let classes share gear without letting them share aesthetics, but that's a topic for another day.

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You act like any of that matters when many people glamour.

It's long time for Ninjas and Dragoons to share loot with someone else or each other. Them having a separate gearing system does nothing but add item bloat to our inventories.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

You act like any of that matters when many people glamour.

It's long time for Ninjas and Dragoons to share loot with someone else or each other. Them having a separate gearing system does nothing but add item bloat to our inventories.

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They often laze out on maiming and scouting sets, settling for a recolor, but do we really want to get rid of the (admittedly small amount of) unique armor models we do get for them once in a blue moon?

Inventory flooding is an issue, but I would argue that combat job gear is but a small pebble in the pond compared to what crafting classes contribute.

The gear and attribute system is just crap and the whole issue of this here wouldn't exist at all and continue to exist in the future as long it get kept being ignored by SE is, that this game shouldn't have stats linked to gear !!!

As long stats are linked to gear you will always have the problem there that certain gear stat settings are awesome for tank 1 and 2, but like total garbage maybe for tank 3 and 4, because of their class desing making completely no usage of the stats of your used BiS gear that you share with all tanks, just to keep the ridiculous inventory management in this game as low as possible, because of SE being too greedy to give players in FF14 properly inventory space enough to equip every class easily with their complete own gear sets, so that the player doesn't have to worry about it that not all of your jobs can have optimally their own individul look AND be stat wise also at the same time optimally geared for their playstyles too.


Thats the exact reason, why I also already complained myself here about the terrible game design around this games inventory system, glamour system ect, becaus all that crap is maybe just old outdated optimization for FF14 1.0 to 2.0 perhaps, but definetely not anymore optimized for the current version of the game, especially for players which are playing ALL CLASSES, including the crafters n gathers - its a complete mess and it absolutely baffles me, how something such important like these mechanics are being left untouched by SE for YEARS, as if they just want to sit this huge problem out, until it becomes first total inevitable to have to take a look on those isses, before they turn unfixable without having to do an expansion's load of effort to do just to bring these mechanics on the long run back onto it's right path again, so that these systems and mechanics stop being permantly so troublesome for the most of all playes, especially so more classes get added ...

The bomb is short before exploding SE, give us some more space to breath and reduce the ridiculous amount of inventory management to a normal level.
This includes also QoL improvemts, like adding container items as sub-inventories to reduce many items of a same type to just 1 item slot being usem, split up weapons n tools and in general war/magic gear and gathering/crafting gear to separate categories.
Give us ways to increase saddle bag space from 70 to say 280.
Implement GW2 style an account chest that can storage materials for us up to a certain amount ect pp

Thats just a few examples that would already have a huge impact on improving the game for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

You act like any of that matters when many people glamour.

It's long time for Ninjas and Dragoons to share loot with someone else or each other. Them having a separate gearing system does nothing but add item bloat to our inventories.

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I mean, it does matter, otherwise the devs would have merged the melee gear by now. So if you have a problem with the fact that it matters, take it up with the devs. I was stating WHY it's still designed this way. Not THAT it was designed this way. It purely is kept separate because of class identity and aesthetics. If enough players want that changed, it probably can be, but that is WHY it's still designed this way.