Gearing Alternatives? Vertical progression ain't working anymore

So well with the fanfest on sight and new expansion on the horizon there are things that should change at this point in the game, mainly gearing imo.

During EW i started to play alot more jobs and noticed how awful is to try to gear them, jumped into casual savage and it was even worst since is just a gamba to try to get the best gear, there is really no middle point or alternatives, you either get a good gear or have an awful gear.

1. Relic Weapon should be BiS, its kinda sad how relics are just a glam and lose any value pretty fast, considering that a BiS weapon can only be acquired in the final tier of a raid, the relic should be an alternative to have more weapons even more so when savage becomes irrelevant by the time relics releases.

2. Augmented Alliance Gear, some of the gear in the alliance raids has good stats and can give room to different comps of gearing, having an augmented version from the base alliance gear could be a good alternative for gearing. Again Alliance raids releases way after the savage raids

3. Criterion and its savage version should give a twine, shine and brine or tome gear weekly, so the V&C releases as a mid patch content in the same patch of savage but with a 6-5 week window at that point having some extra gear and augmentation tokens can be a good but soft boost on gearing.

4. Increase the tome cap in mid patch based on how many classes you acquired (tank, healer, PhysRanged, Caster, Melee). It doesn't have to be a huge increase but something that at least allows you to have one piece of tome chest or pants per week if you have one of it each class maxed out (not per job).

The idea of this gearing alternatives is to have them progressively so you will still main your fav job whenever a savage tier drops and as time goes by have more gear alternatives for other jobs you might wanna try in high end content.

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Originally Posted by AurisNix

So well with the fanfest on sight and new expansion on the horizon there are things that should change at this point in the game, mainly gearing imo.

During EW i started to play alot more jobs and noticed how awful is to try to gear them, jumped into casual savage and it was even worst since is just a gamba to try to get the best gear, there is really no middle point or alternatives, you either get a good gear or have an awful gear.

1. Relic Weapon should be BiS

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Then it needs a process to obtain it that reflects the bis status. Tomes are basically free, the argument that it's just "catch up" gear is garbage because we are a long ways away from any major content and people who haven't participated in end game content by now, are not going to start because of a relic weapon.

Whatever that process is should be watered down to just tomes after the first weapon.

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2. Augmented Alliance Gear. Again Alliance raids releases way after the savage raids

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Yet savage raids are still going strong. You can remove half the abilities off everyones hot bar and still glide through alliance raids. Your suggestion just kills the savage scene the moment it is implemented for content that you can afk through.

It's not inherently a bad suggestion but it's not a great one either unless they change the way alliance raids are done.

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3. Criterion and its savage version should give a twine, shine and brine or tome gear weekly

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This is fine.

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4. Increase the tome cap in mid patch based on how many classes you acquired

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Why base it on classes acquired? Why not just increase the cap and be done with it.

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The idea of this gearing alternatives is to have them progressively so you will still main your fav job whenever a savage tier drops and as time goes by have more gear alternatives for other jobs you might wanna try in high end content.

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I agree but trying to tie those alternatives into truly brain dead content is unhealthy for any game.

Before anyone cries "omg gate keeping gear!", no but better gear should reflect more challenging content. Challenging does not need to be extremely difficult, average players should still be able to clear it.

In a perfect world we'd get more mid-core content where these suggestions would blossom but suggesting for example using alliance raids for end game gear, content that you can easily clear while focusing on a youtube video 90% of time, isn't it.

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Originally Posted by Troxbark

Why base it on classes acquired? Why not just increase the cap and be done with it.

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The idea is to have casual catch up mechanic for relatively good gear, while the raids give better versions, but have restrictions elsewhere (RNG and weekly limits). The cap also is a way to ensure players cant stock up on them, so even when better gear is released using the same tomes, they wont be able to buy everything instantly.

The problem is that because of the weekly limits, tomes are essentialy the only alternative, but their strict restrictions are making it anoying for multiclassing.

My suggestion would be tiered purchase steps. First purchase its significantly more expensive, while each consecutive purchase on the same slot will drop the price for the next purchase. So for example the first piece is 600, 2nd one is 450, 3rd one 300, 4th 200, 5th (and last) 150. Which gives a total of 1600, instead of for example 2250 when all items are a plain 450. And it doesnt matter when you destroyed a gear piece either, since that piece will then always be an effective loss of just 150.

Savage raids already drop off heavily once the odd patch comes out, just let alliance raids drop weapons and gear on par with savage and unlock the tier at the odd patch. Gives casuals a way to catch up and raiders a way to easily gear alt jobs for ultimate.

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Originally Posted by Troxbark

Yet savage raids are still going strong. You can remove half the abilities off everyones hot bar and still glide through alliance raids. Your suggestion just kills the savage scene the moment it is implemented for content that you can afk through.

It's not inherently a bad suggestion but it's not a great one either unless they change the way alliance raids are done.

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you can already do that being afk im sitting in a bunch of twines and brines that you can get from hunt trains alliance coins and p7s+books that i cant use due to the tome gate, my idea behind an augmented alliance gear is to use those twines in alliance gear being an alternative to the tome gear, maybe im wrong but i dont find savage raid anywhere near "strong", i started raiding in week 3 ish where you could find pf with 100+ parties doing savage, by the time 6.3 dropped most hardcore went into ultimate and pf was dead for abyssos and till now everything is just reclears where ppl doesnt even loot and prog parties doesnt exists, at least till 6.3 there still savage activity but cant join cuz ppl putting ilv 620/625 in jobs i dont have gear for, pf and the desing of it just forces you to main one job for months there is no "play any job you want". Having the best gear locked to savage should only matter in the first 4-6 weeks. Abyssos is being out since August and 6.3 alliance in january thats 4 month of difference.

Gearing all Jobs is not so hard. I have all Jobs Level 90 and only you decide what you want do. Do you really need Item Level 630? Or would be a 630 Weapon enough and the rest 620? In 2 Months we get the next big Patch with new Pandemonium Gear, guess it will be Item level 630 then, so the Stress with Gear is not worth it.

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

Gearing all Jobs is not so hard. I have all Jobs Level 90 and only you decide what you want do. Do you really need Item Level 630? Or would be a 630 Weapon enough and the rest 620? In 2 Months we get the next big Patch with new Pandemonium Gear, guess it will be Item level 630 then, so the Stress with Gear is not worth it.

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Its because of the fear of being gated out of parties if you lack good gear for reclears, even though savage fights are designed to be beatable with the minimum required ilv for entry. I said this before on another thread like this but half of the gearing issue is the community itself where you get gated like this. It would still help to get some sort of easier supplementary system to minimally upgrade alt jobs with equipment thats slightly above but still below savage level, but I dont know how you can go about it.

I honestly just say they need to ease up on the loot lockout when you run savage and have some system that guarantee's getting additional pieces for the week so that you're not AS behind from the hardcore community. But also like I said, the issue is also the community itself that does parties like this. I suppose you can just create a party yourself but yeah

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

Savage raids already drop off heavily once the odd patch comes out, just let alliance raids drop weapons and gear on par with savage and unlock the tier at the odd patch. Gives casuals a way to catch up and raiders a way to easily gear alt jobs for ultimate.

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Catching up... This is always mind boggling. Beyond afking in limsa, what content do casual players need to catch up on and are actively trying to do that requires such high tier gear? "On par with savage" is BIS or very close to it. I'm all for gearing alternatives but trying to tie it into content that is tuned to baby difficulty is not the way to do it. The game desperately needs mid-core content for this to work in a healthy manner.

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Originally Posted by AurisNix

So well with the fanfest on sight and new expansion on the horizon there are things that should change at this point in the game, mainly gearing imo.

During EW i started to play alot more jobs and noticed how awful is to try to gear them, jumped into casual savage and it was even worst since is just a gamba to try to get the best gear, there is really no middle point or alternatives, you either get a good gear or have an awful gear.

1. Relic Weapon should be BiS, its kinda sad how relics are just a glam and lose any value pretty fast, considering that a BiS weapon can only be acquired in the final tier of a raid, the relic should be an alternative to have more weapons even more so when savage becomes irrelevant by the time relics releases.

2. Augmented Alliance Gear, some of the gear in the alliance raids has good stats and can give room to different comps of gearing, having an augmented version from the base alliance gear could be a good alternative for gearing. Again Alliance raids releases way after the savage raids

3. Criterion and its savage version should give a twine, shine and brine or tome gear weekly, so the V&C releases as a mid patch content in the same patch of savage but with a 6-5 week window at that point having some extra gear and augmentation tokens can be a good but soft boost on gearing.

4. Increase the tome cap in mid patch based on how many classes you acquired (tank, healer, PhysRanged, Caster, Melee). It doesn't have to be a huge increase but something that at least allows you to have one piece of tome chest or pants per week if you have one of it each class maxed out (not per job).

The idea of this gearing alternatives is to have them progressively so you will still main your fav job whenever a savage tier drops and as time goes by have more gear alternatives for other jobs you might wanna try in high end content.

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1. The relic should be 640ilvl. (the same item level as the next crafted weapon and 5 item levels below the next Extreme Trial weapon).
This way, it is an upgrade for EVERYONE when it is released, and will serve as a base weapon for the following patch if people are not interested in extreme content.

2. Alliance gear, should straight up be equal to savage. Nobody who does savage is going to care if people get equivalent gear 16 weeks after they have cleared the tier.


3. 100% they should.
Hell i would give Island Sanctuary twine/brine/shine in the vendor for ~20k cowries so that content is actually worth doing.

4. Tome cap should just be unlimited after the following patch.

Everything you do in the game should be vertical progression for your character, at no point should the game stagnate for ~6 months with no upgrades, it feels terrible and it is the reason most high end raiders clear a tier then leave the game for 6 months.

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Originally Posted by Troxbark

Catching up... This is always mind boggling. Beyond afking in limsa, what content do casual players need to catch up on and are actively trying to do that requires such high tier gear? "On par with savage" is BIS or very close to it. I'm all for gearing alternatives but trying to tie it into content that is tuned to baby difficulty is not the way to do it. The game desperately needs mid-core content for this to work in a healthy manner.

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I honestly dont know how this hurts anyone other than ppls ego, and unfortunately mid-core difficulty doesn't exist in this game and that's a different topic as well that i kinda agree (this alliance is a joke) , but like i said you can get a full 630 gear without doing any savage but it takes an awful time to get and it shouldn't, if anything the main problem at the moment is getting Tome gear due to the awful design (you can't get any tome gear by savage raiding, twines and shines are way more farmable with hunt trains), alliance gear + twines being an alternative to the tome gear could easily solve that, Hell having more jobs geared earlier would make pf savage to last way longer and not have a shortage in Healers and Tanks like this tier had, the fact that the pf and the desing of gearing forces you to main one job makes the lifespan of savage way shorter.

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Originally Posted by DixieBellOCE

1. The relic should be 640ilvl. (the same item level as the next crafted weapon and 5 item levels below the next Extreme Trial weapon).
This way, it is an upgrade for EVERYONE when it is released, and will serve as a base weapon for the following patch if people are not interested in extreme content.

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I wouldn't even mind to have an extra step to make it 640 ilv and make the ultimate weapon a 645 ilv too at least in that way the Relic and ultimate weapon can have some usage in the next patch other than glam, Extremes are just fomo at certain point i don't think relics or ultimate weapons would affect it, in the worst case dedicated statics only needs 8 runs of extremes to gear them all.

Personally i prefer horizontal progression but i dont know how that would even work in ffxiv