Yoshi P talks about Warriors- from Producer Letter Live @ TGS

[konflikti]

PLD relies on DPS stats just as much as other jobs. If WAR and PLD share anything in common besides gear it's that their combo multiplers threat is directly affected through damage. The only difference is WAR's only have to focus on their direct damage threat rather than threat and Mitigation.

Uh... no? PLD can put all their eggs on VIT and still have enough enmity through proper use of their skills. So can WAR, but all the self-heal abilities of WAR will suffer if you do this (except Thrill of Battle, I guess). You are also choosing to forget that DPS can control their enmity gain at will, while PLD also requires less heals due to inherent mitigation, which means they need to generate less enmity to begin with when competing with healers.

In turn PLD relies on shield as well as part of their abilities require it to use them, it's not really something thats debatable in PLDs case and the mitigation can be seen as the tradeoff for having too rely on them. Either way my point still stands you're falling back on mechanics and not gear, even if they went back and took away PLD's ability to parry with a shield equipped again it still points to mechanics and job design not gear itself that is the problem. If it were a gear problem the devs would physically change something stat related to shields themselves and not the code that affects game mechanics.

Tradeoff of having more mitigation on gear is... better mitigation skillset than their tanking counterpart? Jeez, PLDs sure have it hard. At this point I don't really care if you want to call it itemization problem or mechanics/job design problem. The point is that PLD gets more passive mitigation for the same gear as WAR, which is not compensated on WAR gear in any way. You could compensate this by WAR weapon having more damage, WAR weapon having separate parry modifier or plethora of other things that would make WAR that one bit more unique when it comes to gear.

[Duelle]

What stats does PLD need for his mitigation to work at maximum efficiency? None. What stats does WAR need for his (post-)mitigation to work at maximum efficiency? STR, skillspeed, crit rate, accuracy.

Once again, you're bringing up design differences, not gearing differences. It also does not undo the fact that both jobs get the exact same gear.

WAR thrives on active mitigation due to damage output being the primary factor for self-heals, but the unified armor set is only focused on passive mitigation, which is PLD forte.

Here's where your camp needs to make up their mind. Are WAR self heals there to make up for lack of shield blocking, there to replace the mitigation PLD has, or to save you from kissing dirt during damage spikes. Design-wise you can't have something do all three because if it does it is also probably overpowered as all hell in anything that is not end-game PvE.

On the other hand, I would not mind if axes had something specific to them that would counterbalance shield blocking (preferably something that would also be related to WAR skillpool).

There's a reason WAR's forebear, WoW's Blood DK and their Blood Shield mechanic, has been repeatedly brought up in these discussions. And I agree that WAR is missing something from a mechanics standpoint.

But it is also a factor worth considering.

It would only be worth considering if FFXIV had an equivalent to stat reforging and had tier sets.

[konflikti]

Once again, you're bringing up design differences, not gearing differences. It also does not undo the fact that both jobs get the exact same gear.

How hard it is to understand that by design, WAR requires different things from gear than PLD? Unified gear is simply lazy design.

Here's where your camp needs to make up their mind. Are WAR self heals there to make up for lack of shield blocking, there to replace the mitigation PLD has, or to save you from kissing dirt during damage spikes. Design-wise you can't have something do all three because if it does it is also probably overpowered as all hell in anything that is not end-game PvE.

Currently, they need to make up for 10-25% less EHP received from heals, shield blocking and any other defensive cooldown that PLD has. I have said it is at least once already, gear difference is not the big thing, but it is something worth looking into too. The big divider is Shield Oath vs. Defiance.

It would only be worth considering if FFXIV had an equivalent to stat reforging and had tier sets.

Why cannot FFXIV have more diversity in gear? Has SE ran out of bytes or what? Is there some unspoken rule of linear gear progression?

[PessimiStick]

Why cannot FFXIV have more diversity in gear? Has SE ran out of bytes or what? Is there some unspoken rule of linear gear progression?

It's just a design decision. The more diversity you add, the more players will want something like a token system instead. Nothing is more obnoxious to a raid than having items drop that are either garbage, or unusable by the people in the raid. Homogenizing the gear for certain roles helps cut down on that.

[konflikti]

It's just a design decision. The more diversity you add, the more players will want something like a token system instead. Nothing is more obnoxious to a raid than having items drop that are either garbage, or unusable by the people in the raid. Homogenizing the gear for certain roles helps cut down on that.

But we have token system already... And people complain about RNG no matter how few items you get, unless it is absolutely certain drop.

[Kitru]

How hard it is to understand that by design, WAR requires different things from gear than PLD? Unified gear is simply lazy design.

Honestly, WAR and PLD don't require different things. It's not like WAR gets more out of Parry than PLD does: they get the same effective percent contributions from both. The only difference is that WAR gets some minute mitigation gains from DPS stats on top of the enmity increase that both get *and yet it's not like WAR gets more out of their gear than PLD does*. WAR gets less out of everything that it shares with PLD thanks to the difference in baseline mitigation differences; WAR simply gets a little bit from a stat that PLD gets *anyway* (since it's not like there's any decent gear with pure Vit + Parry).

Why cannot FFXIV have more diversity in gear? Has SE ran out of bytes or what? Is there some unspoken rule of linear gear progression?

Redundancy. The devs have done a pretty good job of preventing armory glut. If each tank class needed different gear, you'd have a lot of glut. On top of that, it's entirely possible that their design efforts would be wasted when it turns out that one set/slot is best for both classes, rending half of their work unused.

Laziness isn't the only reason to go with a single set of gear for both classes. Unless there is some *massive* difference in usefulness between the sets (such as if there were no Parry rating on anything and only DPS secondary stats so that only WAR gets mitigation value from it), there's no good reason, beyond simply the demand for more options, to create multiple sets for the same role.

[SwordCoheir]

It's just a design decision. The more diversity you add, the more players will want something like a token system instead. Nothing is more obnoxious to a raid than having items drop that are either garbage, or unusable by the people in the raid. Homogenizing the gear for certain roles helps cut down on that.

Besides that balancing a job with homogonized gear is much easier to do because you know all you'll have to work on is the job itself. When you start pushing for major gear variance, balancing jobs becomes more difficult because some jobs might have better overall gear than others leading to many of the poor balancing decisions that befell many FFXI jobs.

[konflikti]

I guess I am different breed from the current MMO-generation, that is content with everything handed to them from devs, having measly 30 skillpoints to allocate as the only difference between characters...

Something went very wrong when customization was given up in favour of "easy to balance". The worst thing is that it is still off-balance. I might be able to forgive the "well, they only have to work on the job, so balancing is easier" if they did not fail at that too. Considering MNK, BRD and LNC all have different gear despite being all being DD, it is not that far stretch really.

Well, atleast there is materia. Too bad it is too expensive to be viable option for a gamer like me.

[Kitru]

I guess I am different breed from the current MMO-generation, that is content with everything handed to them from devs, having measly 30 skillpoints to allocate as the only difference between characters...

Self-righteous much?

I like having a highly customizable character. I also like having a very balanced game. I also like devs that actually have time to develop new content in reasonable periods of time. You don't get to have all three of those. To me, new content and balance are more important than massive customization, mainly because I know *very well* that customization is an illusion of choice as far as effectiveness is concerned. There will *always* be an optimal construct; the idea that you can deviate from that may be comforting since it allows those that don't care about balance to achieve some degree of uniqueness by applying their own special brand of less-than-optimal but it doesn't change the fact that it is, honestly, an illusion of choice.

For certain aspects of the game, like gear, going with a single option that is well designed is better than creating a bunch of options, only one of which will actually be used by 99% of the population (or get massive amounts of complaints from the population about their personal preference being suboptimal; just look at what's going on in this very thread). The devs have to play triage because their resources (time, money, staff) are not infinite. They have to spend those resources in what they believe to be the most efficient manner possible.

Creating a glut of stat distributions for gear is not really an efficient way to spend resources because it doesn't create appreciable differentiation: you're just changing some number around. Different classes create appreciable differentiation because they play differently. New dungeons create appreciable differentiation because they offer new, different content to do.

If you feel like getting upset or condescending because you don't have a bazillion options, it's all on you because you're not cognizant of what actually takes place and you have this magical notion in your mind that more options equate to more *real* options. The illusion of choice exists as an illusion and, honestly, most people are recognizing this and simply don't care about preserving it. I love what they did with the classes in ARR: they got rid of talent trees and cross-specs and all of the other stuff that creates the illusion of choice and simply focused on making a large number of well developed classes that have all of the traits you'd expect out of a class with a fully developed talent tree without creating a bunch of non-options that exist purely to provide that illusion.

When making ARR, the devs cut out a *lot* of the pointless crap that most other MMOs have included, largely because other MMOs had them. Because they cut out all of that crap, they got to focus on making what *does* matter actually good. They might not have done a perfect job, but they did a damned good job. If they hadn't I'd be playing a different game rather than one that I thoroughly enjoy.

[konflikti]

I like having a highly customizable character. I also like having a very balanced game. I also like devs that actually have time to develop new content in reasonable periods of time. You don't get to have all three of those.

Because you decided that it is not possible. Because what you decide, is indeed a fact.

There will *always* be an optimal construct; the idea that you can deviate from that may be comforting since it allows those that don't care about balance to achieve some degree of uniqueness by applying their own special brand of less-than-optimal but it doesn't change the fact that it is, honestly, an illusion of choice.

Following your train of thought, WAR as choice for tank should not even exist, because it is clearly less optimal than PLD. Merely an illusion of choice.

For certain aspects of the game, like gear, going with a single option that is well designed is better than creating a bunch of options, only one of which will actually be used by 99% of the population

Or I dunno, you could create bunch of well designed gear! Like, you could have these extremely complex things like items that provide MORE DEF for those people that like to play it safe and ones that provide MORE DMG for those who want faster clears. (Oh wait, it exists to some level already on accessories... but I think they should just lock it down, since those damn illusions man, they don't even fit)

you're just changing some number around

Numbers are everything. Literally.

If you feel like getting upset or condescending because you don't have a bazillion options, it's all on you because you're not cognizant of what actually takes place and you have this magical notion in your mind that more options equate to more *real* options. The illusion of choice exists as an illusion and, honestly, most people are recognizing this and simply don't care about preserving it.

Simple people don't care about choices.

When making ARR, the devs cut out a *lot* of the pointless crap that most other MMOs have included, largely because other MMOs had them. Because they cut out all of that crap, they got to focus on making what *does* matter actually good. They might not have done a perfect job, but they did a damned good job. If they hadn't I'd be playing a different game rather than one that I thoroughly enjoy.

They cut that out because of the time constraints you mentioned earlier and also because it was simply less work for them. Lot of that useless crap, for example housing and vanity items, that will be steadily flowing back too, because that is what the large quiet masses want. More customization, more unique snowflake.