Gear should grant passive abilities

[Nahara]

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them.

Maybe not initially, but eventually you're going to run into the situation where the passive bonus provided by a piece of equipment turns out to be so good that no other option for gear in that slot will ever become viable until something even better comes around that replaces it.

The way gear is setup right now, you're not ever really going to have that problem, because even if there's not a whole lot of options, you still have some choice and room for personal preference. People will debate the benefits of +20 Crit. vs +20 DET, and both sides could be right, depending on the kind of build you're going for.

However, if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

There's no choice anymore, you either have it, or you're bad. And that's not right.

I do think it would be cool to see set stat bonuses on some gear sets like SE currently does with the grand company gear.

[Edellis]

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them.

Maybe not initially, but eventually you're going to run into the situation where the passive bonus provided by a piece of equipment turns out to be so good that no other option for gear in that slot will ever become viable until something even better comes around that replaces it.
The way gear is setup right now, you're not ever really going to have that problem, because even if there's not a whole lot of options, you still have some choice and room for personal preference. People will debate the benefits of +20 Crit. vs +20 DET, and both sides could be right, depending on the kind of build you're going for.

However, if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

There's no choice anymore, you either have it, or you're bad. And that's not right.

I do think it would be cool to see set stat bonuses on some gear sets like SE currently does with the grand company gear.

Thats why set bonuses like "+20 crit" and "+20 Det" aren't the type of set bonuses you should implement. At least, they aren't the types of ones i was talking about, because they still only provide linear DPS increases.
I was thinking more along the lines of, maybe an optional stance you can activate with the gear equipped, or things that allow you to completely change your playstyle.

"-40 STR, +100 Skill Speed".

"-800 TP, +300% Auto Attack damage."

"-40% MP, provide swiftcast"

"-50% TP/MP regeneration for 20 seconds, +30 Det for 10 seconds"

"+200 DET, -1.4% overall damage per missing HP%" (Ultima Weapon?)


Or, simply allow you to use completely unique abilities with different cooldowns or TP/MP costs that you usually wouldn't have access to on your class.

"30 Potency, 40% chance of Petrify"

"50 Potency, Recovers 100% of damage dealt as HP"

"370 potency attack if enemy is under 15% HP, at cost of 999 TP"


They don't have to all be useful 100% of the time, they could even be completely suboptimal, but depending on the weapon you have equipped, you could have benefits in some areas and detriments in others. It just adds some non-linear strategy for tackling content. The catch is to 1) not make these Passives but Actives, and 2) balance them around the weapons.

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them. . .
if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong
if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

Hopefully if they do implement a bonus stat system the choices wont be so black and white.
+20% full thrust damage vs +5% blood for blood damage vs +10sec blood for blood duration
Each one has its own flavor with pros and cons.