Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[skaterger]

This is the defense that is always used when someone brings up horizontal progression and stat diversity and it really isn't true. For one, as stats get more complex, the less other people tend to care about your gear as long as it is level and job appropriate. But sure, someone will always come out with best cookie cutter builds for DPS Output, Healing Output and Damage Mitigation. But you can most certainly have different synergies in gear and on top of that you can also have bonus attributes like movement speed, resistance and a whole slew of other things that work out situationally or to optimize burst damage over sustained. You can't tell me that a +5% movement speed buff has no chance of saving a bad dodger in Titan EX, Ramuh EX, T6 can you? What if you are fighting something that does a lot of unavoidable AoE damage but isn't made any easier by high DPS, wouldn't you like the option of using a higher defense/HP set at the cost of DPS output? Hypothetical of course but what if you could stack enough resist petrify to never have to worry about Shriek, Voice or Petrifaction on T7 again. Or imagine if your tank found a piece of gear that makes it so if he gets hit for more than half his HP in a single attack it restores 25% of the damage from the attack. That sure would be nice for Death Sentence or Ravensbeak right?


I've clearly seen these kinds of things work out flawlessly in multiple MMOs. In XI on my BLM when soloing I optimized very specifically to ensure that I could 1-shot my mob or I would get dead real fast. For normal farming I pulled out a scythe to whack things with, then for endgame bosses it was all about Elemental Magic Skill to reduce resists. My Cleric in Aion has 5 sets of gear (HP, Magic Resistance, Block, Healing Boost/MP and Magic Boost) that I use in PvE depending on the fight (no gear swap mechanics here). Many Clerics would often fail at healing runs because they would die or wouldn't have the MP to handle it. In my DPS set I frequently clocked in the top 5 DPS of all players at open world fortress sieges gaining me top credit and making solo content go by absurdly fast. Man what I would pay for a DPS set on my WHM in FFXIV cause holy farming is amazing already.

Actually the examples you provided hit the nail on the head for the problems that would arise with horizontal progression. Using your example as gear which gives petrification resistance for T7, ask yourself what is the biggest cause of wipes in T7. Yes petrification. So what do you think would be the requirement in PF for people that wish to join T7 runs? I think you can answer than question yourself. This is the inherent problem with horizontal progression. It is impossible to balance because the number of variables that developers have to balance with the multitude of gear out there is going to break the game in some form or another. You can even see it in the game currently. Groups that push world firsts have their members stack crafted gear and meld their accessories with vitality. That is not horizontal progression, there is no choice involved, that is forcing you to play the game in a certain way. It is even more limiting that any form of vertical progression.

First off, melded accessories by definition aren't at the current iLVL cap, making them inherently less good than anything that is at the current iLVL cap, period. The amount of specialization/odd stats you can do are pretty limited, and quite expensive. If you can think of any melded accessories that with their secondary stats make X fight more easier than using iLVL capped gear, please let us know.

Either way, this is nothing at all like for example using full Lightning Resistance gear and taking substantially less damage from Ramuh EX, which was a common tactic used in FFXI (tank dragons using fire resist gear so their unavoidable fireball attacks did next to nothing). Also doesn't really speak to the other wonderful examples given by other posters on how using different stats for different purposes would be way better than how the system currently works.

I remember raiding SSC in BC Wow and there was this boss called Hydross the Unstable. He was a water elemental whose attacks and abilities all dealt frost damage. If you had 0 frost resistance, which most tanks up to that point had none since content prior to that did not call for frost resist gear, you would be 2 shotted by his basic attack. So guilds had to farm for these gear from the trash leading up to the boss repeatedly hoping that the pattern for the gear drop and then had crafters craft a full set of frost resist gear for the tank. What you are asking for is basically this, again similar to my previous point, only one way and one way only to play the game. I'm not saying that this is a bad system, it could work in a niche game like Wildstar, but do you seriously think it has a place in ffxiv? What you are asking for is the company to do a 180 degree turn in its vision for the game and a big FU to players who played the game from launch.