Bring back 1.0 Notorious Monsters please.

[Lemuria]

Nooooo... really? I never knew that. I was using them as examples, and funny enough I took a screenshot earlier of, oh my is that an A Rank surrounded by smaller versions of itself? I must be seeing things.

So, basically you admit to using a bad example? A few exceptions don't prove a rule.

once said piece of gear for specific jobs is given a BiS in online guides, EVERYONE will have it and it won't be "unique" anymore, alas completing the circle of gear.

Sure... but what if BiS wasn't so clear? What if, shock of all shocks, gear was unique enough that some people would covet one stat while others would want another? That's really the point I was making.

Currently gear has only a few stat bonuses anyone actually cares about. [Main Stat] + Vitality + [insert secondary here]. It's really easy to tell which is the 'best' when they're all basically identical. Now if you had to choose between, for example ,"Enhances Berserk effect" or "Enhances Defiance" the BiS isn't quite so easy to judge. On the one hand, having a stronger berserk would be great for DPS, on the other having a better Defiance may result in stronger heal potency or increased enmity.

That's one thing FFXI did well. Gear was so diverse that it wasn't often you saw people wearing identical outfits. Some would favour one stat bonus over another, which keeps things interesting and makes a great reward for killing a NM. It doesn't need to be 'best in slot' to be worth owning, and if you can't understand that then maybe you should play some other MMO's once in a while to expand your limitations.

Then again, people only like to give bad ideas here instead of thinking of ways to make things like open world HNM's work in this game.

People have given ways that this could be controlled. Even I did in my previous post. It's your choice whether or not to read them, but at least people are acknowledging there are ways to exploit the old NM system and are offering ways to counter it.