New Jobs Gated Behind Completion of 2.0 Story?

[Viridiana]

You are basically suggesting getting carried by duty finder. That works fine for one person, but when you have half the party with 3.5k HP in titan, not so much.

How much HP do you think people had when we were clearing Titan? If you've got an i55 or better weapon (GC, any Primal) and pretty much anything more than "base AF gear and fresh 50 jewelry", you're geared enough to clear Titan. An i120 belt and jewelry plus an i55 weapon is enough.

Plus no levi weapons at ~ilvl60, they drop from EX.

My mistake.

And when all the geared players are doing fun new expansion content, you end up with 2-3 people trying to carry 5-6.

Which, for most of the primals, is enough. And that's if the 5-6 new people all die.

If you're going into 2.4 content with a weapon below 90, and 2.5 content with a weapon below 100, you are getting carried. Try a crystalis some time with all dps weapons below 90, see how well that goes.

By the time you get to Chrysalis, you can for a minor detour have gotten your Zenith. I left it out of my earlier post, but it's not much of a detour at all.

You can have an average ilvl of 100 and be less useful to your party than someone with an average ilvl of 40 (130 weapon/body/pants). Hitting the minimum ilvl with the weakest slots leaves your party better off with you getting locked out of the fight.

That's hyperbole and you know it. I know that the ilvl algorithm needs a lot of work, but a half-competent but undergeared person does not put out *negative* numbers, which is what would be required for your last sentence to be true.

Plus with expansion, there likely will be no soldiery tomes, and poetic tomes will likely be significantly decreased from where soldiery tomes are now for a month or two.

We don't actually know what will happen to poetics. It's an expansion, not just another patch, so we don't know what their plans are. *If* the pattern holds, you're right that tomes will be harder to come by. If the pattern does not hold, there's no telling what they'll do.

And my earlier post almost entirely ignored hunts, which are also a valid method of getting gear. Even with no S ranks, a few hours of hunting can get you an i100 chest piece. And that's if they don't move the i120 pieces to the hunt vendor. And if 3.0 lowers hunt participation, that makes it even easier for a fresh 50 to hunt. Especially since hunts don't require good gear as long as you have some tanks and healers for aggro.

And that's *still* ignoring cheap crafted gear.

Face it, when you add all the ways to get gear easily in this game, there's no reason it should take long to hit i90.

[StouterTaru]

snip

You skipped the main point, which is that it requires being carried while having an effective ilvl 10 levels below the minimum, while the people that would be doing the carrying are enjoying the new content.

An undergeared person can definitely have a negative helpfulness in an instance, when they are sucking up so much healer mp/time from being kept alive and raised. Many fights have a dps and HP check, that you won't meet at the minimum ilvl met by high level accessories. Zenith at crystalis is still being carried.

And this is still 200+ hours to reach the content that you bought the game to play when you have to grind hunts/dungeons/relic to reach that point.

The "cheap" ilvl90 crafted gear is going for 300k+ per piece on my server. The also cheap 110 gear is closer to 1.5M per piece.

[Viridiana]

You skipped the main point, which is that it requires being carried while having an effective ilvl 10 levels below the minimum, while the people that would be doing the carrying are enjoying the new content.

The only way you can be 10 ilvl below the minimum even as a fresh 50 is if you're talking about Leviathan onward. And if you're keeping up with your weapon, not even Levi.

An undergeared person can definitely have a negative helpfulness in an instance, when they are sucking up so much healer mp/time from being kept alive and raised. Many fights have a dps and HP check, that you won't meet at the minimum ilvl met by high level accessories.

I focused more on the accessories for a number of reasons. Yes, it's the biggest ilvl increase for most fresh 50s. It's also (on Balmung anyway) the most gil-friendly way to level up.

Zenith at crystalis is still being carried.

No. Having a weapon that is the same as the required ilvl average is not being carried.

And this is still 200+ hours to reach the content that you bought the game to play when you have to grind hunts/dungeons/relic to reach that point.

You bought the game only to play the expansion? You dropped $40 or more on the base game with no intention of playing it at all? Because that seems like a waste of money.

The "cheap" ilvl90 crafted gear is going for 300k+ per piece on my server. The also cheap 110 gear is closer to 1.5M per piece.

For NQ? And how much are the mats? And how much is it to buy NQ and meld it to have the same primary stats as the HQ? Because these are all valid options that I somehow doubt you looked into.