iLv needs to change

[radioactive_lego]

Poetics weapons take all of 3 weeks to farm, and that's only because of the weekly currency cap. You could farm a 110 soldiery weapon in one afternoon if you were so inclined.

Why would I (anyone) waste their poetics on a weapon when you could get a poetics Head & Chest to 130 that same timeframe?
Oh, and I've put all this time and energy into a this Relic, that becomes effectively useless if I buy a new one. Furthermore, the among the grindiest parts of the Relic quest is gaining light which I get from doing dungeons with it equipped (and gaining Alexandrite, which I get by spending Soldiery). I'm not even going to get into the achievement debate.

Not only are there multiple incentives to using your Relic in content, but there's incentives to spend your Poetics and Soldiery elsewhere.
Players must have a complete lack of rudimentary sense and proportionality to buy a poetic weapon (or even a soldiery) if they already possess a Relic for that class.

[HakuroDK]

I agree with a lot of the original post's points. Especially where ilvl is a requirement for dungeons, and I feel that certain gear slots should be weighted much more heavily than others in calculating overall ilvl.

In order of most heavily weighted to least heavily weighted, it should be like this:

-Weapon
-Chest/Legs
-Head/Hands/Feet
-Belt
-Necklace/Bracelet/Earrings
-Rings

[Cirgellon]

I didnt read past the OP but I don't think everything is weighted the same in the ilvl calculation. I just reached 50 for the first time a few weeks ago. I had all ilvl 100 armor and jewellry. One piece of jewellry was ilvl 120 and my bow was ilvl 80.

So one 80, one 120, and the rest 100.

My overall ilvl was 90. It would have been 100 if every piece counted equally(or I don't understand averages).


Edit after readi ng the thread: As a newer player, I haven't found an easy way to get a higher ilvl bow. The ones I see for poetics or soldiery also require coil drops according to what I looked up. Did I see that wrong or am I just looking in the wrong place?

[Gilraen]

The problem I see here is that while a higher base stat as present on higher iL gear is nice, the base stats aren't the only stats. Heck, if you wanted to run Coil and be viable (before the latest update) you needed at least a couple pieces of crafted gear to make up for the accuracy that the higher iL gear simply does not have. Hell, the Turn 13 archer body piece is ONLY good for it's base stats making it little more than glamour bait. I agree, iL as it is is useless, I would ignore it completely if it wasn't for all these lockouts. Used to be iL wasn't a thing, but the vocal minority wouldn't shut up about 'noobs in their elite content' and yet... they have yet to shut up about that STILL. And just to let you know, not all relics are worth getting. Their stats just aren't that suited to the role they're supposedly made for. Not till Novus, anyway.

[Valkrist]

Why would I (anyone) waste their poetics on a weapon when you could get a poetics Head & Chest to 130 that same timeframe?
Oh, and I've put all this time and energy into a this Relic, that becomes effectively useless if I buy a new one. Furthermore, the among the grindiest parts of the Relic quest is gaining light which I get from doing dungeons with it equipped (and gaining Alexandrite, which I get by spending Soldiery). I'm not even going to get into the achievement debate.

Not only are there multiple incentives to using your Relic in content, but there's incentives to spend your Poetics and Soldiery elsewhere.
Players must have a complete lack of rudimentary sense and proportionality to buy a poetic weapon (or even a soldiery) if they already possess a Relic for that class.

When I was gearing up my PLD for Second Coil, I bought a Burtgang and even unweathered it before Final Coil came out. I had a Curtana in my inventory and I was grinding it out. I bought the Burtgang because I absolutely needed a weapon that was competitive for the content that was available. Any tank will tell you how awful it is to try to tank with a subpar weapon against DPS or healers with up to date weapons. Tanks are forced into situations where they have to have a strong weapon to even do their job. Other jobs don't get that immediate feedback that says that their weapon isn't cutting it.

As for a "rudimentary sense and proportionality"... Upgrading your weapon is by far your best bang for your buck if you're not getting the endgame weapon in your hands literally today. In today's terms, if you're literally farming up Dreadwyrm weapons today, then yes. Buying a potetics weapon is a waste of your resources. If you're not capable of farming Dreadwyrm weapons, then going for the fastest weapon to reach an equivalent, or closeness, is by far the best usage of your resources to make the gap to reaching Dreadwyrm. Then if you're going to argue that they're making a relic, then their weapon should already be at least i90 (passable for most non-endgame content), but not Zeta level since we're still talking about reaching that point of strength, then buying a poetics weapon is still by far the best thing you could do to immediately improve your chances of getting Dreadwyrm weapons.

[Ashkendor]

They can technically enter T13. But if they're a DPS, for example, their damage output will be about half or less of what someone with an i135 weapon and full i120 gear + one i130 ring (also amounting to an overall iLv of 123) can do.

I do wish that weapon ilevel should be weighted more heavily than the armor/accessories. Weapon damage is important for everyone regardless of class. Then again, I also wish that people would quit equipping Healing accessories on their Monks and Ninjas to meet minimum item level for content and thinking that it's just fine. It's not. It's absolutely useless and means that the rest of us have to pick up your slack. There are also those players that think that a full i130 set of (for example) Ironworks fending accessories is better than pentamelded i110's simply because they make your item level a shiny i130 instead of i123. Never mind that the secondary stats on them are atrocious and a full VIT build isn't even necessary. Hell, you have those players on DPS classes that have accuracy far above even what a tank needs, and crit/det basically in the toilet. Item level is so poorly understood by so many people that it's not even funny. :|

Animus dungeons should require at least an i70 weapon level to enter. As ridiculous as that sounds, this would lock out a significant amount of people who thrive on being carried through the dungeons. There's no reason for a DFR-Expert run to find experts with unfinished relics in their possession.

Uh. What. "Animus dungeons" are everything from Satasha on upward. >.>

[lyndwyrm]

Not only are there multiple incentives to using your Relic in content, but there's incentives to spend your Poetics and Soldiery elsewhere.
Players must have a complete lack of rudimentary sense and proportionality to buy a poetic weapon (or even a soldiery) if they already possess a Relic for that class.

3 weeks of capping poetics at a generous 8 hours a week, 24 hours.
2 weeks of bad WoD runs taking 1 hour each, 2 hours.
<26 hours from nothing to i130 poetics weapon.

How far on a fresh relic (or at any other stage for that matter) can you get in 26 hours? With current rates, I personally could very likely finish atma, but probably not animus and definitely not novus. I'll be optimistic and say animus (i100). If you're starting from i55, the gain in gear from i55->i130 on head and body slots is 22(head)+36(body)=58 str/dex/int/mnd

The gain in weapon damage for physical classes from i100->i130 is 8, with a weighting of 8:1 for WD:STR, that equates to 64. Then there's a 14 gain from the mainstat on the weapon.

In summary, the damage gain from changing weapon from i100 to i130 is greater than changing head and body slot from i55 to i130 by about 20 mainstat points.

-snip-My overall ilvl was 90. It would have been 100 if every piece counted equally(or I don't understand averages).

Edit after readi ng the thread: As a newer player, I haven't found an easy way to get a higher ilvl bow. The ones I see for poetics or soldiery also require coil drops according to what I looked up. Did I see that wrong or am I just looking in the wrong place?

Each body piece is weighted the same currently, and 2-handed weapons are weigted doubly (multi-slot armor pieces also have increased weighting). With the gear you listed that should put you at 98 or so. However, the rounding can seem weird sometimes (I think there's a floor/ceiling function in there somewhere).

As for getting increased ilv weapons, there's no quest for the zenith (i90), you just buy 3 thavnarain mist and trade them in with Drake the furnace in North Shroud. The two tomestones now can be gotten in either Sycrus tower or from the weekly quest doing all three crystal tower stages.

[Ibi]

Why would I (anyone) waste their poetics on a weapon when you could get a poetics Head & Chest to 130 that same timeframe?

Players must have a complete lack of rudimentary sense and proportionality to buy a poetic weapon (or even a soldiery) if they already possess a Relic for that class.

Since we're talking proportionality, let's do some math!

We're obviously not talking about going from a Nexus, Zodiac, or Zeta to a Poetics weapon here. Let's give someone the benefit of the doubt and assume they've already gotten all the way to Novus relic, and work the numbers based on upgrading from that to an Augmented Ironworks Weapon.

i110 Weapon -> i130 Weapon*: +6 Damage, +12 Primary stat, +14 Vit, +16 Secondary Stats
i110 Head & Body -> i130 Head & Body: +7 Defense, +18 Primary stat, +21 Vit, +16 Secondary Stats

*these numbers are slightly different for paladin and bard

The weapon is costing you 1300 Poetics, the head and body 1320, so that's effectively equivalent. Secondary stats are also the same in terms of numbers. While that's not actually identical, they're weighted so much less than even primary stats that it's going to make very little difference.

With that in mind, the crux of the comparison is +6 weapon damage, +12 Primary stat, +14 Vit vs +7 defense, +18 Primary stat, and +21 Vit.

Weapon damage (according to Ariyala) is worth between 6.7 and 9.4 points of primary stat, depending on your job. That means the weapon has equivalent of between 52 and 68 primary stat, compared to only 18 on the body and head. The difference of 7 Vit works out to 102 HP. The 7 defense is almost insignificant (an i110 bard body alone, for example, already has 91 defense).

You're comparing the equivalent of 34-50 points of your primary stat on the weapon to 102 HP on the head and body. Rudimentary sense and proportionality would probably suggest that the first option is superior.

Also, remember that this was assuming you've already have your Novus relic, rather than an earlier stage. An earlier stage would favor the weapon upgrade even more.

[m3eansean]

TLDR of entire thread:

Always upgrade weapon first folks!

[UBERHAXED]

I didnt read past the OP but I don't think everything is weighted the same in the ilvl calculation. I just reached 50 for the first time a few weeks ago. I had all ilvl 100 armor and jewellry. One piece of jewellry was ilvl 120 and my bow was ilvl 80.

So one 80, one 120, and the rest 100.

My overall ilvl was 90. It would have been 100 if every piece counted equally(or I don't understand averages).


Edit after readi ng the thread: As a newer player, I haven't found an easy way to get a higher ilvl bow. The ones I see for poetics or soldiery also require coil drops according to what I looked up. Did I see that wrong or am I just looking in the wrong place?

It is indeed an average. Weapons get double weight if they are 2 handed (clearly..., which is btw mostly everything except PLD). You always divide by 13. Therefore the OP is incorrect; weapons already have higher weight in the average.