iLv needs to change

[JimboTCB]

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?

The Soldiery bow requires a tomestone which drops in Syrcus Tower, and upgrading it to 110 requires Sands of Time which also drop in ST.

The Poetics bow requires a tomestone which drops in coils, however you can also pick it as a reward from the weekly quest to complete all three Crystal Tower raids. The upgrade item is Carbontwine, which also drops in coil and is also available as a reward from the weekly.

[SarcasmMisser]

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.

This post is a perfect example of a player who has been rendered completely ignorant of the potency of gear by ilevel. If you are a damage dealer a weapon upgrade is by far a more potent upgrade than a head and chest piece, especially if said items have horrible stats for a given job.

[Lemuria]

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.

If your relic is already at ilvl 125 or higher (in other words, an actual Zodiac) then sure, getting a Poetics weapon isn't going to be a big upgrade. You might as well take the time to get it to Zeta and have a stronger weapon. For anyone else who doesn't yet have their zodiac, it's a far quicker and simpler alternative, not to mention saves you thousands, if not millions of gil.

The Zodiac quest line isn't something you can easily complete in 3 weeks unless you have a LOT of spare time on your hands and are wholly dedicated to completing Atma books, farming alexandrite, farming light and getting all the expensive craftables for the penultimate step. Getting a poetics weapon, which is a significant improvement over any other slot, is much easier to do.

Getting a relic is easy. The initial level 90 weapon you get is practically gift-wrapped for you. Getting a zodiac is a massive time and money (and sanity) investment, and anyone who ignores that simple fact can't be taken seriously.

[Felessan]

Item Level should be the first stat people can look at to judge their relative strength, but as is, it's just a prerequisite stat people look at to allow them to enter instances or join Party Finder groups, or compare as an epeen between people with optimal weapons.

ILVL requirement only ensure that you are not too undergeared for this particular content, so making weapon requirements is pointless as even if it have greater weight in your performance it doesn't ensure in any way your success.

But then a problem still stands about what to do about this suddenly-common occurrence of big-armor, little-weapon players?

The biggest impact on performance is lack of skill, not a bad weapon.
I (relatively) often see how people with ILVL90-100 weapon outpefroms people with 120+ weapons just because they know their class and proper rotations.
A quick calculation gives me that at ILVL130 changing weapon from ILVL90 to ILVL135 improves damage by about 15% based on NIN stat weights. It's not that much - you can easily see in WoD for example how people have half of dps of the top spot with similar equipment just because they obviously either not trying or doing something wrong.

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.

This is not even remotely true. Just checked myself. With i55 weapon I have 72% of dps of i135 weapon (40% drop).
You really underestimating the combined power of other gear slots. Vast amount of primary and secondary stats far outweigh additional weapon damage stat weapons have.

[synesthetic]

ILVL requirement only ensure that you are not too undergeared for this particular content, so making weapon requirements is pointless as even if it have greater weight in your performance it doesn't ensure in any way your success.

The biggest impact on performance is lack of skill, not a bad weapon.
[...]
This is not even remotely true. Just checked myself. With i55 weapon I have 72% of dps of i135 weapon (40% drop).
You really underestimating the combined power of other gear slots. Vast amount of primary and secondary stats far outweigh additional weapon damage stat weapons have.

I never said anything about making weapon requirements, and never said groups fail because of people with small weapons.
Nor did I ever imply that all underperforming players are only in that state because of having small weapons; skill is a separate issue which I am not trying to address here.

I will take your point that my estimation on an i90 weapon vs. i135 was off.
Between figures I remember from progression as each endgame tier came out, and what I keep hearing in instances now, that estimation felt right.
A drop in damage by 28% is still a pretty big impact though..

I don't have a job with both an i135 and an i90, so I had to substitute using an i125 and i70 with approximately the same drop in damage.
Equipped with the i70, I did about 75% of what I could do with an i125 and my regular armor--similar result to your test. Cumulative iLv was 110.
Re-equipping the i125, and removing an earring to bring my cumulative iLv down to 110, I did 92.5%.
Also with the i125, and removing body armor to bring my cumulative iLv down to 110, I did 89%.
Each trial was a full skill cycle lasting 2:07. Can't really eliminate randomness like crits from the trials (well I sort of can, but I don't have time for that right now), but I think the results of each are still reasonable.

My main point still stands that item level does not properly reflect your character's potential, and is thus misleading.
Two people with the same item level, but one with a far smaller weapon, have extremely different potential. Even different armor slots are not equal.
Almost everyone here knows all of this already, probably because they either happened to read it or someone happened to tell them. There is no metric in the game that shows this. Item Level is the closest people have, and is referenced everywhere as being super important. The second-closest stat would be that... "Attack Power" and "Attack Magic Potency" stat that just mirrors your primary damage stat, making it also misleading and pretty useless.

The game pushes people to learn how to play their jobs, but does little to convey anything about how to effectively do so, beyond just pushing buttons. Stuff like this helps brew bad blood between "good" players and "bad" players. Changing how Item Level is calculated, or providing some means for players to at least make a better-informed decision on how to upgrade their gear, is just one thing I'd like to see happen to help lessen the gap, because I'm sure there are a lot of "bad" players who are honestly trying but just don't know better.

[JayCommon]

Given i130 gear is either locked in coil, requires something with a weekly cap, requires a VERY long quest, or all 3, getting above 120 at the LEAST takes time. It requires you to experience enough of the content to get a basic grasp of your class.

Please tell this to the DRG I encountered in a Duty Finder T5 that a friend and I entered for fun last night, who had full Poetic set and upgraded i130 weapon, but did less DPS than my PLD in sword oath because it spammed the 1-2-3 combo 100% of the time, hit no positionals, and had heavy delays in their combo as if they macro'ed the 1-2-3 combo.... dead serious....

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.

Yeah, they have a higher weight but I don't think it's high enough. I recently got the dread spear for my DRG. My DRG has very haphazardly put together gear set because I didn't really buy many pieces for it. It's like my 5th choice when selecting a class so it didn't have much priority. It still has the FCoB body piece (i90).

But it had the SCoB spear (115). My avg ilvl was 113. Right when I equipped the spear it jumped to i117. I believe I only have an upgraded poetic ring on him as any other i130, so I don't think that one upgrade would have made a 4 ilvl jump, even counting as double for a 2 handed weapon, if it had equal weighting. You don't normally see 2 110 -> 130 upgrades produce consecutive 2ilvl jumps until closer to end of the gearing cycle, especially considering my body piece is still i90.

I think the point the OP is trying to make, and rightly so, is that my damage ceiling actually skyrocketed by making that weapon upgrade. Much more so than 4 item levels would lead the normal player to believe. Which the "normal" player (who just plays for fun, doesn't care about examining team members etc etc.) is who I believe he is tailoring this argument towards.

[Felessan]

My main point still stands that item level does not properly reflect your character's potential, and is thus misleading.
Two people with the same item level, but one with a far smaller weapon, have extremely different potential. Even different armor slots are not equal.
Almost everyone here knows all of this already, probably because they either happened to read it or someone happened to tell them. There is no metric in the game that shows this.

And it does not really meant to be. ILVL is just an indicator. Simple indicator. For DF purposes it's specify absolute minimum of gear check, but it in no way reflects your actual power. For PF purpose it serves to prevent obviously bad geared players into your party but it does not relieve leader from his job to actually gauge party members performance.
The way ILVL structured it means just how far from current "top level gear" you are quantity-wise, not quality-wise.

Item Level is the closest people have, and is referenced everywhere as being super important.

It's not super important. Your skill to put out reasonable dps/heal/agro/sustain damage/follow mechanics/etc or ability to clear FCOB is super important, and ILVL is just important as it gives a metric to gauge your gear. Imperfect one, but still better than nothing.

Stuff like this helps brew bad blood between "good" players and "bad" players. Changing how Item Level is calculated, or providing some means for players to at least make a better-informed decision on how to upgrade their gear, is just one thing I'd like to see happen to help lessen the gap, because I'm sure there are a lot of "bad" players who are honestly trying but just don't know better.

Bad skill is what brew bad blood. Especially inability to follow mechanics.
And weapons are just a minor problem and you most likely than not will just receive advice how to improve your weapon and no offense if you play perfectly for your gear setup.

[radioactive_lego]

This post is a perfect example of a player who has been rendered completely ignorant of the potency of gear by ilevel. If you are a damage dealer a weapon upgrade is by far a more potent upgrade than a head and chest piece, especially if said items have horrible stats for a given job.

Woo name calling. Congrats.

I will now address people who are rendered completely ignorant of the human condition. You (anyone) still hasn't addressed the fundamental conceptions that the Relic weapon *is your endgame weapon* regardless of it's ilv. Or the fact that some gears of lower level are better than others (some Demon pieces vs. Ironworks on SCH, for example).

I'm not ignorant, I understand there is a modest improvement in deeps when you upgrade weapon vs. gear. However, you are fighting the instinctual urge of people to double down on arms they've invested time (and subscription time = money) in.

Metaphor:
Very few people are inclined to buy a new Mitsubishi Evo X, when they have a 67' Vette in the garage they've been actively restoring for the past 2 years. It doesn't matter how much bang for the buck you get out of the Evo - I'm buying a garage for my vette. I'm getting a leather jacket with a Corvette logo. I'm even buying a bumper sticker for my Chocobo that says; "my other ride is a stingray."

Thus, the Ilv solution comes in two flavors:
- Make 130 gear as difficult to obtain as 130 Relic weapons.
- Make 130 Relics as easy as 130 gears.
...or continue to see folks with an average wLv of 102 and gLv of 118.

EDIT: Considering the uselessness of Relics in the near future; the former solution seems more appropriate.

[Fated]

Crafted accessories are generally superior to everything else, yet because of the lower ilvl it will forbid you from entering raid content through DF with them equipped so you have to switch them inside the raid. Now THAT is stupid.

[Gilraen]

Okay, a thought experiment. Some archer goes full Dreadwyrm. By the assertion of too many in this thread, that means they can do anything because they're in the best of the best that you can get, the iL says so! Their stats are sublime!... at least, that's what the iL says, right? Well, thanks to some miqo'te named Ariyala we can see if this is true. Sparing you the Google search I can tell you, it's not. Sure, your Dexterity is going to be over 660, but your accuracy is just enough... for Turn 9. And your crit... well, you might impress a fresh level 50 with it but you'd be laughed out the room by anyone else who ran Coil to Turn 13. iL is NOT a measure of potential. It has never been a measure of potential. It's an unlock. Further, not all relics are good... until novus where YOU set the stats.