rip crafted accessories

[Rbstr]

The only way I see meldable blue gear working is if it can't be overmelded. 29% chance of success on your 3rd meld, and you have to do it for 11 pieces of gear now? ridiculous.

Yeah, I hope it's just the open 100% slots and no overmelding possible. That's still potentially 20 or more slots depending on how many but you won't be rng-subjected.

You have to be someplace in between these:
You balance raids to penta-gear and you price out players from raiding.
You balance raids to non-melded gear and the melds are a huge advantage.

[giantslayer]

As a crafter, the accessories have really been the only thing we could make that wasn't second-rate garbage. Even then, it was frustrating to have a hard time meeting minimum ilvl requirements because my crafted accessories dragged down my ilvl, even though they were better IMO than higher level regular stuff.

I consider having the accessories no longer being anything all that special in exchange for being higher ilvl and being able to make everything else higher ilvl a good trade. I look forward the day when accessories aren't the only thing that is worth crafting.

As far as people's concerns about players with non-melded gear being shunned... you are vastly overestimating the power of secondary stats melded on by materia. I didn't play WoW, but I imagine those gems actually made a noticeable difference in how powerful people were. If someone were to meld five grade 4 determination materia into an item (which will be prohibitively expensive), they would get a whopping 30 points of determination. How much is that good for? Not much. Ilvl will still be more important. I made pentamelded i110 left-side equipment for myself back in 2.5 and guess what? It was inferior to generic i120 stuff that dropped from 24-man raids. Accessories were different because you could have two primary stats instead of one, but everything else was inferior and pentamelding did very little to change that.

I am kinda hoping that forbidden melds won't be possible on non-crafted gear. That would keep a lot of materia from going down the toilet.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

One thing I'm curious about actually.

Say you buy Exotic Goobbue panties of striking, meld a determination V, and then upgrade it to Magnificent Goobbue Panties of Striking, it should keep the determination V, right?

[Jim_Berry]

Yeah it kinda sucks. Melding stuff to everything else should be pretty good for the game though.

I don't know, man... People might get kicked from content by players if players are not melded. This might now be 100% a good thing. I just hope the community don't make it mandatory.

[Xenosan]

I don't know, man... People might get kicked from content by players if players are not melded.

I don't think Melds are not going to be that important. I think it's safe to assume the primary stats will already be at meld caps. New Tomestone or Raid gear that can be melded... you get to meld a 3rd secondary stat or cap the one secondary that isn't already. That's about it. Make it easier to meet an accuracy threshold by melding some more in. If they added more interesting Materia like Block Rate or Block Strength +, TP return +, MP return +, etc etc than maybe. But as is we're talking about secondaries. Which don't make or break the 'bare necessity' of a class at all really

[Brannigan]

I don't know, man... People might get kicked from content by players if players are not melded. This might now be 100% a good thing. I just hope the community don't make it mandatory.

People get kicked right now for having gear that's too weak. This isn't much different and it should add some productive stuff to do outside of raids and tomestones. It might even get a market going for crafted stuff->spiritbond fodder.

[Lastelli]

People get kicked right now for having gear that's too weak. This isn't much different...

Not true. People get kicked if the have weak gear AND they suck at their job. I've been playing for almost 2 years now and I have yet to see a player being kicked only because of weak gear. If by "productive stuff" you mean spending several hours spiritbonding to meld your equipment then I'd rather not have any productive stuff to do outside of raids. Most raiders don't care about gil, forcing them to meld their equipment to be able to clear content by either spending millions of gils (that most of them don't have) or wasting time doing the most boring and alienating activity in this game (i.e. spiritbonding) would just be the stupidest thing ever.
Devs must be veeery careful with this one. If they leave forbidden melding as it is now and make it possible for every piece of gear I can see most raiders up in arms.

[Duelle]

The main issue with materia is acquisition, and the supply will be vastly outstripped by the demand as has been the case before. Even if raid/tomestone gear is limited to a set number of slots with no overmelding, you're still expecting people to line the pockets of those with too much free time on their hands (and anyone thinking V's prices will taper and dip is lying to themselves, again because of the issues with acquisition).

I see people comparing this to enchanting and jewelcrafting in WoW, except those had sure ways of creating your desired gem/enchant (which means you don't have RNG aggravating levels of rarity, thus driving prices up). When you cut a talasite or cardinal ruby, you know exactly what type of gem you're getting. Likewise with enchants; there's no RNG involved in the potency of the enchant being used or the effect. Materia does not work like this. If anything, I'd say it'll be more expensive than enchanting and jewelcrafting. And it sucks when you're hovering around 2.3 million gil.

[Sandamar]

I personnally don't like the idea at all. Us raider are already spending a good amount of money on food and potion.

I truly don't want to sink more time/gils into melding new gear.

[karateorangutang]

Materia V prices are gonna go through the roof.

.... time to get making gil

This is also probably relevant, from the Q&A thread ( http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3389641 ):

This was interesting. If it's alluding to changing the formula for tanks like the wording appears to be. Could they be looking at figuring VIT into the damage formula? It would be a boon for both PLD and DRK and would counter balance some of WAR's self heals like equilibrium and second wind. Just a thought.