Can future relic weapons have special abilities?

[Azper]

I don't believe we should have boring stats for the sake of "But the abuse", but that seems to be the response to a lot of suggestions.

A few extra points into secondary stats through melds is hardly the same as a completely new abilitiy, proc, or reduced CD which was what the OP suggested. Again, I said I would like this, too. But I see both sides, where it could easily turn ugly.

[Zumi]

SE started doing set bonuses a lot when Abyssea came out in FFXI for the AF3 gear (head, body, hands, legs, and feet). For example on PLD when you got 2 or more pieces of AF3 you would get physical damage reduction, each additional piece you equipped got you 5% more damage reduction. Which means they could do it in FFXIV.

[WellFooled]

FFXIV's biggest weakness is boring stats on gear and inability to customize our combat at all (no skill trees, merit points, sub jobs, or the like) I would love, love to see some kind of ability augmentations, traits, or more complex stats added to our gear. I think it would go a long way toward correcting one of FFXIV's biggest weaknesses.

[Dyvid]

Well for the life of me I don't understand why they never really embraced the materia system. It's the perfect design to customize our gear yet they never ran with it. Job specific materia really is a must if we want to move away from the boring ilvl glamour upgrades that people are getting tired of.

As it stands, WoW Legion's AF weapon is copying XI/XIV and they might actually be doing it better.

[Colorful]

A few extra points into secondary stats through melds is hardly the same as a completely new abilitiy, proc, or reduced CD which was what the OP suggested. Again, I said I would like this, too. But I see both sides, where it could easily turn ugly.

The development team knows how to balance content (albeit sometimes a little late), I somehow really doubt cutting 5 seconds off Jugulate for Ninjas would create a scenario for people to exclude others as it wouldn't create a substantial change. It's a minor change, sure, but it's still leagues ahead how the current system is setup where it's always flat stat bonuses. Been playing for 1.5 years now and I can't imagine getting new gear would be anything special in one or year, instead of thinking "What interesting bonuses does this set piece have?", I have the mentality of "Does it look cool?", that's all there is to look forward to really other than pushing out higher numbers.

[RiceisNice]

As it stands, WoW Legion's AF weapon is copying XI/XIV and they might actually be doing it better.

Coming from someone that's played up to MoP as a hunter, one of my primary gripes from their specialization system (think soulstones added onto a base class) is that they follow the base template, and some don't nessescarly work very well to give their according specs an identity, espesically if the different specs were within the same DPS archetype (such as melee, ranged, or caster). Coming from a hunter, their base template was a physical ranged attacker that uses beast pets.

Beastmastery allowed them to tame exotic pets, and granted abilties that give them more synergy with pets, such as giving them an instant damage nuke, enraging, and beast cleaving.
Marksmanship focused on using your ranged weaponry to deal damage from shots
Survival used...ranged weaponry to deal damage from special ammunition and poisoned shots.

WoD's changes did not do much to address, (and among other things, was one of their downfalls for this expansion), and tbh is something I'm actually seeing with BRD/MCH right now.

Going by legion previews, even if you don't look at their artifact weapons, they're doing each of the specializations to give them more of a distinctive feel from the ground up, versus drawing from a common, base template.

Beastmastery retains their pets, and gains an additional pet and more abilties that augment it as such.
Marksmanship foregos the pet entirely, and is given more of an emphasis on the "sniper" aspect.
Survival foregoes a ranged weapon to use a 2h polearm, while being able to use traps, instinctive attacks with a pet and throwing weapons.

That's not including the weapons, which have a tremendous amount of horizontal builds going for it. As I've mentioned before though, I don't think FFXIV needs something as expansive as different specializations; the armory system and the ability to play as multiple jobs do well enough as is (sans job exclusive gear like eso). Though the problem from that is two jobs in particular are much too similar to each other (BRD and MCH), and that all jobs largely play/feel the same (which also applies to aesthetically) at lvl 60 in 3.0 compared to lvl 60 in 3.5. You don't feel any stronger or different than you were before from gaining gear because they're all functionally the same, you're just min/maxing on numerical stats rather than effects.

The development team knows how to balance content (albeit sometimes a little late), I somehow really doubt cutting 5 seconds off Jugulate for Ninjas would create a scenario for people to exclude others as it wouldn't create a substantial change. It's a minor change, sure, but it's still leagues ahead how the current system is setup where it's always flat stat bonuses. Been playing for 1.5 years now and I can't imagine getting new gear would be anything special in one or year, instead of thinking "What interesting bonuses does this set piece have?", I have the mentality of "Does it look cool?", that's all there is to look forward to really other than pushing out higher numbers.

Honestly, numbers are something that can be tuned easily compared to mechanical changes or functionality of abilities. If something like allowing Bootshine to hit twice with positional bonus was too strong, they could just make the second hit do .5 of the original damage. But with how very minuscule the secondary stats are, I'd feel like any sort of bonus addition is objectively stronger than a sub-optimal secondary stat piece with no bonus.

[Zojha]

FFXIV's biggest weakness is boring stats on gear and inability to customize our combat at all[...]

Which I do not find much of a weakness at all to be honest, largely because I never found stats particularly exciting. I can agree on combat customization to a degree, and that degree is the limitation to gameplay changing effects.

Simply put, if the customization doesn't change the way I play, I'd rather not have it at all. I don't need customization when I still do the exact same rotation with the exact same abilities with the exact same positionals while hammering the exact same oGCDs. New skills with new purposes, that is interesting. New/different effects and uses for existing abilities, that is interesting. A passive procc that randomly grants extra DPS is not.

[WellFooled]

Simply put, if the customization doesn't change the way I play, I'd rather not have it at all.

This sums up the stat situation as it is now. Boring stats don't change how you play, but interesting stats will. Imagine you're a Paladin and the game included a shield with amazingly high block rate, so that shield swipe could be used much more often, but it also contained a skill "Removes Shield Swipe's additional effects". You would be dealing more damage with shield swipe by using it more often and blocking more damage because of your increased block rate, but you would also lose out on the bonus effects of shield swipe (pacification on the enemy and increased enmity) and probably be eating through more TP.

Not only would that one piece of gear provide a change in gameplay for the Paladins who choose to use it, but it would also give us fun choices and ways to differentiate our gameplay from one another, things to experiment with, and a reason to get excited about gear again instead of just glamours.

[cgbspender]

I'd love to customize a relic weapon with a new teleport materia. Say you pentameld it with a teleport +5 +5 +4 +3 +2 and you gain a reduction of 10 gils for every point !

Instead of teleporting for a fee of 400 gils, you could be able to teleport for no more than 290 gils with a fully pentamelded weapon ! And imagine with melding all the gears ! it could be free !

[Tilgung]

The development team knows how to balance content (albeit sometimes a little late), I somehow really doubt cutting 5 seconds off Jugulate for Ninjas would create a scenario for people to exclude others as it wouldn't create a substantial change.

It'd make a 336 potency increase over the course of 10.5 minutes. Now, compared to an ability like Jump with 5 seconds shaved off the recast time, a 1092 potency increase over 10.5 minutes, it isn't THAT big of an increase.

However, it also brings up issues concerning balancing these special stats among the jobs.