Can future relic weapons have special abilities?

[Oscillate_Wildly]

Yeah but too effective in what way? KOing a boss in one hit? That's not how the stats work in this game.
You could have a weapon with a bonus to ability speed but jacked up on Parry and God knows what else tanks hate, and they'd probably still take another weapon. But someone out there might want that cool down buff and suck up the parry and SUPPLEMENT STATS ONTO OTHER PIECES OF GEAR.

[aurace1095]

What people are saying is you can't have relics be TOO glamourous and effective otherwise you'd make them stronger than raid weapons and if it goes down that route, then the devs would put in heavy amounts of RNG and time sinks to make sure people can't get it too quickly. Remember the lovely Atma grind? I don't want to go back there.

Or, special stats and effects could be added to more than just the relics. Why not add them to raid gear too? What does this have to do with the Atma grind at all? The relic shouldn't be just handed out to everyone, so yes there will be effort involved to get it. Effort =/= RNG grind, that was just poor design.

If a relic can give things like potency boosts or an extra shield at certain moments, you'd then have people demanding to have those weapons present at the raid simply because said bonuses can make the raid easier. No one does the same thing with weapons/gear right now because you can get away with being a step below the optimal level without screwing everyone one.

Except, it's possible to balance these things. Obviously they won't just add a shield with +1000% block rate and have it be the end all be all of gear for that slot. Having an A4S weapon over, say, a tomestone one is a substantial DPS increase, yet you can do content without having the A4S one (being a step or two below the optimal level) without screwing everyone. It doesn't happen now, and saying that they shouldn't add interesting stats that could differentiate gear and playstyles in fear of it suddenly happening just seems like a bad argument to me.

[Gilraen]

Well... equipment, both weapons and armor, had special abilities in 1.0. The reason the feature wasn't carried over, as said by Yoshida, was so that there would be no 'must have' equipment. That 'best in slot' would be entirely up to the individual players themselves. I know I don't see eye to eye with others on what's better for my class. The chances of future equipment getting special abilities again are pretty slim due to this slant towards generalized equipment.

The higher iLVL gear with the higher numbers will be the current 'must have' equipment, and anything lower is worthless.

Case in point. I feel iL is a crutch and sometimes the better numbers aren't always on the highest iL equipment. I think this was Yoshida's point with removing special abilities, so we CAN choose what we wear instead of everyone wearing the same thing.

[aurace1095]

Well... equipment, both weapons and armor, had special abilities in 1.0. The reason the feature wasn't carried over, as said by Yoshida, was so that there would be no 'must have' equipment. That 'best in slot' would be entirely up to the individual players themselves. I know I don't see eye to eye with others on what's better for my class. The chances of future equipment getting special abilities again are pretty slim due to this slant towards generalized equipment.

The issue with this is, when a gear upgrade is ONLY a small # increase, it's even *easier* to pick out which gear is 'best in slot'. The higher iLVL gear with the higher numbers will be the current 'must have' equipment, and anything lower is worthless. Adding special abilities actually adds *more* variety to the gear with *more* options, not less.

[Lexia]

You could say that a relic requires a lot of work but honestly they are very casual unlike how they used to be in XI. By casual, I mean you're going through 'normal' content (rerunning dungeons, fate farm, etc) and not going into the hardest content in game to get items for it (dynamis from XI). I do agree with you that they should have more additional attributes in this game and even set bonuses to make it feel (to me at least) that the raiding content is worth my time versus the vanity fair that it always has been since 2.0.

Well lot of raiders won't see the value in relic weapons cause lot of raiders don't believe that casuals should have gear that equal to their raid equipment. Which has largely been the same outlook since 2.0 also.

[Oscillate_Wildly]

Well... equipment, both weapons and armor, had special abilities in 1.0. The reason the feature wasn't carried over, as said by Yoshida, was so that there would be no 'must have' equipment. That 'best in slot' would be entirely up to the individual players themselves. I know I don't see eye to eye with others on what's better for my class. The chances of future equipment getting special abilities again are pretty slim due to this slant towards generalized equipment.

But wasn't that gear basically just the JSE? It was the best gear out there at the time, I believe. That's kind of crappy logic at the time because...what else is there you can compare it to?
Also, they were must haves at the time because they were the best. Just as Eso and raid gear now are the 'best gear to have' and the must haves.
I think they should take another look at special stats because as it is now even without them, there still are 'must have' gear sets ie the ones with the biggest numbers.

[StrejdaTom]

Because at that point they become required and you'll see a spike in people discriminating against non-relic holders for raids, farm parties, and possibly any battle related content. Don't get me wrong, I'd like it, too. But given the community's track record, I can see the potential for it to go horribly, horribly wrong.

This could be said about any equipment change.
I think it should still be implemented, there are solutions to this problem, maybe introducing 2 equally good special abilities to 2 different equipments so people can still have a choice.
But I really don't want to be stuck with current equipment system untill the servers go down one day.

I would love having 2 weapons and changing them (for their special abilities) for different fights. That would feel really good.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Won't that just bloat inventory even further? Especially if you decide to get multiple weapons for other classes you play. Well, at least we can pay for extra retainers, right?

[Elazu]

That would make equip somewhat interesting. We can't have none of that here!

[Kotemon]

Because at that point they become required and you'll see a spike in people discriminating against non-relic holders for raids, farm parties, and possibly any battle related content. Don't get me wrong, I'd like it, too. But given the community's track record, I can see the potential for it to go horribly, horribly wrong.

This is what happened in XI and lasted the life of the game as I knew it. If you were a paladin you had to have Aegis (preferred) or Ochain else you were not a real tank. Ranger or samurai had to have a relic bow or you were not needed. Weapons that increased weapon skill damage or gave afterglow/math, extra attacks, or ignored defense and damage reduction. The same with gear that gave boosts to abilities. Thief's with Treaure hunter +8 or +9 for example. If you had anything below a certain value meant less of a change for that boss drop. Especially if you were starting or in the middle of a long 2 years of Dynamis farming. Let alone to get into Xarcabard and the Promathian areas.

A lot of parties shells and Pug's doing endgame, main story, or content would require a status quo to a job and if you didn't meet it you were kicked or denied.