For those that want skill bonuses on gear: How would you do it?

[Felis]

10 TP recovery with every hit

[Altanas]

BLM
Ley Lines Materia 1 -> The lines follow you around this time
Ley Lines Materia 2 -> Other party members can stand in your lines and gain the buff too

WHM
Assize Materia -> Recover party HP & TP instead of Recover Hp & dealing damage
Fluid Aura Materia -> Fluid Aura upgraded to Water III

DRG
Wheeling Thrust Materia -> Recovers TP
Fang & Claw Materia -> Allows party to drain HP with attacks from the clawed mob

[Jeykama]

why use materia in the 1 place? , and not traits that u can change out of combat? .....

The OP is talking about skill boni on gear, and traits aren't really gear, so...

We already commit ourselves to one grade of gear every patch cycle. Specialization through materia sharpens that focus.
I don't see any problem with "of Xing" gear further enhancing a specific job as long as you can remove the bonus later. The opportunity cost would keep the market alive.

Well, the thing is, you're running into the same problem as ACNs and their stat points. Most SCHs just put their points into INT because MND benefits them less than the INT would for SMN if they play both, but the fact is their SCH is gimped because of it "sharing" a class with SMN. Same with sharing gear - if you have one set of DEX jewelry, you're limited to only playing one out of BRD/MCH/NIN each major raid cycle or else you're playing really gimped. Materia isn't something you can swap out on the fly (yet) and we can't own multiple sets of unique jewelry to cater to different jobs, and raid cycles are long enough for players to gear up several jobs in the weekly token gear. So if I'd design a job-specific materia-based perk system I wouldn't be putting be putting it on any gear that's shared - which leaves weapon/soulstone.

Heck the soulstone would be a perfect candidate since we learn all our ancient job skills from them anyway - I think it's time to leave our mark on our soulstones, like MCH is doing.

Personally I would do it like WoW's glyph system but attached to each soulstone - a glyph "socket" that unlocks at various job levels (40/50/60 or something) that you can use a consumable reagent(alexandrite?) + crafted/whatever glyph materia to apply the bonus. Maybe get Mutamix to teach you how to do it but not needed to swap the glyph materia around. Sure there's the fallacy that everyone will use the max-dps build, but the possibility for increased job utility is very strong too - like say buffing cross-class Mantra to 20% on BRD/DRG while increasing its CD? A glyph reducing damage suffered by B4B? A glyph that changes Blank Shot's knockback into a generic interrupt? stuff like that.

[Elky]

Some of these would be overpowered I feel.

Really, I'd be fine with just little things like "Adlo potency up by 10". Anything for some variety.

If its OP then balance the game aroound the OPness. The game needs to be spiced up a bit, and skill customization could be the way to do it.

[Khanscott]

Set bonuses for gear is a time honored way to do gear buffs in MMO. Otherwise, I am all for materia providing buffs to abilities. We get our horizontal choices, S-E maintains their precious vertical climb.

[MrPresident]

Unfortunately I think it's too late for fun variety options like these. This game has been designed in a "this piece is better than this piece" way for so long now, I just see variety and options leading to more complaints than good.

[Jeykama]

Unfortunately I think it's too late for fun variety options like these. This game has been designed in a "this piece is better than this piece" way for so long now, I just see variety and options leading to more complaints than good.

Yet we just got a patch where we could customize our gear in a significant way with materia. Baby steps.

[Glasya]

Prepare for a long post.

1. Give materia one (or more) elemental affinities. Ice/Fire/Water/etc.
2. Make it possible to add -and- remove materia, at the respective cost of carbonizing matter and elemental crystals (of their subsequently respective elements); this gives new demand to crafters, gatherers and makes materia less transient.
3. Replace all current materia effects with novel ones like "adds X% elemental damage to weapon", "lowers MP cost of spells by X%", "increases critical hit rate by X%", "adds XX% chance to blind enemy on hit", "increases movement speed by X%", "Regenerate X amount of TP upon critical hit". Things of this nature.
4. Distribute this materia. Directly via vendors for Gil; exchangable for company hunt/seals, wolf marks, or even MGP in the gold saucer; rare drops from enemies; discovered while gathering or desynthesis; dropped from instances/bosses, and major sidequests.
5. Arrange this distribution such that more powerful materia come from more difficult or esoteric exploits, and are not sellable on the market. eg. You might buy a "Scorching I materia" that adds 2% fire damage to your weapon direct from a vendor, but Ifrit EX might drop a "Scorching IV" that adds 10%. More powerful materia might have negative effects you need to weigh against the bonuses, like "reduces HP by X% | increases MP by X%". Hell, there could even be a class of legendary materia dropped which are powerful enough to be capped at 1-per-character or even per-server.

6. The idea is to then add class-specific modifiers to gear (eg. a pair of Dragoon boots that give you "Increases Jump damage" or Paladin gauntlets with "Adds X amount of unaspected potency to Flash"), while granting more generic statistical boosts like the aforementioned via materia.

The end result of these changes is there's a lot of freedom in how you gear up, with emergent complexity spawning from the relative simplicity of materia and how they synergise with gear effects. And despite all this complexity it'd all be relatively easy to balance from a design standpoint since Square Enix would be working around a consistent limitation, in the form of materia slots.

[Warlyx]

we will have 10 new lvls (i hope) in the new expansion , lets put a new trait system instead of 5 new skills on a bloated rotations that will provide just another CD or another skill that i use once every blue moon ....let ppl do job missions to "learn" this new traits , this job missions can ask u to jump 50 times (annoying but at least...is better than 50 dungeons)...

we need a way to customize our characters? yeah , but GEAR or Materia isnt the solution im afraid , because what happens when u change your boots with +jump dmg? u need to farm again the materia? or buy again? and again again for the whole expansion ?

SE doesnt want player to wear 1 item forever , nor want ppl to farm 1 specific item until it drops (outside glamours but thats "optional" , same goes for mounts , minions, cards...)

look at the PVP skill system , u can use points to "customize" pvp skills...

[Nutz]

I would prefer that the bonuses be on gear to reduce the grindy nature of the gear treadmill that we're all running on. To me, I would prefer a large assortment of bonuses, but specifically a bias toward QoL bonuses that don't actually make you do more DPS if you're perfectly optimized already. For example, bonuses that extend the duration of buffs that you could keep up anyway (greased lightning, enochian, etc.), buffs that remove restrictions (ley lines follows you/ you can use anyone's ley lines/ anyone can use yours, add an additional workable position to MNK abilities -- side+ front instead of just side) and of course, just buffs in general (increase proc rates on various skills, increase potency on various skills, remove/ reduce cooldowns and costs).

I would also really like to see some creative thinking, though balance can get weird if you get too imaginative. There are also general (not skill specific) enhancements that would be great to see. Increased TP/HP/MP regen (and GP if we're going outside of combat), double/ triple attack, counter attack, an actual evasion stat perhaps, something along the lines of XI's conserve MP (randomly reduced cost of spells), TP/MP cost reducers (combined with TP regen could push skillspeed builds in longer battles), TP/MP cost increased (combined with additional attack power), increased movement speed, increased range, various absorb effects (though probably best reserved for DRK), etc.

There's a lot that they could do, especially since right now they're pretty much doing nothing.