Variance in player skill is hurting FFXIV's itemization design.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

What if they shifted things around a bit? Savage mode comes out first and rewards gear tokens and gear, and the normal mode comes out with the catch up patch and only gives gear tokens that take twice as many to get gear. Would that be enough of an incentive for hardcore raiders to care? Plus with stat allocation, the gear might even be able to last longer.

Well, then you'd need to truncate the experience in that you'll have a comparatively smaller ilvl jump, due to the lack of options available at the outset. I can't imagine a 20ilvl jump being appealing after having larger jumps since HW.

[Kerii]

Well, then you'd need to truncate the experience in that you'll have a comparatively smaller ilvl jump, due to the lack of options available at the outset. I can't imagine a 20ilvl jump being appealing after having larger jumps since HW.

The crafted gear is the same iLv as the current normal mode gear. That would just replace normal mode gear in the chain. At the start of the raid it would be Crafted -> Currency -> Raid. Then in the off patch would expand to Crafted -> Currency -> Full Raid gear -> Upgraded Currency -> Raid gear. Really the ilv jump is the exact same. You just give the crafted gear slightly better stats since they don't have to compete with the normal mode gear.