To the raiders who think this tier is so easy.

[Brannigan]

This tier needs a few things to keep it appealing. Mounts/minions/glamours/titles as rewards (much to the whining of the instant gratification crowd), and these rewards NEED to gated behind a synced version (unsynced drops no rewards).

Just imagine, you beat A12 mega savage supreme mode, and your reward is...... alexander prime mount.

Personally I'd much rather have items that have something unique or cool about them that has nothing to do with how they look. Glamour as a reward sucks because it's so hit or miss and there's already a ton of glamour/mount/whatever options in the game.

Gimme a sword that shoots fireballs on a proc or something. Gimme boots that let me use stealth on combat classes (other than ninja). Give me an axe that makes Mercy Stroke hit super hard but increases the cooldown. Who cares if it's a little bit imbalanced? Item level is going to outdate it anyway, and if you can kill the raid you're already curbstomping everything else in the game.

[Lambdafish]

Gimme a sword that shoots fireballs on a proc or something. Gimme boots that let me use stealth on combat classes (other than ninja). Give me an axe that makes Mercy Stroke hit super hard but increases the cooldown. Who cares if it's a little bit imbalanced? Item level is going to outdate it anyway, and if you can kill the raid you're already curbstomping everything else in the game.

The problem with this is that the entire game would have to be reworked to balance around this system (I want this, but the game is far from implementing it), this game isn't designed like XI is, and personally I don't think shoehorning the system in would be healthy. The system I have proposed in the past are augments, little pieces of materia that slot into augment slots (either into gear, or into the job crystal) and give different effects (either cosmetic or battle relevant, or both). My idea of augment effects involve: increased movement speed outside of combat, cosmetic auras or light effects (kirin-esque angel wings?), increased mount speed (one for flying, one for not flying). These effects don't fundamentally break the battle system, but they are fun and people will want them.

Anyway, my point is that glamour (or minions, or mounts, or titles, or orchestrion rolls, or augments) is a reward that lasts (whether you find the piece appealing or not), and by making it sync only, if you see anyone with that glamour, even many expansions down the line, then you know that they worked for it.

[SenorPatty]

It needs something to represent bragging rights. That means a title or minion or even a glamour. You could crank it up to nintendo-hard and it won't mean a thing if players don't have something to display for it.