Is there a home in FXIV for the "Hardcore Endgame" Player-Type?

[RiyahArp]

It depends what you mean by hardcore. Even savage is casual in this game in that you can start each tier in under an hour of easy normal mode quests, and the time burden of endgame is very low. There's no need to farm nested pop items, and there's very little BS like needing to insert low percentage chance augments into combat armor like in f2P korean games. For an MMO, this game is very casual, but that's not bad in that a lot of the hardcore stuff trimmed is time wasting.

But no offense if the quests bore you its kind of hard to see why you want a hardcore experience. I mean, the story mode in this game is nothing compared to leveling in a more hardcore mmo.

[Vhailor]

It’s important to note that Ultimate weapons, while being technically better by 1 materia slot, are not meant to be actual BiS. Actual BiS weapons are generally considered to be the ones from Savage. The Ultimate weapons are basically bragging rights—weapon damage, main stats, and sub stats are all the same between the current tier Savage weapons and Ultimate ones.

Duly noted, but it's still worth pointing out that current BiS weapons (either the Savage i375 or Ultimate's i375) will likely be struggling to make top 10 in six months, and will almost surely be widely out-classed by a variety of easily obtained alternatives. That's a sobering account of SE's ridiculously steep pace of iLevel scaling.

[HyoMinPark]

Well... ultimate weapons are by definition "actual BiS". Unless you're using a definition of BiS other than "the best possible gear you can equip". I get your point though. No-one who does ultimate is doing it because they want an extra materia slot.

What I meant was that people who look to throw together raiding BiS do not slot the Ultimate weapons in their BiS gear set. Most opt to put the current end-game Savage weapons there because of how few actually pursue Ultimate; and how fewer still actually clear it. BiS gear sets found in raiding networks like The Balance also typically do not advertise current Ultimate weapons as BiS the general raider should aim for. That's what I meant by "actual BiS".

Duly noted, but it's still worth pointing out that current BiS weapons (either the Savage i375 or Ultimate's i375) will likely be struggling to make top 10 in six months, and will almost surely be widely out-classed by a variety of easily obtained alternatives. That's a sobering account of SE's ridiculously steep pace of iLevel scaling.

I know. I never said that wasn't the case. Just wanted to point out that Raiders won't typically slot Ultimate weapons in BiS gear lists because they aren't as readily obtainable as current Savage. The general raider is advised to go for the i375 Diamond weapons this tier if they aim for BiS. Or, for WHM at least, the i370 Tomestone weapon because the Diamond substats are incredibly subpar.

[Echo_Magnus]

End-game will begin at level 70, and there are several things to do that range from more softcore/casual to midcore to hardcore.

"Snip".

Thank you very much Hyomin -- I couldn't have asked for a better answer.

All of it too.

Only snipped for sake of Character Limit and just enough to have context to reference.