Dropped Items and Materia

[Viridiana]

I understood it as crafted gear beating all blue gear regardless of slot. I'll admit my misreading. Though I did bring up the valid point that there's more Blue gear for some slots than others. Also that Paragon's is indeed best in slot for some classes.

Here's the thing, though. So far, all the blue gear we have is Ifrit/Mog weapons, the new crowns, and DD gear. No one's going to argue that Ifrit weapons suck (CNJ notwithstanding). The only Moogle weapons I've ever seen put forward as good are the GLD and THM ones. Paragon is the only crown anyone talks about, but on certain classes even it loses to crafted gear. DD gear is so far behind the curve that it wasn't even all that good when it came out, and it's been blown out of the water entirely with the addition of materia.

So, find me a piece of blue for my PGL that isn't Ifrit's claws and that can't be beaten by a single piece of materia. I would wait with bated breath, but I don't fancy asphyxiating.

[Cho]

I'm pretty sure he said all other U/Us. Also, Paragon Crown is delicious

Paragon's Crown is indeed very cool. It should be, as you need all battle classes 50 to obtain it. It is not, however, best in slot for CON,THM,GLA,PUG. This is generally true because of the very fact that you cannot attach materia to it. Don't try to throw away my generalization, that nearly every U/U item in this game is not best in slot as a result of their not being meldable, because a tiny few exceptions to this rule. Your posts are not constructive towards fixing one of the largest flaws of this game at present. For most U/U items currently in this game to be viable, and for much of this game's little content to keep being worth people's time, U/U items should be meldable. Hence, Brannigan is correct.

[NoctisUmbra]

Here's the thing, though. So far, all the blue gear we have is Ifrit/Mog weapons, the new crowns, and DD gear. No one's going to argue that Ifrit weapons suck (CNJ notwithstanding). The only Moogle weapons I've ever seen put forward as good are the GLD and THM ones. Paragon is the only crown anyone talks about, but on certain classes even it loses to crafted gear. DD gear is so far behind the curve that it wasn't even all that good when it came out, and it's been blown out of the water entirely with the addition of materia.

So, find me a piece of blue for my PGL that isn't Ifrit's claws and that can't be beaten by a single piece of materia. I would wait with bated breath, but I don't fancy asphyxiating.

Indeed. As soon as they freaking make content that drops body gear. Probably 1.21s dungeons. Here's hoping for some actually useful Blue armor gear versus the crap that was Darkhold gear.

[Brannigan]

There is no reason why a crafted item with a single piece of materia on it should outclass all other U/U drops for that slot making what little content this game has irrelevant.

It's not even entirely about that. If future dropped gear is better than crafted+materia then what is the point of the materia system? Relying on multi-melds to make materia worthwhile is stupid because it's a dumb gambling system with no player input at all. Allowing 1 meld on U/U adds a good reason to go after those perfect tier IV materia. I'm not entirely worried about U/U gear being garbage forever. It sucks that mogblade and some other pieces are useless but oh well. The ifrit lance/bow/axe/fists basically make it so you don't even need to consider weapon materia on those classes, and if future armor is any good then you'll have no reason to worry about materia at all.

[Viridiana]

It's not even entirely about that. If future dropped gear is better than crafted+materia then what is the point of the materia system? Relying on multi-melds to make materia worthwhile is stupid because it's a dumb gambling system with no player input at all. Allowing 1 meld on U/U adds a good reason to go after those perfect tier IV materia. I'm not entirely worried about U/U gear being garbage forever. It sucks that mogblade and some other pieces are useless but oh well. The ifrit lance/bow/axe/fists basically make it so you don't even need to consider weapon materia on those classes, and if future armor is any good then you'll have no reason to worry about materia at all.

On a related note, I somehow doubt that Job gear is going to be meldable. This should be interesting. . .

[Cho]

It's not even entirely about that. If future dropped gear is better than crafted+materia then what is the point of the materia system? .

XI relic weapons were better than the other weapons, but that didn't make every other weapon in the game useless, as it took a while to achieve them. Materia system could help people beat content and get to the point where they can achieve good drops, worth doing events for. Having future dropped gear be better than crafted+melded gear won't make the materia system worthless by any means, if that gear is difficult to obtain. The issue is that the materia system makes most CURRENT content worthless, because the U/U items are garbage and can't be enhanced.

Turning a zillion cheap linen 40+ armor pieces into materia every 20 minutes in a party of 8 getting 280k SP an hour AOE nuking wolves on THM and then putting those materia into a slot machine on crafted items to achieve the best gear in the game is not a fun endgame. It is however, the most efficient thing a hardcore LS can do to gear themselves. This is an issue. After a while, people are going to give up logging in every day, if all they have to look forward to is slaughtering wolves and crafting items. We need to be able to attach to U/U, so there's a reason to go get U/U, to increase the variety of worthwhile things to do in this game.

Idea of 1 meld on U/U is good. I don't hate the idea of multi-melding either, with a high risk of blowing up U/U items, as this would, as mentioned, add meaning to achieving multiples at least.

[Viridiana]

XI relic weapons were better than the other weapons, but that didn't make every other weapon in the game useless, as it took a while to achieve them. Materia system could help people beat content and get to the point where they can achieve good drops, worth doing events for. Having future dropped gear be better than crafted+melded gear won't make the materia system worthless by any means, if that gear is difficult to obtain. The issue is that the materia system makes most CURRENT content worthless, because the U/U items are garbage and can't be enhanced.

Turning a zillion cheap linen 40+ armor pieces into materia every 20 minutes in a party of 8 getting 280k SP an hour AOE nuking wolves on THM and then putting those materia into a slot machine on crafted items to achieve the best gear in the game is not a fun endgame. It is however, the most efficient thing a hardcore LS can do to gear themselves. This is an issue. After a while, people are going to give up logging in every day, if all they have to look forward to is slaughtering wolves and crafting items. We need to be able to attach to U/U, so there's a reason to go get U/U, to increase the variety of worthwhile things to do in this game.

Idea of 1 meld on U/U is good. I don't hate the idea of multi-melding either, with a high risk of blowing up U/U items, as this would, as mentioned, add meaning to achieving multiples at least.

Except that so far SE's proven incapable of designing content that requires gear to complete, much less materia'd gear. . .

[NoctisUmbra]

XI relic weapons were better than the other weapons, but that didn't make every other weapon in the game useless, as it took a while to achieve them. Materia system could help people beat content and get to the point where they can achieve good drops, worth doing events for. Having future dropped gear being better than crafted+melded gear won't make the materia system worthless by any means, if that gear is difficult to obtain. The issue is that the materia system makes most CURRENT content worthless, because the U/U items are garbage and can't be enhanced.

Turning a zillion cheap linen 40+ armor pieces into materia every 20 minutes in a party of 8 getting 280k SP an hour AOE nuking wolves on THM and then putting those materia into a slot machine on crafted items to achieve the best gear in the game is not a fun endgame. It is however, the most efficient thing a hardcore LS can do to gear themselves. This is an issue. After a while, people are going to give up logging in every day, if all they have to look forward to is slaughtering wolves and crafting items. We need to be able to attach to U/U, so there's a reason to go get U/U, to increase the variety of worthwhile things to do in this game.

Idea of 1 meld on U/U is good. I don't hate the idea of multi-melding either, with a high risk of blowing up U/U items, as this would, as mentioned, add meaning to achieving multiples at least.

Just for overall clarity sake, let it be clear that I agree with everything in this post. Cho, here has a good grasp of the balance of gear and the issue that exists at this time.

Every coffer drop should have been just like the Sentinel set: meldable. If they can implement a system to meld through bazaar it would make the process much more convenient, and accessible to W gear. That way I wouldn't care if the coffer drops and such were W or not so long as they can be melded and continue to drop to loot list.

That being said, I firmly believe there should be 1 tier of gear that rests precisely around where the Ifrit and Moogle weapons are now in terms of sheer stat value - approximately a triple meld - that is not meldable.

The idea is, although there exists not enough variety and choices at this point, that this set of gear will be rewarded 100% through DoW/M means and is indeed viable for slot as a whole. This does not necessarily mean that every weapon in the set will be viable for every class. After enough content comes with enough sets of different themed weapons/armor, you'll see people on a variety of classes preferring a weapon from different sets.

Ifrit's set is very DPS friendly for damage dealers - especially, if not only, the physical DDs.
Moogle set is very solo-friendly, while also being beneficial mainly for THM and also for GLAs. In case nobody noticed, the Full Party buff goes a long way in terms of accuracy, leading to many misses when solo - so the massive accuracy boost from Moogle weapons help a lot for solo encounters.

Who knows what the dungeons of 1.21 will bring. Then we have Garuda coming. Then the Garlean Legatus battle. Soon there will be many options, and all classes will have something they enjoy using based on scenario. Not to mention Jobs will very likely be making class gear and weapons only important for solo/light party situations. This could very well lead to players changing their priority on what stats they wish to bump on their classes when the Jobs will be fulfilling the role they gear their classes to fulfill now.

Blue W gear right now, and in the future, will remain to be a very small part of W gear as a whole. I firmly support that W gear are made to be meldable, but to reiterate I just as firmly support the existence of one small subset of weapons that are not.

[Brannigan]

XI relic weapons were better than the other weapons, but that didn't make every other weapon in the game useless, as it took a while to achieve them.

The only problem I have with the materia system being used to (essentially) serve as a gateway into getting drops from real content is that the materia system is kind of neat (excluding multi-melds which are kind of retarded). I'd like to see it stay in use no matter how good dropped gear gets. Relics didn't invalidate lower-power weapons because they were hard to get. Ifrit's harpoon can be won on your first kill if you're lucky and basically lets you ignore weapon materia (this is assuming any future dropped upgrades would also be U/U and thus unmeldable).

That said, I basically agree with you on the current state of the game and that is why I made this thread.

On a related note, I somehow doubt that Job gear is going to be meldable. This should be interesting. . .

Lol yeah pretty much.

[Brannigan]

On a related note, I somehow doubt that Job gear is going to be meldable. This should be interesting. . .

I don't really like posting twice in a row but a ls member reminded me of this

ZAM: How will job-specific armor compare to other high-level gear in the game?

Yoshida: Job-specific armor will have higher abilities when used by its specific job. All job quests must be completed in order to obtain job-specific armor, so they will be difficult to obtain. However, we plan on having gear created by attaching multiple materia surpass job-specific armor in quality.

So that's a shame. Hopefully some of it will be worth using as more than just town gear while you wait to get lucky on a double meld.