Augmented Scaevan gear: the true villain of Shadowbringers

[linayar]

Have seen this argument in WoW too in regards to heirlooms, which ended up with the heirlooms getting shafted... I got to say that the joy of replacing gear while levelling is a grossly exaggerated feeling. It literally adds nothing to the game than to force players to keep even more armor sets in their inventory than needed.

You don't need more armor sets if you actually replace instead of hoard.

[Vahlnir]

It isn't too powerful. People just use it for a lot longer than they should. If, after they reach lvl 76 and up and they can't be bothered to upgrade their gear either from dungeons or from the MB...that's on them. That isn't because of augmented Scaevan gear. That is people being lazy.

[Gothicshark]

I'll get straight to the point: the augmented scaevan gear's item level is too high.

You see people using this abysmal garbage gear all throughout shadowbringers, and despite the fact that everyone wearing it does 0 damage, has 0 health and dies if an enemy breathes on them wrong, this expansion old gear for some ungodly reason allows you to get into dungeons nearly TEN WHOLE levels above 70, with my worst example being a dancer wearing this LEVEL 70 GEAR in MOUNT GULG, A LEVEL 79 DUNGEON.

Please square, for hydaelyn's sake please LOWER THE SCAEVAN GEAR ITEM LEVEL so that people can't get into near max level content with gear from last expac. Thank you.

You're actually and factually wrong on a few levels.

Let's look at some numbers.

Using Dancer
Augmented Scaevan Tabard of Aiming:
Requires ARC, BRD, MCH, DNC
Level 70
Item Level 400
---
Defense 668
Magic Defense 668
Dexterity +371
Vitality +419
Determination +325
Direct Hit Rate +227
Materia: 2

Compare with the level 78 vendor/quest chest

Swallowskin Robe of Aiming:
Requires ARC, BRD, MCH, DNC
Level 78
Item Level 415
---
Defense 660
Magic Defense 660
Dexterity +348
Vitality +382
Critical Hit +325
Direct Hit Rate +228
Materia: 2

---
I marked in red the better stat.

When I did this on my Au Ra, I kept the Augmented gear until level 80. That was almost a year ago BTW.

[Hasrat]

Does it meet ilvl requirements?

If yes, it is more than is expected.

Players expecting more than the minimum is a player problem.

[LittleImp]

Does it meet ilvl requirements?

If yes, it is more than is expected.

Players expecting more than the minimum is a player problem.

To be fair, you can meet the minimum for many duties when you really shouldn't be able to due to DF using your total ilevel average. If I wanted to, I could queue into Holminster switch with a level 5 NQ weapon.
Just because it's possible, doesn't mean I should.

People should endeavor to do more than the bare minimum preparation when entering a team-based activity, particularly with strangers.

[Hasrat]

Ok, but, context. This is a discussion on Augmented Scaeven.

Which is indeed more than the bare minimum.

[LittleImp]

You're actually and factually wrong on a few levels.

Let's look at some numbers.

Using Dancer
Augmented Scaevan Tabard of Aiming:
Requires ARC, BRD, MCH, DNC
Level 70
Item Level 400
---
Defense 668
Magic Defense 668
Dexterity +371
Vitality +419
Determination +325
Direct Hit Rate +227
Materia: 2

Compare with the level 78 vendor/quest chest

Swallowskin Robe of Aiming:
Requires ARC, BRD, MCH, DNC
Level 78
Item Level 415
---
Defense 660
Magic Defense 660
Dexterity +348
Vitality +382
Critical Hit +325
Direct Hit Rate +228
Materia: 2

---
I marked in red the better stat.

When I did this on my Au Ra, I kept the Augmented gear until level 80. That was almost a year ago BTW.

You've cited the NQ version of chest, which is a little misleading. The quest awards the HQ version of the chestpiece, which has the following stats:

Swallowskin Robe of Aiming:
Requires ARC, BRD, MCH, DNC
Level 78
Item Level 415
---
Defense 733
Magic Defense 733
Dexterity +387
Vitality +424
Critical Hit +362
Direct Hit Rate +253
Materia: 2


One or two pieces won't make much of a difference either way, but when looking at full sets cumulatively it does start to add up. For tanks it ends up being something like 10% extra defense stat and +100 mainstat.

Full augmented scaevan is absolutely within minimum viability in Mt.Gulg, but it'll either slow your parties run down or put extra pressure on the healer and hamper their ability to DPS if you decide to pull big. I've big-pulled gulg as a tank/healer pair with the tank in scaevan, and knowing what it feels like I wouldn't really wish that on randoms xD.

All that said, the OP of the thread is definitely super exaggerating the issue.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

Nobody does constant full gear upgrades every couple levels- in virtually no MMO does that happen. People will use what they get, but nobody goes out of their way to make sure every time they reach a new dungeon during the MSQ they are fully upgraded. No, not even the people whining about it now- when they got to the points in the story where dungeons or trials were needed, the first thing they did wasn't go get the best gear they could, make sure it was full of materia- what they did was queued up for that duty.

This isn't some major casual conspiracy to make your duty last a little longer because they're a few ilvl behind optimal- this is normal behaviour, people focus on leveling while they're leveling, and on gearing once they hit endgame. If you don't want to play the game with leveling players- maybe don't join the leveling dungeon queues? Seems like a pretty obvious solution to this non-problem you've encountered.

Complaining about people not gearing before they start doing normal dungeons- I want to believe that you guys are trolling but I have a feeling you're actually serious.

[Eien713]

Honestly? When I was playing the ShB MSQ, I didn't use the gear the quests gave me and I wasn't very lucky with dungeon drops (I did get few pieces here and there). I didn't farm any dungeon for gear either and only did every dungeon once. I had augmented Scaevan gear and some Omega Savage pieces, but my gear overall wasn't BiS. I managed just fine all the way through until I was able to get the new job set from Geralt. More often than not, I was actually doing more damage with my BRD than my co-DPSes, who usually had gear from MSQ and/or ShB dungeons. Moral of the story, the problem isn't the gear. Like someone else said, player skill can make up for it. This said, I don't know if this would still apply in the case of tanks and healers. I imagine these roles might suffer and struggle a bit more than DPS when it comes to being under-geared.

[Ammokkx]

All this thread tells me is that my big brain strat of "get a class to level 80, buy a full set of gear and do every dungeon with it" makes me the objectively smartest person in FFXIV.

On a more serious note, bad people are just bad. I get put into dungeons undergeared all the time while doing roulettes and I do just fine. The problem isn't the gear, it's that the players themselves don't know how to play.

The reason why it looks like Scaevan is the problem is because that's what skip pots give you. There are people who have played the game before and skip pot, but there's also a large chunk who, well, haven't. Those players then jump into the high-tier content first thing they can and while some can adapt, others flounder.