Quote Originally Posted by Bikkusu View Post
Why are the latest tomestone and raid item exchange rings unique? Is it just to keep ilevel down for people who do not raid so that there's some air of superiority in having that final ilevel or are the stats on them deemed to be too strong by having two of the same so they need to be mixed? Older content rings no longer have the Unique tag so you can easily purchase and boost other classes you're leveling, or even BLU.
All Tomestone rings were unique up until patch 5.3. That's when the base tomestone gear from prior expansions was removed from vendors so only the augmented versions could be purchased. Since that would have left players with only 1 ring from a set, the Unique designation was removed from the rings in those sets.

We still have the base version of the Deepshadow, Crystarium and Cryptlurker gear available for purchase so SE is leaving the rings in those sets as Unique for now. Once the base versions are removed from vendors in Endwalker and only the augmented versions are left for purchase, the rings will no longer be unique.

Why the decision to make the rings unique in the first place? Have no idea. That 10 ilvl gap between base and augmented isn't enough to disrupt game balance by allowed double augmented. But it's also not enough that any player should feel they're at a disadvantage not having double augmented rings.

I will admit it's very annoying juggling the base ring in inventory when I'm ready to purchase the augmented ring. Either I move it from my character/armoury chest to my saddlebags so I can buy a second base ring and augment/meld that then retrieve the original base ring, or I have to retrieve (and possibly lose) materia from the base ring before I augment it then buy a second base ring and then have to meld both rings. The augment system is awkward at best. It would be nice if it worked similar to how WoW players could upgrade item level on gear in MoP but I would imagine that's not possible since base items can't be dyed while left side augmented items can.