Current State of Melee Gearing

[Kabooa]

Yeah but glamour tho'...
Ideally you could use either striking or maiming on those jobs.

Ideally your glamour plates would work independent of class selection, except for arguably artifact armor.

[Lastelli]

The current state of gearing is what makes me think that in the next expansion (7.0) we're going to have a new melee DPS with scouting gear on the left side and casting gear on the right side, possibly a hybrid melee with some ranged magical phases...a reverse RDM, if you will. It would be quite interesting in my opinion.

[Kalaam]

I meant that it gives more glamour variety x) But yeah it's not an important thing, I was just joking^^

And +10k on that reverse RDM thing. Having a dual blade/sword and spell Spellsword job would be awesome, their wide cloth armor aesthetic would fit the scouting gear too.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The current state of gearing is what makes me think that in the next expansion (7.0) we're going to have a new melee DPS with scouting gear on the left side and casting gear on the right side, possibly a hybrid melee with some ranged magical phases...a reverse RDM, if you will. It would be quite interesting in my opinion.

Doubt we will get any jobs that split main body and accessory stats. At most I suspect we will get another single full job in 7.0 wearing scouting/aiming for a 4 tank/4 healer/6 melee (2 maim/2 striking/2 scouting)/6 ranged (3 aiming/3 casting) spread with any further jobs added in later expansions being limited like BLU.

There is a limit to the number of weapons that can be modeled when developing each expansion and we were seeing those limits with GNB and DNC in ShB as compared to when SAM and RDM were introduced in StB.

[Gruntler]

There is a limit to the number of weapons that can be modeled when developing each expansion and we were seeing those limits with GNB and DNC in ShB as compared to when SAM and RDM were introduced in StB.

Every job introduced increases the work quadratically if you have to go back and do old expansion. Modelling work is some of the more labor-intensive work any dev team has, so there is a finite point where it becomes unsustainable.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Every job introduced increases the work quadratically if you have to go back and do old expansion. Modelling work is some of the more labor-intensive work any dev team has, so there is a finite point where it becomes unsustainable.

Which is why GNB and DNC had only 5 level 60 weapons each compared to SAM and RDM having 22 level 50 weapons each. They spent so much time modeling outdated SAM/RDM weapons that they only created 2 new leveling weapon models for every other job in StB. In ShB they managed to create 4 new leveling weapon models for each job because they limited the number of outdated models created for the new jobs to only those necessary.

[Vyrerus]

If you also play ranged jobs, then the accessories on those overlap on Ninja.

DRG had to have different gear in the past because they wanted it to have higher physical defense because at one point in time it was supposed to be a more physically tanky sort of frontline DPS when they had ironed out some of the kinks of why that's a bad idea yet.

It let you do fun stuff like eat a Sephirot Ex tower on DRG instead of tank and save the party from a wipe with your 80% +parry cooldown on a 40 second timer.

If anything, I kind of wish they hadn't veered away from what they did with Ninja originally on its introduction. This was that all of the striking gear up to i110 was shared by Monk and Ninja, and it made a lot of sense to me, because they both had high attack speed due to intrinsic buffs (GL and Huton). They merely added DEX to the striking gear.

I guess they had Ninja splinter off, so that Monk wouldn't have to compete on raid drops, but with the way raid drops work now... almost nothing matters in that regard.

[Shurrikhan]

Easy fix: add another job using ninja gear !

Staff-wielder, such as an Adept, perhaps? Or maybe a Fencer/Duelist? Corsair?

Though, tbh, I thought Dancer was going to be a hybrid-range Scouting class before its release.

By the way, this makes me think.
What is the main difference between those gears ? Aside from scouting giving Dex instead of Strength. Do they really emphasize different stats?

Nope, not since 1.x, where all physical classes could use Dex, albeit to varying degrees (gave Accuracy, a varying amount of effective Attack Power, Dodge/Parry/Block chance, and... Crit chance, iirc).

The only gear differences are split by Role (Tank, DPS, Healer), not Armor Class (Scouting, Striking, Maiming, Aiming, Casting).

[Rayo]

Easy fix: add another job using ninja gear !

Staff-wielder, such as an Adept, perhaps? Or maybe a Fencer/Duelist? Corsair?

Though, tbh, I thought Dancer was going to be a hybrid-range Scouting class before its release.

If I'd have to choose a Scouting class, than I would have chosen the Garlean Gunblade (maybe the longer variant that Gaius uses since I think he's the only one that has a unique stance when wielding his) but it would be admittedly difficult to categorize from the Gunbreaker's Gunblade. Good alternatives could be a quarter staff wielder or even a whip user (with some whip sword variants).

[Vyrerus]

Staff-wielder, such as an Adept, perhaps? Or maybe a Fencer/Duelist? Corsair?

Though, tbh, I thought Dancer was going to be a hybrid-range Scouting class before its release.


Nope, not since 1.x, where all physical classes could use Dex, albeit to varying degrees (gave Accuracy, a varying amount of effective Attack Power, Dodge/Parry/Block chance, and... Crit chance, iirc).

The only gear differences are split by Role (Tank, DPS, Healer), not Armor Class (Scouting, Striking, Maiming, Aiming, Casting).

From 2.0 until whenever they changed it... either very late HW or Stormblood release, STR still affected Parry % mitigation and DEX affected Parry as a stat. Like every 9 DEX added 3 Parry or something weird like that. I remember on DRG being able to parry for -29% physical damage for a long time hehe. This affected every class, though the option to gear for it was only in accessories, and the returns were so poor that it got cut eventually like all other vestigial things.