Are melds and super gear really necessary?

[Jinko]

Nope my gear has only 1 melds and I do just fine, granted I would probably do better with 2 or 3 times melded gear but I don't see the point when I am perfectly fine with 1 times.

Gear in this game is pretty disappointing overall, its mainly due to high base stats though, hopefully Yoshi-p will come to his senses and sort this out before 2.0

As Choyi pointed out on the previous page, weapons are what makes the biggest difference in any fight, gear is just icing on a very small cake. (or is it not enough icing on a very big cake hmmm )

[Molly_Millions]

The unskilled player can't do any damage if he dies so many times that the party leader ousts him. whereas the skilled player may die once and get a raise, the raise would be wasted on an unskilled player.

Not really, you have to raise the unskilled player so that they can practice and become a skilled player. Your argument is moot I believe because skilled players die as well, just not as often. Of course they can't DD while they are sleeping on the job. My argument was made under the assumption that neither player is dead.

[syntaxlies]

We all use the ifrit/moogle baseline for DPS and the worthiness of gear, we should remember that although DH was a run-n-gun situation the next 2 instances most likely won't have that option. And if you remember DH was chock full of r50-55 lvl mobs in swarms, the returns on gear is scaled by dlvl so that as the higher the mob the less return you see on your gear. When you look at the returns on a nice double melded fully pimped out set vs equal rank mobs the argument that gear has little effect is no longer valid.

I expect the 2 new instances to promote larger impacts from gear then we are used to now. Also this impact of gear on the tank is a monster difference when the mob rank is much closer, talking about going from taking 200/hit in trash gear to taking 75/hit in pro gear. Yes I'm sure ppl will eventually be clearing with raindeer suits at some point but the first few groups through most likely will have very top notch gear.

If its a timed run Im sure people will find a way to avoid mobs once again. In DH the mobs were so frikken hard on the way you had to run past them so you'd have enough time(specifically the moles) Im pretty sure that before patch 1.20 the mobs were lvl 60 too.

[Delsus]

We all use the ifrit/moogle baseline for DPS and the worthiness of gear, we should remember that although DH was a run-n-gun situation the next 2 instances most likely won't have that option. And if you remember DH was chock full of r50-55 lvl mobs in swarms, the returns on gear is scaled by dlvl so that as the higher the mob the less return you see on your gear. When you look at the returns on a nice double melded fully pimped out set vs equal rank mobs the argument that gear has little effect is no longer valid.

I expect the 2 new instances to promote larger impacts from gear then we are used to now. Also this impact of gear on the tank is a monster difference when the mob rank is much closer, talking about going from taking 200/hit in trash gear to taking 75/hit in pro gear. Yes I'm sure ppl will eventually be clearing with raindeer suits at some point but the first few groups through most likely will have very top notch gear.

We do not know the damage formulae, unless you have worked it out and refuse to tell us you cannot say dlvl has an impact.

Also unless you can prove otherwise I would say dlvl doesnt impact it, a mob like ifrit or moogle at lvl 60-70 (not sure of the exact lvl) will have higher stats than a normal 50-60 mob, therefore the att vs def and str vs vit calculations will be different.

It could be on ifrit and mog we arent breaking the threshold to up thier def/vit which I can understand, but on lower lvl normal mobs I can do alot more because I am over a specific att/str which makes me do more damage.

dlvl would mean you are -10 lvls so its an instant -10%dmg (numbers pulled out my ass).

This can be proven by finding mobs the same lvl with lower def/vit and seeing how much damage we do but because we dont know the stats of ifrit and mog, it could be tough.

[TheVedis]

Not really, you have to raise the unskilled player so that they can practice and become a skilled player. Your argument is moot I believe because skilled players die as well, just not as often. Of course they can't DD while they are sleeping on the job. My argument was made under the assumption that neither player is dead.

maybe her refers to the "hopelessly unskiled"
you know those who have done the fight 100 times and are still always face down in the dirt

cant really expect them to improve

[Molly_Millions]

maybe her refers to the "hopelessly unskiled"
you know those who have done the fight 100 times and are still always face down in the dirt

cant really expect them to improve

You do have to be at your keyboard to beat ifrit, yes. Too many people 'play' this game while afk. I think we can safely leave them out of this discussion though. :P

[Jinko]

Even getting 1 materia in every piece of gear is very hard with the current system. Sure its easy to buy materia and catalyst from the markets. But finding a level 50 crafters to put it in your gear is incredibly difficult.

I don't know anyone with level 50 crafts so pretty much have to go without it. I tried leveling armorer myself but only got to 25 before it just became so boring. I have yet to meet any one that could put materia in my gear. My friend told me it was a complicated process.

First you have to trade him dark matter seek repairs and have him repair your gear to 100%. Then you trade him the piece of gear, materia, catalyst. Have him put the materia in your gear. Have him trade you back the gear with materia and trade him how much ever he is charging. I don't know about you but this is just a really convoluted process for putting a shiny gem in a piece of gear. This isn't some ground braking new system tons of games used the same thing putting gems, stones, runes, tokens whatever you want to call it in gear to make it better, but I have never seen such a complex way of doing it.

They really need to do away with needing a craft to put a piece of materia in a gear or at very least have an npc that can do basic 1 slot matria for you since there is no chance to fail. I would love to have materia in my gear have enough gil to buy it all but don't know a crafter. And its not just 1 its 3 different crafts that are needed.

I agree with you, but if you took the crafting process away from crafters now Yoshi-p would never recover from the endless criticism.

Having the goblin do 1 times melds would be a good idea, but again I'm sure crafters everywhere would complain like babies.

[TheFatHousecat]

You're all making valid (in some cases semi-valid) arguments about the advantages of BiS gear/fully-melded gear. But at the end of the day it's always going to be the level of skill a player exhibits that sets them apart from others.

In almost 100% of cases in which somebody's DPS was suffering it wasn't due to a lack of gear or materia, it was an issue with their speed and efficiency in rotation. The former being something that only practice (which can be done in and out of the instance) can improve, the second requiring either the ability to recognize and test the most effective rotations, or being able to observe and imitate players who are out-performing you. This has been the rule to DPS in this game ever since Great Buffalo, you guys.

At best, materia and gear account for a ~10 DPS difference. Obviously, for the sake of min/max-ing, you want to be as well-equipped as possible, but if you don't have an Ifrit weapon because of bad luck, or all your attempted melds blew up, it doesn't mean you can't still beat out people with fully-melded sets. Even if those people are beating your own DPS by the average ~5 difference, you'll be the more desirable player because (hopefully) you being a skilled player are less likely to be stupid and die.

[TheVedis]

You do have to be at your keyboard to beat ifrit, yes. Too many people 'play' this game while afk. I think we can safely leave them out of this discussion though. :P

lol those dont count

im more refering to the people who just plain dont know what they are doing, dont listen, pretty much have no room to improve no matter how much you help them

there are tons out there like that too, thyve been in ifrit 100 times, and still die 2-3 times easily per fight


those are unskilled in my eyes, i dont count people who are new to the fight, those are just noobs

[Bajo]

I disagree, so does mathematics:

(pulled these numbers out of my ass for sake of argument)

Skillfull player:
70 dps +20 from ifrit's bow = 90 dps
70 dps +0 (no ifrits bow) = 70 dps

unskilled player:
50 dps +0 (no ifrits bow) = 50 dps
50 dps +13 from ifrit's bow = 63 dps


The unskilled player still does not do as much dd as the skilled player w/out Ifrits bow, but it DOES help.

So a skilled player with no bow is worth more than unskilled player with a bow. i thought i said that