New savage raid gear has weapon and armour effects. Thoughts?

[Lunaxia]

To be fair, it's always felt weird to me that the savage weapons were frequently underwhelming (though when they were good, they were generally very good) compared to like... crafted weapons from extreme trial materials. Whether or not you like these specific glowy weapons -- and I will say, I don't like these ones half so well as the Asphodelos ones -- I do kind of like the idea of savage weapons which have a chance that you do not immediately glam straight over them.

What you call underwhelming, I call understated and well-designed. I don't agree that a weapon needs a neon glow that can be seen from the other side of Limsa to be worthwhile, and we already have relics and primal weapons to fill that particular niche. Bringing savage weapons into it feels unnecessary, especially when that "glow" looks like a rehash of what we've seen before.

[Packetdancer]

What you call underwhelming, I call understated and well-designed. I don't agree that a weapon needs a neon glow that can be seen from the other side of Limsa to be worthwhile, and we already have relics and primal weapons to fill that particular niche. Bringing savage weapons into it feels unnecessary, especially when that "glow" looks like a rehash of what we've seen before.

I should clarify I don't mean that a good weapon design needs to be glowing; it's very possible to have lovely weapons that don't glow, and conversely it's possible to have glowing weapons that are just plain ugly. (Certain stages of some Eureka weapons definitely fall into that last category, in my opinion.)

Truthfully, if I'm to have a glowing weapon, I personally usually like the glow a little understated; I vastly preferred the Solstice Recollection stage of the AST relic last expansion to any of the later, more ostentatiously glowing steps. In fact, one reason I do like the Asphodelos weapons is that they are somewhat understated and elegant in many cases. The WHM weapon is basically just a staff (which, if you dye it chestnut brown, even has a wood grain and looks lovely) until drawn, at which point even then the glowing element isn't like... some massive neon flame.

Heck, the Edenchoir cane is one of my favorite WHM weapons in the game, and it only "glows" inasmuch as you could say that, for instance, the Bluespirit weapons glow (e.g. the crystal portion is slightly luminous). It's understated, elegant, and just plain beautiful.

But it feels to me like the weapons team often (albeit, not always) puts in a little more effort on glowy weapon designs, hence why I like the idea of them doing that for savage. Because there are many, many raid weapons which I've felt had little to distinguish them from, say, leveling gear. Whereas, whether you think the glow is garish or not, the model for the crafted Susano BLM weapon is better than a lot of BLM raid weapon designs. In my opinion, at least... which is, of course, subjective.

For this specific image? Glow aside, the shape of some of these weapons looks good to me, at least based on the image. The WAR axe looks pretty solid, I like the option for some NIN weapons that aren't curved and spikey, I'm certainly hoping for a SAM weapon where the sheath isn't covered in "kibble" (e.g. "stuff glued onto things to make it look ornate"), etc.

(Of course, if we eventually end up with something like certain Eureka weapon stages where you literally can no longer see the weapon through the glow effect, I may eat those words. Hopefully, there's no finger slowly curling closed on that monkey's paw...)