Why does SE want to force us to downgrade our gear?

[Saraide]

Never buy NQ gear to actually use. It's fine for the glamour dresser, it's fine for battle retainers but it's not fine to use yourself.

[Rufalus]

Never really made sense that NQ and HQ are the same item level. It's a completely different tier of stats, but will pass an item level check all the same.

They should replace NQ / HQ with a system where a botched synthesis produces an item that does not have the same name or item level. It could be Inferior [name of item] for a botch, while a successful quality synth produces the item that does not start with the word inferior and is a higher item level.

Atm average item level is a poor indictor of player strength which is not influenced by quality or melds.

[Vahlnir]

But doesnt that defeat the purpose in general. I dont doubt that being how it worked for years but if the item level is the hurdle normal quality will still get you in but the stats are gonna hurt especially if its less then what you have now. Sorry it has been poking me all weekend when i was checking out my craftin/gathering gear noticing im a bit behind with that gear.

Normal quality is usually used for glamour purposes.

[Iscah]

Normal quality is usually used for glamour purposes.

Indeed. I'd rather buy NQ than HQ if I'm after glamour even if they're the same price, because I'll downgrade it before putting it in the dresser. The glow effect on the HQ icon just makes it harder to identify the image.

[Jojoya]

Sheesh. The NQ really ought to not be 610.

Really what's even the point of the NQ existing just make the craft fail if it doesn't HQ.

NQ is sufficient to meet ilvl requirements for content that have high ilvl requirements even if it doesn't have the same stats. And as others have said, it's the cheaper way to go if you just want the item for glamour since HQ doesn't change appearance or ability to dye.

That works well for casual players who are only worried about progressing through MSQ and not beating DPS checks in Savage. They can use NQ gear to supplement what they've gotten from tomestones and instance drops if they're still slightly below the ilvl requirements.

At the same time, by having NQ stats on the crafted gear lower it leaves tomestone and instance drop gear more valuable to grind for those who place a high value on the right stats or are doing content where the stats really matter.

[Frizze]

At this point I am not continuing with the post EW MSQ until SE wakes up and figures this out.

So there are actually several ways to fix this. Youve already seen crafted gear which, as has previously been pointed out several times, the HQ version is the one to look for stat wise. But you dont actually have to spend any gil. Here are your options for a quick gear up.

1. You already qualify for the new dungeon. Run it a couple times until you get a drop or two that are upgrades and put you over the line. This requires nothing but time and a touch of luck.
2. You already qualify for the new dungeon. Run it(expert roulette) a couple times until you stockpile enough of the new tomes(causality) to buy an upgrade. Any upgrade will probly be enough, but if you pick your lowest ilvl item the boost will be biggest.
3. There is a reasonable chance you have some Astronomy tomes leftover from last patch. You can still buy ilvl 590 gear with them for an upgrade or two. In addition, any leftover Aphorism tomes you might have had can now be upgraded to Astronomy's(i believe the rate is 4 to 1 - exchange is likely in mor dhona), and then exchanged for gear.
4. If any of your left-side armor is below 590, you can run the 24 man instanced raid Aglaia and hope for drops. In addition to the gear, you get a coin for clearing it(i believe this is still a weekly reward) that allows you to upgrade 1 piece of 590 tome gear to 600 tome gear.
5. If you have friends willing to run this content with you, you can just ignore the requirement. The ilvl req's are only for queing into new content with strangers. If you bring a full group, the requirements are waived. The idea seems to be that people who dont know you would want to make sure your gear was strong enough to survive the fight, but your friends might not care if they had to put in extra work to help you through.

And if we want to look ahead in our crystal ball, when patch 6.4 rolls around next year theyre probly going to be asking you to have ilvl 615 to que into all the content. If you arent there in advance, all these same options(with updated names of course) plus a new tier of crafted will be available to use as well. Youll have roughly 8-9 months to get one class to that point, so no rush.

[FatalCharm]

NekoMataMata, I don't know where you got that crap Loincloth that it can be HQ and still lower stats than the nq 610 piece. I was comparing my NQ 590-595 pieces to NQ 610 and my gear had much better stats. And in the case of my weapon, my nq 570 iLevel piece had higher stats than the nq 610. If two pieces are of the same quality level, the one with higher stats should be higher iLevel. make it HQ and you should get extra. period.

[FatalCharm]

Thank you so much to everyone who started a completely different discussion about DoH/DoL on this thread. Yes that is sarcasm. Helpful would be if a moderator deleted all those.

Big thank you to Frizze for giving actual helpful suggestions. What I have been doing is repeatedly running The Fell Court of Troia in Trust mode to try to get drops. I'm sure I speak for many when I say I wish SE would make the drops favor the role you are playing.

I also want to add that from the beginning all the way up through the end of EW 6.0, I never once got held back with the MSQ because I didn't have a high enough iLevel.
Thanks for your replies.

[Mika_Zahard]

NQ is sufficient to meet ilvl requirements for content that have high ilvl requirements even if it doesn't have the same stats..

Stop this right now. Stop telling people to queue with normal gear if the stats are garbage, just to grief the party. What you do is nothing short of telling people to do high content without their jobstones.

[xenahawk]

Crafting and gathering gear is different because the script gear can't be melded so is generally worse than crafted gear which can.

Hq crafted combat gear has the same stat allocations as dungeon/tome/raid gear of the same ilvl, while nq gear has worse stats.

It's not make it so you can't just complete a synth without actually doing any work and get good gear.

Im just going off stats though. I understand how it works withe the normal quality vs high quality its just personally i dont care about my stats as long as i can play though the story butstill feels wierd when i can craft/buy all regular quality armor that would stat wise be worse then my current armor just to get to the ilvl i need to continue. But whats even wierder if i understand the messages in the dungeons anyhow you go in with the base ilvl it boosts you to a higher anyhow. I'll continue to chase that carrot because i like the story though.