Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[MagiusNecros]

Again, I'm all for diversifying content to make those more meaningful choices. But dealing with the content is the first and necessary step to be taken, not obfuscating different damage sources by adding flavor text or messing with jobs' internal balance for the exact same net results.

I get what you are saying when you spell it out like that and I think dealing with the content is the right choice. But I don't think the devs are going to change their formula and only put out very easy and very hard content with no middle ground.

Instead of Easy > Hard > Extreme > Savage > Unreal > Ultimate

The obfuscation argument has merit I think because the secondary stats just amount to a obfuscating number when it should just give you a percentage that tells you what you need to know.

XIV Crit: 2500
Percentage: 27% Crit Rate

What tells you more? A number you have to figure out or a flat percentage?

Or rather instead of Stardiver saying it'll hit for 620 potency it should say at base how much damage it'll do without factoring in a Crit or buffs.

I suppose gear with unique effects/passives don't have much place in a game that has linear gear scaling and only wants you to stack weapon damage, main stat, and Critical Hit with the large focus on the 2 minute burst.

This is probably the way the game is being designed now that you have these problems where they want everyone to be viable so you end up having no options since everyone is so watered down to be so similar within a centimeter of each other and if the only DPS difference between different gear is 1% or 2% there is no reason to create or offer multiple gearsets/loadouts.

I'd rather gear be interesting but I don't think it'll ever be that way. Devs are stuck in their ways.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think the devs are going to change their formula and only put out very easy and very hard content with no middle ground.

Instead of Easy > Hard > Extreme > Savage > Unreal > Ultimate

First, it's hard to tell from your wording whether you are implying that I'm asking for a change to only two difficulties or that you're saying the devs already have only two difficulties.

Regardless, difficulty tiers in themselves only indirectly have anything to do with the kind of content variety I'm talking about. For burst damage to differentiate itself from simple rDPS over the total fight length (to which both contribute at a decently predictable value for a fight of given features and parameters), you need fights that aren't just constant uptime against a single threshold-less unit, etc. That doesn't necessarily have to be "very hard" (though it does at least have to be enough that sustain alone can't nicely handle whatever's being added), it just has to be more varied in its threats and the timing thereof. The same goes for utility.

The obfuscation argument has merit I think because the secondary stats just amount to a obfuscating number when it should just give you a percentage that tells you what you need to know.

I'm all for more transparent secondary stat effects and having tooltips be readable in whatever way is most intuitive to us, but that too is outside what we were just discussing... Was this intended only as a tangent?

Tying such back to the previous point of discussion, you could write a given tier set effect as "X% more damage from Y," "X additional potency for Y," "X more damage for Y," or whatever else, and any of those ways of describing the effect would still require that someone know/understand the skill's frequency, its (CD/raid buff/rotational buff) interactions, and its stat scaling. Until there's an actual trade off in terms of how the given piece handles content --and even then lasting until any short-term advantages become redundant-- adding skill-specific or conditional effects, etc., is just adding hoops to an inevitable mathematical conclusion.

That's not to say that all complication there is necessarily convolution, but there are...

• diminishing returns to increased complexity, especially if systems end up shading out each other,
• differences in the disruptive/convoluting costs of additional complexity based on where and how they're added, and
• the value to be had from an additional layer of complexity depends on how much real, palpable, and ideally satisfying choice can be generated from it.

The latter two parts are the most significant when discussing tier sets.

Tier sets' effects (+%damage to this, -%CD to that) disrupt a job's internal balance, meaning that if there is only really a single form of combat (perfect uptime, 2-minute-based, single-target, etc.) and its profile was already next to perfect, it can only be worsened by that shift in weight among its skills. For it to be a change without being a detrimental one means that there must, too, be available variety of content into which it may go (that would make the shift, even if worse on average, feel better there).

But the worse part is that a tier set is both time-limited and singular. If those changes to internal balance are significant enough to actually make adjustments to play, then that playstyle shift is forced on anyone who wants to gear through that avenue of gear acquisition (be that Savage, for instance, or weekly-currency gear, as what becomes your "tier set" for the given tier). Just to continue playing how they preferred to before, they must gear instead through the opposite means, and to play in that newly permitted way, they must likewise stick to that one particular gearing path. If the tier set has any actual impact, you essentially force new ways to play the job each tier and/or you remove half of a player's gearing opportunities.

That's why I can't agree with the idea of adding tier sets. Had you just wanted gear effects, I'd still have reminded you that, until there's a larger variety in how core combat content plays out, they'd likely be inefficient additions to customization that add more convolution than customization, but I'd agree with the mission on the whole. I just can't get behind tier sets, in particular. They seem an inherently bad idea.