Legitimate reasons why many of you do NOT like Gear Swapping

[Vhailor]

Wat?

I guess you don't do so well in statistics nor any sciences, eh?

That's fine.

You're telling me that gear swapping would only have the benefit of having a slight higher DPS than someone else. This is illogical... Parsing is primarily to find the numbers in YOUR own character and job/class. And DPS is just a small fraction of what I care about.

Parsing opens the door to understanding how stats work at what point/situation, against what mobs, gear or better yet stat swapping is supplemented for a better output.

As I've said before, SE would be wasting data if they came out with haste gear. Especially if it's gear that is not meldable.

There is a significant difference between parsing to figure out gear effectiveness and allowing for mid-battle gear swapping. The former is quite possible in the current system, and in fact, I'd love if SE would introduce a native one so that people who choose to partake in the meta-game can do so easily.

That being said, parsing is so much more relevant and thought-provoking and challenging if it requires you to actually make choices with your gear instead of just isolating a perfect point for each action and then gear-swapping as needed.

Parsing to find out that the best nuke damage is achieved through a combination of X INT and Y MAB with Z Macc is a straight-forward exercise in data gathering. Painful at times? Sure, but still straight-forward. If you allow gear-swapping, then once this data is collected, the challenge ends; you buy the right gear to fit the model, or quest for it or whatever. Then you swap it in at the precise moment you need it at, and all of the thought goes out of the equation. This is what we would call a trivial challenge.

If, however, you have to analyze an entire fight, and determine what setup works best in conjunction with the people around you, for a specific, fixed set of equipment? That is a challenging problem. It's likely a problem that we can't even solve in full generality, but we can perhaps guide ourselves to better results. That is something you can sink your teeth into for years.

If you're wanting mid-battle gear changes, you're not really after a challenge, you're after the warm fuzzy feeling that most of us get when we see something executed perfectly. So don't go around trying to make your argument by insulting the intelligence of others.

[Lux_Rayna]

If, however, you have to analyze an entire fight, and determine what setup works best in conjunction with the people around you, for a specific, fixed set of equipment? That is a challenging problem. It's likely a problem that we can't even solve in full generality, but we can perhaps guide ourselves to better results. That is something you can sink your teeth into for years.

Exactly!

In answer to the question: What if fights are too complex for one obvious set of gear, this quote would be the answer. Confused? Fine. I'll explain.

There was a time when gear was a very personal choice. Lately, and I'm not sure *when* this happened chronologically, gear has become a standard, as in there's only one valid piece of gear for a certain function. WoW is obviously the most popular sinner of all in regards to this, but I doubt it really started with WoW. Then again it might have, who knows. The point is that gear is not something that should be standardized, but personalized. Rather than a vertical progression (WoW formula), there should be more lateral progression (other games). Having more choices means that you customize a set of gear to deal with as many variables as is feasible.

This is where true challenge comes in, as was said above. With all the options, and all the variables, how do you make an effective piece of gear? As a tank you have:

1) Block rate
2) Def
3) Hp
4) Enmity
5) etc etc

Damage mitigation? Pure hp survivability? A combination of the two? What are healers most able to handle? What are your primary concerns during that battle/dungeon? If its a high mp-pressure fight, damage mitigation is your best option. But if some attacks are unblockable, you need hp for insurance. But then again enmity could be a problem if you are burning mp, so you might say screw damage mitigation and just count on your healers to keep up while you stack enmity/hp. Who knows....there is no "optimal" way, only effective ways. Largely depends on group and playstyle.

Gear Swap takes away all of this. No need for it at all, and it is antithetical to everything a player used to stand for before easymode and standardization became the norm.