Quote Originally Posted by Absimiliard View Post
We really need to go back to the old formula. Relic weapons eventually equaling or slightly surpassing savage weapons at the end of each tier was preferable, as it gave casuals access to a strong piece of equipment and allowed raiders an opportunity for (depending on when in the game's life) a sidegrade or slight upgrade.
The only tier where this was the case mid-expansion was at the very end of SCOB, going into FCOB (with the i115 Nexus weapons). BCOB didn't have a tome weapon, so the i90 Zenith Relic was functionally the tome weapon for that tier, at five ilevels below the raid drop.

This is a non-issue now because there are so many parallel gearing systems for players to get caught up. The new crafted set replaces all the previous raid gear on patch release, and you have the Primal weapons working in tandem with that. There are plenty of existing catch-up systems for even very casual players like yourself to make use of. Five ilevels isn't going to make you suddenly clear content that you can't already.

No, if you want Relics to matter, they have to be tied back to interesting content. Exploratory zones like Eureka and Bozja are the perfect environment for this, because they often introduce in new actions and mechanics that don't work anywhere else. You could have a Relic that is functionally just a tome weapon outside, but grants you unique job-specific effects when you're in the exploratory zone. Perhaps the relic strengthens a specific job action or grants it a second charge, giving you more power to fight dangerous mobs and unlock later zones. You could make a case for creating zone-specific effects to justify the existence of other parallel weapon systems as well, like the Deep Dungeon weapons.