Please remove iLevel

[MasamuneBranford]

I wouldn't fret. When an expansion comes out / level cap raises and SE wants "everyone" to be able to continue the "Main" story, you're going to find that the level 50-60 gear that you get from main story quests are better than the current i-level 90 level 50 gear.

SE is following the WoW method now. When the expansion main story comes out, SE wants everyone to be able to play together again and there will be a brand new grind after the expansion main story quests (with everyone starting on equal footing). The only players not used to this forever repeating cycle are those who played FFXI. In FFXI you could hold gear superiority for countless years. With other MMOs, everything goes out the window each expansion release.

[Felis]

I think the best way to do it by far is a mix of vertical and horizontal.

this
We need more diagonal gear.

Like 5 different body for mage class with the same ilevel. The first 3 stats would be the same for every gear, but gear 1 would give you more heal power, gear 2 more crit rate, gear 3 more dot damage, gear 4 reduce the enmity of your skills and gear 5 would make your stone skin a bit stronger.
The next ilevel the same, but with more stat points.

In short, SE should do it that with every ilevel the player can choose between a handfull gear and not just only 1 single gear each ilevel.

[Laryndra]

FFXI had mostly Horizontal progression for most of its life, it gelled really well with the decade worth of content that it had and diff BiS gear from diff sources so you never really felt like grinding away at only one thing. A lot of people enjoyed this because you never really felt you were on a hamster wheel grinding to gear cap and waiting for the next update to invalidate your earnings. On top of this the battle system in XI was designed with gear swaps mid battle so while a piece of Gear was BiS for a Weaponskill it wasnt BiS for a spell's Pre-cast set or Mid-Cast set or a Damage Reduction Set or a Idle Set. I personally enjoyed it (as I saw someone describe it) since "each piece of gear felt like a card in a Deck" and you had all these events to get the best gear for a specific purpose so it kept the gear grind rather fun especially knowing that what you earned wasn't gonna get blown out of the water completely, maybe by a few stat points here and there.

Then Seekers of Adoulin came out and they put one of the Battle Leads in charge of FFXIV 2.0 in charge of XI and we now have Ilvls up to 118 to circumvent breaking the 99 cap so now we have gear with paragraph long stat descriptions and monsters essentially sniping players mid gear swap since when you swap out of ilvl gear you effectively are at a lower lvl.

That's a oversimplification I'll admit but it's my take on XI's handling of Gear past and present.

If you're still gearswapping when you have skirmish/delve gear you're doing it wrong. The gear was designed to eliminate that need.

[Alpheus]

If you're still gearswapping when you have skirmish/delve gear you're doing it wrong. The gear was designed to eliminate that need.

Yes you're right all that fast cast on all the Plasm/Skirmish armor to cap casting reduction for spells along with all the cure potency and MAB and Magic Damage on all the same pieces as that fast cast and add to that SMN BloodPact delay and Avatar perpetuation and Avatar Magic Atk Bonus and all that Double Triple and Quad Attack. Don't be obtuse. I'll agree it's the closest to obsoleting needing to gearswap more than any other item set introduced, but to say gearswapping is doing it wrong for FFXI? You're crazy. It doesn't fulfill every need at every given moment even with it's paragraph long descriptions it's function is to simulate post lvl 99 play without the FFXI Dev Team being bothered to actually break the cap.

Many abilities and spell effects enhanced by pieces of gear still require non item level variants because FFXI's Dev Team was winging it on ilvl implementation and AF upgrades to ilvl territory aren't gonna be a thing until November and even then it's gonna be weaker than Plasm/Skirmish armor so it'll still require gearswapping for those specific effects, it just wont be as suicidal.