Enchanting system is horrible in this game.

[Fiorana]

OP, go play Aion, get to endgame and enchant and socket your gear, then get back to me on this system they have here.

[OldGeezer]

Actual skill? Are you serious? This is a GCD based MMO, skill doesn't even come into this. Gear is all that matters.

Absolutely. Rotations on boss fights are worthless in PVP. I played a destro warlock in WoW for 5 years. You can play with GCD and still fair well. But the other importasnt thing is knowing your opponents capabilites. That dictates your strategy, not because you twinked your gear out. That's the lazy way out.

[Molly_Millions]

Actual skill? Are you serious? This is a GCD based MMO, skill doesn't even come into this. Gear is all that matters.

Um no, because you have to use proper skill rotations. Try doing your skills in random order and let me know how that works out for you.

[Tupsi]

Um no, because you have to use proper skill rotations. Try doing your skills in random order and let me know how that works out for you.

Most rotations are clearly listed out for you, so it's a matter of reading comprehension at that point to be fair

[Reiterpallasch]

Actually the kind of system I enjoy is the WoW system. I used to spend hours re-enchanting/gemming my gear and hitting a target dummy to find out what the best set up was. I would try all crit, all haste, a mix of them, and other combinations just to see what would give my guy the best dps with my playstyle (many times I would go against what was "best" and would way outperform people with the normal setup and regularly was in the top 30 in worldoflogs.com without best in slot gear).

Likewise, you could have found your stat weights, plugged them into any of the dozens of apps online (such as askmrrobot) and gotten much better results. I'd love to see your WoL link btw, because there's no way you got top 30 with unoptimized snowflake setups and playstyles, even if you were full heroic current tier. You know, against the thousands upon thousands of players who are geared/gemmed/enchanted/reforged properly.

[Yamimarik]

OP, go play Aion, get to endgame and enchant and socket your gear, then get back to me on this system they have here.

Oh gods... that was soooo horrible! You get 3 stones in a 4 slot piece of gear.... and then you go for that last stone and BAM!!!!! You lose all of those bastards ; ; I hated AION's enchanting system... oh the rage! THE RAGE! FFXIV:ARR's is so nice and safe! I like the Materia system, I'm sure we'll see more customization out of it the more gear sets we eventually get. But I understand the whole not being able to stack certain stats, it would be nice.... but it's not the way it works.

EDIT:
Here is a video of how bad it was/is in AION hahaha.... THE RAGE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MjLtk4hGdw

[Molly_Millions]

Most rotations are clearly listed out for you, so it's a matter of reading comprehension at that point to be fair

For combos yes, but then there are orders for other skills, and ways to use them that are not always obvious by reading the description. The healing bonus from being infuriated (furious? ie. 5 wrath) on WAR comes to mind.

[Genesiser]

Likewise, you could have found your stat weights, plugged them into any of the dozens of apps online (such as askmrrobot) and gotten much better results. I'd love to see your WoL link btw, because there's no way you got top 30 with unoptimized snowflake setups and playstyles, even if you were full heroic current tier. You know, against the thousands upon thousands of players who are geared/gemmed/enchanted/reforged properly.

If you can find some of the logs on there, then check it out - look up fligmos from llane. Although, I haven't seriously raided since firelands and I stopped playing the game like 6 or 7 months ago. Anyway, to your point about how I could have done it better with an online app, while it's true that they are good for getting a good idea on what to do, they aren't the best for each person. For example, if you have a crappy computer with a bad connection, then going all haste wouldn't be as beneficial to you compared to someone with a good setup. Anyway, I tend to try new things out with my characters to extend the bounds of what the class is normally known for. This expansion I turned into an awesome enh shaman healer. When LFR first came out I would queue as heals, go in there as enh, and be 2nd in heals with 30k hps and 2nd in dps with like 75k dps. I had actually forgotten about until I was looking to see if I could find some logs from the past and I stumbled upon a post on wow forums I had made back in January. It was a good discussion with people having many different opinions. If you are interested, you can check it out at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...3580836?page=1

[AngryPanda]

\O/ Another WoW comparison QQ thread~~~, but seriously the system in place is to make balance instead of like in WoW where you can literally, mob an ENTIRE instance~

[ZephyrAM]

The Materia system isn't really about customizing, it's about empowering. It was mentioned by the devs that Materia is used to bring the strength of lower tier gear up closer to the strength of the next tier of gear; it creates a middle ground that makes progression smoother, and the stat caps just further that aim by keeping the gear balanced in the position they're aiming for it to be.

It's not about making your gear work in a particular, special way, just about making it work better at what it already does.