New items not an ilvl upgrade? Then at least they should be true sidegrade!

[Nihility]

It's the tier of gear between darklight and allagan that was completely missing from the game. Should be a welcome addition

also, the moogle weapons will supposedly be 80 so relic weapons will have an alternate and extreme primals are supposedly 90 making for an alternate to relic+1 while twintania will remain as the sole source of 95 making her the ultimate goal of everyone until 2.2 where there will be harder content released
I'm hoping one of the primals might drop rings instead of weapons though since that particular piece needs 2 and there is only ever 1 available for each gear set

crystal tower just should have been at launch with coil as 2.1 is the only real issue as far as gear goes

[Teleniel]

I completely 100% agree but the development team took the insanely easy way out to "balance" the game by creating linear/vertical stats... not to mention making only 1-3 stats useful for each job.

this is basically how I feel about it... but since I don't have every class in ilvl70+ (or 90+) I'm still happy to see that progression gear at least for me will be coming and that the content will be relevant in progressing TO ilvl90+ all jobs. I DO actually hope that they will release a patch with multiple different pieces of equipment that are available in a single ilvl tier for each job group, along with meldable/convertable equipment that can be obtained. I would *love* to see equipment with unique abilities but I understand that having rebuilt this game for ARR starting with basic vertical progression makes it easier.

[Alkimi]

Horizontal progression gear is an oxymoron as in it doesn't exist. There has to be some reason to go after new gear as in it has to be better in some way even if only very slightly.

The only game I know of that it kind of worked on is FFXI with it's ridiculous gear swapping madness. But here you just pick one or the other, there's not really any such thing as situational gear bar maybe hitting that accuracy cap for coil.