Yoshi was asked about having gear that boosted specific skills (e.g. an individual ability lasts longer or is stronger with this gear attached) rather than relying on main stats we currently get from gear.

His response at the time was that he felt groups would require their members to have all the related gear before trying harder content (or something to that effect) so he wasn't sure.

However today during the E3 Chan event it came out as:

Although the idea of introducing gears with skill-specific stats is enticing, a lot of thought and planning would need to go into it first to ensure balance is maintained.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...short_summary/

This sounds more like he's willing to try it out with some planning rather than abandoning the idea. Although the idea of skill-specific gear sounds great, two potential problems come to mind:

1. We can't swap gear during battle, so we'd want the gear we wear to have all of the skill-specific gear + main stats. (You'd end up seeing lots of description for a piece of gear if it listed every main stat + list of skill boosts)

2. If the system was changed so we could swap gear/stat types, this would (probably) cause inventory issues.

Can anyone think of a way to provide skill-specific gear without requiring multiple gear sets/inventory issues? Not sure if this has been suggested before but why not try using "adaptive materia slots" where the skill-specific bonuses come directly from materia and can be equipped / unequipped on those slots. (sort of like how FF7 handles materia to gear).