Quote Originally Posted by Eye_Gore View Post
Tell that to the Titanic Saw fish. What I have to sink money into is materia. If it had an off-hand I could craft it for free.
I almost burst out laughing when I read this - off-hands are the farthest thing from free. Crafting and Gathering off-hands may well be the most expensive single piece of equipment to meld in the entire game, since they have only one slot and can fully utilize FIVE Tier IV materia. I am SO glad that I have at least one crafting/gathering class where I don't need to worry about the dizzying amount of gil (or time spiritbonding) I'll need to spend to meld the off-hand.

But yeah, fish stat requirements are lower due to the lack of an off-hand boost. As for the RNG, it was made a part of FSH as a deliberate appeal to folks that LIKE the randomness, people who get a rush out of finally seeing that jackpot catch. Because of this FSH was also deliberately made a very low-impact part of the game; there's very few things that FSH provides that are needed by crafters or anyone else, and of those things almost all of them can be caught by a lvl 50 FSH in basic gear. People are encouraged to fish because they like fishing, not because FSH is an important part of the game.

Worm of Nym (and possibly Emperor Fish) are really the only exceptions to this.