iLv needs to change

[SarcasmMisser]

Why would I (anyone) waste their poetics on a weapon when you could get a poetics Head & Chest to 130 that same timeframe?
Oh, and I've put all this time and energy into a this Relic, that becomes effectively useless if I buy a new one. Furthermore, the among the grindiest parts of the Relic quest is gaining light which I get from doing dungeons with it equipped (and gaining Alexandrite, which I get by spending Soldiery). I'm not even going to get into the achievement debate.

Not only are there multiple incentives to using your Relic in content, but there's incentives to spend your Poetics and Soldiery elsewhere.
Players must have a complete lack of rudimentary sense and proportionality to buy a poetic weapon (or even a soldiery) if they already possess a Relic for that class.

This post is a perfect example of a player who has been rendered completely ignorant of the potency of gear by ilevel. If you are a damage dealer a weapon upgrade is by far a more potent upgrade than a head and chest piece, especially if said items have horrible stats for a given job.

[Felessan]

Item Level should be the first stat people can look at to judge their relative strength, but as is, it's just a prerequisite stat people look at to allow them to enter instances or join Party Finder groups, or compare as an epeen between people with optimal weapons.

ILVL requirement only ensure that you are not too undergeared for this particular content, so making weapon requirements is pointless as even if it have greater weight in your performance it doesn't ensure in any way your success.

But then a problem still stands about what to do about this suddenly-common occurrence of big-armor, little-weapon players?

The biggest impact on performance is lack of skill, not a bad weapon.
I (relatively) often see how people with ILVL90-100 weapon outpefroms people with 120+ weapons just because they know their class and proper rotations.
A quick calculation gives me that at ILVL130 changing weapon from ILVL90 to ILVL135 improves damage by about 15% based on NIN stat weights. It's not that much - you can easily see in WoD for example how people have half of dps of the top spot with similar equipment just because they obviously either not trying or doing something wrong.

They can technically enter T13. But if they're a DPS, for example, their damage output will be about half or less of what someone with an i135 weapon and full i120 gear + one i130 ring (also amounting to an overall iLv of 123) can do.

This is not even remotely true. Just checked myself. With i55 weapon I have 72% of dps of i135 weapon (40% drop).
You really underestimating the combined power of other gear slots. Vast amount of primary and secondary stats far outweigh additional weapon damage stat weapons have.

[radioactive_lego]

This post is a perfect example of a player who has been rendered completely ignorant of the potency of gear by ilevel. If you are a damage dealer a weapon upgrade is by far a more potent upgrade than a head and chest piece, especially if said items have horrible stats for a given job.

Woo name calling. Congrats.

I will now address people who are rendered completely ignorant of the human condition. You (anyone) still hasn't addressed the fundamental conceptions that the Relic weapon *is your endgame weapon* regardless of it's ilv. Or the fact that some gears of lower level are better than others (some Demon pieces vs. Ironworks on SCH, for example).

I'm not ignorant, I understand there is a modest improvement in deeps when you upgrade weapon vs. gear. However, you are fighting the instinctual urge of people to double down on arms they've invested time (and subscription time = money) in.

Metaphor:
Very few people are inclined to buy a new Mitsubishi Evo X, when they have a 67' Vette in the garage they've been actively restoring for the past 2 years. It doesn't matter how much bang for the buck you get out of the Evo - I'm buying a garage for my vette. I'm getting a leather jacket with a Corvette logo. I'm even buying a bumper sticker for my Chocobo that says; "my other ride is a stingray."

Thus, the Ilv solution comes in two flavors:
- Make 130 gear as difficult to obtain as 130 Relic weapons.
- Make 130 Relics as easy as 130 gears.
...or continue to see folks with an average wLv of 102 and gLv of 118.

EDIT: Considering the uselessness of Relics in the near future; the former solution seems more appropriate.

[Lemuria]

Players must have a complete lack of rudimentary sense and proportionality to buy a poetic weapon (or even a soldiery) if they already possess a Relic for that class.

If your relic is already at ilvl 125 or higher (in other words, an actual Zodiac) then sure, getting a Poetics weapon isn't going to be a big upgrade. You might as well take the time to get it to Zeta and have a stronger weapon. For anyone else who doesn't yet have their zodiac, it's a far quicker and simpler alternative, not to mention saves you thousands, if not millions of gil.

The Zodiac quest line isn't something you can easily complete in 3 weeks unless you have a LOT of spare time on your hands and are wholly dedicated to completing Atma books, farming alexandrite, farming light and getting all the expensive craftables for the penultimate step. Getting a poetics weapon, which is a significant improvement over any other slot, is much easier to do.

Getting a relic is easy. The initial level 90 weapon you get is practically gift-wrapped for you. Getting a zodiac is a massive time and money (and sanity) investment, and anyone who ignores that simple fact can't be taken seriously.

[lyndwyrm]

... if the devs really don't have their own means to determine the stats' relative weights.

I'm sure they could, I mean look:

public int getPlayerItemLevel(Player player)
{
	float AIL = 0;
	String MainStat;
	if(player.class == Class.healer())
	{
		MainStat = "Mind";
		AIL = calculateItemLevel(player, MainStat);
		AIL *= SomeNormalizationConstant;
		/*The normalization constant would probably be picked such that the current numbers
 		 *wouldn't change much around some number*/
	}
	else if(player.class == Class.DPS())
	{
		if(player.class.job == Class.Job.MNK() || player.class.job == Class.Job.DRG())
		{
			MainStat = "Strength";  // more realistically this would just be an integer.
			AIL = calculateItemLevel(player, MainStat);
			AIL *= SomeNormalizationConstant;
		}
		else if (player.class.job == Class.Job.BRD() || player.class.job == Class.Job.NIN())
		{
			MainStat = "Dexterity";
			AIL = calculateItemLevel(player, MainStat);
			AIL *= SomeNormalizationConstant;
		}
		else if (player.class.job == Class.Job.BLM() || player.class.job == Class.Job.SMN())
		{
			MainStat = "Dexterity";
			AIL = calculateItemLevel(player, MainStat);
			AIL *= SomeNormalizationConstant;
		}
	}	
	else if(player.class == Class.tank())
	{
		MainStat = "Vitality";
		AIL = calculateItemLevel(player, MainStat);
		AIL *= SomeOtherNormalizationConstant;
		/*The normalization constant would probably be picked such that the current numbers 
		 *wouldn't change much around some number, which would differ for tanks
		 *since VIT numbers are a bit higher*/
	}
	
	return AIL;
}

public int calculateItemLevel(Player player, String mainStat)
{
	int AIL = 0;
	//Where player.gear[i] from 0 to 10 represents the 11 gear slots
	for(int i = 0; i<11; i++)
		AIL += player.gear[i].getAttribute(Mainstat);
	AIL += player.weapon.getAttribute(Mainstat);
	AIL *= (0.1 + player.weapon.WD()*.0032);
	AIL += player.weapon.WD()*.4162;
	return AIL;
}

And that took maybe half an hour(and I don't even code much), though I wouldn't joke that I know how their code is structured. This is roughly based on the damage formula from Valk, though I'm sure they have exact numbers they know.

[aerialrave]

Interesting thoughts.

Stat weights are pretty much "player" or even "community" opinion and does not necessarily agree with developer opinion. Although we can pretty much loosely agree that:
Weapon Damage (or MATK) > Prime Stat (STR/DEX/VIT/INT/MND) > desirable Secondary Stat (DET/CRIT etc etc.)

From what I understand of your argument, since Weapon Damage is the heaviest stat (has the biggest impact on how strong our character is), why doesn't it have the biggest weight in calculating ilvl? It appears that each slot has equal weight in determining ilvl (but not an equal impact on how strong we are). For example it has long been common knowledge that you could easily inflate your ilvl with Jewelry, yet those pieces are nowhere near as important as the "left side" pieces.

I think this is a design flaw from over generalizing gear and just loosely grouping them into "tiers" without actually calling them tiers. I'm sure this is a reason why the calculated ilvl is not actually shown when you inspect someone. Nor is that number available when looking at other players in the Lodestone.

[Valkrist]

I personally don't see this as a make relics easy thread. I see it as a thread asking for weapons to be more heavily weighed with iLVL, or making a change so that it's apparent that having a better weapon is significantly more important to damage than just stacking armor and accessories.

By no means do I think everyone needs to be using the absolute best weapons to be running dungeons or endgame. My personal opinion is that people cheese their way through the minimum iLVL lock and becomes dead weight to a party, and that is no fun for the rest of the party.

The way the game is right now, you can easily get carried through Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan HM to get an i90 weapon in a day. Or farm ST for sol and a tomestone for an i100/110 weapon in a day. Or spend 3 weeks farming poetics for an i120/130 weapon. The hardest poetics armor to get take 2 weeks gather enough poetics for. Yet today we're at a point where it's common to see people with full left and right side poetics that takes about 13 weeks to finish, but their weapon isn't even an i90. This really shows that there're some priority issues going on with players and that they feel that there's no need to upgrade their weapons.

I'm going to give a classic example of how one dungeon today still wipes many people because of just one person that cheeses the system. If you enter Sastasha HM and fight the second boss, you know that it's a pretty strict DPS check to reach the boss' 14% HP mark. Very often I've found this boss to be extraordinarily hard with the tank capped at i110, the healer DPSing capped at i110, one DPS at i110, and the last DPS being the cheeser. I'm not saying all of the i110 players are cream of the crop in terms of producing damage. I'm saying that fights like this, you know the cheeser was the reason why the boss reached 16+ stacks or wiped.

[HakuroDK]

I agree with a lot of the original post's points. Especially where ilvl is a requirement for dungeons, and I feel that certain gear slots should be weighted much more heavily than others in calculating overall ilvl.

In order of most heavily weighted to least heavily weighted, it should be like this:

-Weapon
-Chest/Legs
-Head/Hands/Feet
-Belt
-Necklace/Bracelet/Earrings
-Rings

[Cirgellon]

I didnt read past the OP but I don't think everything is weighted the same in the ilvl calculation. I just reached 50 for the first time a few weeks ago. I had all ilvl 100 armor and jewellry. One piece of jewellry was ilvl 120 and my bow was ilvl 80.

So one 80, one 120, and the rest 100.

My overall ilvl was 90. It would have been 100 if every piece counted equally(or I don't understand averages).


Edit after readi ng the thread: As a newer player, I haven't found an easy way to get a higher ilvl bow. The ones I see for poetics or soldiery also require coil drops according to what I looked up. Did I see that wrong or am I just looking in the wrong place?

[UBERHAXED]

I didnt read past the OP but I don't think everything is weighted the same in the ilvl calculation. I just reached 50 for the first time a few weeks ago. I had all ilvl 100 armor and jewellry. One piece of jewellry was ilvl 120 and my bow was ilvl 80.

So one 80, one 120, and the rest 100.

My overall ilvl was 90. It would have been 100 if every piece counted equally(or I don't understand averages).


Edit after readi ng the thread: As a newer player, I haven't found an easy way to get a higher ilvl bow. The ones I see for poetics or soldiery also require coil drops according to what I looked up. Did I see that wrong or am I just looking in the wrong place?

It is indeed an average. Weapons get double weight if they are 2 handed (clearly..., which is btw mostly everything except PLD). You always divide by 13. Therefore the OP is incorrect; weapons already have higher weight in the average.