iLv needs to change

[Felis]

Animus dungeons should require at least an i70 weapon level to enter.

ilevel 70 weapon for Sastasha (normal)? ^^
I don't think that every dungeon, that are in a Animus book, should require a ilevel 70 weapon.

Also for those with unfinished relic, so long their other gears are overgeared enough (ilevel 110 gear in a ilevel 60 dungeon) the gear stats should compensate enough the lower weapon.

[Valkrist]

ilevel 70 weapon for Sastasha (normal)? ^^
I don't think that every dungeon, that are in a Animus book, should require a ilevel 70 weapon.

Also for those with unfinished relic, so long their other gears are overgeared enough (ilevel 110 gear in a ilevel 60 dungeon) the gear stats should compensate enough the lower weapon.

That's picking apart the statement a little too much. Yes, an i70 weapon would be too much for say Sastasha NM, but not so much for say the third dungeon for each Animus book. What I'm getting at is that the Animus books expect you to have an i90 weapon(Zenith equivalent Atma weapon) for this. Anyways, this is really besides the point.

Then I'm going to take the op post's example. Someone fully geared in i130 gear, but an i90 weapon. They absolutely with 100% certainty do under half damage of someone with the same gearing, but with an i130 weapon. This is a fact. If you compare an i90 weapon to an i135 weapon, there's a 12 "damage" difference that is equal to about 110 main stat to catch up, not including the secondary stat difference. Yes, wearing i130 gear is increasing his main stat and secondary stats, but that's ignoring the fact that they're still a minimum of 110 main stat behind compared to everyone else.

[Felis]

Then I'm going to take the op post's example. Someone fully geared in i130 gear, but an i90 weapon. They absolutely with 100% certainty do under half damage of someone with the same gearing, but with an i130 weapon. This is a fact. If you compare an i90 weapon to an i135 weapon, there's a 12 "damage" difference that is equal to about 110 main stat to catch up, not including the secondary stat difference. Yes, wearing i130 gear is increasing his main stat and secondary stats, but that's ignoring the fact that they're still a minimum of 110 main stat behind compared to everyone else.

Yes, but outside of SCoB and FCoB a ilevel 90 weapon is good enough, and in many level 50 dungeons the weapon get ilevel-synched down to ilevel 110

[JimboTCB]

Yes, but outside of SCoB and FCoB a ilevel 90 weapon is good enough

Nothing outside of those has an ilvl requirement of more than 90, so a 90 weapon is the expected gear level almost by definition. Now, if we're talking about people still using a sub-50 weapon and padding their ilvl using accessories, that's something else entirely, but 90 is what the highest non-coil content is tuned around and anything more than that should be considered a nice bonus. Complaining that people in experts aren't running around with zetas and augmented magitek weapons is ridiculous.

[MatthiasS]

Some thoughts on what could be causing the big armor, tiny weapon problem.

1. Alt Jobs that share gear. I play BLM, PLD, and SCH. That means at any time, I could toss my i130 armor on my SMN and have a huge ilvl, despite the best weapon I have being the Titan book. Somehow never got around to picking up the Diamond one off Shiva. (I personally consider any weapon above i110 to be "good enough" for all current content)

2. Poor logic/understanding of stat weights. A player earns, say, 1500 poetics, and looks through the list o' stuff you can buy. They see 1300 and a tomestone for a 120 weapon. Or 850(ish) and a twine for a 130 chest, with enough left over to buy and ring, and nearly there on bracelet. Most players will choose to upgrade 3 slots over 1, thinking it will provide a greater bonus.

3. Deliberately screwing with ilvl to get into content. This is the one that pisses me off. The other day I joined a Shiva EX farm party for a pony, and for some reason, the tank just kept dropping. I checked the tanks gear. Solid for Shiva. WHM? Looked good. SCH? WTF. i55 Grand Company Book. Guy was there for the Shiva book, and hadn't bothered to run HM primals, hit the markets, or burn through relic to Zenith, even. When you can buy an i70 book on the MB for 200k gil, bringing anything lower to an EX primal farm is just saying "I don't care, carry me"

[radioactive_lego]

Solution: Make lv 120 weapons as easy to grind as 120 gear (or vise-versa).

I hate to make this a "I hate the relic grind" thread, but it's really the cornerstone of the OP's problem.

[JimboTCB]

Solution: Make lv 120 weapons as easy to grind as 120 gear (or vise-versa).

I hate to make this a "I hate the relic grind" thread, but it's really the cornerstone of the OP's problem.

Poetics weapons take all of 3 weeks to farm, and that's only because of the weekly currency cap. You could farm a 110 soldiery weapon in one afternoon if you were so inclined. The ease of obtaining gear isn't the issue, it's the laziness and disrespect for other players that leads to people cheesing their itemlevel with no regard for their actual performance. Some people don't care about being bad and just want to put in the absolute bare minimum effort necessary to get carried through content, and making weapons easier to grind out isn't going to change that.

[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.