Quote Originally Posted by Alahra View Post
Even without taking a break it's hard to guess what they're going to do. While the weekly lock does parallel the Tomestone system, there are some differences, too. The main one is that you can't currently buy a full set of i180 gear with Red Scrips, and I think that difference is a small hint toward their future plans.

This leaves them room to add i180 accessories without cycling in new Scrip gear, which would then be necessary to craft 3-stars in 3.2.
This is possible, but if our only new gear pieces for at least 3 months are Accessories I can see a few issues popping up for our Endgame progression:

1. It's very unlikely the ability to craft 3-Stars would be locked behind needing a certain amount of CP over Progress/Control, especially with the variety of skills and rotations we have access to now. The current 2-Stars can be reliably crafted with as little as 437 CP which doesn't require a single i170 Accessory, or even full white gear CP melds (Assuming HQ CP food is used).

2. If these Accessories were i180 they would, by design, be less powerful than i170 Accessories overmelded, especially in the CP department. If this is the case, by the time 3.2 rolls around and they're released the current 2-Star Accessories will likely be much more accessible (Thanks to Exploratory Missions) making them a more reasonable choice time and stat-wise (Even if only for the CP) and effectively making the Crafting 3.2 Endgame gearing pointless (Assuming only Accessories are released).

3. It would make more sense if they released i200 Scrip Accessories and i190 Crafted Accessories, but unless their Scrip cost is massive then we would likely complete our Endgame within a month. Even if they release class specific Accessories (My Armoury chest would explode from the number of rings alone) with their historically low material cost we would still complete them well before the next major patch.

No one, including (Especially) myself really knows though. It could follow a similar pattern to ARR which also began with class specific sets, however they weren't locked behind any kind of gating and could be completed relatively quickly. To me, the gear progression for Crafting in ARR seemed like an afterthought, with bits and pieces of new gear added here and there and an all-in-one set added to the mix near the end.

It feels like SE is trying to extend the life of the Crafting Endgame in HW and if they only release new Accessories then that leaves very little to do for mid-hardcore Crafters after the first few weeks besides making gil, but that isn't the Endgame, it's a by-product of it.