Quote Originally Posted by Sapphidia View Post
I can understand the disappointment, but bear in mind we're the only job that ever had any choice in the first place. You didn't see Dragoons swapping between Crit and SkS sets based on encounters, or Monks having Vit for one fight or Str for another. Every other class got away with one gear set for ALL content. They don't seem to like choice or personal preference in classes in FF.
This isn't really true, historically. in Savage SCoB and early FCoB, it was pretty common to see DPS/Healers foregoing 20 iLevels of their main stat in their accessories, and using i90 VIT+Main melds in place of the i110 Soldiery/High Allagan that offered the most DPS/strongest healing.Just as tanks in Gordias tended to favour i150 melded at the beginning of the raid tier and gradually transition to full STR, people would take the VIT on melded accessories for survivability and only gradually switch to actual DEX/INT/STR/MND gear as their left-side gave them an HP buffer. Even after being geared up, it wasn't at all uncommon to see healers (mainly Scholars, but a few White Mages) wearing several melded pieces to bring them to the accuracy cap.

The only reason that gearing choices never really emerged in 3.0/3.1 is that the exceptionally high DPS checks in Gordias forced DPS and healers to really maximize offense for the first several months, and the exceptionally low iLevel on crafted accessories meant that the tradeoff of losing your main stat to gain extra VIT was too great a loss for too little gain, except on tanks.


You're right that they don't seem to like giving people choices, but the choices were there, and they were viable until 3.0, for all roles. I felt that the game was poorer for not really having those viable choices on DPS/Healers in Heavensward, and I think it will probably be poorer for doing away with this last little bastion of customizability. But I guess there's not much to be done about it at this point.