We'll see when the patch notes come tonight. I'm currently leaning to no changes to the current steps, with a small side of hope that the Unidentified items are reduced to 10 each instead of 20. If that happens I assume the HQ items would be reduced to 2 each.

I honestly don't know what the next part will be like, but from what I've heard 3.3 will be the one were we can fiddle with the stats (and no Alexandrites to worry about.) I'm currently saving Materia just in case for that.