Gearset Stat Permutations, why they are bad, and what you can do to fix them!~

[JunseiKei]

Because no one is asking for a "billion". Right now we literally only have two options, with one ranging from "meh" to "perfect" and the other one being "hell no". Some variety on that scale certainly wouldn't hurt, and it would only allow other ways to gear up our side jobs since tomestones are only good for gearing a single job at a time; unless, of course, you're a one-trick-pony.

The billion is an exaggeration. Each class has desired secondary stats, so adding in other options are still inferior. They will just fall by the wayside like the Dun Scaith gear and crafted gear. For side jobs, you have crafted gear, which is still better than the tier before it. Unless you're a raider, you don't really need anything better until raid upgrades are made accessible through hunts.

Options we have this tier:
- Prototype
- Crafted
- Script
- Dun Scaith (in a few days)
- Alexandrian
- Augmented

Again, unless you're raiding, even the prototype will get you through the content (and good players with Midan can literally do everything this tier). Reading the first post over again, what is being asked is to make crafted and 24-man gear far better than it is (which 2.x had BiS crafted gear; this time around, SE accounted for crafted gear and made it so it couldn't be better than raid rewards) while limiting just as much as script gear. This would allow people to gear up far stronger far faster. It means they'd have to adjust content accordingly, as well. It would also completely undermine the point of raiding if the total stat point of the lower gear made it become BiS. People already complained about this happening with relic; we're now stuck with a relic that is pretty useless for a majority of expansions (unless you don't raid).

Still, as it is, WPDM> main stat> balance of secondaries that give you more total stat points. Even if you add in other options, people will buy and plan for the best (still augmented and raid gear). Making crafted gear not be as good, yet consume scripture gear best spent on something that will be your BiS might actually hurt crafters in the end. Having options is a great notion, but balancing is a thing.

[Astyrah]

Again, unless you're raiding, even the prototype will get you through the content (and good players with Midan can literally do everything this tier).

also let's not forget at 3.4 release, a12s was cleared by the world first competing teams in mostly i250 crafted/protoAlex gear and vit melds on acc's so they're more than enough for expert roulette and other non-savage content

[Klamor]

snip

I can't argue with balancing, and adding gear options does make balancing more [slightly] difficult for the developers (but that's their damn job, not my problem).

But the real discussion to be had spans more than just a simple discussion on gear options, because the game itself is fundamentally designed to be a stick in the mud. Basically everything about it is a straight line, no choice, from the start to the end.

- The MSQ is more linear than a tree with no limbs. I've seen drag strips with more curves. (joke)
- The dungeon progression at endgame is just as linear, but by the time any thing is released, our average item level is so high that the dungeon is obsolete on arrival.
- Savage Raids (the only worthwhile content in the game) is a series of 4 bosses with basically nothing else about them (Faust, lol)

While I genuinely enjoy the end game raids, I don't do the raids on all of the combat jobs I have leveled (which is all of them) mostly because certain jobs are undergeared because the only gear they've been able to get a hold of is a couple pieces from 24-man raids (which is now stagnant and obsolete) and w/e drops from the newest tier of dungeons (which is, by default, obsolete because it's around 50 item levels below the raid drop gear).

Just being able to have a method to power-up the 24-man raid gear would give us a ton more freedom for gearing than what we currently have. Crafted gear is another story simply due to Advanced Melding. Through pentamelding you can instantly gear up multiple jobs (while spending millions of gil, unless you've got friends that love to craft) on day one of a new Raid patch (which is what you mentioned as a downside to more gear options .... ) so having more options from other pieces of content (not diadem, because lol) really doesn't seem like an awful addition, regardless of whether or not I already know it'll never happen (because of the game's design).

As an aside, and an edit: I'm just remembering back to the days where BiS gear sets were combinations of pieces from various origins. Like, having the BiS body piece come from one of the last two or three bosses of a 12-boss raid dungeon, your BiS shield was made by Armorsmithing, your near-BiS weapon came from a high-level 5-man dungeon and was great because it had an awesome proc, and was only replaced by the weapon that dropped from the final boss of the raid, ... etc. SE is making broad combat changes in 4.0, so I see no issue with talking about other systems in the game that could use some help come 5.0 and later, if they plan on making it that far.

[Krindor]

I think it's safe to assume SE has no idea how to work and handle gear and stats. Crit and SS is a mess where one is vastly superior and the other inferior. Hell SS mechanically is a mess if you look deeply into it. As for gear that's as much of a mess. A class like NIN is now equal to DRG in term of personal DPS in raid simply due to gear. While DRG has a low amount of crit NIN is now sitting at a value that SE themselves didn't even expect considering that the crit info for DoT is 8-bit limiting it to 25.5% (No real effect but shows that SE didn't intend for it to be that high), which is a limit NIN surpasses with gear and once other classes gets their relic also has a chance of passing.

[JunseiKei]

I'm just remembering back to the days where BiS gear sets were combinations of pieces from various origins.

...And Final Coil was completed in a week (literally, there were pentamelded crafted gear that was better than the raid gear). That's why it's probably not returning. It makes the raid tier look like a joke because it makes you more powerful that much faster.

People say they want these options to gear up secondaries. The reality is most people will throw these options at their mains first.

~snip~

Has mostly to do with the length of fights. Ninjas does exceedingly well in short fights; vicariously, monk does exceedingly well the longer the fight is; dragoon is somewhere in the middle. Most of this tier's raids can be done in relatively short time (Final Coil roughly 10 minutes VS something like Creator's 5 minutes average for this tier). The shorter the fight, the closer the DPS disparities are.

[vp_cmc]

...And Final Coil was completed in a week (literally, there were pentamelded crafted gear that was better than the raid gear).

By world first groups. And alex creator savage was completed in 3 days! Also, gordias was not possible for world best groups to be completed in a week with 190 crafted gear. For many other groups it means that they were not able to complete it at all, even in 210 gear.

[Krindor]

Has mostly to do with the length of fights. Ninjas does exceedingly well in short fights; vicariously, monk does exceedingly well the longer the fight is; dragoon is somewhere in the middle. Most of this tier's raids can be done in relatively short time (Final Coil roughly 10 minutes VS something like Creator's 5 minutes average for this tier). The shorter the fight, the closer the DPS disparities are.

When the simulated DPS between the two classes comes extremely close simply due to gear, then it has more to do with gear. The 300 difference in crit between nin and drg is no joke in terms of DPS. This can also be seen by looking at the statistics for Alex, in every fight at the start of the tier NIN was quite a bit away from DRG and at the end it surpassed it, in comparison to the other classes which kept a similar distance from eachother, the growth is closely related to gear. Both me and Dervy knew that this was going to happen the second we saw the gear and compared our simulations.

Here's the statistics for A11S: https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/13...36&timespan=60
The only fight where NIN is significantly behind is A12S due to everyone sending their NIN inside the timegate.

[Llugen]

Another response in no particular order:

While prototype gear might be able to get you through content, that sentiment defeats the entire purpose of building up gear and classes. I don't want to "be able to get through" content, I want gear that will allow me to do it faster, better, smarter.

Once again, balance IS important, but two opt

[Llugen]

ions is hardly a "choice", and as someone said before, this directly lends itself to the linear-ness of the game, which we are loosely trying to move away from.

Particularly with there being 6 full months between 3.5 and 4.0, people are going to have max item level on most of the classes they desire by the end of that time period, just like they did between 2.5 and 3.0. I don't think more options are uncalled for.

[CookieMonsta]

Has mostly to do with the length of fights. Ninjas does exceedingly well in short fights; vicariously, monk does exceedingly well the longer the fight is; dragoon is somewhere in the middle. Most of this tier's raids can be done in relatively short time (Final Coil roughly 10 minutes VS something like Creator's 5 minutes average for this tier). The shorter the fight, the closer the DPS disparities are.

This is also not considering the fights themselves take a complete dump on the DRG rotation. Like A12S requires extreme risk on the DRG side to even pull off the opener properly on Alex after Z-laser. The flexibility of the Nin rotation is extremely noticeable through the creator fights, they suffer very little from the mecchanics. All this compounds together with the extreme crit difference to mean that any DPS advantage the DRG had is equalized.

Btw the Spellspeed difference you quote is nothing compared to Nin vs DRG BiS. It is 300 Crit, the DRG crit is so low it cant actually cap out Priestly Omelette.