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

[Erim-Nelhah]

Ok, I kinda agree with the OP: Currently, stats on gear are more than a little wonky. Tanks, for example, basically have to choose between having too much Accuracy or having too much Parry, unless they have access to savage gear (most don't). It's similar for other classes, iiuc. Some of this may be what I'd consider to be good design. Some, however, is not. Parry, for example, is a garbage stat, and Accuracy is only important until you cap it. Now, my understanding is that the devs are doing away with Accuracy starting with 4.0. This is good, especially with the combo-based system in place for tanks and dps. But it also means they have to balance stuff even more carefully or they risk BiS gear being significantly more powerful than non-BiS gear at the same ilvl (significant in that the dps difference could be 10% or more in some cases). That said there are a few things they can do:

First, add some new secondary stats:

• Doublestrike: Adds a chance for any autoattack, spell, or weaponskill to hit a second time (with lower potency - I think it's generally 33% in WoW, which would be a good starting point here as well).
• Mastery: Affects a job-specific ability, which is different per job. The ability itself may come from your base class, but Mastery has no effect if you do not have a Job Crystal equipped. I tried thinking of examples, but coming up with examples that will actually work is likely beyond my ability. Think about increasing proc rates, or the potency and/or duration of specific abilities, for example.

Next, unify the ilvl of each tier. That is, make all gear for any given tier have the same ilvl unless it comes from Savage raiding, Extreme Primals, or the current Relic Weapon tier (all of which should be of a higher ilvl than the norm). For example (using the current tier): Prototype Alexandrian, Shire, and Dun Scaith gear should all be i260, as should the Kinna weapon. Primal weapons should be i265 (to reflect the skill needed to get one), Alexandrian gear should be i270 as it is now, with the weapon being i275. Upgrades to i270 (275 for all weapons) should be available for all listed gear, but the tokens should only come from Savage raids (if you want i270-275 gear, you have to earn it).

As for Crafted gear, it should not include weapons, and should (if overmelding is allowed) be 5-10 ilvls below current gear. Additionally, craftable raid-level gear could be added, with the materials for non-savage ilvl dropping from normal raids and mats for savage ilvl dropping from savage raids. Such gear, however, should not allow overmelding. Alternatively, the ilvl could be the same, with players being limited in the number of pieces of crafted gear they could equip (say, a max of 3 total pieces), yet such gear could always be overmelded.

Finally, diversify the stats on gear such that by picking and choosing among the various sources for gear within a specific tier, a player can get whatever balance of stats they feel is "right" for their character. To keep things reasonably balanced, try to make it so that stat weights for secondary stats are within 0.05/AP of one another, and also try to diversify which stats are "best" for each job (eg we know that Crit is, and likely always will be best for SCH, so make SpS better for WHM, and Mastery better for AST, for example).

Now, why use WoW balancing as an example? Well, if we count all specializations, WoW has a whopping 36 Jobs (FFXIV, by comparison, only has 12 now, and will have 14-15 come Stormblood), and yet still somehow seems to (mostly) get this right (and even did a reasonable job in PvP for many years, without having PvP-Only skills or PvP-Specific changes to skills - the new setup with PvP-Only skills is a very recent change), so it seems like as good of a place as any to start.

--Erim Nelhah