Item Level - How high will it go?

[ZhaneX]

So I just wanted to make a thread to discuss a curiosity I'd been having lately.

With 4.0 and Stormblood will come an increase of our Character Level to 70. But of course, item level long since surpassed character level in almost exponential values. By the time A Realm Reborn 2.X had come to an end, item level had reached 135. And now with the closing of Heavensward 3.X, that number has more than doubled to reach 275.

So, how high do you think item level will go by the time 4.X's lifespan is nearing its close? Think it'll go slightly over double again? Level 70, Item Level 555 Gear?

[Kazrah]

I doubt it would double over, but rather follow similar increments. By that rule....

....starting dungeon gear would be 260.
....fresh 70s would be close to 300.
....70s nearing 5.0 would be no higher than 520.

[Skeltal-Bons]

I think it will increase by 200 tops, so top tier armor being iLvl 470 with weapons being 475, I doubt the iLvl will be much higher than 1000 when the level cap is 99

[Kaedan]

It frankly wouldn't surprise me to see them essentially "reset" ilvl. There are multiple ways they could do it, including just dropping a digit and rounding where necessary. So top gear at the end of Heavensward would be maybe 28 or 30 ilvl max.

Or they could simply divide by some other number to reduce the ilvl.

That being said, they can continue with the pace they've been going for quite awhile before they have to consider resetting or restructuring the ilvl system. Between ARR and now, we've only gained ~140 ilvl I think. So if Heavensward ends at 280 or 300, that would still only put us at ~430 right before the next expansion after Stormblood.

[Felis]

It frankly wouldn't surprise me to see them essentially "reset" ilvl. There are multiple ways they could do it, including just dropping a digit and rounding where necessary. So top gear at the end of Heavensward would be maybe 28 or 30 ilvl max.

Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear. They would have to nerf every content into the ground for that.

ilevel have nothing to do with character level. it only say how good the base stats of the gear are.

How high the ilevel will be at 4.5? It depend on the ilevel steps at lv 70. It can be the same like in 3.x (+20 ilevel), reduced to how it was in 2.x (+10 ilevel) or even higher than it was in 3.x (+30 or even +40?).


I favor the +10 steps from 2.x
Fast enough to feel stronger, but not too fast so the content of the last patch will be still a bit challenging with current gear of the new patch.

[Kaedan]

Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear

ilevel have nothing to do with character level. it only say how good the base stats of the gear are

Huh?

The ilvl numbers are arbitrary. They could label the power level of the items however they wanted. And I find it both confusing and somewhat amusing that in your first sentence you claim a connection between level and ilvl, then in your next sentence you say there's no connection... quite contradictory.

They could label item power with whatever the hell they feel like. But eventually the system they are using now will end up with large numbers that are unwieldy. Thus they will likely do something like drop a digit and round or divide by some other number to consolidate and "reset" them.

Character level and ilvl already don't match after level 50. So it doesn't matter what they end up labeling item power as long as they keep the system reasonable. But as I said, we have have a long ways to go before they even have to think about re-labeling ilvl. At least until 6.0 or even 7.0.

[Felis]

Huh?

The ilvl numbers are arbitrary. They could label the power level of the items however they wanted. And I find it both confusing and somewhat amusing that in your first sentence you claim a connection between level and ilvl, then in your next sentence you say there's no connection... quite contradictory.

A ilevel 32 MNK weapon have str 7. Do you think that is enough for Void Arc, Alexander and the triads without nerfing them to the ground?
Because that is what i mean with "Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear"

Of course the devs can label it how they want it, and they labeled it item level, like "level of the item"
They can hide the label so nobody will see it and nobody will argue about it, even if the stats still increase at the same speed each patch.

[Kaedan]

A ilevel 32 MNK weapon have str 7. Do you think that is enough for Void Arc, Alexander and the triads without nerfing them to the ground?
Because that is what i mean with "Good luck with doing lv60 content with ilevel 30 gear"

Of course the devs can label it how they want it, and they labeled it item level, like "level of the item"
They can hide the label so nobody will see it and nobody will argue about it, even if the stats still increase at the same speed each patch.

*sigh*

Okay, let me work this through with you step by step, since you're not quite getting it. Let's start with if they dropped a digit (divide by factor of 10):

Current 270 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 27. Same stats. Same power. Just a different label. By comparison, current 20-30 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 2-3. Same stats, same power.

Now, let's say they reduced by a factor of 3 instead of 10:

Current 270 ilvl gear would then be ilvl 90. Current ilvl 90 gear would then be ilvl 30.

Do you get it now? It would just be a re-labeling to keep numbers from getting unwieldy. Though they won't have to do it for at least another two expansions.

[Zojha]

Well, I'd not be surprised if it doubled again. The more stats you have, the less small stat increases matter when it comes to making you feel empowered. Either that, or we'll get exponentially more stats per item level.

We'll see!

[Riardon]

Eventually they will have to stop using this system to identify gear power. The numbers keep rising and in the end we gonna end up talking about i1010, i960, etc. It doesn't look very nice. It was a nice system when it started and we had gear ilvl close to player's lvl but now it went too far off. It will not be easy to remove it as it has implications with dungeons, DF, PF etc. A way to deal with this will be to simply remove and replace the minimum ilvl requirements with minimum stat numbers like critical 800, min accuracy etc. It can also open the door for more horizontal gear progression. In other MMORPGs you judge the power of gear by the color of it (icon color) and simply the stats it gives. Here we just go for bigger ilvls overlooking stats in the process.
ofc it will not be that simple but maybe devs already thought on this.