Raid gear set bonus

[Urthdigger]

I think a bigger issue with job-specific set bonuses like that some effects may be too powerful to be replaced by anything else, which can cause problems down the road. Imagine if the healers all required ilvl 90 gear even when doing ilvl 200 content just due to the invaluable ability bonuses? Or say a new player needs to hit up Labyrinth of the Ancients or other dead content for a vital piece but no other class needs to run that.

If ability specific bonuses are added, care would need to be taken to ensure they get replaced eventually like all gear, or the entire system FFXIV runs on would need to be entirely overhauled (which I really don't see happening).

That all said, back to the original topic, I would LOVE to see set bonuses on more gear... just most likely it'd need to be basic stats, or standardized (say, Healer gear gets a 10% healing potency bonus for 5 sets on all 8-man raid gear)

[Leigaon]

Someone put up a good thread a long time ago about something similar to this and used FF9's ability system in comparison. It might have worked back then but we're so far into the game now I don't see it happening.

Like someone said if you put it on Raid Gear someone is going to want it for other content. They could introduce it at level 50 for things like Crystal Tower and CoB. Though now you run the risk of those bonuses being better compared to iLV or completely useless, which people will complain either way. They could do something like FF9 where gear sets and you can apply those to other pieces of gear after spirit bonding them. Now you'll have people who might want to go back into certain content and spam it to get gear, which leads to RNG. I guess the work around would be currency like primals after each dungeon is completed so after X amount of times you can turn it in for a piece of gear.

Also, if we get a set bonus I can see people wanting only those people in their farm groups if the bonuses are decent enough (if they're not people will get upset and scold the developers). I'd like to have something like this or in 1.0 when our AF boosted certain aspects of our job. The more I think about it the more I realize though the players will make it into a negative, toxic situation. Or maybe I'm wrong, which I'll accept and move on with. I do like the topic though and the ways it could be implemented.

[bass9020]

FFIX ability system

I never made a thread about it but I did bring it up a few times in other threads. I thought an updated/expanded system similar to IX would be a pretty good idea. It would be job based instead of gear based and you could apply the passives to whatever content type you wanted. Now this may be way too complicated to do or add a lot of extra work but isn't that the point of developing a game with systems? Its there job to make fun and exciting features for us. I even brought up bringing back guild tokens as a way to collect the passives. Doing content like we do now or more unique class based quests or dailies (lol classes I KNOW SO FUNNY) would earn us tokens for the guilds and we could then purchase passives to slot if we wanted. It would also make the old guilds serve a purpose again which would be nice.

[Zojha]

Imagine if the healers all required ilvl 90 gear even when doing ilvl 200 content just due to the invaluable ability bonuses?

Thaaat... would kinda go against the whole point of item levels. If an i90 piece (or set) doesn't get replaced until i200, then it's effectively like handing out (an) i200 item(s) at a time where i90 would be appropriate.

That's a general problem with special effects - It's hard to appropriately tune them. You have to convert their value back into a metric that's comparable with flat number increases to balance them with other gear options and that's messy.

[YukiteruSenko]

Good idea but for pvp should the bonus does not exist otherwise will disturb the balance..!

[Dreggit]

Sure you can argue with current BiS meta against a set bonus but a set bonus can be as simple as a +xx (main stat), +xx (secondary stat), +xx defense boost. Which would likely make the set then BiS with the bonus effects instead of individually.

However such set bonuses would need to be attached to armor/accessories as weapons are a mix between x set and relics.

You could have a soft set bonus for uncrafted gear and a higher bonus for crafted. (For example. Shire vs augmented shire) I know the thought was towards raid but, eh.

I've seen set bonuses be successful to promote continued farming of a range on content relevant to the sets and so would solve a que issue.

Alternatively, if nothing else, you could make sets that even do procs based off of certain actions that may or may not serve a purpose. (One mmo I played had a easter set that when wearing the full set has a random chance to spawn a peep minion upon every global cooldown. A fully cosmetic thing but an example of something else for set bonuses)

[Dreggit]

Is it not obvious that sets with a set bonus would outlive their usefulness as any other gear. I don't think it should be complicated and be getting massive stat boosts at all.

Using the i90 example. That gear should, as at whole set, be no better than i115 imo. If nothing else it just adds another level of accessibility to people and options to those that want them

There's merit in making gear statisticly desirable but the set bonus would make that big of a difference.

For another example. Let's say that we have a full set of i230 gear with a set bonus that is statisticly equivalent to I 245 gear bit slightly better stat wise, or i260 being as good as i275 gear and slightly better.

The bonus shouldn't be so crazy that it would be relevant much later in content

I've seen in some mmos that have a set bonus, give the player some kind of cosmetic particle effect that is somewhat unintuitive but noticeable.

[Urthdigger]

Using the i90 example. That gear should, as at whole set, be no better than i115 imo. If nothing else it just adds another level of accessibility to people and options to those that want them

My comment was mostly in regards to having set bonuses that add bonuses to certain abilities. As was pointed out, this can be a NIGHTMARE to balance properly: Certain bonuses can be so beneficial to a job's role in a party that there's no point in equipping a piece that doesn't do that, no matter how many stats they give. Which is probably why those such abilities were taken out of the game in 2.0. I know if my AF body still give +10% healing magic potency, I'd probably STILL be using it 220 item levels later.

[odintius]

Gear in general is a lack luster although 1.0 had its many flaws the one thing I think it did right in a way was the gear and materia it had then back then. What we have now is a joke I'm no longer excited when they show off the new sets it as basic as you can get in a mmo.

[Emerald_Swords]

This would be so cool.

Much more enticing to actually raid if the gear has something special that most gears don't.