Can we talk about how the materia system is irritating for casters?

[NovaLevossida]

I initially looked at materia slots on "endgame gear" back in 3.x in a negative light. I just saw it as a gil sink that I'd have to pay into just to have good stats. However, I came to appreciate it while playing BLM when I could put a little piety materia on my gear and never be at the mercy of server ticks for MP during the umbral ice portion of the rotation. However, it did lead to a problem where gearing up for BLM meant that SMN had terrible secondary stat allocation since they didn't want the same secondaries. That's basically the whole ACN problem all over again with stats you used to assign at level up.

Flash forward to 4.0, and I feel the problem is worse than ever. For starters, the "you can't meld secondaries not assigned to your role" stuff hit BLM with piety doing nothing, and we're back to the days of server ticks being annoying. Second, the jump between grade V and VI is much more than IV and V. IV and V were 9 and 12 stats. V and VI are 12 versus 40. This is such a large jump that it's just kind of ridiculous to look at grade 5s at all once the better gear becomes available starting Tuesday.

That said, with the bump up in secondary stats, we're potentially looking at 500 spell speed on BLM versus not wanting that on SMN. The BiS in 3.x didn't have spell speed on SMNs, and now we also have RDM not wanting it. RDMs get their dualcast, and they don't even have DoTs unlike SMN to benefit from the spell speed.

I really feel that the materia system encourages either picking BLM or picking SMN and RDM. I'm just really not a fan of that at all. It feels a lot like the glamour system and loot lockout / weekly tome cap which all are at odds with the job system, best working for a single job rather than in a system where you can switch jobs freely.

[Dzian]

The materia system is busted anyway.

As it is most players will never meld there gear because of how quickly that gear get's replaced. So when you look at the tier 6s and the much larger stats they offer over the 5s it looks like it's gonna create some pretty big problems for players to try and keep up. Especially if they start designing content around the idea you need to be wearing melded gear in order to get through..

Looking at things like direct hit. where t5 is +12 and t6 is +40. tha't s a gaping difference, and if you add it up over all the various materia slots it's gonna add up to massive difference in stats..

On my server currently the variouses tier 6 materias are around 200-300k each (from the few I glanced at) So melding your gear would cost millions. That's something which people just aint gonna pay when that gear will be trashed / replaced in the next couple of weeks...

If I wanted to meld my paladin in 6s for example it'd be 16 t6 materias to fully meld it. at say an average of 250k each. Thats 4 million gil!
My current gear that gear will likely be replaced within a few weeks.. some of my current pieces likely to be replaced in a few days so it just isn't worth investing in it. be replaced again when they add the new tome stones.....

The result is players won't invest in materia for gear because of it's always short lifespan.. so if they end up designing extremes / savage fights around needing those melds. that gonna cause problems. if they design fights around not having those melds though that's gonna cause problems as well cos it'll end up trivialising / breaking extreme level content and end up with repeats of zurvans soar skip drama.

the funny part is players will spend 10s of millions on glamour items like ponchos or mounts. but 100k to meld there gear. "you're kidding right i'll be throwing it next week...."

[Ferrasper]

That is why I went with BLM as a my main even though I have RDM at 70 as well. It came down to materia on which one to main because BLM need Spell Speed while my RDM doesn't. Granted if DET proves to be better then crit this time around, I could use my RDM some times. For most things though since I went with SpS, I am sticking with the BLM.

[NovaLevossida]

The materia system is busted anyway.

Most players will never meld there gear because of how quick it get's replaced. so when you look at the 6s and the much larger stats they offer that's gonna create some pretty big problems for players to try and keep up. especially if they start designing content around the idea you need to be melded in order to get through..

Tbh, I'm not sure I'd play a second job if I couldn't gear it up with grade VI materia if my main was rocking grade VI, and I'm not too sure I could be bothered or justify the gil for gearing up a second.

That is why I went with BLM as a my main even though I have RDM at 70 as well. It came down to materia on which one to main because BLM need Spell Speed while my RDM doesn't. Granted if DET proves to be better then crit this time around, I could use my RDM some times. For most things though since I went with SpS, I am sticking with the BLM.

That's exactly what I did, dropped RDM for BLM. I'd like to play multiple jobs which is a selling point of this game, but I don't want to half-ass it on my secondary job because of secondary stats.

[Paladinleeds]

The way I see it is akin to how cross-class worked between classes and jobs pre-SB. If you were a class, you could pick up cross-classes from a much greater variety of classes, but once you specialised into a job, you became restricted to 2 classes (set by the system dependent on the job you were playing). There's also specialists for crafters that I believe work in the same way. The idea would be is that at endgame you would choose a main class, and you would focus on that. Now naturally, because of how you can level everything on one character it looks like it goes against that, but if we look at weekly caps for tomestones, weekly lockouts for endgame gear, etc, it's clear that there is a "Focus on one job at a time" approach being taken to endgame. In essence, having a main job, and umpteen side jobs. Though yes, there is enough time to gear up a few classes with the lockouts. In a way, it makes sense, you can't be the best at everything. But at the same time you can have a general knowledge of everything about the game.

It is indeed the approach I take. I pick one job that I learn to become really good at (or as best as I can), and others that I pick up that I will do my best with, but at the same time will have lower performance compared to playing on my main job. However, here's something to bear in mind about VI vs V, that keeps V relevant. VI materia can only have one overmeld per piece of gear (anything after that is a 100% fail chance, hard coded). Each piece of gear can have 5 melds. For the left side, that's usually 2 meld slots, and 3 overmelds. 2 slots for V materia there. Accessories, 1 meld slot, 4 overmelds. 3 slots for V materia there. So, that'll help keep V materia somewhat relevent, even if it has lost relevancy since Stormblood hit.

That being said, them taking away stat allocations per class flies in the face of that mentality... but maybe that was a 1.x relic that only caused problems between SMN/SCH, and not elsewhere.

[NaesakiAshwell]

To be fair, spell speed isn't all that bad for Summoner, not as high a weight as for BLM but it still has a positive benefit on the dots and squeezing in more Ruin III's in Dreadwyrm.

Least as far as 3.0x weights as DET / SPS weights it came down to personal preference on SMN.

Though I do wonder how much the weights have changed with the addition of direct hit into the mix.

[HyperSMB]

To be fair, spell speed isn't all that bad for Summoner, not as high a weight as for BLM but it still has a positive benefit on the dots and squeezing in more Ruin III's in Dreadwyrm.

Least as far as 3.0x weights as DET / SPS weights it came down to personal preference on SMN.

Though I do wonder how much the weights have changed with the addition of direct hit into the mix.

I imagine Crit and Direct Hit will be king once we determine the exact SpS breakpoint for an extra Ruin III in DWT.

That is unless the weight on SpS goes down because of the chance of Ruin IV being proc'd making the need for the extra Ruin III less important...which further makes Crit and Direct Hit more appealing.

[kattzkitti]

This all comes back to the "can only obtain one of this" gear system being archaic and objectively terrible design. If we could obtain more than one piece of gear at a given ilvl tier, then 90% of the issues this game has that are related to gear would instantly vanish. No more issues with materia, no more issues with glamour, content becoming irrelevant to a given player would be mitigated a bit, etc. Unfortunately, this will never change and so we are forced to choose "main" jobs to compensate, rather than enjoying the game to its fullest by being allowed to play every job equally if we wanted to. That being said, healer and tank jobs don't have to worry about it as much, as they all want the same materia slotted. Still a problem for glamour though.

[NaesakiAshwell]

I imagine Crit and Direct Hit will be king once we determine the exact SpS breakpoint for an extra Ruin III in DWT.

That is unless the weight on SpS goes down because of the chance of Ruin IV being proc'd making the need for the extra Ruin III less important...which further makes Crit and Direct Hit more appealing.

Based on my own limited testing so far 1340 spellspeed seems to be the "soft cap(?)" as I noticed I needed at least another 100 or so to get my ruin casts to move from 2.35 to 2.34 after that 1340 rating. So dunno how much more I'd feasibly need to get a 2.30 cast to make it even worth it.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I think you talked about it without waiting for anyone to say yes, so the question in the topic title is meaningless.

But materia melds for anyone other than ninja's and DRGs is annoying for all the other classes. Its not limited to casters lol.