Dropped Items and Materia

[NoctisUmbra]

XI relic weapons were better than the other weapons, but that didn't make every other weapon in the game useless, as it took a while to achieve them. Materia system could help people beat content and get to the point where they can achieve good drops, worth doing events for. Having future dropped gear being better than crafted+melded gear won't make the materia system worthless by any means, if that gear is difficult to obtain. The issue is that the materia system makes most CURRENT content worthless, because the U/U items are garbage and can't be enhanced.

Turning a zillion cheap linen 40+ armor pieces into materia every 20 minutes in a party of 8 getting 280k SP an hour AOE nuking wolves on THM and then putting those materia into a slot machine on crafted items to achieve the best gear in the game is not a fun endgame. It is however, the most efficient thing a hardcore LS can do to gear themselves. This is an issue. After a while, people are going to give up logging in every day, if all they have to look forward to is slaughtering wolves and crafting items. We need to be able to attach to U/U, so there's a reason to go get U/U, to increase the variety of worthwhile things to do in this game.

Idea of 1 meld on U/U is good. I don't hate the idea of multi-melding either, with a high risk of blowing up U/U items, as this would, as mentioned, add meaning to achieving multiples at least.

Just for overall clarity sake, let it be clear that I agree with everything in this post. Cho, here has a good grasp of the balance of gear and the issue that exists at this time.

Every coffer drop should have been just like the Sentinel set: meldable. If they can implement a system to meld through bazaar it would make the process much more convenient, and accessible to W gear. That way I wouldn't care if the coffer drops and such were W or not so long as they can be melded and continue to drop to loot list.

That being said, I firmly believe there should be 1 tier of gear that rests precisely around where the Ifrit and Moogle weapons are now in terms of sheer stat value - approximately a triple meld - that is not meldable.

The idea is, although there exists not enough variety and choices at this point, that this set of gear will be rewarded 100% through DoW/M means and is indeed viable for slot as a whole. This does not necessarily mean that every weapon in the set will be viable for every class. After enough content comes with enough sets of different themed weapons/armor, you'll see people on a variety of classes preferring a weapon from different sets.

Ifrit's set is very DPS friendly for damage dealers - especially, if not only, the physical DDs.
Moogle set is very solo-friendly, while also being beneficial mainly for THM and also for GLAs. In case nobody noticed, the Full Party buff goes a long way in terms of accuracy, leading to many misses when solo - so the massive accuracy boost from Moogle weapons help a lot for solo encounters.

Who knows what the dungeons of 1.21 will bring. Then we have Garuda coming. Then the Garlean Legatus battle. Soon there will be many options, and all classes will have something they enjoy using based on scenario. Not to mention Jobs will very likely be making class gear and weapons only important for solo/light party situations. This could very well lead to players changing their priority on what stats they wish to bump on their classes when the Jobs will be fulfilling the role they gear their classes to fulfill now.

Blue W gear right now, and in the future, will remain to be a very small part of W gear as a whole. I firmly support that W gear are made to be meldable, but to reiterate I just as firmly support the existence of one small subset of weapons that are not.

[Brannigan]

XI relic weapons were better than the other weapons, but that didn't make every other weapon in the game useless, as it took a while to achieve them.

The only problem I have with the materia system being used to (essentially) serve as a gateway into getting drops from real content is that the materia system is kind of neat (excluding multi-melds which are kind of retarded). I'd like to see it stay in use no matter how good dropped gear gets. Relics didn't invalidate lower-power weapons because they were hard to get. Ifrit's harpoon can be won on your first kill if you're lucky and basically lets you ignore weapon materia (this is assuming any future dropped upgrades would also be U/U and thus unmeldable).

That said, I basically agree with you on the current state of the game and that is why I made this thread.

On a related note, I somehow doubt that Job gear is going to be meldable. This should be interesting. . .

Lol yeah pretty much.

[Viridiana]

Bleh. We'll just have to wait and see, then, I guess; but I'm not getting my hopes up. . .

[SnickleWhiskers]

Glad to know my cheap self is getting some decent gear w/o having to meld.

[Venat]

Let Materia be Melded on Ra/ex Gear. When doing this that gear cant break. Only Materia Breaks.

Also increase the chance of melding Materia on normal gear.

Also start adding crafting with Materia. Not Melding. It will make more of a use for Materia also. Alot of Junk Materia players dont want will end up being used in Crafting.

[Viridiana]

Let Materia be Melded on Ra/ex Gear. When doing this that gear cant break. Only Materia Breaks.

Also increase the chance of melding Materia on normal gear.

Also start adding crafting with Materia. Not Melding. It will make more of a use for Materia also. Alot of Junk Materia players dont want will end up being used in Crafting.

Errr. . . bad idea. That would make things way too easy. Still expensive, but too easy.

[Brannigan]

Let Materia be Melded on Ra/ex Gear. When doing this that gear cant break. Only Materia Breaks.

Also increase the chance of melding Materia on normal gear.

Also start adding crafting with Materia. Not Melding. It will make more of a use for Materia also. Alot of Junk Materia players dont want will end up being used in Crafting.

Really I think the best thing would be to just have everything be meldable only once. Multi-melds sound kind of cool on paper but they kind of suck in practice. If everything gets 1 then it keeps crafters in use, adds materia stats to u/u gear, and makes those top-level materia (like 70 hp, 20 stat, etc) much more valuable. Low level materia can be used by low level players (perhaps with adding an NPC who will attach your materia for a fee, as well as something like the new repair system we just got for other players) and high level stuff will filter out as people get new gear since you can't remove materia without destroying it.

[NoctisUmbra]

Just based on that statement I expect the job sets to be Blue W and thus unmeldable. Though unlike current Blue loot they will be designed entirely with that job in mind. I think what Yoshi P is getting at is that very high multi melds like 4 or 5 will be able to surpass them. We'll just have to wait and see I suppose.

[Jinko]

Just based on that statement I expect the job sets to be Blue W and thus unmeldable. Though unlike current Blue loot they will be designed entirely with that job in mind. I think what Yoshi P is getting at is that very high multi melds like 4 or 5 will be able to surpass them. We'll just have to wait and see I suppose.

If they are comparable to 3 melds nothing will touch them (until level increase).

So if this does happen everyone will be wearing the same, materia items will become useless and we will be back to square one where crafters are complaining etc.

I will be kind of happy that blue items are finally superior, but sad that we only have one choice.

[Jamester]

Fully agree with stronghold/darkhold to be meldable like the Sentinel set and HNM dropped items such as champions lance to have much better stats. So players can choose from a variety of gears and customize it with materia.

Against the melding of primal weapons but believe DEVS need to adjust the stats with more caution. Ifrit's weapons are DD based and the difficulty for materia melded weapons to surpass Ifrit's weapons should be balanced.

Only have MRD & THM @ R50 so I can only compare these two. I have attack power 72+ Demilune Bhuj and its still inferior to Ifrit's Battleaxe before 1.20 (before +10 attack power is added) because base damage is/was the biggest multiplier. It is way too difficult to surpass the battleaxe (requires at least 4th meld) and not worth it. On the other hand it is bit too easy to surpass or on level terms with Ifrit's Cudgel's attack power (e.g. Lightning Brand + Thundara Combo). It is difficult to achieve a good balance but I sincerely hope the devs can do that.