Idea on changing how substats work with gear

[JunseiKei]

It has always been my belief that raiders should undoubtingly have the best possible gear in the game. Why? Because they are the ones that will actually use the gear. Many casual players, mainly ones who don't raid, will not use the gear to the best of its ability.

• Raiders are the only ones with access to the best weapons
• Left side armor upgrades
• Accessory upgrades
• Tomestone weapon upgrades

These are the things only available to people willing to raid. Until the catch-up patch, where some of those items are then placed in hunt rewards and/or 24-man raids. These are patches specifically designed to let more casual players not be left completely behind come the next tier patch.

Until then, raiders have the best gear possible.

So, I have to ask, why is raid gear so unaccommodating to our substats?

Passive job balancing. Just because you have armor that can be used for three jobs doesn't mean it's the best armor for all three jobs.

Example: The Augmented Allagan Casting Coat has spell speed, which is completely not beneficial to a red mage. The Genji Coat is the better upgrade between the two final coats. Even giving the crafted gear preferred melds, it still isn't as good to a red mage as the Genji coat (because the substats can't make up the difference of main stat loss and be more than the secondary stats combined).

pentamelded crafted gear (which should NEVER be BiS).

You have to take into consideration the weight of your main stat (this is always 1), the differences in the substats (this changes per job and the benefits it reaps). Using red mage as an example again, just because a stat isn't as useful as another doesn't make its value 0. Spell speed isn't that useful to a red mage, but if a piece of gear were to come down to just the choice of 50 Crit or 200 Spell Speed, that 200 Spell Speed is worth more than the 50 Crit. Generally, when people say 'worthless,' they are really saying worst choice, even if they don't understand that. Actual worthless are things like piety on any job other than healer.

This flows back into the above response as passive job balancing.

There have been instances of 24 man raid gear being BiS, too.

I really like raiding in this game, and I seriously would like to see better rewards come out of it. The fact that the only decent item, right now, for my main job, is just the i345 weapons, is really silly.

We're already being rewarded plenty over non-raiders.