Normal mode raids: please don’t settle on this loot system...

[Vidu]

Another prime example of how spoiled this community is sometimes. Consider yourselves lucky they don't do it like blizzard does loot lockouts where it locks you out of looting the boss more than once, even if you don't receive any gear for the entire week until reset. The loot system is fine as is.

We used to have a system like that for Coil! Two pieces of loot dropping after defeating the boss, everyone in the party now being locked out of entering the content again for a week. The pieces were random and you could be stuck with useless bard-stuff for the third week in a row.
Complains were made, both about the loot-system aswell as there being no casual-version of the raid - and we got Alexander/Omega with their respective loot-systems... and now its to much hassle to do the content more than once a week... *shakes head*

Yeah man! It's not like I got a static or anything while being broke af and no crafters so I can't make/commission the pieces I need!

...you'd think a static could organise to run this stuff together each week, so every member can get the pieces from NM they need/want...
You'd also a think that a serious static would rather see crafted&melded gear - unless some Sigma-pieces have godly substats for some classes. Making friends with a crafter or becoming one yourself can really go a long way! And if Sigma is so tedious and horrible to you... why not invest the same time in leveling up a crafter?

[RiyahArp]

Making friends with a crafter or becoming one yourself can really go a long way! And if Sigma is so tedious and horrible to you... why not invest the same time in leveling up a crafter?

It's too hard to do this to make 4 star gear for yourself. The caps are so high that only a full set of HQ white gear overmelded moderately (but with t6 crafting materia in the main slots) will give you the stats to HQ it. You're looking at 20+million as a one time investment to be able to get that; even augmented scrip gear won't work. And even then unless you can make all parts and gather them you are saving maybe 50% or less on the cost of the finished item if you buy HQ mats.

edit: Oh, and I also just do the last tier, unless my friend wants to do it for the week. It's always been stupid, SE has had three years of seeing people do this and they never think that maybe a system that needs 4 pieces which drop once a week from two instances and are bid on by 8 people is stupid. T

[Vidu]

It's too hard to do this to make 4 star gear for yourself. The caps are so high that only a full set of HQ white gear overmelded moderately (but with t6 crafting materia in the main slots) will give you the stats to HQ it. You're looking at 20+million as a one time investment to be able to get that; even augmented scrip gear won't work. And even then unless you can make all parts and gather them you are saving maybe 50% or less on the cost of the finished item if you buy HQ mats.

I supplied several people with the new 350-HQ-gear And I spend about an hour yesterday crafting Crimson Cider for our little casual static.
I know what effort is required to get the stats for that - I have a full, self-made, overmelded to the top ala mhigan set. I think I spend about 3-4 million on it in the end (needed some more materia) - you can get materia elsewhere. You can get all the mats yourself. (And yes, you should ignore the yellow scrips gear...)
Granted, I had a foot in the crafting endgame since ARR... so I know its tedious and not hush-hush easy to get your crafters ready and rolling, but its not "too hard" and if you want to supply yourse... oh wait, I forgot - the whole thread is about people who dont even want to run Sigma NM more than once a week to get gear. My bad. Dont bother with crafting. Find a crafter-friend. Treat them nicely!

But even if you dont end up making the gear yourself: if you're "broke af" you can level up a crafter, just to do the weekly Zhloe/Naago turn ins, get some cheap and easy yellow and red scrips, but materia and mats for those and sell them without the need of a huge time investment.

[RiyahArp]

Yeah, you were an omnicrafter/gatherer if you are in crafting endgame and able to make armor on release. But it's not particularly fun for someone to level a craft to 70 just to hope that whatever scrip mats sell well now don;t get devalued like hell in a month; ala mihgan infusions already are down 50% from their value, and soon will approach zero because yellow scrips in the long run are useless, same as creation mats. You can make near infinite supply of them. There's no guarantee.

And it really isn't fun running Sigma Normal more than once a week; its a boring tier compared to others except for the third fight, even if it is visually striking. The gear is already limited by a weekly cap, same as rabanastre; not much reason it needs to also be gated by a part cap.

[Zigabar]

Snip

Find a crafter-friend. Treat them nicely!

This right here is the solution if crafting is 'too hard' or 'too expensive' for you. My static group has 2 people who don't craft. They treat me and our other crafters nicely. They offered to level gatherers and bring us mats. It's simple, easy, and your crafter is probably going to make you good DoL gear as well as DoW/DoM because everyone benefits.

[RiyahArp]

This right here is the solution if crafting is 'too hard' or 'too expensive' for you. My static group has 2 people who don't craft. They treat me and our other crafters nicely. They offered to level gatherers and bring us mats. It's simple, easy, and your crafter is probably going to make you good DoL gear as well as DoW/DoM because everyone benefits.

You need to get two gatherers to 70 and unlock the regional folklore books for them, which take 50 tokens from rowena, aka 2500 red scrips each. You also need to gear those gatherers pretty high, because under a certain amount your HQ chance for those node items becomes 0, making it much harder for your crafter friends to make the HQ ingredients needed to HQ a 4 star piece. And you need your crafter buds to have all crafts at 70, for a set of gear due to splitting it up among the differnt crafts.

I mean, people are kind of pooh poohing effort. You're not going to be able to make a full set of 3 star crafting gear HQ for yourself as someone who doesn't already have crafts leveled to cap or without sinking decent time in stuff; crafting is too interrelated to be easy to do so. The only reason the prices remain low currently is that the demand for crafted gear is very low; most people just ignore it unless they needed to raid the first week, and even at low prices, you're probably doing at least 15 mil gil work of gil or effort.

It's not really an option for a player who isnt into crafting. A ot of the gearing options in this game kind of suck. At least eureka hopefully will help combat players to gear in an actual combat way, without BS.

[alimdia]

It's too hard to do this to make 4 star gear for yourself. The caps are so high that only a full set of HQ white gear overmelded moderately (but with t6 crafting materia in the main slots) will give you the stats to HQ it. You're looking at 20+million as a one time investment to be able to get that; even augmented scrip gear won't work. And even then unless you can make all parts and gather them you are saving maybe 50% or less on the cost of the finished item if you buy HQ mats.

They are 3 stars and gearing up to that point isn't costy at all, you can do it with Vs and IVs purchased with red scrips. And it's definitely possible to make 3 star gear using augmented, you just can't use the same rotations roaming on Reddit, maker's mark exists as a safe way to craft things when your stats or CP are low.

[AxlStream]

...you'd think a static could organise to run this stuff together each week, so every member can get the pieces from NM they need/want...
You'd also a think that a serious static would rather see crafted&melded gear - unless some Sigma-pieces have godly substats for some classes. Making friends with a crafter or becoming one yourself can really go a long way! And if Sigma is so tedious and horrible to you... why not invest the same time in leveling up a crafter?

Okay, not all groups have alot of hours. I know you're aware of this. We raid 2 hours x 3 days a week. We like those actually being prog stuff not snooze an hour+ on normal trying to get everyone their drops. Also, not every group has this huge network of gatherers/crafters at our beck and call like we're Elysium. There's 8 of us. We play other games. Some of us invested into crafting to get level 70 1 star. Keeping up to date with all the overmelds REQUIRED, is a pain in the buttcheeks. So guess what we did? We went in, in our Deltascape BiS 340 gear after we made sure our time before raid on release was spent on unlocking savage so we could start on time.

If you're "broke af" and you ain't got no crafters, this would seem to imply that you don't use food or stat pots either? You'd think a static would support its members though. /shrug

Eh, I use El Cheapo last tier stuff and no pots. Gets me through and the price drops from this patch are quite appreciated.