Item Level? I'm not clear

[HyoMinPark]

RANT ON

I'm not clear why we can't have a simple rule.

"Larger Item Level Means Better Gear."

Why is this not the case?
Why is it not the case that the "Recommended Gear" button on the Character panel should just be able to choose the gear with the higher item level.

So, apparently, now White gear can have a higher item level, but lower stats and therefore not be as useful as "yellow" [is that what it is? Higher Quality? From quests?] gear. So item level 285 White gear from a vendor is CRAP compared to IL 279 gear from quests that has a yellow shading across the top. I don't mind that the 279 gear is better, only that it has a lower Item Level. Shouldn't it be IL 290? Why is it not IL 290?

Let's just have a future patch where we fix this so that higher item level means "Better" and the "Recommended" button agrees. How about we do that?

1. Is there some other religion around "Item Level" that I am not aware of that prevents this?
   
2. Is there some dependency around Item Level that would prevent this change from occurring?

RANT OFF

Generally while leveling, higher item level gear is better. What you’re experiencing here is the discrepancy between High Quality white gear and Normal Quality white gear. High Quality will always beat out Normal Quality, sometimes even for gear that is a higher item level. For example: normal quality weapons from Stormblood (e.g., i350, i380 weapons) were worse than a high quality weapon of a lower item level to them (e.g., an HQ i350 weapon was actually better than an NQ i380 weapon because its stats were capped, where as the NQ i380 weapon’s stats were not capped).

However, once you start getting into level capped gear (so, in this case, level 80 gear), things actually get a bit more fuzzy, and higher item level may not always be best for you. Sometimes gear of a lower item level is better than gear of a higher item level depend on the stats on each piece of gear and the job you are playing. For example, my i430 weathered gloves on DNC are better than the i440 Goetia gloves because the i440 gloves have undesirable substats for the job (mainly, skill speed). Last expansion, tanks used pentamelded crafted accessories over the accessories that dropped from Savage (20 item levels higher) because they could meld them and they would turn out to be better (albeit, by a small margin, but still better).

So, higher item level does not necessarily equate to better gear. There are a lot of caveats to consider such as Quality and, at level cap, substats. Of course, Recommended Gear has a funky algorithm to it, but for the most part it gets things right while one is leveling with a few exceptions (e.g., as someone mentioned, the Ala Mhigan earrings versus the Aetheryte earrings on sub-level 50 jobs).

[Barraind]

n the current system, ilevel is a fixed property of an item, and it determines the maximum to which you can adjust its stats. What you're asking for is for the game to calculate the ilevel according to the item's current stats. That's a very different system, and I doubt it would be easy to change it.

Ilvl reflecting the actual stats of gear makes more sense than the maximum stats of gear, but 14 uses it solely to prevent minimal gains from being able to meld even_more_crit.

So there's level 71+ greens with same stats than level 70 blues. But they have a higher item level.

Nope!

Every item in any given slot of the same item level with the same usable classes has the same primary stats, and the same numerical allotment and distribution pattern of every other item at that item level in that slot.

The caveat is that IF the item has an HQ version and an NQ version, the HQ version will have the maximum initial stats, where if an item DOES NOT have a HQ version, its normal version will have those stats.



4 different rarities (Purple, Blue, Green, crafted HQ green), same damage, same primary stat, same secondary stat allocation (excepting the eureka weapon secondary stats because shootmeinthehead . I mean because RANDOM IS FUN)..


14 is not in any way creative with how its item generation scheme works. Ilvl is ilvl unless its crafted, in which case the NQ version is sub-par.


To directly address level 71 gear, it is the same as every ilvl 390 piece.

[MistakeNot]

RANT ON

I'm not clear why we can't have a simple rule.

"Larger Item Level Means Better Gear."

Why is this not the case?
Why is it not the case that the "Recommended Gear" button on the Character panel should just be able to choose the gear with the higher item level.

Item level is just a fixed number for each piece of gear that is not terribly important in and of itself.
Item level matters in exactly three cases:
1) Determining which levels of Materia can be melded to the item
2) Your average item level restricts which duties you can enter through the Duty Finder
3) For DoW/DoM retainers their item level determines how good items they can bring back.

For all other purposes Item Level can and should be ignored. It does not matter - the stats an item provides matter.



It is indeed not always the case that higher item level means better gear. In particular for low level gear where some of it is wearable by all classes, the item with highest item level is not necessarily the item with the best stats for your class.

For crafted items there have always been Normal Quality and High Quality versions of the same item. The HQ versions is significantly better, but keeps the same Item level because it is the same type of item.


In short, the answers to your questions is: Because that is not how Item Level works.
Sure, the game could be changed to have it work the way you'd like it to work, but why should it? Just to fit your preconceptions?

[Sylve]

RANT ON

I'm not clear why we can't have a simple rule.

"Larger Item Level Means Better Gear."

Why is this not the case?
Why is it not the case that the "Recommended Gear" button on the Character panel should just be able to choose the gear with the higher item level.

So, apparently, now White gear can have a higher item level, but lower stats and therefore not be as useful as "yellow" [is that what it is? Higher Quality? From quests?] gear. So item level 285 White gear from a vendor is CRAP compared to IL 279 gear from quests that has a yellow shading across the top. I don't mind that the 279 gear is better, only that it has a lower Item Level. Shouldn't it be IL 290? Why is it not IL 290?

Let's just have a future patch where we fix this so that higher item level means "Better" and the "Recommended" button agrees. How about we do that?

1. Is there some other religion around "Item Level" that I am not aware of that prevents this?
   
2. Is there some dependency around Item Level that would prevent this change from occurring?

RANT OFF

Hrmm. I'll try to answer what I think your issue is stemming from.
Item Level determines the stat cap. The cap itself is an individual figure, which is then divided amongst the stats that are present. The total combined present stats are not using 100% of the stat cap though. It leaves room for customization via Materia Melds.

Vendor Gear is Normal Quality. Crafters can make High Quality versions. NQ vs HQ is essentially how much of the stat cap is available.
Now, to use some example numbers to illustrate what you see happening, Lets assume an i285 item has a stat cap of 500, and the i279 has 450.
In this situation, the NQ i285 is only utilizing 70% of its stat cap, leaving it with 350 usable stats.
But since the i279 is HQ, it is utilizing 90% of its Stat cap, leaving it with 405 usable stats.

The result is that the HQ i279 has more available stats to give you than the NQ i285, which is why the Recommended button equips the i279 over the i285.
Another way to describe it, I guess, is that the NQ is a stat penalty, while HQ is the removal of that penalty. The HQ stats is what the piece SHOULD have for its Item Level, but the NQ applies a 30% penalty because the crafter (vendor in this case) wasn't skilled enough to make a quality piece.
An IRL example would be Chinese imitations/knockoffs of a product. It looks the same, it sorta works the same, But its build quality is junk so its inferior to the product it was imitating.

Does that make sense?