Quote Originally Posted by Toystore View Post
I'm just wondering why Ruby Weapon gives a 485 weapon for 1-2 lockouts worth of work when the previous end game fight gave a 475.
Because Ruby Weapon is a new end-game fight. E4S is at least six months old at this point—a bit more, actually; it’s not current content anymore, it’s old content. Newer end-game content usually gives higher item level rewards (dungeons not included).

This is bizarre. This is not RPG design. There's catch up mechanics and then there's whatever strange mess this is. Call me crazy, but I expect to be able to actually progress and use my gear from the previous tier on the next tier. I understand there's a hard reset between expansions, but c'mon, really? You won't even have gear persistence from one tier of the same expansion to the next?
You can usually prog and clear the first two Savage floors with previous tier BiS. It’s the third and fourth floors that will require you to have the crafted/Ruby Weapon gear (though, you can just do crafted—the weapon from Ruby Weapon isn’t necessary to clear). E8S will require you to be in full i480 simply to survive some of the AOE damage (the first raidwide hit in there almost kills you even with mitigation—my group does Passage + Temperance + Deployed Adlo and it still takes us to ~35% HP—if we forget one of these, we drop down to sub 10% sometimes, depending on which mitigation we forgot).

Why is week 1 gear 480?
Because E8S requires it for survivability at the very least; DPS check, second.

This situation creates a form of an RPG where the gearing feedback loop for taking out the strongest content isn't even used in the very next fight. This is absurd. Gear resets like this used to only happen in MMOs between entire expansions and now we're doing it between literal content patches?
The previous tier BiS is still BiS for TEA because of the item level sync and how item level sync negates materia melds. So you can still use it for that.

This system isn’t new. It’s been around since ARR—so over 6 years, now. It’s how this game has always handled new gear when new tiers release.

How about just handing cosmetic and vanity items as rewards for savage fights if you're gonna pull this kind of catch up system? I'm not against catch ups because I know that's going to be the straw man, but geez. This is ridiculous when there's essentially no progression between savage tiers at all. It's going way too far off the deep end when it comes to RPG mechanics to just do the previous tier gear dirty like that. Maybe if players got umbrellas or anime ears or whatever for killing savage bosses that would be more honest than the bait and switch that it's going to actually be useful RPG gear going forward to the next progress fight in the expac.
There are already vanity rewards from Savage (i.e., the mount drops exclusively from the final floor). The fact that the Savage gear is usually a dyeable version of the normal mode gear has also been cited as “vanity” in the past (since people like having the ability to dye the gear for glamour reasons). Savage gear now is good for progressing in new Ultimate fights, where they are absolutely mandatory. If a new Ultimate was to release in 5.3, you would want to upgrade your gear to the i500 Verse Savage gear for both damage and survivability. Unfortunately, we won’t see one in 5.3; I’m guessing the second Ultimate this expansion will be for 5.5, meaning the final Eden Savage tier gear will be BiS for it—and Verse gear will be used for entry-level prog for that tier.