Cataclysm weapons: SEVEN WEEKS!?

[Ultimatecalibur]

Not a seven weeks time investment. In many of these such games it can take seven minutes to get one if you know what you're doing. Obviously it shouldn't be that simple in a game like this, but seven weeks is excessive. There is absolutely no reason for stuff in a game that gets discarded after 3/6 months like yesterday's trash to take that long to obtain.

Tomestone weapons have some of the longest staying power of all end game gear. While initially it take 7 weeks if you do not raid and as low as 2 or 3 weeks (Paladins can get theirs in 2 weeks) even if you do raid, Tomestone weapons stay an important part of the upgrade path for nearly a year from their release. Deepshadow/Augement Deepshadow weapons are going to be the primary way casual and midcore players will gear up alt jobs until 5.4 when Crystarium/Augmented Crystarium gear becomes the primary alt gear. When 6.0 drops, 5.4's new Tomestone/Augmented Tomestone gear becomes the standard leveling gear for 80 to 90 until FFXIV. Each teir of tomestome weapons is a key part of the upgrade path for at least a year or more.

It's funny that you don't even seem to realize that the bold makes the whole 7 week thing even more egregious.

Like, is it not already enough that you have to spend 3 weeks worth of weekly tomes for the weapon (which is a far more reasonable time frame for obtaining anything of value in this game), but you need to further gate it behind 7 weeks of normal-raid tokens? The weapons still aren't even as powerful as what raiders can get from the highest tier raid, so what is the need for this excessive gating? It's clear this is only done to allow (a few) raiders to get things sooner than everyone else can, which is fine... to an extent. Again, when the incredibly short shelf life of equipment in this game is taken into account, I don't think tacking on a whole extra month onto tome weapon acquisition for (all) the non-raiders is the right solution.

I guess you were not paying attention during 2.0, 2.3 and 3.0. During 2.0, easily gained i90 Relic weapons and gear deincentivized raiding as equivalent gear was readily available to everyone. During 2.3, once the weapon token and upgrade token were made to always drop in Srycus Tower, Ramuh participation decreased rapidly as it was a far easier way to get an equal or superior weapon. During 3.0, easy access to i200 weapons made doing Ravana (Bismark suffered from Ravana invalidating its drops as upgrades at release) mostly meaningless once they were added and participation in A1-4N dropped hard after the first 5 weeks.

The token lockout is to prevent them from deincentivizing raiding, the multi-week delay for non-raiders is to make EX trial weapons a viable upgrade for them for a longer period and requiring 7 normal mode raid tokens (and later 4) to get the tomestone weapon token is to keep normal mode raid participation up throughout the patch cycle.

[linay]

Not a seven weeks time investment.

It's not a seven-week time investment. It's 7 weekly normal raid clear plus however long it takes you to earn 1000 of the capped tomestone. You don't spend the whole time working on the weapon. There are other slots you can upgrade in the meantime if you're not running savage or extreme, so you still have character progression in terms of gear during that seven weeks.

Also, you can still make good use of the previous tier's weapon. So in 5.4, you can make good use of the seven weeks before you upgrade using this tier's weapon. That's around 7 months of use out of the weapon.

[KDSilver]

You must be new.
It's been like this for a while now.

[Seraphor]

They could always just not release the weapon in shops at all until the next part of the patch, 6-7 weeks later, and do away with the whole 7 tokens thing.
But then make the weapon a random drop just from the last savage fight.
Would that make you happier?

[LaylaTsarra]

Personally I have more of a problem with the 1000 tomes needed when trying to gear as well as get a weapon. The 7 tokens take time but I would at least like to see a nerf to the cost of the weapon. Hard to gear multiple roles having to give up more that two weeks of tomes for it in addition to the tokens.

[Rilifane]

People keep saying it's seven weeks work when all you have to do is beat E8 normal each week. Which is really not asking for much. The tomes are capped by doing expert roulette with bonus a couple of times per week. Your choice wether to log in several days a week or farm it in one go by spamming experts, though the latter is less time efficient.

Crafted 480 exists and even has BiS stats for some classes.
Ruby Ex weapon exists and has BiS stats for almost every class, which makes it almost on-par with non-augmented Crystarium. The enrage timer is lenient as heck and it's really easy to recover from deaths. I think on my first clears we had 6 or 7 deaths in P1 alone and still didn't see the enrage cast. You can wipe your way through and can comfortably continue at P2.
Relic weapon will also come.

Augmented Crystarium weapons aside, there are enough ways to progress outside savage. Augmented Crystarium takes a bit of patience but crafted and Ruby weapon can be acquired within a day.

Right now is still a pretty good time for hitting PF since many more skilled players continue to farm Ruby Ex for 2nd classes. Either because they want flexibility for their static/ PF or because they want to get it out of the way asap. I've been regularily joining farm parties the past week and they were generally fine. A few wipes, yes, but nothing too bad and definitely not parties where it's clear that they probably won't even get ONE kill.
But wait too long and it will be the same when Savage unlocked last tier and you had the most ridiculous "farm parties" full of people who got carried during one clear and thought they're up for quick farm, escpecially for E4.

I'm good with dragging progression out for a bit. It's not like you're getting nothing for seven weeks. You have plenty of other slots you can upgrade.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I don't see any problem with it taking 7 weeks (which eventually gets reduced to 4). It's something to work towards if you aren't doing savage and I like having long term goals that don't require me to log in every day for hours on end to grind away at one thing or another that never ends. That's what WoW is for. :P

Me personally though, I decided to craft myself a 480 HQ weapon for WHM (I might do so for other jobs as well if I feel the need), and will sit on my weekly blades until the weapon cost gets reduced to 4, that way I will have enough for more than one weapon. And at that point the option to upgrade them with coins should be available as well. A 480 HQ Weapon can hold me over until then, and I'll jump to a 500 when the cost drops to 4 and I can do the upgrade. I'll also likely be able to upgrade that 480 crafted cane to a 490 at that time and hand it off to my WHM combat retainer.

[RokkuEkkusu]

I'm fine with my i485 Ruby EX weapons. Better than waiting 3, 4, or 7 weeks just for the i490 weapons atm.