Quote Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk View Post
That was my point, yes. How much do stats escalate over those item levels? We jump that every time we go to a new expansion, and we're going onto the fourth expansion soon. That means three big end-of-expac gear jumps, with corresponding stat jumps. That's a big chunk of what's being smoothed out.
This is absolutely something they could control, and I think they should look into.

Some potential places to reduce the explosion of item level:
Leading up to the end of the expansion, we were given a job coffer with item level 430 gear
Immediately we had the option to replace this with item level 440 Ronkan gear
Then level 445 crafted gear
Level 450 Eden normal
Level 460 Tomestone (and later 460 YorHa gear)
Level 470 Eden savage (and later 470 augmented tomestone)

So within the first patch we went up 30 item levels.

An example of the squish they could use:
Coffer : 430
Ronkan gear : still 430, but lets you use the same items on multiple jobs to streamline armory space. Additionally this set would have the accessories. Alternately this set could just be deleted.
Eden normal gear : 435
Crafted gear : also 435
Tomestone gear : 440
YorHa : 445
Augmented tomestone & Eden savage : 450

This cuts out 20 item levels of advancement every tier leading to 60 fewer levels added each expansion.

The stat gains could be comprable as well, which would lead in addition to the stats not inflating so dramatically, more flexibility when creating BiS lists for jobs making 24-man raid gear more relevant than it currently is.