Endgame gearing in FFXIV

[TomsYoungerBro]

What is the actual rush? That's a rhetorical question btw, as I know there's no good answer.

Well the fact that Ultimates are tied to Savage tiers is one. Ultimates require near top ilvl to clear current, and PFs usually require Highest ilvl - 1 or 2. You can't get those numbers on multiple jobs consistently even if you clear week 1.

People have hopped into savage and cleared the full tier week 1 with just crafted and one tome accessory (two acc or one body piece with this new grace period). People have probably done the same with criterion, as entry is 610.

This is also just not true, at least for the savage version of criterion. People were hitting dungeon enrage on the savage version at the highest ilvl. And mind you, this content was practiceable through the hard mode, so the savage was not blind progged. Players were already somewhat optimal with damage. Hitting near the enrage 20 ilvls higher than minimum is doom and gloom for someone trying at min ilvl. This is content released merely 8 weeks after savage. You again need more gear to realistically do this content.

[Deveryn]

Well the fact that Ultimates are tied to Savage tiers is one. Ultimates require near top ilvl to clear current, and PFs usually require Highest ilvl - 1 or 2. You can't get those numbers on multiple jobs consistently even if you clear week 1.







This is also just not true, at least for the savage version of criterion. People were hitting dungeon enrage on the savage version at the highest ilvl. And mind you, this content was practiceable through the hard mode, so the savage was not blind progged. Players were already somewhat optimal with damage. Hitting near the enrage 20 ilvls higher than minimum is doom and gloom for someone trying at min ilvl. This is content released merely 8 weeks after savage. You again need more gear to realistically do this content.

And where is this Ultimate that people need to clear? Another 8 weeks away maybe?

Going back to my point about the rush: Everything is paced so that you can get what you need by the time the next content comes out. If you're not doing ultimate and just want to clear savage at some point or just have much better gear, maybe it's better to just wait til x.1 x.3 or x.5 when you can more easily grab those upgrade bits from nuts and alliance raids.

It's Day 3 of V&C. There's plenty of time to figure things out.

[AurisNix]

OP has a well written post, but I can't say that I agree with any points, moreso those following in some sort of agreement. SE has a clear formula for gearing up and despite what some might think, it actually works. Those that only do dungeon content can work on their BiS every week. Likewise for savage. There doesn't need to be an alternate route that takes people out of the pool of players pursuing that level of gear.

What is the actual rush? That's a rhetorical question btw, as I know there's no good answer.



People have hopped into savage and cleared the full tier week 1 with just crafted and one tome accessory (two acc or one body piece with this new grace period). People have probably done the same with criterion, as entry is 610.

Bozja / Zadnor offered nothing that one would honestly use anywhere outside of those zones. That gear was specifically made for that content, as well as glam purposes. Calling it midtier is false and we don't need more. If you want 620 gear, you should've had a full set done by now.

lmao so your argument is that if week one hardcore raiders can clear savage with 610 PENTAMELDED gear then everyone should able to do so? sorry im not week one raider and i dont plan to become one i didnt start raiding in week one either or have a static and sure as hell im not gillionare to get a pentamelded gear, i jumped as a casual player and did prog blind and then prog some more with guides and thats how i had lot of fun but then i found myself waiting long time in pf for a spot cuz i had a low ilvl or there was no spot for my job in pf and couldnt join as another job cuz my gear would just suck, at this point all my alt jobs have 610 but i know that if i jump criterion p7s or p8s with my mch with a potato 610 gear ill just be a pain in the ass for everyone and thats no fun at all, and zadnor gave 525 ilvl that had better stats than a 510 gear. the only time to "figure it out" as you say is to wait every week to cap tomes or books and pray for a good rng to get a 630. ive been farming books no matter how good my gameplay was

[AwesomeJr44]

People have hopped into savage and cleared the full tier week 1 with just crafted and one tome accessory (two acc or one body piece with this new grace period). People have probably done the same with criterion, as entry is 610.

What a stupid argument. "Week 1 raiders cleared with crafted gear, so gearing speed doesn't matter. Just clear with crafted gear lol" Well I guess if week 1 raiders cleared with crafted, then there must be no point in getting new gear at all then? After all, we can always just clear with crafted gear, right?

Have you considered that maybe people want better gear to make clearing things easier? Not everyone's a week 1 world first raider who wants to go into P8S with nothing but crafted gear. Just because you can go into P8S with crafted gear doesn't mean that everyone should. I 100% guarantee this guy has never cleared a savage tier. He clearly doesn't understand how they work.

Deveryn's here with the nonsense take, as usual.

[Rolder50]

What a stupid argument. "Week 1 raiders cleared with crafted gear, so gearing speed doesn't matter. Just clear with crafted gear lol" Well I guess if week 1 raiders cleared with crafted, then there must be no point in getting new gear at all then? After all, we can always just clear with crafted gear, right?

Have you considered that maybe people want better gear to make clearing things easier? Not everyone's a week 1 world first raider who wants to go into P8S with nothing but crafted gear. Just because you can go into P8S with crafted gear doesn't mean that everyone should. I 100% guarantee this guy has never cleared a savage tier. He clearly doesn't understand how they work.

Deveryn's here with the nonsense take, as usual.

If you look up that poster on the Lodestone and check Achievements, you can see that indeed they have not cleared any recent savage tier. Furthermore, looks like they wait until Savage can be unsynced and only clear it then.

[Zepherl]

OP has a well written post, but I can't say that I agree with any points, moreso those following in some sort of agreement. SE has a clear formula for gearing up and despite what some might think, it actually works. Those that only do dungeon content can work on their BiS every week. Likewise for savage. There doesn't need to be an alternate route that takes people out of the pool of players pursuing that level of gear.

What is the actual rush? That's a rhetorical question btw, as I know there's no good answer.

What this argument is completely ignoring is PF which is where a lot of people are raiding. PF gradually raises the item level with each week, if you aren't clearing week 1 and keeping up with your tome gear, if you're having bad luck with gear rolls etc, it doesn't matter if you can technically clear the content at a lower item level, PF doesn't care. This late into the tier it is common for PFs to ask for 618+ item levels, I've even seen as high as 625. That is far, far beyond just one crafted set. This also completely ignores how unfriendly this system is for new players. A sprout getting done with MSQ and wanting to go into savage is not going to conveniently time their savage readiness in time with the patch cycles that SE schedules. If they want to keep up with future content and be BiS ready, they're SOL if they didn't clear early enough. Either lower the cost of raid and tome gear, raise the tome cap, or unlock the weekly restriction on loot after week 8. Or do all three of these things!

[Ivtrix]

What this argument is completely ignoring is PF which is where a lot of people are raiding. PF gradually raises the item level with each week, if you aren't clearing week 1 and keeping up with your tome gear, if you're having bad luck with gear rolls etc, it doesn't matter if you can technically clear the content at a lower item level, PF doesn't care. This late into the tier it is common for PFs to ask for 618+ item levels, I've even seen as high as 625. That is far, far beyond just one crafted set. This also completely ignores how unfriendly this system is for new players. A sprout getting done with MSQ and wanting to go into savage is not going to conveniently time their savage readiness in time with the patch cycles that SE schedules. If they want to keep up with future content and be BiS ready, they're SOL if they didn't clear early enough. Either lower the cost of raid and tome gear, raise the tome cap, or unlock the weekly restriction on loot after week 8. Or do all three of these things!

The argument also completely ignores that people do enjoy playing multiple jobs, and especially if you dont play jobs on the same job role, you are starting from square 1 obtaining BiS should you dare to play, for example, melee, ranged, healers. You have to start from scratch for all 3 and it really hampers what you want to play in savage.

[Illmaeran]

Agree with everything. One idea I've had for a while is for savage raids to drop "tokens" that can be consumed to unlock gear on a vendor similar to how you can redeem artifact gear. Consuming a hand token should unlock hand gear for every job for instance. They can expand the system to tomestones too but I also agree that substats in their current form are restrictive at best and multiple builds should be viable. I shouldn't be screwed out of playing DRG well if I have pieces with skill speed on them.

I agree, a slot token would be a good solution to this issue. The OP's point about gearing up multiple jobs per tier being essentially unachievable is valid and goes against the One Character, All Jobs paradigm. Having a single token give all sub-sets of gear for that slot at once seems a bit too fast at 9 weeks to get all slots filled, 10 if you can have two of the same ring (I don't raid so don't know). Perhaps letting a player get 3 generic tokens per lockout to redeem however they want would work well. That would let people get a full set of gear every three weeks for a total of 21 weeks, or just over five months, to fill out all slots for all roles (Fending, Maiming, Aiming, etc). It may be less, I can't remember how much overlap jewelry has. A scheme like this would allow people to gear up secondary jobs relatively quickly to give their group some flexibility in composition while also keeping the upgrade drip-feed going at a rate that's still exciting enough to encourage long-term farm groups.

Then we have to look at what an RPG is, and who plays it. This actually affects casual players more than raiders, because those who are casual(In this context, I refer to players not doing savage raids.) have it even worse: Tomestones. These take forever to get, 450 per week, and god forbid if the game we played were to have one of its main qualities about playing multiple jobs on one character it would be a huge slog to actually get gear on most jobs in a timely manner. Savage players aren't AS concerned about this because they DO have savage gear (bis isn't 100% necessary for ultimate, it just stacks all cards in your favor so running non-optimal pieces is still valid just not sought after or desired).

Now, one can make the argument:
"But Mia, they casuals don't need that higher item level gear. The content they do doesn't require it!" and while in essence, it would be true, who plays an RPG and wishes to live in a stalemate for for 7 months with gear? RPG's and especially games with items with increasingly higher stats, everyone aims to get stronger and stronger.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I don't raid, so tomestones are the only reliable means of improving my gear. Sadly, the low rate of acquisition and knowing that come X.5 I'll be able to get the BIS tomestone gear is very demotivating. Why should I bother grinding all those time-gated tomestones when I'll be grinding them out come X.5? I understand the philosophy of wanting to spread out top-tier tomestones over time, but Poetics and the mid-tier tomestone should have their rate of acquisition increased and caps removed. There are seven gear sets each so the left side alone is 35 pieces to gear all types, not to mention the right side stuff. I'm the kind of player that wants to have a max level job for each role and have them all well geared even if I never play them except to level during the next expansion.

I haven't bothered this time around since the top-tier non-raid tomestone gear's an ever moving target and takes so long to accomplish. The irony of the situation is even though I'm "only doing roulette/DF" content and don't need top-tier gear, the difficulty in getting full sets as tiers increase has caused me to stop doing content when it's the tomestones themselves that are the reason to do the content to get ever better gear. In general I could care less about the glamours, I just want to progress my character's gear at a rate that will let me complete each set before the next tier comes out rather than just sit back, not engage in content, and wait for the time to do the big push to prepare for the next expansion.

I enjoy the game a lot and generally find something to do on a daily basis, but I'm not as engaged with the game now as I am when there's a meaningful goal or means of improving my character at a sustainable rate. I'd gladly do my roulettes every day if I felt it would have a meaningful impact on my character's progression, even if it only means gearing out various jobs and/or my retainers with gear. As it stands now, grinding PvP to get the rank 25 reward each series is about the most significant thing for me and that's only because they're time-limited items. Other than that, the majority of my play time is doing little, non-progression, things and sitting in venues chatting with friends.

[Rolder50]

I agree, a slot token would be a good solution to this issue. The OP's point about gearing up multiple jobs per tier being essentially unachievable is valid and goes against the One Character, All Jobs paradigm. Having a single token give all sub-sets of gear for that slot at once seems a bit too fast at 9 weeks to get all slots filled, 10 if you can have two of the same ring (I don't raid so don't know). Perhaps letting a player get 3 generic tokens per lockout to redeem however they want would work well. That would let people get a full set of gear every three weeks for a total of 21 weeks, or just over five months, to fill out all slots for all roles (Fending, Maiming, Aiming, etc). It may be less, I can't remember how much overlap jewelry has. A scheme like this would allow people to gear up secondary jobs relatively quickly to give their group some flexibility in composition while also keeping the upgrade drip-feed going at a rate that's still exciting enough to encourage long-term farm groups.

Perhaps you could have the bosses drop the tokens as suggested but only have the token vendor give 620 gear (or similar depending on tier)? Then have the raid bosses drop the upgrade item, or the 24 man on off patch like normal. That way you can get full 620 gear for alts easy, but getting them up to 630 would still take a little bit of farming. Of course, if I were to do this, I would slightly increase the drop rates on the upgrade items, add em to a couple more bosses like have one of each drop off the last floor or whatnot.