Quote Originally Posted by Ayche View Post
I am sure when 5.3 hit and a LOT of old players took the plunge again and returned to the game, the need for an obvious "back stop" weapon become apparent.
You could get the base ShB relic for just some poetics, making it a very convenient way to jump from a 430 weapon all the way to 485, essentially solving a lot of gearing problems for returning and new players. Whatever you lose in the aspiration value of the relic weapon by forgoing its role as the long grind weapon was probably easily made up by the fact that people could just ... get on with the story without jumping through the weapon acquisition hoops.

This is an old blind spot in the gearing system that I have wondered why it hasn't been solved earlier. Dungeon sets work as a backstop for anything but weapons. If you are short on gil, you can be out of luck how to get a real catch up weapon to get to every final story content. In that situation, having a weapon you can get by just spamming dungeons and roulettes for 1500 tomestones is very feasible, the player probably gets that passively by just catching up on content.
Deep Dungeons also did this, where the first form weapon was a fairly small grind to get a 235 weapon for Heavensward or 365 weapon for Stormblood.