When I first found out about the rank 50 NMs dropping only mats I thought, hm, strange. Not only do you not get a piece of gear but there's a chance of failure with that mat. But, I thought it was interesting that it followed the trend of only craftable gear and I thought I would see where that would go.

At around the same time a friend who no longer plays remarked to me that he hasn't seen a mob drop an awesome sword and that it was disappointing. So now, with the last patch we now have NMs that drop awesome swords and gear. Now we can all spend 3-5 hours per NM getting some gear that we're super stoked to get.

..BUT..

I find myself seeing a big flaw with gear drops and I'm looking forward to the return of the old way.

Prior to patch 1.17 I wore blue dyed clothes that I made myself. In fact no one on the server wore my exact color scheme. It was nice to enjoy my own preferences and still be at the top of my game gear wise. However, after getting the Seer's Cowl which looked cooler, had better stats, and more defense than my Canvas Cowl guess what? Now everyone is running around in a red cowl. Great. It's FFXI all over again where everybody has the exact same shirt. Vermillion Cloak / Yinyang Robe anyone?

I propose that we're better off with mats that we can dye into a color that we like to give us some variety for clothes from NM drops. Weapons on the other hand, I think should still drop from NMs.

What do you think?