Gear in this game comes from various areas and the item level associated from it is determined by how difficult the content is. I wish to focus on the systems where gear is locked behind a weekly limit, as it's considered best in slot item for that raid patch (x.0; x.2; x.4). Currently, you acquire 1 to 0.5 pieces of i780 gear from Tomes per week. You also acquire a *CHANCE* at loot every week from Raids. Finally, you can acquire oddities like Shines / Twines from alternative sources such as Alliance Raid (weekly), and Hunts (usually on the odd patch x.1, x.3, x.5).
Normally, this system works fine, and honestly there's some upsides to it that I will give it credit. The one being, when savage is dropped, the bosses can be tuned to a certain point in which a large amount of gear is not required to kill the boss (like in WoW where multiple weeks of gear are needed). I think this is fine. They have struck a balance for Savage to where gear isn't flooded into the game and that the content is religiously farmed every week. What I don't like about this system is when new content comes into the came, and it recommends the highest item; the item level that savage and augmented tome gear provides.
In a very broad sense, it takes 4 to 6 weeks of weekly tome capping to even taste best in slot. One would also have to run Alliance Raids or win Shines/Twines weekly to unlock a single piece into the the Augmented version. Additionally, if you were to do Savage, it would take you up to 8 weeks (or some very lucky rolls) to acquire all the pieces of gear that you would need. My issue is this, the game gives you the illusion of choice in that you can play every single job in the game (of which there are 8 unique gear archetypes) but only allow you to gear one job at a time. New content being released having those high item level recommendations are not recommended, but mandatory in most cases. The style of fights provided are ones that are tuned to the high item level and expect the player to have it. This realistically is not an issue when it comes to the average player, who will unlock a single job and play that job for the whole patch cycle. However, there are some people who enjoy playing more that one role or archetype of job that get reminded about how it takes a month or two to even bring that job into the fresh new piece of content, and that's not okay.
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Normally, this system works fine, and honestly there's some upsides to it that I will give it credit. The one being, when savage is dropped, the bosses can be tuned to a certain point in which a large amount of gear is not required to kill the boss (like in WoW where multiple weeks of gear are needed). I think this is fine. They have struck a balance for Savage to where gear isn't flooded into the game and that the content is religiously farmed every week. What I don't like about this system is when new content comes into the came, and it recommends the highest item; the item level that savage and augmented tome gear provides.
In a very broad sense, it takes 4 to 6 weeks of weekly tome capping to even taste best in slot. One would also have to run Alliance Raids or win Shines/Twines weekly to unlock a single piece into the the Augmented version. Additionally, if you were to do Savage, it would take you up to 8 weeks (or some very lucky rolls) to acquire all the pieces of gear that you would need. My issue is this, the game gives you the illusion of choice in that you can play every single job in the game (of which there are 8 unique gear archetypes) but only allow you to gear one job at a time. New content being released having those high item level recommendations are not recommended, but mandatory in most cases. The style of fights provided are ones that are tuned to the high item level and expect the player to have it. This realistically is not an issue when it comes to the average player, who will unlock a single job and play that job for the whole patch cycle. However, there are some people who enjoy playing more that one role or archetype of job that get reminded about how it takes a month or two to even bring that job into the fresh new piece of content, and that's not okay.
(1/2)
Continue reading...