New Character Development System: Master Level.

iLevel worked fine, until they abandoned it and just set everything to 119 even though it was clearly higher then that.

Would be nice if they further lowered 2 hours. It seems silly to have it be even 45 min. Seems like modern fights have 30 min or less time limits. Maybe at a certain ML we can get a 30 min recast on those.

Indeed, the equipment system didn't suddenly turn into FF14 or WoW back then when i(tem)lvl was showing correctly, we still had same diverse stats between equipment as always.

Do people not get that ilevel stalling at 119 represents SE listening to the playerbase? We hated the system but it was already baked in to SoA, so rather than try to backtrack and remake the whole expansion from the ground up they put in a pin at 119 and went back to the old model.

It doesn't matter that they didn't bump the number up. +3 Reforged, Malignance, and now especially Odyssey armor are so far beyond everything else. An entirely new level of power. It's effectively the same damn thing, except without an increase to the ilvl.

Let me illustrate how ridiculous the argument that this isn't the case is. Here's examples of 119 endgame breastplates, wrapped in a meme some of you guys might be able to comprehend easier. This is how you're coming across to the rest of us.



These pieces aren't sidegrades. You don't consider using Sakpata's just for additional accuracy, STP, or some other single factor when the need arises. Hell, some people never take it off.

Do you understand now, Billy?

SE already broke from that with the above stated lines of gear. We're at an effectively much higher item level, it just isn't represented as it should be.

Pets not getting a boost is silly. We should be fighting higher level content soon (or we should have been with the introduction of such powerful gear), shouldn't they get a boost to account for that?

I personally would favor sidegrades and incremental increases in power. It means content doesn't become a complete joke. However, the reality is what it is. SE's already taken us to far beyond what 119 was.

Zantetsuken works on Apex Mobs btw

Someone should test Cruel Joke :p

Depending on what you refer to when you say old model that's wrong, if you mean the old model of horizontal progression we haven't had that since aby, instead we have something of a mix where we have a period of horizontal then we go vertical, then back to horizontal, ilvl 119 is no different as shown from that picture above, 119 delve gear is a clearly weaker 119 than say 119 omen gear, which is weaker than (most) of the current string of 119 ody gear/malignance set from a bit earlier.

I think cruel joke will work too, on mobs with no dark orb core. Might also work on Gears in Alzaadad? Like we already talk in LS tho, imo you would need at least 2 or 3 BLU to make it efficient. Tho I guess it would also be possible to just mix CJ every 5 minute and regular killing between cooldown, since CJ doesnt really require anything special, beside tank gathering mobs.

yup i'm thinking the gear in alzadaal would be prime targets. Maybe you can do it with 3 blu, tank, cor, healer as a chill-ish ML party lol.

The reason they stopped increasing Ilevel was because the JP players demanded they stopped doing it, they fully planned to keep going. The reason is because increasing Ilevel adds a stress factor to the game that normally is not there.

A casual player is fine with you having better gear than them, as long as the game does not specifically state you are better than them with a number. You can say this is already the case and you would be correct, however it's a state of mind thing and state of mind is very important.

A common Ilevel of 119 allows players to know you have better gear and be fine with it, but not feel they need to have the gear you own. Adding 120 would overnight invalidate nearly all the gear in the game in the minds of the majority of the players.

The ILevel model has been in the game for 10 years now; I would imagine newer (2012+)* players don't even know what the "old" way was anymore.

* 2012 was a decade ago, so depends on your definition of new I suppose.

You have taken the most obvious examples possible tho. Sure Sakpata is stronger than that other body. None is questioning that. But by how much? What ilvl would you put on it? It's also that obvious only if you compare it to some REALLY old 119 armor. Compare Mpaca to Kendatsuba for example or even to Adhemar. Even Sakpata isnt perfect. It has much lower total accuracy than many other old armor sets. It has no enmity for PLD. PDL is useless without tons of attack buffs/def debuffs. Even set like Nyame is sometimes damage drop to some old SU3, AF+3 or DM augments. Most Odyssey sets still lose dps wise with old more glassy sets. Damn even many Empy+1 which can be overall considered weak 119 armor if you look at base stats are still viable because they have some unique game changing augments or stats. They make some vertical jumps on some slots from time to time, but it's usually not without some sacrifice. The clear thing that got better and only really in recent Odyssey gear, was high meva, eva mixed with -DT on same item and more PDL options.

There are numerous ways to reset your 1hour already so they don't actually need to lower it as its basically 5mins cooldown as it is.

this being said, I do think that at this stage in the game, you should be able to just reset your 1h with the goblins in escha zones. they give you the revit item to purchase that doesn't reset 1h, so just have them offer the option that you can buy from them directly. it would be a small quality of life change to the game, especially when doing aeonics

None of that affects his point. Lower effective ilvl items can still be useful over higher ones in some situations, but that doesn't stop different pieces being at significantly different overall levels of power.

Ilevel only matters for trusts, there is no reason to go above 119.

There is all the reason to go above 119. There are people thart don't understand the fundamental difference between 119 pieces. No matter how blatantly obvious it may look. That is a failing of a system.

Just like there is all the reason not to put hidden stats on gear. You don't need them written out. But it's the much better option.

It would be the single most stupid thing they could ever do to this game if they went above 119.

It matters more then that, iLevel determines the base damage on magic WS's, the chance of shadows being absorbed and bonus stats that all pets have. Technically it's also the amount of pseudo "skill" that's added to our combat and magic skills, though they have been bumping that up without actually making 119 change to 121 or 124.


We are likely somewhere in the low to mid 120's right now in "Item Level", there just happens to be a 119 plastered onto everything.

I would like you to address my question then. How would you evaluate ilvl of armor? What ilevel would be mpaca and what ilvl would be Malignance? What ilvl would be Sakpata and what ilvl would be Ratri+1? All have some very high stats, but are low/mediocre in something else and lacks some things completely. How about ilvl before and after augment? Would my DM herculean with 10%WSD and 30mab beating even Nyame get ilvls with that augment? Surprise me with actual answer and not a troll post.

I'm in the camp that ilevel should've been scrapped and another system should've been in place for allowing trusts to increase power. That said, it's pretty easy to rate things past 119. Almost all pieces have a given formula(applied for armor type and slot) for calculating each stat.

https://www.ffxiah.com/search/item?&slots[]=128&jobs[]=8&description=Magic%20evasion&level[0]=99&level[1]=99#adv


100: 42 m.eva
105: 59 m.eva
106: 62 m.eva
109: 73 m.eva
110: 76 m.eva
113: 86 m.eva
114: 90 m.eva
115: 93 m.eva
117: 100 m.eva(wayfarer slops, espial are for melee classes and use a different calcutaino)
118: 104 m.eva
119: base is probably 107 m.eva (miasmic pants, telchine braconi, helios spats, vanya slops, doyen pants, kaykaus tights.. all the early 119 is exactly the same)

Normalize for each stat, and you can figure out what modifiers SE actually put on each piece after running their automatic generator. relic/af+2 is like 122, and +3 is like 125. Current generation stuff like bunzi is around 135.

It's easy to undervalue stats on gear when meta is to stack insane amounts of buffs, but if you compare someone soloing on a melee job, that entire spread of stats adds significant value. Someone with full malignance will be insanely more powerful than someone with starter delve 119.

You talking purely from survivability perspective and you are not even accurate.

Mpaca and Gleti has way lower meva than some older gear.


I assume https://www.ffxiah.com/item/23742/heidrek-harness is higher ilvl than mpaca since it has higher meva right? lol

Also Inyanga is ilvl 130+ with your scale, even when it came before Relic+3 which is 125. Great :)

ilvl can't be only based on defensive stats anyway, because it would be more confusing than having ilvl119 on everything.
Also even if you consider survivability as only gauge, than what's higher ilvl (real example):

DEF:174 HP+84 Evasion+102 Magic Evasion+86 "Magic Def. Bonus"+14
OR
DEF:150 HP+122 Evasion+70 Magic Evasion+117 "Magic Def. Bonus"+9

Just like older gear, items can be given specialised bonuses (like Inyanga's MEVA) or penalties (like Arke's MEVA) that are layered on top of their ilvl related parameters based on gear type or even the individual item. Ignominy Cuirass and Vishap Mail are both the same armor type and ilvl, but have different stat vomit.

Inyanga would just have a high MEVA for the ilvl just like how Arke has a low one. SE would have access to (or the authority to determine) the base values from ilvl because they created the items.

Ilvl doesn't need to be perfectly representative of how useful an item is just like how level wasn't either in pre-ilvl days, but just a very rough estimate of how powerful an armor set is at a glance.

What's the point of ilvl then. ilvl in other games is to show clear (high) power creep (both defensively and offensively), not situational power or survivability power creep or rather situational survivability power creep

EDIT: or first glance power creep. What you describe would be useless, because you would still need to calculate everything to know what's better, because higher ilvl wouldn't be clearly better for everything.

Also Iyanga doesn't only have high meva, it can also rival Bunzi with base stats values (at least on body, Im not gonna check every slot now) and has higher HP than Bunzi for example.

To give a general sense of baseline power creep, which isn't perfect, but better than labeling literally everything 119.

It woule also give incentives for new players to uograde their gear to higher ilvl ones. Someone with 119 Cizin +1 gear is going to have more incentive to improve their gear if they know they're working for ilvl 127 Flamma +2 or ilvl 129 Sakpata (or whatever levels), since most players aren't good at evaluating sets on their own.

Yeah and you would have everyone full timing highest ilvl even when it's totally wrong to full time. That would be for sure helpful. Im done discussing this, because we are clearly on two opposite sides here and wont understand each other at all.

Rather than change the iLVL system as it stands, wouldn’t it be better if they just VASTLY improved the /checkparam function?

If /checkparam were to show considerably more stats, then more average players like me could more easily build gear sets for situations, rather than just look at items individually?

Thoughts?

Checkparam is indeed woefully inadequate. That's A thing should do too

But the much easier way to be honest with gear level. Pick a gear level stat minimum and add whatever specialty stat to it. Even lower the Ilvl on the older stuff. Say they call delve 102 and work up they can still call the newest Gaol gear 119. If they stop pulling stats out of their *** and make a standard baseline to build from it'll work fine.

I recall SE mentioning they were deciding which route to take w/ iLv back ... maybe a little before they introduced ambuscade.

They weren't going to let player iLv go past 119 but wanted to know if we wanted the items to show their actual iLv or to just say 119 regardless what iLv they actually plugged into their formula.

Personally I look at accuracy & magic accuracy for my determination of actual iLv. If you can't hit it, then obviously you're a lower level. Before iLv existed the main thing you always get on a Lv UP was just accuracy. Ya the new item may have another STR, or your base STR may have gone up, but there's only the chance of that, base ACC always increased thanks to a higher skill cap.
I guess EVA and mEVA would be similar though ... aside from iLv, mEVA just doesn't seem to exist.

Simon is incapable of grasping the existing reality if it rustles his personal taste jimmies.

Yes, SE botched the continued rollout of ilvl. They made a whoopsies. For the longest time, we were at a least good spot with sidegrades and mostly gradual improvements. The aforementioned AF+2/3 provided some really nice accuracy/defensive swaps for most jobs, opening up more options for support if people utilized them.

With Lilith and Odyssey gear, they went a good deal overboard... or at least released it way too early. There's nothing that requires either, really, but obtaining and utilizing it properly makes a lot of content a hell of a lot easier.