October 2022 Version Update

So, here's the thing. This gear is supposed to be the end game of end game gear. Unmatched in difficulty to acquire, and thus, unmatched in power. Does it feel like that? yes, some of the pieces are most certainly good pieces, but they still leave some jobs feeling very underwhelmed. with weapon skills nearing capped damage and usable every 6 seconds by melees, why take the time to set up a skillchain to make a magic burst that will also deal capped damage? why bring a black mage who's melee attacks are next to worthless and drag down the DPS for the occasional spike, and even then, a tier 6 nuke might deal 30k? why bring a mage at all unless the fight specifically demands it?

this is why people are so disappointed with this gear. it took the jobs that are already prioritized, and kept them strong, while doing nothing to offset the balance issues that have plagued this game for years.

now, this being said, if you don't have an oddy group to acquire that gear, then this gear is extremely appealing. but it's still just on par with what's already considered the best end game gear.

As far as I'm aware, they've yet to introduce another tier to favor to give any players a 20 second timer. I have BIS for smn barring the +2 earring (have gelos) and my timers will not drop below 21 seconds.

Where is new +3 slip??

No slip and the cap still being 100k.....

This has been their modus operandi for a while now. They simply don't want to flat out invalidate all previous gear, because then people will say Z is better than X + Y, so why bother doing past content for X+Y? Instead, they make some pieces marginally better, some on par, some worse, so that players still have to do the content to acquire the few pieces that they want. I just look at Crepuscular gear for example. Nothing it drops flat out invalidates anything else in the game, but the gear is so unique, you can't fill that with anything else. Malignance seems to be the last set of gear that basically replaced dozens of armor prior, especially some of the high stat su3 sets that were pretty good up to that point.

According to who? I think this is just a label you are placing on the gear due to incorrect expectations. I don't believe the intention was ever for Empyrean +3 to be difficult to acquire, just time-consuming. Yes, it is the most recent content released, but that doesn't mean it is going to be "unmatched" in difficulty. Unless the starstones or w/e require defeating a particularly hard NM, then all Empyrean+3 takes to acquire is a significant time investment. What's more is, why do people feel like they need even more powerful gear right now? At this point in the game most content is a steamroll, and only a few V20s present any sort of challenge. I have not been to Sortie floor 2 yet, but I don't imagine it is all that much more difficult than floor 1 aside from jacked up mob levels/stats, especially since it appears the boss NMs are unavailable.

I'm pretty sure none of us think sortie is difficult. Compare it to vengence 20 oddy NM's and it's more busywork than anything. The fact that the gear is so aggressively statted for such a lax event speaks volumes.

Pretty much this se sold people on this stuff being extremely broken for the game and said most stuff wouldn't touch it. Then odyssey said hold my beer. R30 is gonna push most of this stuff back into the dirt sadly. I don't even think people wanted broken stuff just to have a decent couple pieces for each job and job specific help. Some jobs just got glorified dt pieces which didn't really need them as nyame basically covered that. Yes before the pitch fork crew comes out about how meva dt and ***is super important I know it is but it's not most of the jobs needed at all. Great everyone can super tank now but the jobs that needed real help didn't see it.

What has given you this idea at all?

Seconded, I thought it was supposed to be another 119 reforged +3 set of comparable power to reforged AF+3 and Relic+3. Interested in why you thought it was going to be the one set to rule them all.

Because se spent the better part of 4 years saying they been trying to balance the sets and what's taken so long is that the stats were so good that they were scared it would break the game and make stuff too easy. What they really were looking at was odyssey gear and got it confused with emp +3 gear.

What? You are claiming SE said this?
When?

I'll find the quote when I'm home from work. Believe it was about a year ago when they said it. I'm for sure ain't claiming they said the sets weren't gonna be good for half the jobs.

SE did at one point say something about needing to balance them and that being why it took so long.

But the player base took that and seems to have ran with some crazy ideas about the gear needed to be the best thing ever and I don't know why...

JSE gear has always been a mixed bag.

these sets are ***lmao

The problem isn't that people took it and ran with it you said job adjustment would significantly change how emp gear played out which clearly isn't the case. Noone saying the ***needed to be bis 5/5 for everything or every class. Idk why people can't just fault se and legit say they do everything right its the player base. They been working on this gear forever from what they said not me claiming it and it's pretty much subpar to odyssey even at r20 for most classes. What people wanted to see what jobs get help with aoem of the gear job specific wise and that ***didn't happen. It's okay to call them out of it. It's the players fault for assuming jse gear would have job specific stuff to help the job I guess.

Edit: I truly think if the order of release for this was switched when odyssey came out people probably wouldn't be as disappointed. Odyssey gear coming out first and it's still not even done yet makes it seems even more disappointing. The player base did for sure hype up emp gear but most have been waiting 5 years for the gear basically.

Didn't they actually say something about preparing a serious rebalancing for all jobs and therefore will release this gear after it drops because it wouldn't make sense before? I vaguely remember some story like that

"Master Levels"

Not sure to be honest was not really my point.


This is what I really didn't understand.

https://twinfinite.net/2021/02/latest-final-fantasy-xi-digest-qa-job-adjustments/

Yes, and Master levels WERE the job adjustments.

I don't know about that. They mentioned "Job Progression System" which was Master Levels, but also "Job Adjustments all at once".

And "job adjustments all at once" is exactly what master levels are. Every job gets a pile of stat increases... all at once. Trust me on this. They're not going in and rebalancing 22 job's worth of job abilities all at the same time. If that's what you were expecting, you misunderstood. And to be fair... a lot of people thought that way. You can thank the localization team for that one. The intent of the message didn't translate well from JP to English, but I assure you that master levels were the "all jobs adjustment" progression system they were talking about.

so my comment was in regard to a linkshell conversation after the last DEV Q&A where they talked about making sortie relatively easy and acquiring emp +2 easy to bring people up to the 119 standard. the devs also talked about making the +3 substantially more difficult end game content, at roughly the level of oddy V20 bosses and the rewards would be worth the effort. Clearly my expectations were incorrect, but that is the bases of where I got them.

I never said that the sortie we've been doing the past month has been difficult. in the Q&A, the devs talked about making wmp+2 easy to obtain to bring pepole into the 119 meta and that getting +3 would be roughly as challenging as the v20 oddy content.

the dev Q&A

At this point in this games design, your paying for what you see.
No different than a 20+ year old recipe for chicken soup in a can and on the shelf at your local retailer.
This is what it is, the recipe won't change, either eat it or buy something else to eat.

When they said that empyrean +3 would be more difficult to get than empyrean +2 they simply stated that you would probably require a party of players to get +3 versions whereas +2 would be soloable. At no point did they make the comparison to oddy NM's, much less the higher tiers. That lines up with what we're seeing in the sortie thread. Larger muffin costs for the +3 is conducive to efficient farming with 6 people, and one of the reports indicates that one of the new nms has a mechanic where you need to hit him with multiple different damage types to keep him from raging. So a soloer who can only do say.... slashing or a job that can only use one weapon, such as dancer, would no doubt struggle to kill a boss like that if they were alone.

I didn't say it was supposed to be one set to rule them all.

given the fact that the emp +2 was already comparable to +3 relic and +3 af, in most cases better stat wise, it was a naturally assumption that the +3 would have some improvements, even in only minor. the devs using the word "beefier" does not imply a small stat increase.

Honestly, who cares? It will be here next month. The galli requirements mean that even the hardest core of the elite players aren’t going to be able to afford more than a handful of pieces in month 1, and presumably the pieces you upgrade first are going to be ones you plan to use significantly and not just toss on the porter moogle. It’s a little silly that they don’t just release the slip alongside the gear, sure. But the actual impact is a non-issue.

Additionally, they did a Mythic style “unique job-specific features” weapon not that long ago with Su5 path C weapons. Some of which are truly unique and excellent pieces: Crocea Mors, Musa, Rostam, Fudo Masamune to fill a particular NIN tanking niche, Xiucoatl for PUP pet DD, etc. They definitely weren’t all winners, but some of them were pretty inspired design decisions.

I have my doubts they will be especially creative with Prime weapons. However:
1) They could serve as another way to give access to Relic WS - which may also be somewhat underwhelming UNLESS they also adjust those WS alongside the release. The very real possibility of that just killing the existing Relic weapons is also a concern though.

2) I assume they will come up with something as a universal feature or aftermath effect across all Prime weapons (like Aeonic TP bonus and lv4 SC, Mythic OAx, Empy ODx, etc). Can’t think of what the heck that would be at this point, but that’s probably the most realistic thing to hope for.

I’m a little worried about staff in particular. But hell, even just a very strong nuking weapon that beats Marin+1 is arguably a step up for BLM SCH. And maybe they could throw SMN a bone by slapping some avatar stats on there.

I have somewhat higher hopes for the single job weapons to be well thought through. Then again, we’ve seen utterly boring and not very job specific choices like with what BST got for Aeonic Axe, so…