Crafted Gear vs Dungeon Gear

[Wise Donkey]

Going off the limited information we have, mainly looking through xivdb.com, and looking at the gear, it would seem that Dungeon and GC gear far out stripes crafted gear. The only chance I think crafted gear has is Materia slots - and I have zero experience through beta with Materia. I made a few meh pieces, but never got far enough in crafting to be able to attach it to anything. I can understand end game raid gear being better than crafted gear, but I always felt that the pre-end game should belong to crafters, and this has me worried for crafting as an enjoyable venture in FFXIV.

I have seen threads where people have been complaining about how "easy" FFXIV crafting is - perhaps the true difficultly lies in melding gear with the proper materia to top Dungeon gear? What does everyone else think and what have they experienced thus far?

[Malacite]

Re: Crafted Gear vs Dungeon Gear

The game has been purposely set up in such a way that Rare drops are immediately better than crafted gear. However, HQ crafts with the right Materia added (like Gryphonskin) have the potential to outclass the best drops. It's a pretty smart system really.

[Aeni]

Re: Crafted Gear vs Dungeon Gear

Crafted items can still compete if you can HQ them. That still gives crafters an incentive, unlike in other MMOs, where crafting is rendered so useless that people don't even bother. Where crafting can shine, however, is with materia (you need the levels in order to meld) and of course certain sectors will be desired (e.g., Goldsmithing, as there's hardly any dungeon drops for those items and if there are, they are ultra rare)

Crafting is not so entirely useless as you still find people that would rather spend the time questing, doing FATES and behests, rather than "grinding" for items in dungeons. This obviously changes in end-game, where only from dungeons can you obtain the best of the best gear, as it should be. Crafting is a means to gear up for dungeons, but it's not suppose to replace dungeons. There will be instances, probably through expansion, however, that certain crafts can only be produced with item drops from dungeons, which then can be used to craft some of the better, if not the best gear. That would be a bit of an influence from FFXI, as in WoW, crafted items of anything is never better than gear you get from drops or from some NPC vendor ...