July 2026 Version Update

If a job falls in disfavor there is not just no effort to re-balance that job, it will get neglected and nerfed so it doesn't recover for at least a decade it seems. There are a few exceptions where SE plays favorites though.

Not happy with ANY of this gear. I don't feel like SE is even demonstrating they have a finger on the pulse.

If they are targeting new players, the 30 merit cost wasn't logical.

If they want 30 merit costs and low drop rates, then the gear should feel like something is an upgrade for some purpose for at least some of the jobs that can wear it for established players. New players already have a TON of stuff to work toward that matches or exceeds what they just released.

As a RDM main, it immediately pops to mind to compare Elemental Nuke options. Why is the Mage Body from this new fight weighing in with 50 magic accuracy, 40MAB and 5MBII, when EA +1 Body (2017 body) has macc+52, MAB+44, MB+9 and MBII+9. RDM, BLM, and GEO can wear EA, and the only other job on the new body that nukes with proficiency is SCH. BRD and SMN probably do not care at all for MBII or MAB[if the MAB lacks pairing with ws%].

If they had done something like 10 WS% and 45MAB on the mage body and bumped up INT and MND a touch, it would've at least been usable for a lot of people on Elemental WS, as that would perform better than Nyame.

But I'm looking at this body as a career RDM and there's zero desire for this body... the first High Tier Merit fight addition in a while now and why would I even care? You have to put *something* on the gear that makes us want it.

I'm not going to go too much into the weapons, but they are not attractive to me either.

One of my larger yearnings for Modern FFXI, is for considerations for Crit Based weaponskills to be given. They need to start adding gear with Crit DMG %. I don't even care if the pieces have slow % on them to prevent their use as TP pieces. Ramapage, Evisceration, CDC, etc. This game has focused on WS% gear and big 1 hit weaponskills (Tachi: whatever, Savage, Rudra, Primes, etc) for too darn long.

Does SE even understand that WS% gear is largely pointless for these weaponskills?

Any number of us, even if we had no programming skill, could be hired to offer advisement and make this game more diverse, and more fun, for a broader audience, all while largely recycling assets and ideas.

It's not that hard SE. Please figure it out.

As someone who's been very lazy about R30ing any of my Gleti's, but also as someone who's seen a ton of players who have also been lazy and not aug'd their Sakpatas past R20...

The Reciente Coselete is kinda great.

It's got more accuracy than R30 Sakpata's body and 2% more double attack. No crit rate or PDL, 1 less DT, and none of the other defensive/healing received benefits. 2% more Haste though.

But as a piece for building TP, it is superior to R30 Sakpata's. R30 Sakpata body when taking its +55 accuracy and 25 DEX into consideration has about +73 or +74 accuracy depending on your race's/gear's DEX total.

The Reciente Coselete has +50 accuracy and +32 DEX, putting it at +74 accuaracy or +75 depending again on your race/dex gear.

R30 Gleti's on the other hand, beats it out slightly in the accuracy category and also by having Regain. Of course, Gleti's only sports PDT, and while you'll hear good talk about Shell V and MDT being easy to cap, breath damage is quite prevalent because of endgame enemies sporting fetters and gyves, so the Reciente Coselete beats Gleti's defensively, for the most part (MDB on Gleti's is huge, so if you can get enough DT elsewhere to not be an issue for your healer, then it's still the better piece. But only when it's R28+).

Like yeah, it's not blowing our socks off. But only us crusty veterans could look at such a nice piece, and say, "Meh, this sucks!" When it doesn't suck at all.

Like you could get a Reciente Coselete as a newbie or on a mule, and that character would never even have to consider RPing either Sakpata or Gleti body, realistically.

Yes, it also restores JA on VD

Everyone is saying the same thing you said. It sucks for veterans (hence: nobody is clambering to get it), but it's a nice piece for new players.

It's not BiS for ***at the endgame. Sakpata has higher crit rate, resist all status ailments, cure received, PDL, DT, DEF, and HP. You aren't trading all that crap for 1 acc and 2 DA.

For DRG I'd use Hjarrandi if I needed DT-, especially considering the STP scales better with QA/TA/DA (from your wyvern), or just use Gleti's body if you want DA and/or aren't fighting something with active fetters out.

I don't think I will put any of these bodies in any set on any job. My entire group looked at this armor, went "meh", and we decided not to bother farming the HTBF today.

I only bothered to get the Club and Ammo for my PLD character and moved on from this HTMB.

Newbies aren't getting this armor either. The drop rate is absurdly low. No newbie is gonna spam this fight 200 times.

DOA content even for newbies. Very simple SE lost their ability to create anything. Sad to see. This was a net zero - Limbus still needs a lot of work, and honestly, I don't even want to bother with it.

Is the drop rate on the body pieces Shinryu bad? If so, that is a massive disappointment.

A full day and not one documented drop

It's tough to be sure, because there's no excitement, it's largely ignored.

It's certainly a bad drop rate, far below reasonable, for sure.

Did 3 fights (Normal, VD title for me, VD title for others) and no bodies here. Just weapons.

Done 8 VDs, 1D, 1N, 1E, got all weapons and Ammo for 3 characters, no bodies.

So the bodies are "catch up" items but it'll take you weeks or months to get them? Wtf is SE doing.

They had it right with CoD and ruined it with this new one

I've seen two bodies in less than or around 15 fights.

"Sorry dude, you picked the short straw, you gotta make the next FFXI update. Don't worry, once you push that ***out, you get to come back and work on 14 again."

If they buy me an extra claude code max sub I can make them better content then this in my free time :)

Hell if they just give me source code access I'll use my own tokens for this.


Edit: please note I am not saying I would make GOOD content. Only better than this.

a sim can have its uses imo, but that depends largely on whether someone using it understands what conditions are being simulated and how well that map represents the territory, so to speak. i haven't fiddled with the sim that's been used here to build cookie-cutter BIS lists but if i were going to rely on sims i would want a lot of specific knobs and dials to play with.

for instance, the metagame of C seg farming still shapes perceptions about what makes for optimal DPS in other situations. it's fields of squishy mobs that can be burst down in a single weaponskill usually, therefore the limiting reactant probably has more to do with a player's target-switching agility than it does straight TP gain. you can still do plenty of work in limbus as a sword/board WAR optimizing for average weaponskill damage, but because the mobs stay alive longer factors like TP gain and skillchain damage become more relevant, which make options like dual wield and 2h much more useful than they'd be in sheol C.

there are also plenty of people out there who don't consider things like MEva/MDB/status resist as useful in their TP sets, like folks used to not consider DT important. gets a lot harder to slam the savage blade button when you're paralyzed, petrified, or dead, and even a good WHM and a pocket full of meds can only get one so far. i went to check the MEva differences between flamma+2 head, war empy+3 head, and sakpata's and it was wayyyy bigger than i remembered lmao

Seems you have had better luck then others and I'm assuming that's on VD? And I'd argue that's still too low for intended purpose of new player gearing. They aren't going to be able to hold 60 merits, so grouping might be a problem having to stop after every fight. Then you have to win the lot.


But whatever, head slot should be better I think for more seasoned players. Body is just too competitive.

Ya, VD.
I was surprised to see it's rare.

Returning players aren’t going to be doing VD either. So if it’s 2/15 body drop on VD, it’s going to be like 1/99 on VE lol. OG Lilith level bad drops.

It's fine, in another 5 years there will be a box drop added to the HTBF that gets you your missing body piece.

reddit translation of the AMAN live - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/1ussvhc/711_aman_live_translation_thread/
a few tidbits in there, like they start adding the field NMs next month. But also, those are meant to drop catch up gear, so they aren't expecting congestion.

Of course, people may hunt them down anyway just in case for mastery rank I imagine.

Damn, I was looking forward to the NMs. Too bad.

Are new people really struggling to get gear? Everyone that has returned or is new that I've seen just has someone carry them through V0 clears for odyssey gear

Brand new players can't get into V0 for 47 days, if nothing else. Might be nice to not be gated by that arbitrary timegate.

(they can't remove it because the raw gil from touching the thing at the end is high enough that RMT might actually bother, and generally I'm a skeptic for "RMT will do X")

That's the common route, but for those who can't happen to get a carry through ody V0/1 armor, or a carry through sortie a few times, its ambu+2 > grind lilith if on malignance and/or spam sortie to get into what's currently decent/good gear, surprising number of people welcomed the RSE+1 gear as just starter nyame-lite, so if they add more stuff like that(and its not garbage drop rates/respawns etc) it'd be a welcome change imo.

Filling in the middle is fine.

Filling it in with weeks of grind is not.

The bottleneck is odyssey. If they discover a way to fix the absolute *** that seg farming is they wouldn't need to keep attempting and failing to backfill.

There's an undeniable bottle neck at the sheol/gaol section of progression. Sortie blows but it's a low effort grind for empyrean. Limbus blows but its a low effort grind for gear upgrades. Odyssey is a brick wall.

And no, the answer is not "just give out free daily mogphone 2" It would work. Just not the way you think it would.

Sortie is perfectly solo-able for +2, which lets you solo for +3.

Carry for V0/V1 Odyssey unlock for R1 armor. Then solo sortie for +2. Don't waste your time farming intermediate gear just to replace it with empy half a minute later.

RSE+1 as starter gear so you're not useless/in god damn peacekeeper armor.

Yeah with a free MP2 isn't going to help nearly enough. As long as it has no rewards to folks who already cleared and finished the content.