ilvl vs. Materia

[Hellfury]

Potentially silly question, I am fairly new to the itemlevel concept.

From what I can gather, the item level (and core stats) displayed on item do not change when you add materia, so assuming that you have an item with base stat of 10 dex and add 7 dex to materia, the description text will still say 10 dex and you will have to "manually add 10+7" to get the actual dex count of the weapon. Item level doesn't change when you add materia(?).

Is item level only a descriptor for the base strength of a weapon/armor that does not account for modifications made to the weapon (or gear for that matter) and as such doesn't really give a clear indicator of actual output effect of modified gear, or does the item level define a span of stats (this is disregarding the limitations of materia type connected to item level as such) so that a hypothetical item with an itemlevel of 60 with added materia can never surpass a non-materiable hypothetical item with an itemlevel of 61?), to give a concrete example, could you forbiddenmeld the gryphonskin up to (or beyond) an approximation of the one/two tier higher itemlevel equipment?


(I'm not sure I explain this [my question] well enough, I am relatively new to the concept of ilevel. I can't check this myself, because 1017, 2002 etc. but have been wondering all day)

edit: rephrase: can the effective (as opposed to the listed) specifications ilevel of an item be increased by the addition of materia, to the degree that it can reach an approximate/match/surpass gear of a higher ilevel, say the archer/bard ilevel70 gear that is meldable, as opposed to the ilevel 80/90 gear such as Darklight and/or AFv2, or will it always be inferior to a higher ilvl regardless?

[Spider-Dan]

iLV only describes approximate base stat value. It does not change based on melds.

You could probably make iLV55 about as good as iLV70, but it would be difficult to make it superior because of materia stat caps.

[Purrrfect]

Even more basic question: How do you know what the ilvl of an item is?

[Takiwaki]

Even more basic question: How do you know what the ilvl of an item is?

This just made my day thanks!

You can just read it =/

Random google image, right under the dmg rating

http://i1.wp.com/www.ffxivguild.com/...size=367%2C444

[Skai]

I wondered this myself for a while too until by chance I caught a glance. Can't believe it was right in front of my eyes the whole time, lol.

[Purrrfect]

Ok wow. Herpa derp derp for me it seems.