How are players supposed to beat maat these days?

[Ris]

Just as a quick update... Last night I took down Maat at level 68. Only had to use howling moon twice at that, and it wasn't even darksday, and my gear is still pretty crappy (gremlins handed my @$$ to me so I decided to come back to the AF quests later). Easier than the level 20 trials... so Maat specifically doesn't seem like an obstacle to SMN.

You'll love the Evoker's Ring.

The Caller's Bracers +2 do much the same thing but based on Day/Weather instead (basically, you can /SCH for a limited selection of the weather spells if you really want to make them work).

Reforging your AF gear when you get to 99 should also be a priority if you're really into Summoner - and if you get lots of Sparks you can buy the chapters to do this too.

Yep, high level gear doesn't seem like it will be a problem. It's those awkward middle levels...

[dasva]

Haven't browsed thru this thread but sch is a super easy fight if you just trying to break the cap. Though annoying in having to do the af quests first. Ran several mules thru it who had gotten every last level thru coalition assignments and the only skill they had that wasn't 0 was like 5 enhancing and 10 evasion and were missing a lot of spells. But tabula is just that awesome

[Pixela]

The dev team has stated they plan to add mid level gear to sparks vendors, so they listened!

The thread did start off with amazement that my friend could not get gear and he asked me if there was a way to get gear some other way (which their obviously isn't and crafting is as horrible as ever so people can't even craft their own).

The point wasn't that you can't beat maat without gear, it's that A) new players or returnees will have a harder and unfair time on a compulsory level cap fight and/or that this is an MMO where gear is an important hook to keep leveling. I remember over the years on my first character that getting that haub or SH was a huge thing that kept me grinding away.

A large part of playing an MMO is about getting stronger and getting better/pretty/cool gear, if players can't get gear during leveling then you're missing an important part of the core principle of an MMO. Considering Square are desperate to bring XIV players to play XI and XIV they need to put more thought into that idea beyond free weeks.

[Numquam]

Level a job to 30, unlock BST, level that to 70, get the HQ diremite pet, 2 hr, have some reward food, and have your pet on maat while you rampage from the back, you'll need to skill up your axe. Once you finish fight, toss all the BST gear away, and pretend like it never happened and go on your merry way leveling real jobs to 99.

[SMD111]

to beat maat all you need is a lvl 70 whm with repose cast it on maat wait for it to ware off then cast it again after a few cycles you will win no challenge

[Bebekeke]

DD mage gear
Light DD gear
Heavy DD gear

Will cost you 255k allied notes for a full set (assuming that you switch to the nation that you require this gear from), though for most jobs, you'll find that you won't want all pieces as some of the AF might be better, or you may manage to get something better off the AH. But generally, if you're struggling to get gear with which to fight Maat, you can't go far wrong with this stuff.

Alternatively, shout for a crafter to make what you want. If you've already farmed the materials, many crafters won't even charge a newbie for their time.

Edit: Remember that you can get allied notes from trading in your copper vouchers, too^^

[Vtgar]

As a new player that started a month ago, the Maat fight really worries me. I'm still running around in level 40 CP gear since I am not able to acquire the artifact stuff and the auction houses are either are short on items around my level or the stuff goes for unreasonable prices.

I for one would love to see some armor for Sparks.

[Kensagaku]

I personally just did my Maat fight on my mule (1/2 at NIN66) completely self-funded with no help from the main. I understand what a pain it is to get things like the AF done, but many of the things can be farmed or earned. If you want to talk about your artifact armor (I'm assuming SAM, since that's listed), most of the mats for the first armor quest are readily available from vendors sans the Hecteyes eye, which can be farmed in a number of areas, and the second quest has Gold Thread, which I recall being fairly common on the AH but I don't know Leviathan's AH either. Granted, you could just get the materials and get the item crafted, too. So the artifact armor is relatively easy to get, and for SAM it's handy, particularly the headpiece. The hands are pretty decent with rice ball food, too, at earlier levels. The difficulty, I think, for the Samurai ones would be the enemies; for a new player, I can imagine they'd be daunting without some help from a friend.

As for other gear, you can probably get it crafted from the AH. I'd definitely look into getting materials for a Haubergeon (for WS, if not for general TP, depending on situation) and a Scorpion Harness (for those times you have to be evasive) if you can't find the direct items on the AH. You can look both of the recipes up online to find materials. If the materials are too expensive, there are several farming options, the best of which is sparks; you can convert sparks to gil at roughly a 1:10 ratio, so if you need 100k gil, you just need 10k sparks, etc. Leveling, provided you followed objectives and did things like Damage Taken, Total Damage, and Enemies Vanquished, should have gotten you a lot of sparks that can be converted to gil towards making those items. These are just some suggestions, of course; there's also CP armor (if you've been keeping up with rank missions and making sure you always have Signet up) as well as armor from events like Campaign.

Granted, with all of that in mind, I don't really have an objection to mid-level NQ armor, something like the Harness sets that don't offer anything besides DEF, giving players something to tide them over as compared to more useful items that are more of a luxury than a necessity. This is just advice towards helping a player get some more effective gear, because Maat can be a jerk. Double Asuran to a Mijin was not a pleasant end to my first fight...

[Jybwee]

I just got back to the game a few months ago, haven't played in many years. Starting fresh, first job to 70 was whm which i got a few days ago. Wearing all arti gear, real crap earrings... some random + a few mp and + some divine, one being lvl 10. Rings were like.. one +acc one and some other junk. I just went into the Maat fight just seeing what it was gunna be like. I ending up winning first try standing toe to toe with him and just outlasting him. Buffing the crap outta myself before going in and keeping regen III up is really the only 'strat' i had, lol.

Lvl'n up i did keep all my skills capped. I did go with staff over clubs since the 50's tho so i had Spirit Taker which really is a game changer . IDK, was honestly perty surprised it wasn't harder.

As far as gear goes leveling up. So far it's just random NM pieces and things from brown caskets or roe 10 kill quests.

BLU is 62 now, i hear that one is harder? We'll see how it goes, as with blu i haven't been able to complete the 2nd arti quest (no trusts allowed )

[Xantavia]

I beat the BLU 2nd artifact quest on 60 RDM (though I really shouldn't have won). I finally had to shout for help for the last piece though. Couldn't take down that mob after many attempts with different trust set-ups. I did use BLU on both characters to complete G5 though. A lot of it comes down to which spells he decides to use against you. No asuran fists spam from him, though vorpal blade is painful enough.