Gear Upgrade Frustration

Anyone know what to do about picky groups?
I have a set of Hagondes at 113 with some augments for use with my BLM, (one at 119 thanks to the red mog pell), but being declined for Outer Ra'Kaznar skirmishes to even get the items to upgrade. Rejected due to not having enough 119 gear.

So I decided, hey, let's try a different job - my SMN, who has all his AF at 109 - so I can do high level battlefields to get the pages and crafts. Shouted for a group.
Rejected due to not enough 119 gear.


How does one attain 119 gear without being able to participate in 119 upgrade content? I'm baffled.


Rant over.

Fight some of the Delve II NMs outside of Delve, get the KI, buy the gear.
Get yourself a set of ilvl 117 gear from the PKG ( I know it's not 119, but 117 is really close)
Beat Delve/High level battlefield on Normal or above so that you can upgrade your JSE to 119 (you gan get the chapters with sparks, although it sucks and takes a looooooong time).

But the best piece of advice I can give you:

Start a run yourself/find a group of people who aren't so close-minded and realize that ORK Skirmish was designed to be beaten by people wearing YW Skirmish gear.

Eh, more than that, 119 Hagondes is the tiniest bit of marginal better than 113 Hagondes anyway, 113 can beat itif the augments are better (Same goes for Artsieq gear on several slots), this is a case of foolish people being foolish. Buy yourself a JSE staff and find a group of people who don't mind you having 113 gear, long as your gear choices are logical, plenty won't.

Frankly, from ORK, SMN is doable (because the content isn't very hard honestly) but like most, I would much rather have an other job for it.

Only things people still use SMNs for that I know of is Delve2 (pulling to prevent adds, clearing auras) and Head Wind (PD zerg), and oh yeah, Shadowlord.

Higher iLevel gear is not always magically better than lower iLevel gear for all things, in FFXI, as it always has been, everything is situational, higher iLevel gear tends to have more total stats, but what matters the most is if you're putting the right stats, in the right place, for the right spells/abilities.