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So as the title says, should I go for the 180s with the Red Scrips? or should I go for 170s?
Considering if I go for 180s, will I be disadvantaged in any way compared to having a pentamelded 170s? I feel like I will be going for the 180s albeit it being more expensive because grade V materias are rare on my server and needless to say, expensive.
take a look into your wallet. do you have hundreds of millions of gil?
yes? then take the ilvl 170
no? i think ilvl 180 would be fine.
you still need the crafted offhand, the belt and all the jewelry.
it's also a question how active you will use that gear. at this moment all the red script gear is simply useless. you can craft and gather all items without it. it will take A LOT of work to craft the ilvl 170 gear. you need mats you can only get with red gatherer AND crafter scripts. and the grade 5 materia to overmeld the gear...
if crafting is your main reason to play FF14 it's probably worth the work and gil. and i mean hardcore crafter. like someone who is able to reach the gil cap :x you don't need the gear now, but in the future probably... otherwise i don't think square will add recipes wich requires a full melded ilvl 170 set... it will make the work only a bit easier.
keep in mind that you dont need grade V materia to reach the stats of ilvl 180 with HQ ilvl170. For some pieces like mainhand tool or chest you need very expensive overmelds without grade V, but for others you need no overmelds at all to surpass the ilvl 180 item. So if you have the time to farm the mats (mainly from favors) yourself, then you dont need much gil to make use of the ilvl 170 and you will get it much faster than ilvl 180. Personally i'd wait for the upcoming change to favors before deciding, lets hope it will be soon...
Alrighty, so here's the thing. You don't need full i170/i180 in order to craft 2-star items or even gather folklore at HQ. You just need the i180 main hand tools and the i170 off-hand tools.
You just need to layout your materia like so:
Crafting: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/R9R1
Gathering: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/R9RT
That way, once you get your main hand for crafting, all you need is HQ Seafood Stew to reach the 2-star cap, which you should be using anyway for the CP bonus. Once you get your i170 off-hand, you won't even need THAT.
Right now I'd say it depends on how much time you have and how quickly you want upgraded gear. I180 gear will undoubtedly take longer with the script cap, 7 weeks for all left side armor, minus the belt. Plus all the craftering, farming, and/ buying mats to craft collectable gear.
I170 gear could potentially be much faster, and the only potential cost would be materia. Albeit, you'd be favor farming for an unknown amount of time.
I myself am passing in both until SE balances scripts or favors. Both are mind numbing time sinks right now.
I'm starting out with 180 mainhands first, then crafting the 170 offhands and belt/accessories. I'm not melding 8 full sets of gear, especially when that gear is the current hardest gear to craft.