Originally Posted by
Sotek
DL and the iLv70 crafted stuff are basically identical. Crafting is probably better with Materia, in fact (though Materia is retarded now, so who knows). Generally better for your inventory, too. I'd take two Astral Rings which can be used for WHM, SCH, BLM, SMN over four Darklight Rings of Meh. Without Materia there's what? A one point difference in the stat that matter?
So yeah... iLv55 (Crafted) < iLv60 (Wanderer's/Amdapor) < iLv70 (Darklight/Crafted) < iLv90 (Heroes/Allagan).
Similar story for main equipment as well, actually. Darklight isn't the be-all and end-all of equipment, Darksteel/Vanya/etc. can pretty easily be justified, and let you completely skip Philosophy farming (outside 900 for Relic, and I guess the required crafting items).