Not really. Doma Castle gear is plenty to get smooth runs in Castrum Abania. You don't need to buy HQ 68 gear. NQ 68 gear off the vendor gets the job done better than Shire does.
Printable View
Yesterday!
I was lvl-ing my WHM. I'm lvl 49 and farming Aurum Vale until 50.
So I got this 47 DRK, I popped protect and we proceed to first pack of mobs, he lost like 60% of his HP from 1 hit from one of those plants! I had to spam cure II to keep him alive!
Next pack of adds he actually lost enmity, I had less trouble keeping the BRD & SAM alive. He actually also died because he didn't care to move out of the poison puddles.
So apparently I was the noob, so I did inspect and well ... all his accessories were lvl 1 stuff ... on the left side his weapon was the lvl 30 DRK weapon you get from the job quest and that other chest and leg and stuff you get as lvl 30 but the other gear pieces were between lvl 1 and 15...
So after another wipe I told him that I can't keep him alive in a lvl 47 dungeon with him wearing lvl 1 gear and he said I should stop bullying him and that he was poor and all that.
So I looked up his search info and he had a lvl 70 Paladin, so then I replied with 'how can you not obtain lvl 40+ gear when you have a lvl 70 job' and he just kept going on that I'm a bully and all that ... so I just vote kicked him to get rid of him.
So the new tank that joined was decently geared, we continued told him to pull multiple groups, we never wiped, apart from the BRD that wiped from the swing from second boss and being to close in range but other then that swift run.
But yeah apparently I'm the noob for being unable to keep a tank with lvl 1 gear alive in a lvl 47 dungeon.
Of course it's stronger than the ilevel 67 doma gear, because it's ilevel 68 :) But you don't need it for Castrum Abania.
If you hit level 67 and unlock Doma Castle and level through til level 69, there is a high chance to enter CA with all gear of Doma Castle (if lucky even with the weapon). Doma Castle gear is sufficient for Castrum Albania and after 2-3 runs with exp bonus you'll hit 70 and get your left sided 290 job gear. There is no need to spend money for crafted gear (if you got the HQ gear through quests, then you can upgrade missing parts like the weapon).
I've forgot to say: If you level Jobs who share the same gear (DD caster for example) don't discard the gear and use it for later jobs. If you plan your Job leveling a bit, there aren't inventory/arsenal issues.
I've been lucky enough to run into something similar to this maybe once or twice in nearly 3 years playing this game. Doesn't mean that such a rare occurrence (in my experience) should be acceptable. Maybe people think regular dungeons function like PotD? Who knows.
Yup, that's how I started doing it when SB hit, but since I've put off on leveling the last few classes for a bit to work on other things, I ended up getting rid of most of it(oops). Oh well, I'll just get what I need later on before I start leveling those classes.