My Big decision...AF2, Darklight, Relic, oh my...

Warrior here, wearing darklight gloves, belt and full darklight accessories. The rest is Hoplite. About to take on the primals for my relic and have about 1300 philo, 650 mythology, and 500k gil. I wanna gear up before Garuda/Titan and need advice

Until tonight I planned to buy my AF2 chest and darklight legs.

I DESPISE the tank darklight chest/head because it's ugly and a re-skin of level 20 armor. Puke.

But I wanna do what's best, so after some research here's what I'm thinking: Either use tomes to by DL legs/feet and buy HQ darksteel chest from the market or another player. Conversely, assuming I find an armorer I can trust, buy one peice of darksteel and get the other crafted using my philo tomes for mats.

This would free up my growing pool of mythology for the +1 on my relic.

I think this is best, but feel free to chime in. I'm gonna despise wearing darklight and looking like a tool, but I guess I can hope for an allagan chest drop in coil 1...

I would either spend your myth on +1 ing your relic or getting the ring, they're the best purchases in the long run and until turn 5 opens again and you get to that stage in the game you can clear everything in DL without too much difficulty, that boost in HP from AF2 isn't going to save you on Turns 1-4 it'll be on how well you and more importantly (imo) your healers play if anything.

The ring is 'BiS' and the allagan axe(the only other option besides your relic) has meh stats (crit and no parry), I also believe it doesn't drop until turn 5.

All your other slots (Chest, Helm, Legs, Boots, Gloves) can drop in turns 1-4, the AF2 can make things a bit easier but are in no way a must-have to clear the content that's currently available. If anything, after you get your relic+1 and the ring just spend your myth on what looks cool. You won't see any real game breaking changes from pick up a myth armor piece.

I would get the Darksteel chest and gloves (both can be melded for more parry and acc to hit the 472+? cap for turn 4). The legs seem terrible as they're loaded with crit + skill speed while DL gives a nice chunk of acc. and parry.

Do you plan to do Coils? If so, go for jewelery pieces with Myth and just go DL everything else. Once you get the Allagan Chest, get the Myth helmet; Allagan helm does not drop until Turn 5.

If not, I'd actually recommend aiming for Chest/Helm first, then Legs/Feet second, followed by Gloves, Jewelry slots, then +1.

I don't recommend going Relic +1 right away, it's not worth it as it only gives +5 vit, +4 str, and +2 damage. You can get way more out of other items than you can Relic +1.

You can always do what I did, which I see a few of the other raiding tanks doing (mostly due to hating the Darklight Chest but also wanting to save 1300 philo tomes).

There's no point getting the HQ Darksteel i70 chest because it's the same design as the Darklight Chest! The combo chest/head tincan. You'll be much happier aiming for separate Allagan or AF2 chest/head parts. Also, half the point of the crafted i70 gear is that it's only better than AF2 if you put 5 melds in it... and the tank set is combined head/chest so you only get 5 melds between two equipment slots. Save your money.

What you can do though is make the AF2 Helmet your FIRST buy. As people have said, it drops off Turn 5 so you wont risk having wasted those tomes. It wont be replaced by allagan. Then, use either the Hoplite Chest if you're lucky enough to have it, or if not, you can actually have a BETTER chest by buying a HQ Militia Cuirass (the crafted i55 chest) and melding it with materia, probably crit + determination. HQ Militia Cuirass + AF2 helm is a BETTER stat combo than Darklight Chest as you get pretty much identical def/vit/sta, but get much higher secondary stats, especially threat-wise. The HQ militia cuirass goes for about 20k on my server, and materia costs might vary. You can get away with grade 2 but ideally grade 3 at least for the first two green slots.

You can always swap in the Hoplite chest if you find you need more accuracy - this is the main reason i bought a melded HQ Cuirass, the Accuracy on my hoplite chest was wasted as I was miles overcap, so the parry+crit i got out of the Militia was a substantial upgrade.

My recommendation? Get the AF2 head with Myth, the Darklight legboot combo with Philo, and use either Hoplite or HQ Militia for chest. Save 900 for the Bravura +1 next, and make sure all your other jewellery slots are Darklight (with hoplite ring). Once you've got your relic and +1'd it, replace your Hoplite Ring with the Heros Ring for Myth tomes, and spend your remaining Myth tomes on either gloves/legs/boots/chest depending on which parts drop for you in Coil.

I'd probably aim for the Bravura +1 after the Head to be honest -> the allagan axe drops off turn 5 too. Getting +1 relic and AF2 head and the rest of your slots being Darklight guarantees you wont waste any of your first myth on stuff which could drop.

Just be sure to keep an eye on your Acc. That stat goes down pretty fast when you get rid of DL legs and chest. :P

similar dilemma for me...warrior...full DL and hero ring...relic +1 already....what to spend myth on?

Huh. I REALLY like the idea of skipping the DL chest/head debacle, and I DO love the warrior helm. I'll check out this Militia Cuirass--better to spend my money tricking it out instead of spending 400k on armor I hate, right? I do imagine having to explain to people in Titan and Coil that it IS equal to darklight...

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Originally Posted by dinantes

Warrior here, wearing darklight gloves, belt and full darklight accessories. The rest is Hoplite. About to take on the primals for my relic and have about 1300 philo, 650 mythology, and 500k gil. I wanna gear up before Garuda/Titan and need advice.

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You have WAY more than enough gear to tank Garuda. Garuda is more about tank positioning and add control than about tank survival. Dodge the slipstream and keep Garuda positioned well, that's 100% of your job.

I tanked Titan with full DL accessories + hoplite ring, DL legs, belt, gloves, and hoplite chest/head. That's about 5400hp for a PLD in a group. At the most I would say get DL legs and go do Titan as you have the gear already.

Thanks!

Also, looking at the militia cuirass stats...it has no parry or crit whatsoever and only two guaranteed meld slots. Combined with the AF2 warrior helm is has less total defense (3 or so) as well as 1 less str. So how exactly would I trick it out to be better than darklight?

Suggestions welcome, because I really, really wanna do this instead!

(EDIT) Huh. Nevermind. Was looking online and not in game, haha. Has crit and parry and IS quite a bit better.

So which materia to meld? It has a little less parry, so do I address that, or go with determination or something instead?

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Allagan helm does not drop until Turn 5.

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This is false it was proven yesterday that the Allagan helm does indeed drop form TURN 4.

I melded my Cuirass with Crit and Determination to make it a definite "threat" chest upgrade. Your strength/def/vitality will be a teeny tiny by under darklight by 1-2 points, but if you meld Crit/Det into it it'll overtake the darklight for threat/damage by a lot of points.

23 Crit is the maximum you can have melded, so 1 Savage Aim III in the green slot makes it 22 total. You can't meld any more vit/str/parry into it, so the other 4 slots should be personal choice between Accuracy, Skill speed and (my choice) Determination. You could also meld Dexterity in it if you were near to a parry cap but this is less optimal. I used a Savage Might III in the green slot (guaranteed) and stuffed the three red slots with savage might IIs as they can break on melding.

End result is a chest with 23 parry, 23 crit, 11 determination potentially. It's not -better- than Darklight, but it's definitely as good as darklight with the AF2 hat, and ties you over till the Allagan Chest. It's also MUCH better than the Hoplite Chest unless you're undercap on Accuracy.

Thank you (all) so much for the advice. You've saved me a lot of time and wasted effort, and with the militia cuirass dyed black I will finally, FINALLY look badass again.

Appreciate it.