Crafted Gear for leveling other classes is actually quite...amazing

I'm still in the camp with everyone else that crafting needs to become more relevant. I did spend months crafting with my toes while I played another video game leveling up to 50 on everything afterall, crafters spend alot of time crafting and want it to be...meaningful.


Anyways, now that all my doh/dol is 50 and my OCD is partially sated, I'ved been spending time leveling up my battle classes and I've discovered that...self crafted gear is actually really good and it's a pity its overlooked for leveling sub classes (especially now that dungeons and not FATES are the best way to level and gear is more relevant in dungeons then fates). Here are my observations (feel free to correct me on some of these if their wrong).

1. HQ crafted gear have equivalent stats to the aethereal piece with the same name, although aetherial gets one or two random tiny stats sometimes.
2. HQ crafted gear, like dungeon gear, is usable across many classes so useful for leveling multiple classes at the same time.
3. HQ crafted gear is cheap as hell to make yourself if you have the crafting classes leveled up. You can fully gear yourself in one go, rather then run enough dungeons for a full set only to not need it anymore.
4. you can make one set for archer, lancer, pugilist, one for mages, and one for tanks. An appropriate spread would be a set at level 20, 30, 35, and 40 (45 you get you AF, 50 you go to darklight or twostar pentameld). pre-20 whatever you get is irrelevant as the first dungeon starts at level 16. That means 12 sets of gear, 8~9 sets of jewelry, and your set to level every class to 50.
5. Here's the killer part, you can pentameld all of that gear cheap is hell. Like you pretty much can only use grade I and II materias, which generally cost very, very little (on average I spend about 4k to pentameld one piece with cheap but useful materia). And this makes this gear really awesome.
6. Since your gear is preplanned, you save alot of armoury space.
7. you can dye it all.
8. the only dropped gear I've been using is the weapon drops at end of dungeosn appropriate to my level.
9. puts your way closer to that carrier of the caudron achievement. I've got like 200 melds to go >.>

Unfortunately since most people only care about end game gear, This is greatly overlooked. No one even stops to consider pentamelding a lvl 30 piece of gear even though it doesn't really cost that much (unless your the unluckiest SOB in the world an you fail like 100 times on a overmeld).

on a side note I've even gone crafted for my jewel slots on my lvl 50 tanks now.
From what I can see, Hero jewels of fending or striking/aiming give either 15 vit or 13 str each. not both.
so, you can have a combo of
75 vit
60 vit 13 str (73 stat points)
45 vit 26 str (71 stat points)
30 vit 39 str (69 stat points)
15 vit 52 str (67 stat points)
65 str
and a few other stats of parry, det, etc.

on the other hand,fully pentamelded rose gold (note, STAT materia is relatively cheap compared to other materia. I've seen grade IVs go for as low as 1k on our server)
gives
50 VIT 45 STR (95 stat points).
and comparable stats, plus you can meld more of what you want on. Is there any reason to upgrade to HERO over pentamelded rosegold?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cearka

Is there any reason to upgrade to HERO over pentamelded rosegold?

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For tanks: If you need every last bit of HP and mitigation stats for hard content, i90 accessories can be better. For faceroll content, you're generally better off with your i70 overmelds (or possibly even i90 STR accessories).

For Healers/DPS: If you don't need the additional HP granted from sticking VIT on your crafted accessories, then i90 accessories can be better. For faceroll content, you're generally better off with your i90 accessories.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raldo

For tanks: If you need every last bit of HP and mitigation stats for hard content, i90 accessories can be better. For faceroll content, you're generally better off with your i70 overmelds (or possibly even i90 STR accessories).

For Healers/DPS: If you don't need the additional HP granted from sticking VIT on your crafted accessories, then i90 accessories can be better. For faceroll content, you're generally better off with your i90 accessories.

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that makes sense I guess, thanks =D

Yea it, unfortunately, doesn't seem to get much credit. It's the "meaningful content" complex. Apparently the content that helps you reach "meaningful" is just a nuisance.

When I was leveling BLM I wore crafted gear all the way to level 50. My HQ crafted/melded gear was in fact better than any dungeon drops I got including the battlemage set.

Yarr. Half the time Aetherial equipment ends up being outright worse than a regular HQ version of the same item. Seems especially noticeable with jewellery for some reason, in my experience. -_-

And crafting gear gives you something to do while waiting for DPS queues if you enjoy dungeons. :p

recently I lvld DRG and had opportunity to craft all the way to 50 my accessories. had lots of fun converting, hq'ing and melding my new stuff. Its very cool when all the gear u wear its being made by you.

I craft myself hq weapons when I level classes on my alts for this reason. But the period of relevance for every piece is so short that I don't bother with most anything else.

Yep. Melded HQ whites are competitive with greens.

Heck Aetherial equips are basically HQ equips with the secondary stats dropped and random Materia embedded in them.

I love it too.
You basically enter a dungeon already equipped with the gear you'd be getting from it. Puts my DPS right at the top and always have to pay attention to my enmity not to out aggro the tank :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ferth

I craft myself hq weapons when I level classes on my alts for this reason. But the period of relevance for every piece is so short that I don't bother with most anything else.

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^^this is the problem


Plus, why pay for crafted gear... when you can get gear that will easily get you through all the content for free from dungeons?

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Originally Posted by OSUBuckeye4

Plus, why pay for crafted gear... when you can get gear that will easily get you through all the content for free from dungeons?

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Before CT (/patch 2.1), there're only Myth and Coil gears better than Darklight (and crafted gears), to obtain either of them, you need wait time due to Myth tomestone and coil lockout, to add more, you need a very good luck for your gear even turnout in coil drops.

So how many times we have to repeat this: Crafting gears are for fast ilvl/basic stats upgrade.

What are you talking about?

The post I was responding to was someone talking about levling up their subclasses from 1-50. They said that crafting HQ is useful (for the reasons you mentioned), crafting anything else is pretty much worthless, because they get so little utility/use out of the eqiupment... they are already ready for an upgrade before even SB'ing it to 100%.

Put it this way, the period of relevance that you get from crafting lvl 25 gear is extremely short... as you can go from lvl 25 to lvl 30 extremely quickly, and then you have to go ahead and craft yourself lvl 30 gear.


Why waste the time/resources gathering and crafting your level 25 gear, when you're just going to breeze through to level 30? If you really hit a wall, you can just run dungeons like Brayfox and get gear that is better than anything you can craft for that level anyway. (plus you get experience while running the dungeon)