Returning player with a couple of questions re gear and weapon

Returning to the game after a long absence. Currently 170 gear, I do have a lvl 60 WAR tho. Just a couple of questions.. [Answered]

Level 60 is still the limit?

In terms of gear progression, best place to start?

I loved the zodiac grind (Im a nutter), so Anima weapon is the next line, I am planning on doing that first to get my skills back, is the final anima weapon competitive? Doesn't need to be bis, just close enough to make it worthwhile.

Feel free to help with any other tips :-)

Yes level 60 is the limit.

As for gear, start with farming Lore tomestones (for i230 equipment -i230 weapon with 4 x Alex:burden of the son + 1k Lore) and maybe Void Ark + Weeping City of Mhach for i240 upgrades.
This until you can get in Alexander:creator (token based i250 gear), and ofc see what you can get with Scripture tomestones (i260) by then.

Yes, Anima is BiS, or close (you do the substats), i270 in the latest iteration.

Awesome, thanks for your help.

For gear I'd say start with doing Hunts. They can be done solo and will quickly let you buy fairly cheap i200 gear - upgradable to i210. That will open up more venues and make it easier to earn lore/scripture for further upgrades.

MistakeNot's suggestion is a very good one once you get to HW.

At 53, 56 and 59 once you're in HW you'll unlock each Hunt tier and end up being able to get 110 Centurio Seals per day, so when you get to 60 more than likely you'll be able to get a full set of 200 gear right off the bat; and each hunt (5 per tier per day) will get you a nice chunk of XP simply for killing 1,2 or 3 mobs: note that this will NOT get you a weapon sadly, SE want to make you grind for one instead of being able to 'earn' it like other gear in a non-grindy way.

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Originally Posted by Pintsized

MistakeNot's suggestion is a very good one once you get to HW.

At 53, 56 and 59 once you're in HW you'll unlock each Hunt tier and end up being able to get 110 Centurio Seals per day, so when you get to 60 more than likely you'll be able to get a full set of 200 gear right off the bat; and each hunt (5 per tier per day) will get you a nice chunk of XP simply for killing 1,2 or 3 mobs: note that this will NOT get you a weapon sadly, SE want to make you grind for one instead of being able to 'earn' it like other gear in a non-grindy way.

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It WILL actually get you an i200 weapon too.

Honestly, I would skip the hunts and do Palace of the Dead. It has a separate leveling system and gearing system so the gear that you enter with will not really matter. Inside, you will find silver chests that have the possibility to raise the level of your weapon by 1 or more point or the level of your armor by 1 or more points. When your Aether Weapon and your Aether Armor are both +30 and you have cleared Floor 50 (you can do this pretty quickly) then you can receive a Padjali Weapon which is ilvl 235 for use outside of Palace of the Dead. This will return your weapon and armor inside back to +0 though. Then if you grind them up to +60 each, you can again exchange them for a Kinna Weapon which is ilvl 255.

Meanwhile, every time you defeat a boss in the Palace of the Dead (bosses are every 10 floors), you will receive both Lore and Scripture tomes which you can use to upgrade your armor and accessories outside of Palace. You can farm your weapon on any job but to receive tomestones you need to be on a level 60 job so keep that in mind. Also mobs in palace die very fast so make sure that you spend time outside reviewing the ins and outs of playing as a WAR in other content which will require longer fights and a deeper knowledge of your skills and abilities.

LVL 60 is the current limit, The Zodiac weps Z help you skip fate grinding for new relics, and start off continuing the main story, unlock dungeons, and raids. Palace of the Dead has a nice weapon that you can use while completing your relic.

As far as other tips for WAR in general, they changed it so that STR and VIT have the same stat weights towards damage (not sure when you left but a year or so ago a lot of WARs used STR accessories) as such, actually using your fending accessories is worth it now as it will give you the same damage with more HP.

The meta for tanks has changed greatly depending on when you left. You said you're 60 so you likely have Deliverance. Once you are able to comfortably run the content and keep hate (this is a gearing issue), most WARs stay in Defiance only long enough to establish solid hate before they switch to Deliverance for more damage. Make sure you use your defensive cooldowns appropriately when doing this so you don't stress your healer or make them give up Cleric Stance too often.

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Originally Posted by Dement

Honestly, I would skip the hunts and do Palace of the Dead.

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I don't know about skipping hunts, since there are useful things you can get from them, but definitely get the kina weapon! Palace of the Dead is fun, good EXP, profitable, and relatively easy. I ended up with my Kinna weapon and I'm not even 60 yet. I just got a little hooked on deep delving...

Thanks everyone for your help, I will throw a few likes around when I am off my mobile.

The change to STR and vit is new, that is really helpful to know, one last question, is parry useful now? Wasn't considered that helpful when I stopped playing (pretty much around when HW was released)

The Parry stat is more useless than it's ever been. They actually admitted some months ago in a Live Letter, or some broadcast like that, that Parry is not a useful enough stat and they're aware of people avoiding it as much as possible. In other words, they're saying, "Yes, we know it's functionally broken. We'll look at it for Stormblood, not now. It's okay if you don't get gear with it."

Also, just to expand on the STR and VIT change: Each point is now 0.45 AP. Although gear does have slightly more VIT than STR, this did indeed result in a slight reduction in tank damage, so they boosted enmity generation on tank stances to compensate. Overall, I greatly applaud the change. However, there is a downside: Flash and its equivalents are now nearly useless outside of tank stances, albeit they were always fairly limited in enmity generation outside of tank stances even before.

As for Anima weapons, except for one stage, the grinding doesn't feel nearly as bad to me as most of the Zodiac stages in ARR. Then again, it also feels uncreative except for that one very grindy stage. By their nature, the Anima/Zodiac weapons will be/were always the best weapons once they reach the level of the latest raid weapons because of being able to tailor the stats.

When you need Lore, people do Aetherochemical Research Facility non-stop now (yes, the final 3.0 story dungeon) because they boosted the total amount of Tomestones of Lore to 150 in order to motivate people to not leave if they get it in Level 60 Roulette. Unfortunately, it's too good of an incentive and now it's the ONLY serious way to farm Tomestones. Nothing else can compete if the only thing you care about is Tomestones of Lore.