Gear Prep for Dawntrail: crafted 640 enough?

If the game follows the iLevel patterns of the past for combat gear, the first L90 crafted gear available from Dawntrail will be iL645 gear, and the L90 Poetics gear will be iL660. (Of course, the L90 poetics gear won't be available until reaching the end of Dawntrail's MSQ.)

Top crafted gear now is 640, but it can be upgraded to 650.
And the top tome gear for casuals is 650 as well, which I believe can be upgraded to 660 by grinding Myths of the Realm.

Do people think it's worth the effort to grind for 650 or perhaps better gear in prep for Dawntrail, or will the 640 gear be enough?

Having 6 characters currently at End-of-Content all in 640 gear for at least three classes (SGE-WAR-DNC), I don't want to put a lot of effort into grinding gear upgrades if it isn't useful. And I expect I'll easily be able to gather and craft mid-expansion gear (e.g. L96 gear) should it be useful to do so.

640 should be fine. The 660 gear isn't even all that worth it anyways since you pretty much can already upgrade them by the second dungeon of the expansion.

It will be enough for the first few dungeons.

To be clear, the 660 now will be the next poetics so by farming now you will gain on poetics when the expansion will be released. But poetics will only have the upgraded one, you will to buy an entirely new items or do the 3 raid 24 to upgrade an old non upgraded item.

And to be complete on the gear during the expansions.
First quests will give you the 645 ilvl gear, then the first dungeon will give you 650ilvl gear, next quests will have 655 and next dungeon 660.
So with 640 ilvl gear, you will take all items you will found as an upgrade and with 660, you will only have upgrade starting at the 95 dungeon and 660 will be largely enough to go to 100 but not the 640.

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Originally Posted by Kazelus

It will be enough for the first few dungeons.

To be clear, the 660 now will be the next poetics so by farming now you will gain on poetics when the expansion will be released. But poetics will only have the upgraded one, you will to buy an entirely new items or do the 3 raid 24 to upgrade an old non upgraded item.

And to be complete on the gear during the expansions.
First quests will give you the 645 ilvl gear, then the first dungeon will give you 650ilvl gear, next quests will have 655 and next dungeon 660.
So with 640 ilvl gear, you will take all items you will found as an upgrade and with 660, you will only have upgrade starting at the 95 dungeon and 660 will be largely enough to go to 100 but not the 640.

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what this guy said... it's good enough but you'll have to upgrade.

Right now it's easy enough to get your tomey gear so just do that and your relic weapon ez pz

Level 90 Dawntrail gear based off of past expansions would be 645, and leveling gear increasing 5 ilvl per level making the current augmented tomestone gear (660) effectively level 93 gear.

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Originally Posted by Kazelus

To be clear, the 660 now will be the next poetics so by farming now you will gain on poetics when the expansion will be released. But poetics will only have the upgraded one, you will to buy an entirely new items or do the 3 raid 24 to upgrade an old non upgraded item.

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Based on historic patterns:

• The base IL 650 Comedy gear will be upgradable to Augmented IL 660 at the cost of 100 poetics per slot.
• The Lv91 dungeon will drop IL 650 gear.
• The Lv93 dungeon will drop IL 660 gear.
• Crafters will be able to make Lv94 gear that is IL 663.
• The Lv95 dungeon will drop IL 666 gear.

Getting a full set of IL 660 gear now would put you at the max IL available from Lv90 through Lv93, and the max IL available from duties through Lv94. A full set of IL 650 gear now would put you at the expected IL through Lv92 but that set can be upgraded to a full set of IL 660 gear for 1,100 poetics.

The MSQ will give you 645 gear coffers prior to the first Dawntrail dungeon. It will be a complete set (especially if you do sidequests, but I recall it being complete on alts that skipped them). The vendors in Old Sharlayan or Radz that sell MSQ gear will sell this 645 gear as well, but normal quality.

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Originally Posted by Bun_Vivant

Do people think it's worth the effort to grind for 650 or perhaps better gear in prep for Dawntrail, or will the 640 gear be enough?

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640 will be enough, but I would also point out that there's not much reason not to get 650 or 660, because what else is there to do? Even if you have other things to do, you can probably grind the tomestones from a few hunt trains, so may as well do it.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Based on historic patterns:

• The base IL 650 Comedy gear will be upgradable to Augmented IL 660 at the cost of 100 poetics per slot.
• The Lv81 dungeon will drop IL 650 gear.
• The Lv83 dungeon will drop IL 660 gear.
• Crafters will be able to make Lv84 gear that is IL 663.
• The Lv85 dungeon will drop IL 666 gear.

Getting a full set of IL 660 gear now would put you at the max IL available from Lv90 through Lv93, and the max IL available from duties through Lv94. A full set of IL 650 gear now would put you at the expected IL through Lv62 but that set can be upgraded to a full set of IL 660 gear for 1,100 poetics.

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Like I said, no upgrade before third dungeon. You have ilvl 663 from MSQ once but it won't apply for the rests of your jobs. And is not a necessity to continue the expansion.

I'm curious, never found a way to upgrade old Tomes gear with poetics, where did you get the upgrade ?
(You've put the wrong level for the dungeons, you put 8X instead of 9X.)

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Originally Posted by Kazelus

I'm curious, never found a way to upgrade old Tomes gear with poetics, where did you get the upgrade ?

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The upgrades were obtained the same way you obtain the upgrades for level 90 gear now, except with poetics and old hunt currencies.

They just decided to remove the upgrade process and make it impossible to purchase non-augmented gear for old expansions. This was done because it was a nightmare to explain the upgrade process to sprouts in the Novice Network. This led to Yoshi-P posing the question - would there be a problem with making it impossible to obtain non-augmented gear? There didn't seem to be much reaction to that question so they just did it shortly after.

So, when Dawntrail releases you won't be able to obtain non-augmented gear for Endwalker.

You can start with 640 but you'll want to start equipping every upgrade you get along the way.

Just to expand on what Rongway has listed, using the Endwalker dungeons as an example:

Exarchic was the best crafted gear from Shadowbringers at 510 (or Augmented at 520).
Augmented Cryptlurker was the best tomestone gear from Shadowbringers at 530.

You could wear all Exarchic and meet the min ilvl requirement up through Vanaspati. When you got to Ktisis, the minimum ilvl increased to 515 so you needed either half Augmented Exarchic or other
upgrades to enter.

At Aitiascope, the min ilvl was 520 so you needed all Augmented Exarchic or better.

For The Final Day, the minimum ilvl was 540, higher than even the Augmented Cryptlurker. You could still have a couple of Augmented Cryptlurker pieces equipped but you had to mainly rely on 542 gear from Ktisis, 548 accessories from Aitiascope (no left side drops) and 545 gear from level 89/90 quest coffers or HQ crafting.

Remember that any crafted gear you equip should be HQ, not NQ. HQ has a stat budget in line with dungeon/raid/tomestone gear stat budgets. NQ's stat budget is about 30 ilvls below what is proper for the ilvl. NQ is great if you just need one last piece to hit the minimum ilvl to enter a duty but it should never be what you solely rely on once you're out of ARR. If you're using NQ, you're going to be in a serious world of hurt due to the lower stats.

oh yea..I should start working on that, been playing alt jobs. Don't want to have to get a bunch of gear right as DT comes out.

The short answer is i640 will carry you all the way to lv94 in the new expansion. If you are 640/650, it would be a good idea to upgrade here as it will be the first level that marginally beats out current BiS. If you are i660, you can skip this. Lv96 will be the first level that you should toss the i660 gear for the HQ set available at that level.

If you currently are using crafted i640 gear, use your poetics to upgrade to i650 and you'll be just fine. Tomes of comedy and Thalia drops are also options to get i650 gear.

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Originally Posted by Kazelus

But poetics will only have the upgraded one, you will to buy an entirely new items or do the 3 raid 24 to upgrade an old non upgraded item.

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Originally Posted by Kazelus

I'm curious, never found a way to upgrade old Tomes gear with poetics, where did you get the upgrade ?

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You can't obtain coins from the raids any more once the gear converts to poetics. The upgrade items become useless.

However, the shopkeeper previously tasked with upgrading your gear in exchange for base gear and token is now offering the same service for a payment of 100 poetics per piece, which used to be the cost of the token for non-current expansions back when we still had to buy them.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

This led to Yoshi-P posing the question - would there be a problem with making it impossible to obtain non-augmented gear? There didn't seem to be much reaction to that question so they just did it shortly after.

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Who actually got asked?

In most cases it's fine because the only difference is dyeability, but I am still disappointed at the loss of non-glowing Gerolt's Masterworks weapons.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

640 will be enough, but I would also point out that there's not much reason not to get 650 or 660, because what else is there to do?

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I guess that depends a bit on how many active characters you have.

I have 8 active chars, across three worlds and two accounts, and while 6 of them are at EoC, two of them are still in ShB. I have a bunch of other chars too but I don't do much with them; none of the inactive characters are out of Stormblood yet, and eight of them are really just mules.

My spouse is in a similar situation, although with a couple fewer characters at EoC and more characters still pushing through the MSQ.

So we're plenty busy without grinding for tomestones.

660 will be fine till the 97 dungeon which will loot better gear

The lv100 tomestone will allow you to buy i700 gear? Ar1-Ar4 gear will be 710, so will be the next crafted gear for Ar1s-Ar4s

So yeah don't worry, 640 is enough to start the expansion

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Based on historic patterns:

• The base IL 650 Comedy gear will be upgradable to Augmented IL 660 at the cost of 100 poetics per slot.
• The Lv91 dungeon will drop IL 650 gear.
• The Lv93 dungeon will drop IL 660 gear.
• Crafters will be able to make Lv94 gear that is IL 663.
• The Lv95 dungeon will drop IL 666 gear.

Getting a full set of IL 660 gear now would put you at the max IL available from Lv90 through Lv93, and the max IL available from duties through Lv94. A full set of IL 650 gear now would put you at the expected IL through Lv92 but that set can be upgraded to a full set of IL 660 gear for 1,100 poetics.

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Just to plus 1 this.

The final tomestone set will be better than anything until the 3rd dungeon.

At the same time, you can just as easily replace any bargain bin armor via quests and even the very first DT dungeon. You would almost have to go out of your way to be below required ilvl if going through on your first class.

Is stat increases linear or little bits exponentials as climbings up the ilevels? Mao askings because if linear then differences become relatively less importants over the many ilevels unless critters finely tuned for narrow ilevel range. Whats gonna make HUGE difference, Mao thinkings, is next set of materia.

Crafted gear will last you until around level 93 to 95 as a Tank/Healer before it becomes an issue. Around then as a Tank trash mobs will start to hurt if you still plan on multi-pulls. As a healer you'll feel weaker the longer you go on without new gear.

As a DPS you can bring it to 100 and it wont matter. DPS is irrelevant in this game and you wont be taking damage outside of raid wides that don't deal much, sure you will hit for low damage but it's only normal mode so it wont matter and anything you can get via quests and levelling dungeons will be enough.

Pretty much as long as you meet the minimum requirements of the first dungeon you'll be fine. Can't see it being more than 640/650 and you'll get those from the story quests prior. Don't worry about it.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Is stat increases linear or little bits exponentials as climbings up the ilevels? Mao askings because if linear then differences become relatively less importants over the many ilevels unless critters finely tuned for narrow ilevel range. Whats gonna make HUGE difference, Mao thinkings, is next set of materia.

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Hi Mao!

Unless they do a stat squish, you can generally look at armor progression from the current expansion (so the 81 dungeon to the final tomestone set)

That pattern has generally been the same since 3.x. So, unless they rework stats, it's fairly safe to say any differences in iLVL gear will be along those lines.

To give specific examples, let's talk SHIELDS:

The level 80 Augmented Cryptlurker shield in 5.x has:
iLVL 530........Block 867
STR +61........VIT +64
Crit Hit+41.....Ten +59

These stats are identical to the level 83 Dungeon drop (Imperial Magitek Shield)

The 85 shield is only marginally better.

It's not really until 90 that the difference becomes quite large.
The 90 Augmented Diadochos Shield has:
iLVL: 650.......Block 1140
STR +100......Vit +110
Crit Hit +54....Det +76

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The difference in Materia, is +8 / +24 in the 5.x series vs +12 / +36 in the current 6.x. If I had to do a wild guess, I would expect 7.x Materia to be +16/+48...but we'll see!

Don't know if that helps, but it's just some data to chew on.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Who actually got asked?

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He often poses the questions to himself, the twitch/youtube audience or maybe it's to the interviewee.

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Originally Posted by Eraden

Is stat increases linear or little bits exponentials as climbings up the ilevels? Mao askings because if linear then differences become relatively less importants over the many ilevels unless critters finely tuned for narrow ilevel range. Whats gonna make HUGE difference, Mao thinkings, is next set of materia.

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Level dilutes the stat over a larger number, making it weaker (in other words, you need more of the stat to achieve the same effect). Most of them are linear but with breakpoints and the breakpoint gaps get larger due to level as mentioned.

You can always just wait for Dawntrail release and get the last set of augmented tome gear for poetics. Just make sure you max them out and you should be able to get a couple pieces, then grind for the rest.

Augmented tome gear usually lasts pretty far into the expansion.

Yes it is. Usually, the game add a crafted catch up gear that is 15 ilvl lower that the best gear of the previous extension (not counting the weapon). HW added a lvl 50 ilvl 115 gear when the ARR best one was 130, SB added a lvl 60 ilvl 255 when the best HW one was 270, etc. With how formulaic FFXIV is with that, DT will add a lvl 90 ilvl 645 gear. Your 640 gear will be enough, 5 ilvl difference is nothing.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

It's not really until 90 that the difference becomes quite large.

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I think it's worth noting that while the individual piece differences are small, wearing a full set of augmented tomestone gear in the Lv_5 dungeon is similar to wearing a full set of Lv_5 dungeon gear minus one large armor slot (chest or legs), at least in terms of defense, and this is why the Lv_5 dungeons traditionally hit so much harder than the Lv_1 and Lv_3 dungeons. So while you can wear a full set of augmented tomestone gear to the new cap, a healer will notice if a tank isn't updating their gear because they'll need to spend a few GCDs on heals during trash pulls.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

I think it's worth noting that while the individual piece differences are small, wearing a full set of augmented tomestone gear in the Lv_5 dungeon is similar to wearing a full set of Lv_5 dungeon gear minus one large armor slot (chest or legs), at least in terms of defense, and this is why the Lv_5 dungeons traditionally hit so much harder than the Lv_1 and Lv_3 dungeons. So while you can wear a full set of augmented tomestone gear to the new cap, a healer will notice if a tank isn't updating their gear because they'll need to spend a few GCDs on heals during trash pulls.

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This is usually how I do it; basically not bothering with new gear until the _5 dungeon, and by then with doing daily roulettes and local quests, I’ve typically been able to keep 2 jobs fully geared at any given time as I progress to cap.