Being Elite (Best Gear)

So in 2.0 we get special rare nodes that pop up at fixed times.

To access them you need to have Truth of the Forests or Truth of the Mountains activated. I'm not sure if fisher has one.

In order to get the +1 version of the items at these "undisturbed nodes", you need 320 perception to get a 1% chance. You can use abilities to nearly give yourself a 100% chance though.

So it seems that the new Bot/Min/Fsh AF, slotted with perception + gathering materia (depending on the piece) is the way to go. With a focus on getting your perception to 320.

Do you think there will be a benefit for getting +1 AF and slotting it with multiple tier 4 perception materia? Especially since it will only increase your chances of getting HQ rare items by 1 or 2% (when you get 3 per node anyway using abilities).

What do you think is the best gear setup? And how "worth it" do you think investing in perception or gathering over the needed limits is?

Stat caps for items throw a monkey wrench into that plan. Especially since HQ items are typically at their cap for the stats on them already. That said, putting enough perception materia in your gear to hit the cap on all of them would, of course, result in the best perception you can have.

As this is based on item level, I wonder if it might be a good idea to, rather than use gathering accessories, use the level 70 tank/dps/caster accessories instead, as they may likely have a higher stat cap.

What comes out of special rare nodes? Is it like a special kind of wood or a special ingredient that only comes from that single place which can then be sold or crafted to make items that require the one specific thing (only availalbe from the one place)?
I am relieved that there is no direct competition on spawns b/c camping a HQ tree is not my idea of a good time.

Perception to 320. and GP to 550 is the base you want to be able to get at least 1 HQ 100% of the time with sharp vision 3 and deep Vigor. After that you want to get gathering high enough to where you can hit 100% by using sharp vision 2. Which is around 320 I believe. With this you can use Unearth to reach 11% HQ chance. which will most likely yield better results than just stacking perception. Even at 350 perception its still only 1% HQ rate.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

Do you think there will be a benefit for getting +1 AF and slotting it with multiple tier 4 perception materia? Especially since it will only increase your chances of getting HQ rare items by 1 or 2% (when you get 3 per node anyway using abilities).

What do you think is the best gear setup? And how "worth it" do you think investing in perception or gathering over the needed limits is?

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As pointed out by Xianghua, at 350 perception your base HQ% will remain at 1% therefore, unless at yet higher perception the rate goes up, there appears to be little reason to bring perception above 320 for now.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Stat caps for items throw a monkey wrench into that plan. Especially since HQ items are typically at their cap for the stats on them already. That said, putting enough perception materia in your gear to hit the cap on all of them would, of course, result in the best perception you can have.

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This is inaccurate. Although this does appear to be the case for the battle gear such as Gryphonskin, Vanya and Darksteel sets - it is quite the opposite in regards the gathering sets. Please, let me explain my findings and I hope to clarify this point while answering Azurymbers question.

Azurymber, let me start off by saying there will be a benefit for getting +1 AF and slotting it with Tier 4 materia.

The best case I can make is to take the Hamlet Cutters/Miners Hats for example: NQ versions have 56 perception. The stat cap on the NQ version is (look here Urthdigger) +19 perception. That means The AF hats perception stat caps at 75. This can be achieved several ways. Either you plug in 3 x Tier III perception (+5) materia + 1 x Tier II perception (+4) materia for a Quad Melded hat. Or you plug in 4 x Tier II perception (+4) materia + 1 x Tier I perception (+3) materia for a Quint Meld hat. If you put in 3 x Tier IV perception (+6) materia you are one perception shy of the +19 cap and using a fourth materia of lower grade would result in a loss of perception due to stat cap.

So here is where the importance of HQ gear comes into play. I don't know the exact number of perception on HQ hat but let's assume it's +3 at the least (59 perception). That means you only need +16 perception from materia rather than +19. You can easily achieve +16 perception by tripple melding 1 x Tier IV perception (+6) materia + 2 x Tier III perception (+5) materia (or you could 2 x T4 + 1 x T2 but that cost more T4..) The point being that with the HQ hat you can achieve the perception stat cap with 3 melds (rather than 4) which leaves an additional two open slots (rather than 1) in which you can try plugging in a +gathering and +GP materia.

Just to make the point clear, Urthdigger, The gathering slops which have +28 gathering and +3 perception will only accept +1 perception for a total stat cap pof +4 perception (iirc), which just goes to show that if you HQ the legs, although the perception is likely to be at it's cap (+4) I am certain the pants are willing to accept two or three +gathering perception.

TLDR: HQ AF + appropriate materia can be used to get the maximum benefits out of each piece of gear, but this does not mean that this will be a requirement nor a necessity in any way to obtain the resources you desire. It might just be purely for epeen purposes.

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Originally Posted by TeezyBone

What comes out of special rare nodes? Is it like a special kind of wood or a special ingredient that only comes from that single place which can then be sold or crafted to make items that require the one specific thing (only availalbe from the one place)?
I am relieved that there is no direct competition on spawns b/c camping a HQ tree is not my idea of a good time.

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These rare Unspoiled Resources provide the materials for the current end game crafted recipes such as Gryphonskin, Darksteel, and Vanya gear sets as well as the DoH and DoL lvl 50 "AF" gear sets. These include but are not limited to crawler cocoons, darksteel ore, gold ore, gold sand, spruce logs, astral rocks, thavnairian thistletoe, prickly pineapple, honey lemons, elemental clusters, grade 4 carbonized matter and a few others...

Ah, most of my experience with stat caps thus far had been with information done with battle classes. Still, my main point was that stat caps mean you can't necessarily pour a whole bunch of high tier perception materia into an item, and also that you need to try and boost your important stats on ALL your gear. Which means remembering that accessories have materia slots too now.

I think it's likely they'll make adjustments to the Mining of unspoiled outcrops / nodes. I noticed at Dragonhead, Quarrying Outcrops appeared at 9.05pm Eorzea time, whereas the normal unspoiled mining nodes (For Darksteel Ore) appeared at 1.05am. The node appears in the same spot for every player in the area, if 50 people decide to mine at that time it's going to be pretty silly sending them all to the same node lol. I hope they find a way to make Gathering more exciting, it's been pretty fun in the past! :D

Matsume - did you find the stat cap on gear by application (trial and error) or is there a site that displays such information?

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Originally Posted by bG188y

Matsume - did you find the stat cap on gear by application (trial and error) or is there a site that displays such information?

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Personal trial and error. I only remember the hat and legs at the moment.

So you are saying that tier IV materia can be melded onto ilvl 55 items?

From what I remember:

Tier 1 Materia ilvl 15+
Tier 2 Materia ilvl 30+
Tier 3 Materia ilvl 45+
Tier 4 Materia ilvl 75+
Tier 5 Materia ilvl 90+ (nothing in game right now)

Tier 4 gathering and crafting materia can be melded to item level 55 crafting and gathering AF.

I'm so confused lol.
So if we meld more perception than the cap (which i dont know any caps lol) We lose perception? Or did i read wrong and you were just saying that its a loss of money since we're beyond the cap?
And each gear slot has a stats cap? or each piece of gear has its stats cap?
Its kinda confusing lol :\

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Originally Posted by Tiago

I'm so confused lol.
So if we meld more perception than the cap (which i dont know any caps lol) We lose perception? Or did i read wrong and you were just saying that its a loss of money since we're beyond the cap?
And each gear slot has a stats cap? or each piece of gear has its stats cap?
Its kinda confusing lol :\

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When it comes to melds. You can only put so much of one stat in it. once you hit the cap. You can't put anymore of that stat into it.

Say a gear has 20 perception and has a cap of 25. If you put a T4 Perception materia in (+6) It will only allow you to add the 5 to hit cap and that last point will be lost.

Matsume is most correct. I will add to it that a HQ Hamlet hat, you will only need 1 T4 and 1 t3 perception materia to cap its perception, while a NQ one you would need 3 t4. I know this, because I tripple melded perceptions onto my fisher and botanist hats and double perception'd and single gathering'd my HQ miners hat. You can only put 4 points of gathering into any of them btw, and 0 CP.

For gathering and crafting gear at least, the stat cap is not reached simply by HQ'ing them. They all have their own stat caps and you have to try to put materia into them to see what they are. But, you will save a great number of materia by melding HQ versions.

I haven't tried, but they probably changed the stat caps on battle gear to be like this too, but I spent b4 melding my gathering and crafting gear

Also, I have enough perception as miner to get 2% on unspoiled mats, but I don't think its too far over 350.

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Originally Posted by Xianghua

When it comes to melds. You can only put so much of one stat in it. once you hit the cap. You can't put anymore of that stat into it.

Say a gear has 20 perception and has a cap of 25. If you put a T4 Perception materia in (+6) It will only allow you to add the 5 to hit cap and that last point will be lost.

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Thanks for the explanation ^^
So the cap is gear~wise, and we do not lose points like i was thinking (X gear has 20 perception, with a cap of 25... i though if i melded a Tier IV (+6 Perception) to it i whould end up with 24 (21-22-23-24-25-24) and os i was kinda confused lol. But now it makes more sense that once it hits the cap, it will go not below nor past it.

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Originally Posted by Reika

Matsume is most correct. I will add to it that a HQ Hamlet hat, you will only need 1 T4 and 1 t3 perception materia to cap its perception, while a NQ one you would need 3 t4. I know this, because I tripple melded perceptions onto my fisher and botanist hats and double perception'd and single gathering'd my HQ miners hat. You can only put 4 points of gathering into any of them btw, and 0 CP.

For gathering and crafting gear at least, the stat cap is not reached simply by HQ'ing them. They all have their own stat caps and you have to try to put materia into them to see what they are. But, you will save a great number of materia by melding HQ versions.

I haven't tried, but they probably changed the stat caps on battle gear to be like this too, but I spent b4 melding my gathering and crafting gear

Also, I have enough perception as miner to get 2% on unspoiled mats, but I don't think its too far over 350.

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Reika is mostly right and I would sooner take her (his?) word over any other on this forum,

However, I just want to point out that even adding 3 T4 materia to NQ hat you will be ONE perception short of the cap (which isn't much) and if what you say is true about HQ (only needing +10 to cap) then that alone is even more incentive for a HQ set. I would rather reach the cap in 2 melds than 4 =P

Strange, though I cannot personally confirm this yet, I was informed by a gatherer with 350 perception that their base HQ remained at 1%. I must have had 334 perception or so on my miner pefore servers went down and I did not notice any increase above 1%. Please, let me know tonight if you can re-confirm this.

Hello Yall,

The route I went was as follows:

Got my perception to 320 for the 1% chance. Got my GP to 600 for the ability to clear the weeds and the +30% HQ chance skill to give myself an 80% chance to gather each attempt at 31% chance for HQ. It came out to roughly 1-2 HQ gathers per node.

I also tried the 100% gather chance route w/ the skill that lets you get an automatic 100% HQ gather after the chain 4.

The difference was that at 31% i did not ever come across a time I didn't get atleast one HQ result, and many times I would get 2 HQ's. A few times I managed to get 3x HQ. So it became evident to me that the higher HQ % chance was the route that seemed to make the most sense to me.

I had all HQ gear from 1.0 including the HQ Dordre chest peice. I managed to quickly 5 meld it in phase four to my shocked surprise. I was only able to put +14 perception on it if I recall correctly, and put GP into it for the final 2 materia's. I also put as much perception as my jewelry would take due to the thought that I would be using the same Jewelry on my other gathering class, and it would result in less total materia required. I managed to get both MIN and BOT to 320 / 600 to use the above strat. The only thing I was unable to test before the 3102 kicked in was how much higher of a % food would give if I used food to boost gathering. I doubt it would kick the 80% chance much higher than 1-5% total however based on the effects perception food managed to increase. All in all, I believe the 320 / 600 is a very strong approach.

Now I can say I have 345 of both Gathering and Perception and get 2% hq chance on unspoiled stuffs as miner.