Healers and gearing up for end game

Yesterday @ 7:21 PM I got my very first L50 character (WHM). Been wondering which is the plan for gearing up? Probably the only "decent" (blue) items I got come from L45 and L50 class quests.

I can't access yet GC L50 items, haven't finished the story yet (at the part that you have to go thru CM). But wanted to have an idea of what to do. Been having connection issues so meanwhile I'm working on Swiftcast.

Read a bit here and there, but I'm confused with all that Relic, Relic+1, Ifrit HM, Darklight (?), etc.

Any guidance, Fellowship of the White Mages (and Scholars)?

Lets start with your last question;
What is Relic, Relic+1, Ifrit HM (and other HMs), Darklight, etc.

So, Relic, or Relic weapon, is sort of the "ultimate weapon" for your job, and is obtainable through a questline after you finished the mainstory. This questline requires you to go through different kind of dungeons, instanced battles, and Primal Hardmodes, and the last part being to beat Titan Hardmode.
Later on, you can upgrade this weapon to +1, to make it even better, by spending 900 Mythology tomes.
So the Relic Weapon is a long-term goal you should work towards, but will probably be one of the last pieces you will get.

What you should do, is get access to your GC lvl50 weapon so you at least can heal somewhat effectively.

So, instead of that, you probably want to get your weapon from Ifrit Hard Mode.
He is a relatively easy fight once you know where to stand and where not to stand.
This is a Itemlevel 60 (Itemlevel is not the same as level required to use the weapon) weapon, that will be a good start to help you get your farming going to the Darklight Gear!
(oh, and you unlock Ifrit Hardmode after beating the story, and going back to Waking Sands)

Darklight is the name of the ilvl 70 blue gear you can purchase from an shop in Mor Donha.
The currency you use is the Tomes of Philosophy that you should have some already from earlier dungeons.
You get these tomes by doing dungeons such as The Wanderers Palace, or if you have a good group, or a bunch of friends, you can go and take on Amdapor Keep. Though this can get really tough at the start though, since your heals arent that good. And it will become a real nightmare if your partymembers aren't good enough and takes unnecessary damage.

Getting Darklight is a bit of a grindfest (by a bit, I mean a lot).
You might can get into a group that is farming one of the last mainstory dungeons, since they give you 100 tomes at the end.
You can also queue up for them by your self, but by doing that, you will very likely get grouped with people who have not been there before, and want to watch the cutscenes, which means the waiting can take some time.

Wow, thanks a lot for the information!

*Bookmarks page for use later*

Just to add to the AK info:

While it's very important that some of the classes (especially DPS) have some DL gear or at least better than just AF, for a Healer it's ok to have the Ifrit Weapon and your AF. That's more than enough. it's even possible to do it with a green ilevel 50 weapon if your group is decent :)

Or in other words: Gear check for AK is not as important as it is for DPS.

I did AK with my friends, lvl44 GC weapon and 40-45 white gear.
it WAS borderline, even for a group of skilled friends.
I recommend getting some gear for it if you are going to PuG it.
For your own sake, and for other peoples sake.

*grabs a pen* sweetness, thank you guys! <3

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Originally Posted by Sodamachine

I did AK with my friends, lvl44 GC weapon and 40-45 white gear.
it WAS borderline, even for a group of skilled friends.
I recommend getting some gear for it if you are going to PuG it.
For your own sake, and for other peoples sake.

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Hehe yeah, that is playing it closely. AF gear and Ifrit weapon is more than enough for a healer, though :)

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Originally Posted by Kyomih

Hehe yeah, that is playing it closely. AF gear and Ifrit weapon is more than enough for a healer, though :)

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As long as people doesnt eat purple poop on the floor, get stunned by the gnats, or play around with the last boss's tail ;)

The above information is all very helpful. Just to add another 2 cents, or to repeat some points.

I personally went for Ifrit's weapon. GC weapon is nearly just as good, but I really wanted the "novelty" of having Ifrit's weapon. I did not have good luck though, so it took me something like 25 runs before getting it. Until then, if you don't have GC either, I would buy the weapon that is requested of you from the Relic weapon quest (Maddening something). Do NOT turn it in right away: feel free to USE it for a bit, until you get a better weapon. Even more so if you meld'd some quicktongue 3 materia to it. The next steps to the quest require you to do content that you want to be more geared for, so there's no rush to turn in the weapon.

As others have said, healers are not as gear dependent for AK, provided you have a party who doesn't get hit by everything. DO at the very least buy level 48-50 items to upgrade anything you have that's behind (ex ring, necklace, wrist, belt, earring).. at least on my server, these items are relatively cheap. Better yet, you'll make the money back when you convert them later. I successfully have healed AK many times in AF + White Accessories + Ifrit's Cane.

I do suggest you buy the DL Wrist early on though. AK doesn't drop wrist gear, so that'll be a good upgrade.

Also, several quick off top of head for AK..
Stoneskin tank before pull trash, wait on regen. Adds will peel to you otherwise. (True with any dungeon, but somehow more prevalent here).
1st Boss: Medica2 works very well after the AOEs.
2nd Boss (Demon Wall): Be very careful about what direction you are facing when the wall pushes you backwards (Repel). I like to use regen very liberally during this might, and medica2 after the bees come out. Regening after a repel works very well for me, and has often left me time to DPS as well!
3rd Boss: I like to regen the guy who gets hit with line as he's running out. Most importantly though, Ensuna the tank when he gets the debuff (forget the name). Then drop a Cure2 on him after ensuna. If you have a smart group, there's actually not too much party healing to do here.

Remember that you have a MP refresh ability - use it early if you're in doubt of your MP pool due to low piety.

first time I healed ak, I had the GC wand, a GC shield, Bard GC earrings, Blm GC ring so I could get the 4set bonus on wand, also the 2 set bonus on the blm ring was spell speed. The bard rings had no stats for a caster but I needed a 4th piece for my set bonus. I had the quest AF gear. Then out of my belt, neck, ring, the highest ilvl was 36 and went down from there(just brayflox gear or lower). Of course, people would get mad if they examined me. But after a successful completion all you gotta do is #winning and be about your way. After a few runs you should get some ak drops and with each upgrade it gets easier. AK isn't hard to heal tho there are times when your like geez this blows. I'm just saying it can be done in mediocre gear and anything above that is a bonus. People get to caught up on "being geared" and fail to realize in the vanilla stages everything is just handed on a silver platter. 80% of the time is not a gear issue its a player movement/awareness/reaction time issue.

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Originally Posted by enthrop

Also, several quick off top of head for AK..
snip~
3rd Boss: I like to regen the guy who gets hit with line as he's running out. Most importantly though, Ensuna the tank when he gets the debuff (forget the name). Then drop a Cure2 on him after ensuna. If you have a smart group, there's actually not too much party healing to do here.

Remember that you have a MP refresh ability - use it early if you're in doubt of your MP pool due to low piety.

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Just a point on that I wasn't told about the debuff (and didn't read up before going to the instance - baddie) What the debuff is on the last boss is Disease, you can waste a lot of MP trying to heal up the tank since Disease lowers the amount that the heals will do, so as they said Esuna then Heal. Luckily I had the opportunity to read the debuff for a moment, since I noticed my heals were being weak, and from then on Esuna'd before healing.

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Originally Posted by enthrop

Until then, if you don't have GC either, I would buy the weapon that is requested of you from the Relic weapon quest (Maddening something). Do NOT turn it in right away: feel free to USE it for a bit, until you get a better weapon. Even more so if you meld'd some quicktongue 3 materia to it. The next steps to the quest require you to do content that you want to be more geared for, so there's no rush to turn in the weapon.

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Madman's Whispering Rod. If HQed, it's on the same tier as a number of item drops like Chiran Zabran's Tempest, while relying a lot less on random drops to smile on you. On a related note, armorwise you can get an upgrade over artifact armor via crafting. The "Militia/Imperial" items are item level 55, and for white mage it'd be as follows:

Head: Imperial Operative Hat
Body: Imperial Operative Dalmatica
Hands: Militia Ringbands
Legs: Militia Tights
Feet: Militia Duckbills
Waist: Militia Belt
Earring: Militia Earrings

If HQed, all should be an upgrade over your AF, minus potentially the body. Though, you can also add materia to it. And speaking of materia, one advantage of this set is that once it's replaced, you can convert it into high level materia. Actually, if you know folks who can easily craft it (Or level up the crafts yourself), you could use it as a "spiritbind" set when facing lesser foes as a money making option even once you have better gear.

Thanks for all the feedback so far! Keep it coming!

I don't get this: to get the next rank in my GC, have access to the L50 weapons and raise the cap to 50k Seals, I need to clear Amdapor Keep (AK)? Isn't that place a gear-check instance? /headache

As has been said, there are options. You can snag the level 55 crafted stuff. You could run Wanderer's Palace for item level 55 weapons and armor (Darklight Kple Kple for weapon, Warlock's set for armor). You could run lesser dungeons like Darkhold, Wanderer's Palace, and Castrum Meridianum enough times to get enough philosophy stones for darklight armor.

Or, with all likelihood, item level 50+ items will probably be sufficient for AK. Folks may not like you having low gear, but you know folks have to start somewhere.

What is "AF" gear?

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Originally Posted by Azuvidexus

What is "AF" gear?

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Artifact Gear - the one you get with your jobs specific look. The blue set you get automatically through your job quests (45 for all pieces but chest which you get at lvl 50).
Can be improved into AF2 with improved stats later.

About Darklight, it's usually better to start with accessories or armor?

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Originally Posted by enthrop

I do suggest you buy the DL Wrist early on though. AK doesn't drop wrist gear, so that'll be a good upgrade.

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You mean the "hands" armor?

OP, when you are deciding which DL pieces to upgrade please prioritize your main pieces. It might tempted you to upgrade accessories since we don't get much upgrades in accessories department(I remember I have a lowly 20+ rings still at lvl50) but please bear in mind you need certain HP to survive titan hardmode and coil (especially turn 2 and turn 4) and you don't get HP from accessories. End of the day, please do not exclude vitality gain factor when you are deciding.

a group of 3 or 4 friends and I did AK several times completely drunk and we still did it easily still, I might add that I had 1 or 2 pieces of Darklight gear and Jade Crook staff as I was spirit binding to convert to Quicktongue III. So essentially as long as you have the skill you can easily heal this in the 45/50 AF gear with any 45+ weapon.

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Originally Posted by MelvinK

OP, when you are deciding which DL pieces to upgrade please prioritize your main pieces. It might tempted you to upgrade accessories since we don't get much upgrades in accessories department(I remember I have a lowly 20+ rings still at lvl50) but please bear in mind you need certain HP to survive titan hardmode and coil (especially turn 2 and turn 4) and you don't get HP from accessories. End of the day, please do not exclude vitality gain factor when you are deciding.

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While focusing on the non accessories you can on most worlds buy tourquise rings, neck and braclets all for around 5k a piece, maybe a bit more for HQ. They give you about 6 mind and 9-10 spell speed per, and are great cheap pieces to get you by.

aren't he tourmaline better for piety?

if you got the money, and your farming philosphy anyways id just jump into the vanya set hq its much better then darklight. why you need the money is if the crafter charges a fee (which he most likely will do) and the materia stacking. 5 materia meld on a piece of gear is amazing tho. I have the vanya hat of healing hq with 5 materia and it took me like 100k worth of materia to get final result and that was with pretty cheap materia. So if i wasn't in coil id just get the full crafted set and 5 slot with materia. but i am, so i'm not upgrading certain things right away cause item level 90 crap beats the crafted hq set :<

just do full darklight if your broke, and your not progressing through coil to much.

I really wouldn't recommend Vanya for someone just starting to gear up for endgame, as it likely means they're new and didn't come in with a bunch of legacy money (So they can't just straight up purchase one), and it actually takes MORE philosophy stones to buy all the materials than it would be to get an equivalent piece of darklight gear, nor are they likely to have 100k worth of materia to slot in either, so at best they'd be getting a roughly equivalent piece if it's HQed.

It's basically like telling someone starting out to just focus on Relic +1 and relic armor. Yeah it's the better option, but they need stuff to use in the meantime.