BiS HQ Ruby Gear

[Donjo]

Gearing now I would aim for the ScOB gear as it is proven to suffice through to T13 already which will yield you the best gear at least until Expansion. (undoubtedly they will add a i130 primal acc, or wepaon in due time before expansion)

iLvl 110-115 only suffices for T13 with very skilled groups. Most other people will probably need an amount of FCoB gear to handle the DPS and HP checks later on in the Coil. It is also worth noting that I'm pretty sure there were no clears in the first 1-3 weeks that didn't involve use of crafted i90 accessories. I'd personally wager that the feats would have been literally impossible without them.

I'm currently on ilvl98 saving up for my first Ironworks piece (Chest) and pretty much Noct/Gloam in every slot minus one ring. Haven't tried any of the turns yet but my FC is planning on training me up tonight with some baby runs.

Thanks a lot! I think my obsession with trying to get a bit of STR in my gear and not just vit will have to wait :P

Excuse me for sounding cross, but no tank-in-training should be using STR. What the guides that suggest this tactic often fail to tell people is that the DPS Tank is for Experts only, and this doesn't just refer to the skill of the Tank. I believe this is because the guides know their intended audience: serious to hardcore raiders knee deep in the toughest content in the game trying to get the maximum performance out of everybody in their group. To properly STR Tank, you'll need a borderline perfect awareness of all of the tools available to you for mitigation to make up for the HP you're sacrificing and your healers need to be skilled enough to keep up with the increased difficulty of keeping you up while doing everything else that's expected of them. Use the time you're spending leveling Goldsmith to really, really get to know your job and role. You have a lot of tools at your disposal, and forgetting about any of them can get you killed later. Then, get some excellent healers. Then, you can consider getting some STR

yeah, as much as ruby set is appealing, it's not a good idea to get it now. People are foreseeing 2.5 to come really soon (like, end of December), and should bring i110 accessories for crafters, which will pulverize any accessory available now for tanks (and progression groups). They are likely to cost a hell lot though, so yeah, keep your money safe and pray for the crafters to put decent prices this time.

I disagree. Crafted i70 was incredible for Tanks. Free DEX and STR with easy melds to max VIT and 2 Secondary Stats. Crafted i90 was a noticeable nerf: they only had one main stat and one secondary stat each. Their natural caps were higher so it was only feasible to max one main stat and most of one other secondary. This, of course, didn't stop them from being absurdly powerful.

Thus, I'd say we should be braced for the possibility that Crafted i110 either won't even exist due to SE deciding that they'd just break the game or that they'll be nerfed even further than i90. Even if they weren't, it would take 2 IV's and 1 III on average to max a stat instead of 2 IV's, so stat choice would be limited such that they'll be more powerful than Crafted i90 but they won't exactly pulverize them.

Also, there are these rumors that 2.5 will be coming to us in two "parts" or something to that effect. If this is true, what's to stop them from tossing i110 Accessories into Part 2 instead of Part 1?