The Profession Gear Gap

[Kabooa]

You don't have to HQ your leve turn ins.

It should be about 18-19 NQ turn ins to get to 52.

As others said, you can also quick synth or manual craft recipes with the free +xp manuals you get just for going into ishagard. +900k exp is one level worth of bonus exp.

[Rufalus]

If you level up via the Ixal tribe quests in North Shroud, you can get an i70 hands piece usable by all classes there which is suitable for use at lv50. I think NPC vendor at Ishgard at least has main hand tools to sell you. On second thought, if you keep leveling past 50 and avoid difficult receipes for now, the class quests will reward you with appropriate gear.

[Ksenia]

If you can manage to HQ the iLevel 55 green sets in core classes like Weaver, you will find it takes a lot of the weight off. HQ Weaver's Swallowtail, Gibbus and so on set is hands over fist better than Patrician. You might want to make a set for Alchemy too and have militia off hands. This will give you strong classes for making 53 crafting (holy rainbow)

Grand company turn ins and old school grind to get them all to 53 from 50. Locking leve experience at 3000 was a clear sign they were going to be spiteful with anyone who didn't play crafting on rails.

Add on - If you have mats to make the level 51 NQ set, do it. The ilevel and stat difference from even HQ Artisan to NQ 51 is huge.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

So...you're telling me that the crafting classes cannot stand alone and aren't BUILT to stand alone, and that in order to effectively use them I NEED to grind out all of the other DotH classes? I refute your claim, sir.

I was doing just fine making HQ items up until 50, but the first HW tier is too highly-tuned to allow a smooth transition while leveling. It assumes I'm going to spend time at 50 to go 2.0-2.55 like I did my job, and I don't have the time for that (call me casual if you must).

How much of your materials, in the 40-50 range, had to be HQ for you to have a good chance at HQ'ing the result? Cross class skills, and keeping your gear up to date (but without using Materia on it) would have let you HQ every 70/80 Durability recipe from the mid 20's on up through 50 1 star, using all NQ materials.

If you are fighting the massive underlevel penalty, you do not need to make the i55 class-specific gear. You only really need HQ Patrician's. Make Darksteel Nuggets! Use those to level to 51.

Then either choose to take the other classes on up, or continue struggling making HQ results out of HQ materials, with no realistic shot at HQ results from NQ materials. Unless you want to buy the refined materials off of the Marketboard, you are going to want to have the rest of the classes leveled anyway. How many BSM recipes use GSM, ALC, CRP, or LTW materials? How many ARM recipes use GSM, ALC, CRP, or LTW materials? Its not uncommon for recipes to use refined materials from two or three other classes. It was somewhat annoying in ARR, its ubiquitous in HW.

But yes, you are correct : the classes are not built to stand alone. That's the entire reason SE gave us the Specialization system with HW, despite the utter uselessness and ineffectiveness of that system. You can try; but you are doomed to fail. I wish you good luck making 1 star or 2 star level 60 stuff without taking any other crafting or gathering classes up. You'll need it just to NQ.

[LineageRazor]

With Heavensward, SE realized that the cross-class abilities were pretty much forcing players to level every class just to be successful in one, and that this requirement was discouraging new players from getting into crafting. They made it one of their goals in Heavensward to try to move away from this requirement, by adding abilities common to all classes that could substitute for the must-have abilities possessed by other classes (in particular, Byregot's Blessing).

It is the dominating opinion on these forums that SE has FAILED in this goal, that not only are the new abilities less powerful than the abilities they're meant to replace (which would be acceptable), but they are flat out inadequate. Most believe that obtaining these level 50 cross-class abilities is still a requirement, not a luxury, which is what SE was trying to overcome.

I don't know if it's true or not, and don't have a lot of incentive to experiment myself since I'm sitting comfortably with all my cross-class abilities already unlocked. Perhaps you'll be able to find out yourself.

That said, folks are giving good advice in this thread; if you're having trouble HQing stuff (particularly 40- and 35-durability items, which have always been tricky), make sure your gear is up to snuff - and yes, you'll need to buy at least some pieces from the Marketboards. If your gear is up to snuff, meld it with materia. If you don't have Byregot's Blessing, see what you can do with Byregot's Brow - like Blessing, it is meant to be a powerful finishing quality move, and all classes learn it at level 51. Blessing is both more powerful and easier to use than Brow, but Brow is better than nothing.

[Zarzak]

So...you're telling me that the crafting classes cannot stand alone and aren't BUILT to stand alone, and that in order to effectively use them I NEED to grind out all of the other DotH classes? I refute your claim, sir.
.

That is exactly what he is saying. You need your cross class skills for crafting just like you need them for combat classes.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

If you don't have Byregot's Blessing, see what you can do with Byregot's Brow - like Blessing, it is meant to be a powerful finishing quality move, and all classes learn it at level 51. Blessing is both more powerful and easier to use than Brow, but Brow is better than nothing.

Actually .. the relative power of the two depends upon how many IQ stacks you have built up.

If you have IQ displayed anything from 1 through 5, then Brow is actually better. If IQ is displaying a 6, then they are both equal. If IQ is displaying a 7 or higher, then Blessing is better. This, of course, assumes that you get the Good or Excellent and have the choice of the two. Because Brow can only be used on a Good or Excellent, it is much harder to use, and that restriction alone removes it from consideration as a substitute for Blessing at least 95% of the time.

[Hanmerreborn]

I was in the same situation and you and made pretty much the exact same post. The difficulty spike in gathering and craft from 50 ARR to 50 HW is enormous.

What i did was just find the material item (for my weaver, the cloth) and just churn out that. I had previously made pretty much the entire weaver set though.

I don't have many cross class skills, and weaver sits at 60 with arm at 43 for my 2nd highest.

For botany I leveled using the unspoiled nodes and the cedar logs for a long time until I could get the first set of upgrades in HW, and then worked on just grinding and doing the regions timer every time the collectible popped.

I didn't do any leves, it was a pure grind.