HW 3.0 Gathering BiS + Caps

[Zfz]

Don't forget that the red scripts have a weekly cap.

[Mysha]

Heres the cap list someone provided from the hand section of the forums

[Mature]

Appreciated mysha

[Karasumori]

Thank Lyrinn! Glad to see you're still at it!

[Woggers]

Is it actually worth it to use them now when Red Scrips will be coming in a few weeks? I crafted 4 pieces on the left side just in case but I'm a little worried they will be easily replaceable in just 2 weeks.

It's really your call, I bought the lvl 60 stuff HQ, but gonna hold off on the melds incase Red Scrip gear is better. If the HQ 60 set is better I'll meld it my self once I get crafts up high enough. But as of right now I can collect everything but the Legendary Nodes with out a problem with Lucis, HQed 60 left side, lvl 59 HQ off hand and Dodore accessories. All the 2.x accessories are at meld.

[Rath]

I went ahead and melded my gear. You get quite a bit of t4 materia if you level all 3 gathering classes to 60. I put 1 t4 gather/perception in each slot, save belt which could only take a t3 perception. 1 gp meld in my pants as well and I am able to HQ legendary nodes without food. Most of those were guaranteed melds, so that is no risk involved. Also, I made my gear so I didn't pay those obscene prices. But, having access to those HQ legendary materials when the red scrip recipes come out (or if you need to turn in these legendary materials for red scrips even?) will likely put my crafting at a significant advantage...or my retainer if I decide to sell them since my server has a bunch of people that tend to buy new crafting mats when they need them for stupid prices!

I will probably put a couple more melds in just to enable one-shotting on legendary nodes, but I think it is worth it regardless as gathering HQ anything without food has its benefits.

[Zfz]

Red script gear is considered welfare gear, according to Yoshi-P, for people who don't want to spend millions of gil on gathering gear and don't mind the weekly cap to slowing upgrade their gear over time.

My guess is that over-melded gear is going to be BiS. Just a guess.

[Mortechai]

Red script gear is considered welfare gear, according to Yoshi-P, for people who don't want to spend millions of gil on gathering gear and don't mind the weekly cap to slowing upgrade their gear over time.

My guess is that over-melded gear is going to be BiS. Just a guess.

Except it's not. The i180 set has more perception and gathering than completely meld-capped serpentskin. Theres nothing that needs over 600gp yet. On top of that, even with the best GP food and melds, you can hit 700gp(the next useful spot) only by sacrificing materia slots for GP instead of gathering and perception. So no, melded serpentskin will not beat out i180 red scrip gear. The only place you'll need to get melded gear is in your accessory slots.

[blueruckus]

Main hand and chest are the only worthwhile 180 gear. Everything else is 'better' with melds. The hands/hat/etc come out to around the same values except you end up with more GP and less perception or gathering. I'd rather sacrifice a bit of gather/perc to have more base GP so I can use vendor nq food to hit 700 GP instead of having to rely on crafting HQ. Plus, with all 180 your ONLY option to hit 700 GP is Stuffed Chysahl which adds even more perception. More perception is wasteful because, as has been proven before, there WILL be a perception cap and it will be pointless beyond a certain number and my guess is it will be in the 750 range. Gathering, however, usually goes much higher before it becomes wasteful. So if I'm gonna use any HQ food, I'd rather go with HQ Snurbleberry Tart. The only way you can hit 700 GP is with Serpentskin gear. I put together a build that gives you 800+ gather and still 700GP using Snurbleberry Tart.

The biggest problem, from a stats perspective, with the 180 stuff is the GP deficiency.

The HUGE problem is how ridiculous it is to spend that many tokens when you can be gearing your crafters or boosting your wallet.

The majority of the token gear IS wasteful and I would consider welfare gear. You can be on the same level with crafted gear and only a couple of 180 pieces. With all crafted gear right now, I'm sitting at 725/725/700 with nq Beef Stew. Not using my tokens for the 180 stuff has allowed me to invest heavily in to my crafters, but my gather gear is still very competitive. Anytime I see a gatherer in full 180 left side, I can't help but shake my head.

Melded serpentskin DOES beat out red scrip gear, with the exception of main hand (DEFINITELY) and chest piece (still iffy on whether this one is truly worth the 18 tokens).

[TechnoTechie]

Main hand and chest are the only worthwhile 180 gear. Everything else is 'better' with melds. The hands/hat/etc come out to around the same values except you end up with more GP and less perception or gathering. I'd rather sacrifice a bit of gather/perc to have more base GP so I can use vendor nq food to hit 700 GP instead of having to rely on crafting HQ. Plus, with all 180 your ONLY option to hit 700 GP is Stuffed Chysahl which adds even more perception. More perception is wasteful because, as has been proven before, there WILL be a perception cap and it will be pointless beyond a certain number and my guess is it will be in the 750 range. Gathering, however, usually goes much higher before it becomes wasteful. So if I'm gonna use any HQ food, I'd rather go with HQ Snurbleberry Tart. The only way you can hit 700 GP is with Serpentskin gear.
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Well, HQ snurbleberry won't get you to 700 GP regardless, and if you're making snurbleberry, you might as well make a stuffed chysahl, which will still get you to 705 GP with full i170-crafted/i180-token gear melded for max gathering/GP (see link: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/RS48). You mention that the "hugest problem" with the token gear is GP deficiency, but you're only missing out on 17 GP, 12 GP if you ignore main-hand. Considering that you can still mostly get there with just i170 melded accessories and HQ chysahl, I would say that's a moot point.

And not like there are many useful rotations that absolutely require 700 GP, with the exception of trying to squeeze out an extra 1-turn-HQ-move on folklore nodes. That said, perception for HQ% (15%) won't cap anywhere near 725 perception, nor will you be able to get gathering chance anywhere near 95% with the stats that you mention. I imagine with the setup I linked (800/777/705) you'd be much closer if not there or just under (seems to be 10 gathering/perception for 1% chance, so 800 would be around 93% chance to gather, with HQ chance being around 14%).

EDIT: Okay, I guess my numbers were off by about 5 GP because I missed the fact that the 180 helm only had perception and nothing else... lol