Bard Gear

[Maero]

Well currently lvl 45 Bard and just started the Minfilia Quest (after Garuda)
so thinking of end game gear. Since this is technically my first MMO i am a little mixed up on all the gear options people talk about. i70, i90, Darklight, Allagan, etc.
Granted i may eventually try coil (Crystal Tower i would like 1st) What sort of gear would any recommend? I understand you must farm lvl 50 dungeons for the gear

[Meshico]

If your hard core, and want to progress by item level i.e. i55->i60->i70->i80-i90

Then that will be a lot of work.(which is what i did) Otherwise I would stick to Hard Mode Dungeons to grab that i60 Gear, and you can fill any empty slots with i70/i90 gear accordingly

oh and of course the once a week i80 gear.

[KagatoAC]

Wanderer's palace (ilvl 55) is pretty much the place to go for beginning farming to work on Tomes to buy Darklight (ilvl 70) you can also get crafted stuff as well depending on your FC's crafters and your own money. Be sure to pick up your Relic quest as well which will send you to the HM primals (these drop weapons) Also Ampador Keep is ilvl 55 as well.

as you get more Darklight you can start doing Crystal Tower (ilvl 80) and perhaps Coil depending again on your FC

Coil is where the Allagan stuff drops. so thats the upper end and requires decent gear to run.

[Katchii]

Once you hit 50, complete your AF quest and buy the ilevel 49-ish accessories and stuff from the Market Board (or craft them if you can) and start your Relic quest. Work on Relic quest as you gear up, no real progression there, but you should be in at least ful Darklight (ilevel 70) before attempting Titan HM.

Copmlete your Grand Company Hunting Log and max your rank so you can buy the max rank ilevel 55 weapon, which will be your weapon until you get a HM primal weapon or get your relic.

Run Wanderer's Palace and Amdapor Keep, along with HM Haukke Manor, Coperbell Mines and Pharos Sirius ad nauseum to get equipped in ilevel 55-60 gear while also collecting Tome of Philosophy and Mythology. I personally used Philosophy tomes to buy ilevel 70 Darklight accessories first because they were less likely to be upgraded within the next few dungeon runs and are much cheaper than the armor. Continue running and buying Darklight items until you are suitably geared to run Crystal Tower (CT) and run CT until you get our one piece of gear for the week...continue buying Darklight gear with all the tomes you acquire.

Cap Mythology tomes for the week. Your priority for your Mythology tomes should be your AF+1 pants...not sure after that honestly, but Relic weapon upgrade to Zenith is one of the last things because it isn't much of an upgrade vs your other gear. (This is Bard specific advice, other classes will have different priorities)

After you're in all ilevel 70+ with your Relic weapon, you're geared for Binding Coil Bahamut and can start doing pretty much whatever you want from there.

Hapy hunting =)

[Mikedizzy]

Agreed ^^^^
You should farm HM Dungeons to get Philo Tomes to get FULL DL Gear and on the way you will be getting some ilv60 gear to get you "up to snuff" faster and out of the AF gear as soon as possible. Also like he said you want to run CT and get your 1 Loot drop per week which is ilv80 and very good gear. Just make sure you stay disciplined on what you are gearing as you don't want to buy DL Pants gear when you just got CT pants...just be smart and plan out what you want to get and then work towards it. To be in Full i80 CT gear for Head, chest, hands, legs, and feet that is only five weeks to be pretty bad ass. I wish they had CT when I was gearing my BARD originally.

[Bixby]

It hasn't been updated for 2.1, but this thread provides a pretty good base.

The changes in 2.1 are the three new dungeons (Pharos Sirius, Copperbell HM, Haukke Manor HM), Duty Roulette, Good King Moggle Mog XII, Crystal Tower, Ultima Weapon HM, and Extreme Mode primals. They all have minimum gear level requirements before you can queue for them (in addition to unlock quests), so you can't enter them with gear that's too terrible (as long as you stick with gear that's for your job and don't cheat with high-level gear for other jobs). You might want to aim a little higher up the gear chain than the bare minimum for your first time. Darklight gear is pretty easy to get with the Duty Roulettes, so it shouldn't take too long to overgear a lot of these.

Duty Roulette, you can use now. At 50, you can use it to get tomes faster and/or more easily than you would solely grinding dungeons that reward tomes.

The dungeons drop gear that's about the same as AK gear. Those get inserted into the climb just a little after AK.

GKMM drops i75 weapons, a bit better than HM Garuda weapons. Supposedly can do this in between Garuda HM and Titan HM.

Ultima Weapon HM drops i80 accessories, and CT drops i80 armor. You can do this shortly after hitting 50.

EM Primals give an i90 weapon for defeating all three of them, and have a chance to drop i90 accessories.

[Maero]

Wow so many great responses, and i thank you all very much
Now the Bard's Chapeau, is that one like the very final piece if say you wish to run coil (assuming it is Allagan armour)
I seen many level 50's that seem to have that piece of gear
I hope to be up to relic quest this weekend hopefully
Probably will practice more before i even attempt extreme Primals or see how hm goes first
Oh and i have been doing the daily Sylph and Beastmen quests to get started on Tomes

[Bixby]

Bard's Chapeau is purchased with 495 tomestones of mythology. It's part of what most people call AF2.

[Maero]

Ah, thank you for that response Bixby

[Urthdigger]

All the endgame gear can be divided up into tiers based on item level. You generally want a significant portion of the previous tier before moving on to the next, but by no means do you need the entire set. The tiers are level 55, 60, 70, 80, and 90.

In addition, you should be doing your relic quest throughout this. This will involve turning in a specific level 55 weapon and beating a few bosses and a dungeon (55), beating Ifrit (60), beating Garuda (70), and beating Titan (75). This will get you a level 80 weapon, which can be upgraded to level 90.

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Item level 55 gear is the baseline for endgame. There's basically no reason to be using anything worse. You have two options: Dungeon drops from Wanderer's Palace (and I hear Amdapor Keep after it was made easier), which for bard would be the Mercenary's set (Plus the sash of the blind maiden), as it gives dexterity. Unfortunately, this involves relying on drops.

However, another option available is the Militia/Imperial armor, which is crafted. HQ armor will be comparable to gear from WP, and you can add materia to it if you so wish, and when it comes time to replace it you can convert your set into materia, sell that, and possibly even profit! You'll mostly be using the militia set you can equip, although the Imperial Operative Tricorne is suited for bard if you'd rather use that. As far as accessories go you'll be using the imperial operative wristlets and choker, and the rest spinel accessories and a raptorskin voyager's belt. In addition, you can use the level 55 crafted weapon Longarm's Composite Bow. Just keep in mind you'll need to turn one in for your relic quest, so be sure to have another level 55 weapon handy (Possibly get an HQ one to use and an NQ to turn in)

Finally, you can use gear from your grand company. As far as level 55 stuff goes, this covers weapon, head, body, hands, and feet. The weapon is always a good bet if you'd rather not use the crafted version, and depending on the GC you've joined certain pieces of the officer's armor may be useful. And of course, the artifact armor body piece from your level 50 job quest is level 55, so you can use that.

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Level 60 content involves the two hardmode dungeons and Pharos Sirius. Before patch 2.1, Amdapor Keep dropped the level 60 armor, but I've heard since it was downgraded it no longer does. Your two sets are the toxotes set (Older set that used to drop in AK, so you may see more people use this) and the Noble's set (New in patch 2.1). It will be noted that the only accessory in the noble's set is the belt, while the toxotes set has every slot covered (Well, though only one ring).

As far as weapons go, you'll be beating Ifrit's hard mode for your bow. It's a random drop, so keep at it.

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Level 70 content has a few options. The major one is to use tomestones of philosophy to purchase Darklight armor. Your accessory type is "Aiming". Another option is the level 70 gryphonskin set, which is crafted and HQ is on par with darklight. The materials used to craft it are bought with philosophy tomestones however, and take MORE than it would cost to buy darklight to get the materials. However, you can add materia to it in order to make it better than darklight, mostly be ensuring every single piece of gear you have gives a certain stat you care about. One common route is to get the crafted jewelry that suits your class and put Vitality materia into it (As only tank accessories have vitality normally) to get enough HP to survive rough endgame battles.

As far as your weapon goes, you can kill Garuda for your bow. You can also get a Sarnga crafted, though as with the other crafted 70 items it is VERY expensive, and it will be replaced shortly. Also, on a side note, Moogle Mog drops level 75 weapons, though that's quite a difficult fight.

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Level 80 items are a new tier in patch 2.1. The armor comes from Crystal Tower, where you can get one piece of gear each week. It's actually relatively easy. Your armor is the Ballad set. You can get a ring and choker from hardmode Ultima, although this is significantly harder.

As far as weapons go, Titan drops level 80 weapons... however, if you can beat Titan, you can get your relic weapon which is ALSO level 80, doesn't involve waiting for a drop, and can be upgraded to level 90.

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Finally, level 90. Your armor here comes from two sources: Spending tomestones of mythology to get upgraded artifact armor, or doing the Binding Coil for allagan armor drops. As you can only do binding coil once a week, you'll likely find yourself getting the mythology gear even if you prefer the allagan armor, at least until it drops. One final difference between the two is that while the gear from mythology tokens is restricted to a single job, the allagan armor can fit the other classes with the same role in the case of casting, healing, and tanking, and also can be used by classes if you want to use them for some reason.

Patch 2.1 also added the extreme mode primals, which drop accessories. Ring from garuda, earrings from Titan, bangles from Ifrit.

As for weapons, you have three choices. By spending 900 mythology tomestones you can upgrade your relic weapon to its level 90 zenith variant. You can also beat all 3 extreme mode primals and earn a level 90 weapon (This can be done once a week). Finally, if you manage to beat the final turn of the binding coil, you earn a level 95 weapon (But good luck, it's the hardest dungeon in the game).