New to 60 Crafting, Confused

[Mirateski]

So I hit 60 in my first crafter about three days before 3.3 hit. I'm still in unmelded lv55 gear, and didn't want to do any scrip stuff pre-patch because they said there were changes coming, and now I'm a bit confused as to where to start.

I have more than a few friends with geared 60s, so if crafted gear is the best way to go, I can get that without needing to gear first. But should I focus on the scrip gear instead? I have all my gatherers at 60 if you need anything from that, although they're only in hq crafted serpentskin.

Please help. There's so much to look at and I'm so confused. ;-;

[Chyro]

If you're capable of doing blue-scrip collectables with your current gear, grind some to get yourself i180 blue gear for your specialist crafters (and/or for Carpenter / Alchemist, since they have the arguably best red-scrip items).
Doesn't take too long since they increased blue-scrip gains and it takes only 3-8 token depending on the gear piece (I think around 36 for full armor + main-hand?)

Alternatively you could get the 170 omni-gear, but has the downside that it can't be overmelded. Though It's good enough to reach 2-star crafts.
You'd need your friends to craft it for you, or buy it from market board.

If you got all Crafters 60, even a normal lv60 HQ set may be enough to start doing red scrips.
And with red scrips you can then upgrade the 180 gear to 200 (best to focus on one class for that first, since it's a slow process of upgrading due to red scrip cap).

So.. either grind blue scrips for 180 sets, or get lv60 tradeable set (the normal white one or new carbonweave).
Once capable of doing red scrips, use those to upgrade 180 pieces to 200.
At some point you should then be able to do 3-star crafts, if that's your goal.

Oh yeah. For Off-hand, belt and accessories, best get the 170 craftable ones at first. (or cheaper /easier: the highest white craftable ones. I think they're lv56-60.)
They're made with favor mats (a lv60 gatherer thing for getting special mats), which were 'nerfed' in this patch so should be easier.

[Mirateski]

Awesome, thanks so much! I'm pretty sure I can do collectibles on my ALC, so I'll start saving towards the blue scrip gear asap.