i70 off-hand tools

[Niwashi]

What's the best melds for the i70 off-hand tools? (e.g. Artisan's Spinning Wheel)

Most of the rest of the gear is pretty straightforward, as it can be maxed out to the stat caps, but for the chest piece that would require 6 materia, and for the off-hand tools, it would require 10, so there's choices to make, especially for the tools. I'm not sure where the points are going to be the most needed.

[Niwashi]

For reference, with the initial (ilevel 55) main tool from the level 50 quest, HQ ilevel 70 off-hand tool (but not melded yet), and everything else fully melded BiS (either i55 or i70 depending on slot) gear, I have:
405 Craftsmanship
387 Control
349 CP
(I could have had 3 more CP at the cost of either 2 Control or 6 Craftsmanship if I'd melded my apron differently.)

The off-hand's stat caps would allow melding another 25 Craftsmanship, 14 Control, and 3 CP were it not for the limit of only being able to use 5 materia to do it. Materia can add 3, 4, 5, or 6 points of Craftsmanship, or 1, 2, 3, or 4 points of either of the other two. (Tier 5 materia isn't available for i70 gear, so this is just tiers 1-4.)


p.s. I sure like the new feature that shows us in-game on the melding window what all the stat caps are. It's a whole lot easier than having to look everything up online (assuming you can even find it). So thanks for that, SE.

[Caitlinzulu]

I'm guessing you dont have heavensward?
Still honestly I wouldnt pentameld an ilvl 70 anymore, you wouldnt get any profit out of it, it will only be a gilsink, would be cheaper to just buy any starred level 50 craft.

[Niwashi]

I'm not registering Heavensward until I finish ARR, and that includes finishing the crafting part. Though I did resort to buying gear (at least my first set of it), I intend to make all my own turn-in items in order to get the master books and main-hand tool upgrades. Buying rather than crafting the turn-in items would seem to negate the whole point of having leveled crafting in the first place.

And I plan to max out all my gear. (In fact, I may well max meld multiple sets of the main armor pieces, just so that I can glamour them differently without losing stats. I want to make my Artisan gear look like the DoH AF gear, but that makes it all class-specific.)

[Caitlinzulu]

Its just fully melded artisan gear will last till lvl 55 or so, but you will use a lot of gil to get the materia needed for that meld, seems a waste to me.
also if you ever want to know the stat caps of any piece of gear, have a look at the Ariyala website.

ffxiv.ariyala.com

You can even simulate the meld you would be going for. As or melding, its been too long ago to give actual goals, but usually it goes along the lines of
1. cap CP on that piece
2. meld craft till you hit the level needed for the craft you are aiming for and perhaps a bit more if it would allow you to skip a progress step
3. meld in as much control as you can

If you want to check how much craftsmanship you can check out
ffxiv-beta.lokyst.net
Simulate your rotations and see how much craftsmanship you actually need.

[PROBOUND]

Good God! Please save yourself months of agony. Dont Do it. Have you completed MSQ? At this point give up on crafting until you unlock heavensward. Get all Crafts to 50 and then stop. Best advice i can give you. You are actually holding yourself back substantially by "holding back on Heavensward until the ARR crafting is done". Ignore everything crafting until you purchase expansion. This includes, turn ins, master books, gear, tools, melding. Your doing yourself a disservice and its painful to read. Would you rather reach endgame crafting in 1month or 1 year? Time to focus on your Battle class quickly.

I know this might sound harsh but it's the best decision you could make at this point.

[Niwashi]

Would you rather reach endgame crafting in 1month or 1 year?

I'm already at my endgame. If you mean when do I want to reach the same endgame the rest of the playerbase is at, the answer is never. By the time I register my copy of Heavensward, you'll probably consider Stormblood to be obsolete and be a few patches of the way in to whatever the next expansion after that is.

There's still a ton of stuff to do in the game I'm already playing. Once I finish it all and need to look elsewhere to have content to do, then I'll register Heavensward, but before that, I'll have at a bare minimun:

• All jobs/classes to 50. (So far, I've just got BRD, NIN, and all the DoH and DoL there.)
• Have run every dungeon, trial, and raid available at level 50. (Still a long way to go here. I've done several hard mode dungeons and trials as I get to them in the course of relic upgrades, but most others aren't even unlocked yet. Haven't even started on Coil.)
• Complete every sidestory and sidequest in ARR. (I've done most of Hildibrand, but only just started on Moogle Delivery quests.)
• Have at least the first stage of all 10 Relic weapons, with at least one of them (maybe more) advanced all the way to Zeta. (Currently on the animus books for both NIN and BRD.)
• Max reputation with all ARR beast tribes, and complete the allied beast tribe quests. (Ixal, Kobold, and Amalj'aa done. Working on Sahagin. Barely started on Sylph.)
• Have all master books and Lucis tools, all earned from items I've made/gathered myself. (Just gearing up for this. My earlier attempts to make HQ Vanya silk for my first master book, back before I had good level 50 gear, didn't go so well.)

There might be a few other things. There's some notable achievements, for instance, like the ones that reward the Luminary tools for DoH/DoL, that I'd want to do. I can't think off hand what similarly notable achievements there are in other parts of the game, but there probably are some.

I'm already a bit flooded by all this content that I've yet to complete. Piling even more on top of it with an expansion is just way too much until I clear out my current stuff.

[PROBOUND]

When do I want to reach the same endgame the rest of the playerbase is at, the answer is never.

You couldn't possibly fathom subscribing to Netflix when there are still Thousands of VHS tapes to watch! My bad bro. Carry on.

[OoglieBooglie]

You don't have to actually use heavensward once you register it. In fact, you won't be able to get anything out of it until you complete the main story quest. BUT you will get the level cap raised to 60. If you intend to purchase it eventually, you may as well get it for the level cap alone. That's literally the only thing that'll do for you (and unlock the au ra race, but that's irrelevant in this context, i feel).

[MikeWW]

It's expensive and kinda wasteful to perfectly overmeld level 50 gear, and expensive to buy/craft artisan gear unless you go for the NPC token reward version. It takes a few hours to get up to 52-54, and when you slap on those new gear you will already have quite higher stats than pentamelded level 50 gear.

I admit I recently perfectly overmelded a full set of level 50 forager gear because I was bored, but I was sitting on over 100 mil gil due to end game crafting. If I was stuck at level 50 crafting I'd probably only have 10-20 mil instead.