Easiest way for i230

[Ama_Hamada]

PvP is the fastest and best way, lore gear is outdated and doing pvp also gives lore/script to give you options on what to do with the second ring (least daily frontline bonus is enough, I don't remember what feast actually gives you)

A word of advice since you imply your goal is to gear up in preparation for 4.x as fast as possible. Go the PvP path, as once you have your full set of PvP i235 gear, you can just head straight into the Dun Scaith raid, which will upgrade your left-side gear to i260 and also has a weekly quest for i270 right-side gear. You'll still need to obtain a weapon from some other source though. Palace of the Dead is easy i255, Zurvan Extreme gives i265, or Tomestones of Scripture for i260 that can be upgraded to i270.

^ agreed, do that

[Abriael]

As some already said, the garo set you can get in PvP is by far the fastest way. It's iLvL 235, so it's good enough for everything relevant, including Dun Scaith.

In order to get there fast, spam 8v8 unranked Feast matches. If you're unlucky, each match will give you 500/250 wolf marks in 8 minutes, depending on win or loss. If you're lucky, and have a very good party or a very bad one, a match can end in a minute or so. Queues are also very fast.

As an additional note, at this point in time I would not worry about going much over iLVL 235. As soon as you start getting gear in Stormblood, most of that you earn now will be obsolete.

[kattzkitti]

To give you an example, you can literally buy level 60 ilvl 265 gear from vendors in Kugane.

That doesn't follow the ilvl curve of 2.x/3.x, it's higher by 10 ilvls. Slightly concerned about their changes to ilvl power curve now, they had stated they were lowering the curve in 4.x... Our current i270 gear is the equivalent of 2.x i130 gear (Dreadwyrm / Augmented Ironworks). Considering the level 50 gear from Ishgard (the first set of vendor whites in 3.x) was i115, the level 60 gear from the first 4.x zone should be i255, not i265. This implies that the ilvl growth is being increased, which is going to lead to exponentially higher ilvl as content is added going forward. Since they aren't adding more content (and are in fact reducing the amount of content per cycle), the very few upsides to a higher ilvl curve won't come into play and thus this is an almost purely negative thing.

[Abriael]

That doesn't follow the ilvl curve of 2.x/3.x, it's higher by 10 ilvls. Slightly concerned about their changes to ilvl power curve now, they had stated they were lowering the curve in 4.x...

Actually I may remember it badly. It could be slightly higher than level 60 (maybe 62?). I wish I took a screenshot (the set also looks very nice, while totally un-Japanese). That said, I *am* positive that you're gonna drop iLvL 270 level 63 gear in the Shisui of the Violet Tides dungeon that can be accessed from level 62.

You can see it briefly in my video here https://youtu.be/0yNjGbDmHoI?t=2m54s

But yeah, to my point, unless the leveling curve is MUCH slower than in heavensward, current max ilvl gear will become obsolete super fast in Stormblood. So I wouldn't sweat it too much.

[Scorp6]

Wow I've never touched the pvp but looks like that is the quickest way. I've been gone so so long. I have ever heard of some of these raids/dungeons and definitely haven't run most of them. Thank you all so much for all the info!!!

[Abriael]

Wow I've never touched the pvp but looks like that is the quickest way.

Don't worry. You don't need to win Losing as fast as possible is just as efficient, if not more.

[savageink]

if your ilevel is good on your gear and your weapon truly sucks you could just do the first 2 steps of the anima weapon to get close it's a 200 ilevel at that point. to get that far just takes 6 crystals which you get from fates in HW areas, it's been nerfed so much i got all six in 20 minutes by running a fate in each area i think i only had to run 2 fates in 2 of them because of rng failure. That gives you ilvl 170. And then 10 level 50 dungeons to toughen it up to 200. If you used scripture on a couple of your new pieces for 260s it should all even out.

[Zumi]

frontlines pvp buy the 235 gear from the garo npc