Question about gearing. Spending T. of Phantasmagoria or saving them?

[BothFawn]

Hello.

I've been playing FFXIV for about 6 months, so I wouldn't necessarily call myself a "new player". However, by posting my question here, I wanted to reach out to those more experienced ones.

First of all, one of my goals in this game is to level up every single available class to lvl 80. What I've been doing is basically focusing on one class at the time and level them from the start to the very end, without engaging overly in other activities. It's a common approach of mine in games, in order to focus and enjoy the current quest storyline at ease, since story is something I deem important when it comes to games. It also helps me getting a better feel of the job, so I would have a better understanding of which class should I ultimately main.

Having that in mind, I'm now leveling the Bard, but at the moment I'm sitting at 1980/2000 Tomestones of Phantasmagoria and I'm not so sure how should I approach all this, especially when there are tokens from Eden Raid, which I can easily exchange for 450 ilvl gear for my BRD(and I've done the same for my previous class I leveled up- PLD).

My question is- would it be a good idea to spend those T. of Phantasmagoria gradually on each of my class I consecutively level up?...

...Or should I have the tomestones capped all the time until, for example, a new patch hits and there will be a new and better gear to buy and just stick with the Eden's gear only? And then after I'd eventually find the class I plan to 100% main, I'd just go full YOLO and spend everything on my main class' gear.

Small note: I don't play Savage content as for now.

Thank you.

[DrWho2010]

this early in the patch you're typically only gearing one class. until you finish then you move on to the 2nd job you like the most after your "first". but you said you don't really have a main so really just spend them on the job you're playing the most right now. when 5.1 comes around then you can use the 24 man gear to gear an alternate class, or if you have the gil or crafters up you can just make crafted gear for your other classes as you get there.

[Billythepancake]

So first thing, don't ever let the tomes cap, that's you throwing away tomes, so even if you gotta buy something cheap, buy something, because you always want to get as many tomes as you can.

As for what to spend them on, for a class leveling up and prepping it's not a bad idea, but I think it'd be smarter to do on a class you consider a "main". One you plan to spend a lot of time on.

[Raldo]

I agree with the other posts here, but I wanted to highlight this:

...Or should I have the tomestones capped all the time until, for example, a new patch hits and there will be a new and better gear to buy

When they add new gear bought with tomes, a new set of tomestones to collect will be added, and they will phase out the old tomestones. You can't prep for future patches by hoarding your tomestones. When 5.2 hits, they'll add a new set of weekly-capped tomestones, and everyone will start from zero because they'll be brand new.

Example from during Stormblood:

The first weekly-capped tomestones from SB were "Allagan Tomestones of Creation", and could buy i330 gear. When 4.2 hit, you could buy i360 gear, however it required the newly-added "Allagan Tomestones of Mendacity". These new tomes became the new weekly-capped tomestones, and no matter how many Creation tomestones you had saved up, you weren't any more ahead than anyone else, because the new gear used new tomes.

[BothFawn]

Now when I think about it, I tend to play the 80 lvl content with my 2 healers, WHM and SCH, the most, despite having SMN leveled up, for example.

I haven't actually thought about doing this like you said. It seems to be the best approach- having the best gear on the class I currently enjoy the most at lvl 80, and not on the class I've just leveled up to 80.

Thank you for you replies. I'll go now and spend the tomestones on my healer and leave my would-be 80 lvl Bard with ilvl 450 gear in the future.

P.S. Yeah, if there will be no new tomestones until 5.2 and again another ones until 5.4(I assume?), then I see no reason in hoarding them.

By the way, do you happen to know what exactly ilvl will the new gear from the NieR alliance raid have? Will it be the same as the Phantasmagoria one?

[Raldo]

P.S. Yeah, if there will be no new tomestones until 5.2 and again another ones until 5.4(I assume?), then I see no reason in hoarding them.

By the way, do you happen to know what exactly ilvl will the new gear from the NieR alliance raid have? Will it be the same as the Phantasmagoria one?

All of this is assumed based on previous expansions, but once the pattern started, they have never deviated:

- Yes, new weekly-capped tomestones will arrive with 5.2 and 5.4.
- The alliance raid gear iLevel is equal to the gear bought with the weekly-capped tomestones, so this first raid will drop i460 gear. When that raid hits, it will also come with a weekly drop that allows you to upgrade one piece of gear bought with tomes from i460 to i470 (and then even later, they'll let you upgrade the weapon too).


The expansion as a whole will look like this:
- 5.0: Only uncapped tomes available (Goetia), buys i440 gear.
- 5.05: Weekly capped tomes added (Phantasmagoria), buys i460 gear. 8-man raid added, drops tokens for i450 gear.
- 5.1: 24-man raid added. Drops i460 gear (limited to 1 weekly), and a token to upgrade Phantasmagoria armor to i470 (limited to 1 weekly).
- 5.2: New capped tomes added, buys i490 gear. 8-man raid added, drops tokens for i480 gear.
- 5.3: 24-man raid added. Drops i490 gear (limited to 1 weekly), and a token to upgrade [5.2 tomes] armor to i500 (limited to 1 weekly).
- 5.4: New capped tomes added, buys i520 gear. 8-man raid added, drops tokens for i510 gear.
- 5.5: 24-man raid added. Drops i520 gear (limited to 1 weekly), and a token to upgrade [5.4 tomes] armor to i530 (limited to 1 weekly).

There's also crafted gear, and crafted trade-ins, but I'll exclude that unless it comes up. Also, since the job-specific gear you get for free is called "Weathered" and is un-dyeable, at some point they'll also give us a way to upgrade that armor, but I've deviated well off-topic at this point.

[BothFawn]

There's also crafted gear, and crafted trade-ins, but I'll exclude that unless it comes up. Also, since the job-specific gear you get for free is called "Weathered" and is un-dyeable, at some point they'll also give us a way to upgrade that armor, but I've deviated well off-topic at this point.

Thank you. I tend to buy crafted gear when I'm impatient or I miss a specific piece of equipment, usually it's a weapon or a ring.

I've got each of my crafters and gatherers at 50 lvl now and I can't wait until I'll have reached 80 eventually.

[Frizze]

The crafted gear(which raldo is leaving off an otherwise fine list) will tend to be the same ilvl as the raid token pieces. Useful to gear something up in a hurry or to get a small edge for early runs on the next savage tier. And the alliance gear will almost certainly be the same ilvl as the current phantasmagoria set - just with different sub-stats.

[RoyalBeef]

As already stated, there will be new tomestones for new gear so you can't just hoard them and deck yourself out with it on day 1. There is still a lot of time to kill till new content hits. I wasn't planning to do Savage, but I just poked my nose in due to lack of other things to do, and I'm having quite a lot of fun. Getting the 460 weapon and some other pieces will make pretty much everything easier, nd you'll be prepred hould you decide to give Savage a try.