Best gear for each class?

[Meow_Zedong]

What's the best gear/weapon/accessory for each class? (Excluding AF stuff). Any help would be appreciated.

[Urthdigger]

Wait... you're excluding AF, but not excluding endgame items? I mean, if you're gonna exclude anything, exclude the stuff that takes months to get, not the stuff you can grab a party for and get by the end of the day.

That said, for white mage, best items are:
Weapon: Chiran Ziran's Tempest
Gloves: Darklight Gloves
Earring: Blessed Earring
Choker: Black Pearl Choker
Wrist: Black Pearl Wristbands
Ring1: Blessed Ring
Ring2: Turquoise Ring (Or Amber ring)

For the rest of your slots, your AF's pretty much as good as it gets, except for maybe the pants (I happen to like faster insta-raises, some folks prefer better stats). There's really not a lot of gear out there that directly helps healing or enhancing magic, so your best bet is probably to find whatever gives the best MND and/or VIT, and slap some materia in there for more if need be.

[prymortal]

Wait... you're excluding AF, but not excluding endgame items? I mean, if you're gonna exclude anything, exclude the stuff that takes months to get, not the stuff you can grab a party for and get by the end of the day.

That said, for white mage, best items are:
Weapon: Chiran Ziran's Tempest
Gloves: Darklight Gloves
Earring: Blessed Earring
Choker: Black Pearl Choker
Wrist: Black Pearl Wristbands
Ring1: Blessed Ring
Ring2: Turquoise Ring (Or Amber ring)

For the rest of your slots, your AF's pretty much as good as it gets, except for maybe the pants (I happen to like faster insta-raises, some folks prefer better stats). There's really not a lot of gear out there that directly helps healing or enhancing magic, so your best bet is probably to find whatever gives the best MND and/or VIT, and slap some materia in there for more if need be.

^^totaly agree
Other choices:

Body: Woolen Cowl (no head equipment slots with this) (+materia mind or Vitality)
Body Alt: Imperial Operative Dalmatica (Imperial Stronghold Gold Chest)
Waist: Vanya Sash (+materia Touch of serenity or manathirst)
Legs: Darklight Breeches
Legs Alt: Felt Gaskins (+materia Vestryman's or manthirst)

[fusional]

Waist: Vanya Sash

debatable. unless you're having enormous aggro issues and need a double/triple meld -enmity belt, militia belt is likely the superior choice (until regen is capped)

[prymortal]

debatable. unless you're having enormous aggro issues and need a double/triple meld -enmity belt, militia belt is likely the superior choice (until regen is capped)

??
Vanya Sash: MP : +20, Healing Magic Potency : +3 (4)
Militia Belt: HP : +50, Vit : +3, Enhancement Magic Potency : +4

Materia options are limited so Touch of serenity or manathirst are best. as whm your mostly healing cura/curaga & regen is limited to 40 seconds therefore Vanya is the better choice, unless your soloing with whm which is pretty stupid yet fun!.

[Otaku]

??
Vanya Sash: MP : +20, Healing Magic Potency : +3 (4)
Militia Belt: HP : +50, Vit : +3, Enhancement Magic Potency : +4

Materia options are limited so Touch of serenity or manathirst are best. as whm your mostly healing cura/curaga & regen is limited to 40 seconds therefore Vanya is the better choice, unless your soloing with whm which is pretty stupid yet fun!.

I can tell you don't play WHM because you mention Vanya hat/feet and those are class only
Militia Belt > Vanya Sash because picking up EMP is harder then getting HMP
Personally I just run with a Scarlet Sash because I have yet to see a Militia Belt drop, even that is better then the Vanya unmelded imo
I solo on WHM all the time also, it's almost too easy

[charlemagne]

It isn't as simple as that, there is no one answer. First you have to consider how you are playing the job and against what are you fighting. Different gear sets are better suited for different tasks. A prime example would be botany where you might have one gear set with an emphasis on gathering and another focused on perception for gathering hq materials.
It's a similar story for DoW/DoM. First obviously we would want to cap out the two main stats for the job but after that it becomes situational. You will need differing amounts of accuracy against different mobs and will want to swap some out for another stat such as ATT in some situations. You may be fighting something with a particular elemental weakness as BLM and so have an accessory set based around that element.
Since the amount of materia we can stack on gear means that the stats of the gear can vary so much it has such a large affect on the overall gear set that giving a definitive gear set is impossible. For example someone with 36 STR melded to hands would need very different focus on other slots to someone with ATT melded to them or to someone with a lower amount melded to them.

[Meow_Zedong]

Hmm ok, maybe I should re-phrase. I know there is a lot of different gear for different situations, so there is no BEST gear. Maybe I just want something that is close to the best, but also unique?

For instance, for each job, uniqueness is easy because you can just use AF gear and weapons (when we get them).

But say I wanted to make a unique gear set for each class too, any suggestions on what to use? From what I've read some good choices for end-game stuff is Militia gear, AV/CC gear (Darklight?), Sanctioned GC gear, and high level crafted gear (Vanya stuff?). For weapons I wouldn't know how to choose between high-level crafted weapons, GC weapons, or Primal weapons...

I guess I'm just asking for suggestions, because I want to equip each of my seven classes with a completely different set of gear. It's just a weird OCD thing I want to do.

[Urthdigger]

Well, if you're wanting unique sets for each CLASS, and not job, it should be noted that Darklight is job exclusive.

When it comes to classes, your "best" gear in general is probably going to be the recent class-only high level items. These are generally regarded as very nice, stat-wise, especially considering you can slot in materia on them (Unlike AF and Darklight). So, for example, CNJ would probably do best with a Vanya set and an Alkalurops. Well, maybe not Alkalurops for WHM due to the tricky nature of mage stat requirements making an "upgrade" not always an upgrade. You'd probably still want a Chiran Ziran's Tempest for healing, or a GC Sergeant's Radical for nuking.

[Asiaine]

I do not think one should approach it as 'best' for 'class', but rather 'best' for 'purpose'.

What is your purpose?
Are you a healing CNJ or a fighting CNJ?
Are you a party THM or a solo THM ?

Are you a WHM in a controlled party (and thus never run out of MP) or a chaotic party (and thus need all the MP help you can get).

Many different purposes.