Explorer's Tabard (Why?)

[Mister-Wonderful]

the argument on hauby > tortoiss is moot if you don't have tripple melded pie body. You have to remember in order to craft hauby it costs easily 3x as much per synth. Also HQ'ing tortoiss is a piece of cake, I went 10/10 and then of the 10 hq's I got a tripple pie body among a few double crit power's and sold a few to make the whole process free. Hauby is a freeking bitch to HQ, making all those damn HQ ingots > rings is very annoying rather then:
ingot (low lvl synth)
shell(5-10k on wards hq)
boar leather (low lvl synth)
raptor leather (easy synth with at least 1 hq skin + hq alumen)

I don't quite understand why the arguement is moot unless you have triple pie melded.

with a triple pie body you should already be blowing stat cap way out of the water and hauby would still be better due to base strength and attack instead of additional piety and attack. I can do about 373 strength and 320 piety with a triple meld hauby, even allowing me to wear Darklight Eyepatch instead of the darklight helm because i dont need the strength, allowing me to increase crit rate/crit attack while still capping stats.

It is a preference thing either way, and you should choose what works for your gearset, but I see the hauby as the more beneficial piece any way you slice it.

And there is a very minimal difference in stats between HQ and nq, 1 additional attack power from hq tortoise(so 3 higher than hauby in total) and ease of HQ are not enough to make me want to lose 6 str and accuracy for it. Pie is capped easily with either body and I prefer extra strength/acc.