Importance of Gear

[Daniel103090]

In the vaguest sense, as long as you have ilvl required to do a dungeon, you are qualified to do the dungeon. Generally people won’t care as long as you make some effort to keep gear relatively up to date.

If you are nervous about it, just do it with NPCs and re-equip with dungeon drops. All the drops for you, and no complaining players! Win win.

Final raid or tomestone gear from each expac will generally last until the 3rd dungeon (so 65/75/85), where you can replace with drops from said dungeon.

Mainly right now my biggest focus is making sure that my gear is compitent enough to run a dungeon or a "Hard" dungeon when it comes up as a quest requirement, so far I have been able to stay pretty close to everyone else and be helpful I think, but was also just making sure that gear gained mostly through MSQ can keep me going until basically endgame and when I jump into Extremes or Savages. So all of this info from everyone has been very helpful. I try to at least every 5 levels double check my gear against the market boards and make sure there isn't too big of a difference between what I've got on versus what I can buy. Which now I'm going to be double checking that against tomestone gear ( I need to research all the sellers for each expac)

[Colt47]

On the flip side, it also means there's very little to do for people who aren't into social or hypercasual faceroll content. There isn't even any midcore content in this game, and it's helping nobody.
There isn't really any reason to not be supportive of a healthy endgame environment.

That's been an ongoing thing since late ARR after they introduced coil. Originally, they had the EX fights as a continuation of the main story rather than a sideline activity, since they had the ascians force the beast tribes to use more crystals or what not to make a stronger eikon. Coil was the first raid content and due to the difficulty, people complained about not getting to see the story of coil, so they broke it down into normal coil and savage coil. Then they continued that through heavensward with normal Alex and savage Alex. The big difference between heavensward and now, is that peoples skill on jobs was no where near where it is now and the skill floor and ceiling are far closer together post shadowbringers. So in truth, it shouldn't be hard for the team to implement mid core level content.

Technically, they need to have a mid-core version of savage that is like the savage mode, but has the markers on the floor and maybe rewards half the loot. The big problem savage has is it hides mechanics from players far too much and therefore forces everyone who has an actual job in real life to use guides. Then it turns into people with different commitments all stacking into the same content and we got the social nightmare that is current savage. WoW fixed this by having multiple tiers and ultimately giving everyone access to the same cosmetics. The only piece that changes beyond that is the gear score.

[kaynide]

Mainly right now my biggest focus is making sure that my gear is compitent enough to run a dungeon or a "Hard" dungeon when it comes up as a quest requirement, so far I have been able to stay pretty close to everyone else and be helpful I think, but was also just making sure that gear gained mostly through MSQ can keep me going until basically endgame and when I jump into Extremes or Savages. So all of this info from everyone has been very helpful. I try to at least every 5 levels double check my gear against the market boards and make sure there isn't too big of a difference between what I've got on versus what I can buy. Which now I'm going to be double checking that against tomestone gear ( I need to research all the sellers for each expac)

I would add, the main core game (like 90% of what you are doing) is going to play very different to EX and/or Savage. Core game, as long as you aren’t dying you should be able to clear…

I can’t really speak from experience, but gear is going to be a lot more important, as well as fight memorization/positioning.

EX/Savage will demand much more competency in your skill rotation as well- there are enrage timers, etc.

..again I don’t really know a lot on this from experience, but you will surely get good advice here on that from a vet.

Edit: Gear Merchants:

You can find everything you need to be properly geared up from the Rowena Vendors found in the "B" town of each expansion. (The city/town that doesn't have a marketboard...without spoiling). The Tomestones of Poetics are all you need. The easiest way to get Tomestones is to run the 50 alliance raids for a small daily boost and lots of XP on a non-main job.

[kaynide]

….

I would actually love more midcore stuff myself. I don’t enjoy the raid scene, but I really did like the Hardmode dungeons and enjoy doing older Savage content low-man/unsync’d.

[dspguy]

Generally speaking, if you have augmented end-expansion gear that you can buy with poetics... you wear that until level X6. Then maybe buy a weapon (maybe!). That takes you to X0. Then rinse and repeat until you hit 90.

[Araxes]

Gear only matters if you wanna do Savage/Ultimate. For most other things it gets scaled down anyway.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

You can clear the normal content by rolling your forehead over your keyboard.
No, it doesn't matter. Gear only matters in the content you actually get it from (Savage and extremes) Which usually boils down to the current 4 savage fights and an extreme.
You just have to roll your forehead over your keyboard a bit less in normal content once you get better gear.
FF's endgame is very shallow compared to that of some other MMO's unfortunately, and a lot more niche than in, say, World of Warcraft. Where the endgame is the main appeal, and where the game begins.

At the cost of everything else. Nothing to do in WoW if you don't do M+, Hardcore Raiding, or Arena. Blizzard abandoned the rest of the game.

The gear differences are insane too.

Like, current season. Characters geared out easily have 2 to 3, or even 4 times as much health as player wearing top gear from last season. It's insane how bloated numbers already are. Blizzard is going to have to do another stat squish next expansion as they never learn and keep repeating the same mistakes.