Being Elite (Best Gear)

[Matsume]

Do you think there will be a benefit for getting +1 AF and slotting it with multiple tier 4 perception materia? Especially since it will only increase your chances of getting HQ rare items by 1 or 2% (when you get 3 per node anyway using abilities).

What do you think is the best gear setup? And how "worth it" do you think investing in perception or gathering over the needed limits is?

As pointed out by Xianghua, at 350 perception your base HQ% will remain at 1% therefore, unless at yet higher perception the rate goes up, there appears to be little reason to bring perception above 320 for now.

Stat caps for items throw a monkey wrench into that plan. Especially since HQ items are typically at their cap for the stats on them already. That said, putting enough perception materia in your gear to hit the cap on all of them would, of course, result in the best perception you can have.

This is inaccurate. Although this does appear to be the case for the battle gear such as Gryphonskin, Vanya and Darksteel sets - it is quite the opposite in regards the gathering sets. Please, let me explain my findings and I hope to clarify this point while answering Azurymbers question.

Azurymber, let me start off by saying there will be a benefit for getting +1 AF and slotting it with Tier 4 materia.

The best case I can make is to take the Hamlet Cutters/Miners Hats for example: NQ versions have 56 perception. The stat cap on the NQ version is (look here Urthdigger) +19 perception. That means The AF hats perception stat caps at 75. This can be achieved several ways. Either you plug in 3 x Tier III perception (+5) materia + 1 x Tier II perception (+4) materia for a Quad Melded hat. Or you plug in 4 x Tier II perception (+4) materia + 1 x Tier I perception (+3) materia for a Quint Meld hat. If you put in 3 x Tier IV perception (+6) materia you are one perception shy of the +19 cap and using a fourth materia of lower grade would result in a loss of perception due to stat cap.

So here is where the importance of HQ gear comes into play. I don't know the exact number of perception on HQ hat but let's assume it's +3 at the least (59 perception). That means you only need +16 perception from materia rather than +19. You can easily achieve +16 perception by tripple melding 1 x Tier IV perception (+6) materia + 2 x Tier III perception (+5) materia (or you could 2 x T4 + 1 x T2 but that cost more T4..) The point being that with the HQ hat you can achieve the perception stat cap with 3 melds (rather than 4) which leaves an additional two open slots (rather than 1) in which you can try plugging in a +gathering and +GP materia.

Just to make the point clear, Urthdigger, The gathering slops which have +28 gathering and +3 perception will only accept +1 perception for a total stat cap pof +4 perception (iirc), which just goes to show that if you HQ the legs, although the perception is likely to be at it's cap (+4) I am certain the pants are willing to accept two or three +gathering perception.

TLDR: HQ AF + appropriate materia can be used to get the maximum benefits out of each piece of gear, but this does not mean that this will be a requirement nor a necessity in any way to obtain the resources you desire. It might just be purely for epeen purposes.

What comes out of special rare nodes? Is it like a special kind of wood or a special ingredient that only comes from that single place which can then be sold or crafted to make items that require the one specific thing (only availalbe from the one place)?
I am relieved that there is no direct competition on spawns b/c camping a HQ tree is not my idea of a good time.

These rare Unspoiled Resources provide the materials for the current end game crafted recipes such as Gryphonskin, Darksteel, and Vanya gear sets as well as the DoH and DoL lvl 50 "AF" gear sets. These include but are not limited to crawler cocoons, darksteel ore, gold ore, gold sand, spruce logs, astral rocks, thavnairian thistletoe, prickly pineapple, honey lemons, elemental clusters, grade 4 carbonized matter and a few others...