Being Elite (Best Gear)

[Cal]

From what I remember:

Tier 1 Materia ilvl 15+
Tier 2 Materia ilvl 30+
Tier 3 Materia ilvl 45+
Tier 4 Materia ilvl 75+
Tier 5 Materia ilvl 90+ (nothing in game right now)

[Matsume]

Tier 4 gathering and crafting materia can be melded to item level 55 crafting and gathering AF.

[Tiago]

I'm so confused lol.
So if we meld more perception than the cap (which i dont know any caps lol) We lose perception? Or did i read wrong and you were just saying that its a loss of money since we're beyond the cap?
And each gear slot has a stats cap? or each piece of gear has its stats cap?
Its kinda confusing lol :\

[Xianghua]

I'm so confused lol.
So if we meld more perception than the cap (which i dont know any caps lol) We lose perception? Or did i read wrong and you were just saying that its a loss of money since we're beyond the cap?
And each gear slot has a stats cap? or each piece of gear has its stats cap?
Its kinda confusing lol :\

When it comes to melds. You can only put so much of one stat in it. once you hit the cap. You can't put anymore of that stat into it.

Say a gear has 20 perception and has a cap of 25. If you put a T4 Perception materia in (+6) It will only allow you to add the 5 to hit cap and that last point will be lost.

[Reika]

Matsume is most correct. I will add to it that a HQ Hamlet hat, you will only need 1 T4 and 1 t3 perception materia to cap its perception, while a NQ one you would need 3 t4. I know this, because I tripple melded perceptions onto my fisher and botanist hats and double perception'd and single gathering'd my HQ miners hat. You can only put 4 points of gathering into any of them btw, and 0 CP.

For gathering and crafting gear at least, the stat cap is not reached simply by HQ'ing them. They all have their own stat caps and you have to try to put materia into them to see what they are. But, you will save a great number of materia by melding HQ versions.

I haven't tried, but they probably changed the stat caps on battle gear to be like this too, but I spent b4 melding my gathering and crafting gear

Also, I have enough perception as miner to get 2% on unspoiled mats, but I don't think its too far over 350.

[Tiago]

When it comes to melds. You can only put so much of one stat in it. once you hit the cap. You can't put anymore of that stat into it.

Say a gear has 20 perception and has a cap of 25. If you put a T4 Perception materia in (+6) It will only allow you to add the 5 to hit cap and that last point will be lost.

Thanks for the explanation ^^
So the cap is gear~wise, and we do not lose points like i was thinking (X gear has 20 perception, with a cap of 25... i though if i melded a Tier IV (+6 Perception) to it i whould end up with 24 (21-22-23-24-25-24) and os i was kinda confused lol. But now it makes more sense that once it hits the cap, it will go not below nor past it.

[Matsume]

Matsume is most correct. I will add to it that a HQ Hamlet hat, you will only need 1 T4 and 1 t3 perception materia to cap its perception, while a NQ one you would need 3 t4. I know this, because I tripple melded perceptions onto my fisher and botanist hats and double perception'd and single gathering'd my HQ miners hat. You can only put 4 points of gathering into any of them btw, and 0 CP.

For gathering and crafting gear at least, the stat cap is not reached simply by HQ'ing them. They all have their own stat caps and you have to try to put materia into them to see what they are. But, you will save a great number of materia by melding HQ versions.

I haven't tried, but they probably changed the stat caps on battle gear to be like this too, but I spent b4 melding my gathering and crafting gear

Also, I have enough perception as miner to get 2% on unspoiled mats, but I don't think its too far over 350.

Reika is mostly right and I would sooner take her (his?) word over any other on this forum,

However, I just want to point out that even adding 3 T4 materia to NQ hat you will be ONE perception short of the cap (which isn't much) and if what you say is true about HQ (only needing +10 to cap) then that alone is even more incentive for a HQ set. I would rather reach the cap in 2 melds than 4 =P

Strange, though I cannot personally confirm this yet, I was informed by a gatherer with 350 perception that their base HQ remained at 1%. I must have had 334 perception or so on my miner pefore servers went down and I did not notice any increase above 1%. Please, let me know tonight if you can re-confirm this.

[Astropop]

Hello Yall,

The route I went was as follows:

Got my perception to 320 for the 1% chance. Got my GP to 600 for the ability to clear the weeds and the +30% HQ chance skill to give myself an 80% chance to gather each attempt at 31% chance for HQ. It came out to roughly 1-2 HQ gathers per node.

I also tried the 100% gather chance route w/ the skill that lets you get an automatic 100% HQ gather after the chain 4.

The difference was that at 31% i did not ever come across a time I didn't get atleast one HQ result, and many times I would get 2 HQ's. A few times I managed to get 3x HQ. So it became evident to me that the higher HQ % chance was the route that seemed to make the most sense to me.

[Astropop]

I had all HQ gear from 1.0 including the HQ Dordre chest peice. I managed to quickly 5 meld it in phase four to my shocked surprise. I was only able to put +14 perception on it if I recall correctly, and put GP into it for the final 2 materia's. I also put as much perception as my jewelry would take due to the thought that I would be using the same Jewelry on my other gathering class, and it would result in less total materia required. I managed to get both MIN and BOT to 320 / 600 to use the above strat. The only thing I was unable to test before the 3102 kicked in was how much higher of a % food would give if I used food to boost gathering. I doubt it would kick the 80% chance much higher than 1-5% total however based on the effects perception food managed to increase. All in all, I believe the 320 / 600 is a very strong approach.

[Reika]

Now I can say I have 345 of both Gathering and Perception and get 2% hq chance on unspoiled stuffs as miner.