Absurd Yoshi Absurd...

[Shiyo]

Crafted gloves, helm, and boots are my best in slot for scholar. Melded + HQed is better than even ilvl90 stuff, because of the useless stats on my af2(determ, spell speed is ok crit is best though). Crafted gear is going to be BIS for a lot of classes because you can customize to the stats to fit your need.

[Sakasa]

For tanks the crafted gear when hq I believe matches defense totals of their Darklight counter parts because for the Milita gear i55 matches your AF1 in both defense and a stat by stat basis except for one thing materia which will actually be made to match the af or surpass it in certain instances because the skills not present share the same cap as they do on the AF. Like for instance if you have high enough materia putting mnd on pld gear to help their heals will be feasable as it possible to max out every normally used stat. If the same is true then the gear is actually very on par with darklight as long as it is HQed. Rose gold accessories for instance when hq trump darklights. So yes that makes the fact that getting them and having a failure rate ,because not hq is a fail, hard for sure.

But if you think it is bad now if i80 gear follows this trend when crystal tower drops the cost for those components will be for the hardest of hardcore. Is your body ready?