Endgame Progression, Elitism and You

[Hachiko]

It depends on your class.

I would say if you were to average up the ilvl of every non weapon item it's something like:

Ifrit = ilvl 50 average ilvl 44 weapon
Garuda = ilvl 60 average ilvl 49 weapon (Tank) or ilvl 55 Weapon (DPS)
Titan = ilvl 65 average* ilvl 60 weapon

*On Titan, DPS and Heals have to have over 3300 health, so that means that that it's better to upgrade Darklight main pieces, and rely on offset (AK accessories) than the other way around, as that gives more of an HP buffer.

Garuda really doesn't require more than AF unless you're the main tank.

Are you kidding? Main tanking Garuda doesn't even do that much damage. Particularly as a PLD tank you don't need that much because you only have to worry about damage when adds are out, and then you can just pop cooldowns and be fine. The other demands on the tank are 100% positional.

It's far more demanding on DPS and to a lesser extent healers. Garuda is basically impossible without 4 DPS that know what they're doing and have the gear to take the adds down (and the feathers, to a lesser extent). If you cant down both adds in time, it's basically a party wipe, in addition to taking much much longer due to the fact that Garuda will heal for way too much health. Trying to do Garuda with 4 dps less than 100/sec will just result in failure after failure.