Healers and gearing up for end game

[enthrop]

As others have said, healers are not as gear dependent for AK, provided you have a party who doesn't get hit by everything. DO at the very least buy level 48-50 items to upgrade anything you have that's behind (ex ring, necklace, wrist, belt, earring).. at least on my server, these items are relatively cheap. Better yet, you'll make the money back when you convert them later. I successfully have healed AK many times in AF + White Accessories + Ifrit's Cane.

I do suggest you buy the DL Wrist early on though. AK doesn't drop wrist gear, so that'll be a good upgrade.

[enthrop]

Also, several quick off top of head for AK..
Stoneskin tank before pull trash, wait on regen. Adds will peel to you otherwise. (True with any dungeon, but somehow more prevalent here).
1st Boss: Medica2 works very well after the AOEs.
2nd Boss (Demon Wall): Be very careful about what direction you are facing when the wall pushes you backwards (Repel). I like to use regen very liberally during this might, and medica2 after the bees come out. Regening after a repel works very well for me, and has often left me time to DPS as well!
3rd Boss: I like to regen the guy who gets hit with line as he's running out. Most importantly though, Ensuna the tank when he gets the debuff (forget the name). Then drop a Cure2 on him after ensuna. If you have a smart group, there's actually not too much party healing to do here.

Remember that you have a MP refresh ability - use it early if you're in doubt of your MP pool due to low piety.

[Masta]

first time I healed ak, I had the GC wand, a GC shield, Bard GC earrings, Blm GC ring so I could get the 4set bonus on wand, also the 2 set bonus on the blm ring was spell speed. The bard rings had no stats for a caster but I needed a 4th piece for my set bonus. I had the quest AF gear. Then out of my belt, neck, ring, the highest ilvl was 36 and went down from there(just brayflox gear or lower). Of course, people would get mad if they examined me. But after a successful completion all you gotta do is #winning and be about your way. After a few runs you should get some ak drops and with each upgrade it gets easier. AK isn't hard to heal tho there are times when your like geez this blows. I'm just saying it can be done in mediocre gear and anything above that is a bonus. People get to caught up on "being geared" and fail to realize in the vanilla stages everything is just handed on a silver platter. 80% of the time is not a gear issue its a player movement/awareness/reaction time issue.

[Nailkita]

Also, several quick off top of head for AK..
snip~
3rd Boss: I like to regen the guy who gets hit with line as he's running out. Most importantly though, Ensuna the tank when he gets the debuff (forget the name). Then drop a Cure2 on him after ensuna. If you have a smart group, there's actually not too much party healing to do here.

Remember that you have a MP refresh ability - use it early if you're in doubt of your MP pool due to low piety.

Just a point on that I wasn't told about the debuff (and didn't read up before going to the instance - baddie) What the debuff is on the last boss is Disease, you can waste a lot of MP trying to heal up the tank since Disease lowers the amount that the heals will do, so as they said Esuna then Heal. Luckily I had the opportunity to read the debuff for a moment, since I noticed my heals were being weak, and from then on Esuna'd before healing.

[Urthdigger]

Until then, if you don't have GC either, I would buy the weapon that is requested of you from the Relic weapon quest (Maddening something). Do NOT turn it in right away: feel free to USE it for a bit, until you get a better weapon. Even more so if you meld'd some quicktongue 3 materia to it. The next steps to the quest require you to do content that you want to be more geared for, so there's no rush to turn in the weapon.

Madman's Whispering Rod. If HQed, it's on the same tier as a number of item drops like Chiran Zabran's Tempest, while relying a lot less on random drops to smile on you. On a related note, armorwise you can get an upgrade over artifact armor via crafting. The "Militia/Imperial" items are item level 55, and for white mage it'd be as follows:

Head: Imperial Operative Hat
Body: Imperial Operative Dalmatica
Hands: Militia Ringbands
Legs: Militia Tights
Feet: Militia Duckbills
Waist: Militia Belt
Earring: Militia Earrings

If HQed, all should be an upgrade over your AF, minus potentially the body. Though, you can also add materia to it. And speaking of materia, one advantage of this set is that once it's replaced, you can convert it into high level materia. Actually, if you know folks who can easily craft it (Or level up the crafts yourself), you could use it as a "spiritbind" set when facing lesser foes as a money making option even once you have better gear.

[Azuvidexus]

Thanks for all the feedback so far! Keep it coming!

I don't get this: to get the next rank in my GC, have access to the L50 weapons and raise the cap to 50k Seals, I need to clear Amdapor Keep (AK)? Isn't that place a gear-check instance? /headache

[Urthdigger]

As has been said, there are options. You can snag the level 55 crafted stuff. You could run Wanderer's Palace for item level 55 weapons and armor (Darklight Kple Kple for weapon, Warlock's set for armor). You could run lesser dungeons like Darkhold, Wanderer's Palace, and Castrum Meridianum enough times to get enough philosophy stones for darklight armor.

Or, with all likelihood, item level 50+ items will probably be sufficient for AK. Folks may not like you having low gear, but you know folks have to start somewhere.

[Azuvidexus]

What is "AF" gear?

[Kyomih]

What is "AF" gear?

Artifact Gear - the one you get with your jobs specific look. The blue set you get automatically through your job quests (45 for all pieces but chest which you get at lvl 50).
Can be improved into AF2 with improved stats later.

[Azuvidexus]

About Darklight, it's usually better to start with accessories or armor?

I do suggest you buy the DL Wrist early on though. AK doesn't drop wrist gear, so that'll be a good upgrade.

You mean the "hands" armor?