[cidbahamut]

I was going through the AH last night looking for some new pants since I've grown tired of running around in a Beetle Subligar. One particular item caught my eye: Combat Caster's Slacks.

Recently I've been doing solo stuff on my RDM rather than partying, so +5 evasion and a solid defense boost looked pretty appealing to me, especially given my budget(read:"lack of gil"). I know full well this piece won't be helping my party out, but for running around on my own it looked like a sweet deal.
I don't really have the gil to fund a ninja subjob at the moment so I'm thinking +evasion is a good substitute for now.

There are two questions I have now.

1. How important is Evasion for soloing things?

2. As a level 41 Red Mage are there better <leg> pieces for soloing that I overlooked?

[ShepardG]

wellllll I'll say that evasion is great for soloing. importance scale.... 7/10, but here's the thing.

You want to be good at this game? you want to solo effectivly? would you like to increase your exp an hour?

Macros
At 41 you have refresh, and your elemental staves are right around the corner. You might not be using them in a solo situation where you don't want to be losing your TP with weapon swaps, but in parties you need to get into the habit of swaping gear based on which spell your casting. It's imperative to get the most out of every cast, and the only way to do this is with gear swaps.

Soloing, you can still swap gear to get the most of your cast, just make sure you don't change your main or your ranged and you'll keep your TP. I really think people get worked up about the "chore" of writing macros, and it's really not that difficult. I wrote 20 new macros of just gear swaps with a few spells thrown in, in under 15minutes.

I can't stress learning how to play FFXI like this enough. You take a good player who dosen't gear swap and a good player who does, and the one who does looks like a champ 99% of the time in comparison to the one who doesn't.

This goes back to your OP, you'll want to start looking at an idle set. With evasion+ gear, and spell interuption rate gear. Swap in MND for buffs and INT for nukes. Enfeebles you'll have to play around with, because INT helps them land, but MND improves their potency. (a good balance based on consistently succesful casts is the way to go)
Hope this helps.

[Armando]

Enfeebles you'll have to play around with, because INT helps them land, but MND improves their potency.

Most enfeebles are based solely on either INT or MND.

Evasion is handy when solo, but its importance depends on the situation. It's less important against weak things if you're already at the point where Phalanx and Stoneskin will reduce the mob's damage to near-zero. It's a lot more important when going /NIN and fighting things that can hit you fairly hard. Since I doubt you'll be missing out on anything major, yes, CC Slacks would be desirable.

While we're at it if you're using a Buckler or any similarly small shield (or a bone type) then stop. They suck. Stick to Size 2 shields (big round ones) until you hit 48 and can move up to Size 3 (Hard Shield.)

[cidbahamut]

I'm well aware of how important macros are, as I'm working on getting enough gil to get some gobbie bags and gear to fill said gobbie bags.
I wasn't really planning on fulltiming CC Slacks in a party, since I also threw the other half of my gil at Baron's Slops. I figured it was time to start building that hMP set.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

While we're at it if you're using a Buckler or any similarly small shield (or a bone type) then stop. They suck. Stick to Size 2 shields (big round ones) until you hit 48 and can move up to Size 3 (Hard Shield.)

Don't you listen to him, Viking Shield, you're still tops til I get a Tatami.

Then again, BST doesn't have great shield skill anyway, I trust my Gothics to proc more than shield blocks.

[Armando]

A soloing BST isn't under attack as often as a soloing RDM >_> Nor is Attack as critically important thanks to Enspells and Dia II.