Gear, which to use?

[Vyren]

Okay, right now I'm 36, I'm slightly worried about the 50's costing me a bundle, I was wondering which gear people suggest getting and stuff. I have Austeres body and shoes, but I'm gonna stick with mithra RSE pants (+MND and 32MP I think) till my AF pants, which I think you use for a long time. I know elemental staves are essential, so I'm working on getting those too. Is it worth me getting the Austeres hat, or is it skippable till my AF horn. I also have carby mitts, so nothing is replacing them. Keep in mind, I speed through levels, like, 2-4 levels a day so if you think it's worth me getting an austeres peice I don't have, don't bother if my AF is better. XD

I also have electrum rings/hairpin for 40, and a himmelstock, I was contemplating an Ether ring, but seriously, is 300k worth the +10 MP between that and the electrum ring I already have? As for earrings I have energy+1, so.. +5MP on each I think, is there anything I should get instead?

[Susurrus]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Dunno if its much help, but here's my gear for my level 63 SMN:

Main: Elemental Staves (6HQ, 2NQ atm)
Head: Austere Hat
Neck: Star Necklace
Earring: Antivenom Earring
Earring: Enhancing Earring
Body: Austere Robe
Hands: Evoker's Bracers (Carbuncle Mitts macro'd into Carbuncle Macro)
Ring: Tamas Ring
Ring: Electrum Ring
Back: Aurora Mantle
Waist: Powerful Rope
Legs: Evoker's Spats
Feet: Evoker's Pigaches


At 68 I plan for Blue Cape, 70 Fenrir's Torque, 71 Evoker's Ring (replacing Electrub) & Hierarch Belt, 72 Magnetic Earring (Replacing Enhancing), and at 74 I am planning to get Evoker's Pigaches +1.

[Palom_FF]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Austere hat is the one piece you don't want to pass up. It will last you just about forever.

[Vyren]

Re: Gear, which to use?

^ ^ That actually helped me alot, thank you. I didn't think about macroing my mitts into carby macro, I fingured I'd just use them till 75 XD So I'll buy me an austeres hat. Any more suggestions are welcome.

[SharMarali]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Yep, you definately don't want to use the AF horn over the austere hat. I dunno about other servers, but the austere hat is ridiculously cheap on Ramuh (20k last I checked) and gives you blood pact ability delay -2. All the horn does is give you a few MP.

The only head pieces that are BETTER for SMN, in my opinion, are the HQ version of the austere hat (which is almost 5 million gil on Ramuh and I'm way too lazy to make that much gil for one extra second off my timer) or the AF2 horn, which is incredibly, incredibly rare. I've been doing Dynamis for over a year with the same linkshell and we've yet to see that horn drop.

So in conclusion, definately buy the austere hat. It looks ridiculous but it's a great piece of equipment. ^^

[Kitalrez]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Yeah, the thing to realize about our AF was that it was designed about the same time as RoZ was. Which means that it's from a time when Spirits not Avatars were our bread and butter summons. This is why you see a lot of -avatar enmity on them. On a spirit, major disparities in it's aggro level vs. yours puts it in "berserk" casting mode faster. On an avatar, this stat just gets you killed faster. Since RoZ came in, the perpetuation costs between avatars and spirits got switched, making avatars cheaper, and rendering a lot of our AF obsolete or situational at best.

You'll want mainly the boots and pants, as you'll use these pretty much all the way to 75. Gloves are useful, but most of us swap them around for carby mitts when soloing. As far as Austere gear goes, the only two pieces you absolutely have to have are hat and robe. You'll be replacing robe around the early 60s with Vermy if you go that route, or you can keep it around til Yinyang at 72, (or longer because this camp really blows goats). As SharMarali mentioned, you're gonna be hanging onto that hat for ages.

I'm using a similar setup to Susurrus at 70 SMN, with the exception of a Peace Ring instead of Tamas (still stuck on Tenzen and Ark Angels), which is -10 hp/+10mp -1 enmity. I also have a pair of bat earrings instead of his enhancing, (I do a lot of WHM soloing too... I Beastmen PLDs), they're a bit cheaper if higher level. I also use Gramary Cape instead of Aurora Mantle, you can make your own choice here, I don't need the MP on taru and tend to get hit with a lot of spells and AEs, so it helps. Star Necklace is great, hard to quest, but it'll last you til Fenrir Torque easily.

[Vyren]

Re: Gear, which to use?

^ ^ Thank you for the great advice, I'll deffinatly get the hat, and work on from there. I'll be doing alot of BCNM's when I hit 40 with a friend of mine, so hopefully some PC's drop and I can get me some nice gear.

[Xylaa]

Re: Gear, which to use?

I'd also think about getting Austere Cuffs, if you can afford them. Carbuncle Mitts only help when Carbuncle is out, and the artifact bracers aren't very good in most situations. Austere cuffs take off a little of the bloodpact timer, so if they're aren't too expensive I'd get them.

I used to always carry around the full summoner artifact set all the time. I love how it looks, and if I wasn't doing something with avatars and spirits like exp parties, I'd wear it everywhere. Now I have YY robe and relic bracers and spats, so I wear them.

Also, if you go with vermy cloak at 59, with a Light staff, you'll only get refresh from 59-62. At 63, Carbuncle's cost goes up by 1. So unless you have the gil for both vermy cloak and Apollo's staff, I wouldn't bother with it. That's vermy's only advantage for summoner.

[Vyren]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Oh? Well I'll be doing alot of BCNM's when I hit 40 today, with a NIN friend, and any PC's that drop I get a split of, so you never know, I might be able to get both. xD And I totally agree about the summoner AF, I plan to wear it when not in exp parties. There's just something about it I love. As for the cuffs, I'll take a look at the prices, I guess I was only wearing carby mitts all the time to show them off, since they're a bitch to get. XD

Oh, I have another question. MND, or +MP. I've heard the argument a few times, and right now I have MND gear mainly because I can't use electrum rings for 2 levels, but which should I invest in for the long term?

[Shirai]

Re: Gear, which to use?

I'd say go for a mix of MP/MND for the moment.
In the future I would suggest to stay away from the -HP items though, for now the electrum set will do you very good.

Like the rest sais at level 50 do not pass up on at least the Austere robe and Hat.
They can both last you forever (The robe at least until you get your Yinyang, even then it's still a very good piece.).

Get the full set of Elemental staves (doesn't really need to be HQ, see those as a future investment.)
The HQ Elemental staves really help when you solo a lot mostly, or maybe when SE implements new updates worthy of us keeping avatars out.

For the rest, it's a bit of a mix between AF and Austere.
I myself never unequiped Carby mitts until I got the AFv2.

[SharMarali]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Also, if you go with vermy cloak at 59, with a Light staff, you'll only get refresh from 59-62. At 63, Carbuncle's cost goes up by 1. So unless you have the gil for both vermy cloak and Apollo's staff, I wouldn't bother with it. That's vermy's only advantage for summoner.

Slightly disagree.

I started using vermillion at 59, partially because of the "regaining MP with buncle out" thing, but PRIMARILY because it gave me refresh during all intervals in a PT when I did NOT have an avatar out.

I know 1 MP / 3 sec doesn't seem like a lot, really. But let's say you're in a PT for 3 hours and you have a pet out 50% of the time (that's actually a bit more than I generally keep pets out when I'm in an exp PT, but it makes the math easier). So 3 hours = 180 minutes = 10,800 seconds. 50% of that is 5,400 seconds. Divided by 3, since you get 1 MP every THREE seconds, and over the course of the PT, you get an additional 1800 MP from the cloak. That's the equivalent of resting from zero to full 1.5-2 times, depending on your race and how much MP you have. If you use your avatar less than 50% of the time, you're talking about even more MP. I think MOST SMNs do have pets out less than 50% of the time in a standard leveling PT, though I certainly don't encourage SMNs to stand around without summoning at all.

Eventually though, I wound up going to a setup where I ONLY used vermillion when I did not have a pet out, swapping to austere body & head when I did. Best of both worlds - Refresh with no pet and a few seconds off your blood pact timer as well. I kept this combo until I was able to get a yinyang, which is really only SLIGHTLY better than using both the austere body/hat AND the vermillion for swapping. The +enmity for your pet is the biggest difference between the two setups. Yes, there are a couple of other differences too, not to mention freeing up a precious, precious inventory slot. But that's the biggest one.

Now remember, I'm talking about IDEAL equipment setups here. Not everybody is going to have a means to make enough gil to afford a vermillion, and that's OKAY. You won't be a bad summoner because you don't have it, no matter what anybody in the game, friend or otherwise, might try to tell you.

There are very few pieces of equipment in this game that are "mandatory" and the vermillion cloak is CERTAINLY not one of them. There is NO piece of gear that costs millions and millions of gil that you NEED to have to be effective at ANY job. The closest thing to it would be scorpion harness for ninja, but I have seen half a dozen ninjas who were amazing tanks and DIDN'T use it.

Honestly, if you're going to only use ONE or the OTHER and not both, the Austere body & hat is a BETTER combination than the vermillion.

[Xylaa]

Re: Gear, which to use?

There's two ways of looking at it, I saw it as 20 MP per minute for 9 million gil. Since summoner was my first job, I didn't have nearly that much to spend on 20 MP per minute.

I was suggesting not bothering with it because it seems to be Vyren's first job leveling to 75. Although that is a slight advantage, unless you have a lot of gil, it's no where near good enough to buy for summoners in my opinion.

[SharMarali]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Let me just quote myself here to address that.

Now remember, I'm talking about IDEAL equipment setups here. Not everybody is going to have a means to make enough gil to afford a vermillion, and that's OKAY. You won't be a bad summoner because you don't have it, no matter what anybody in the game, friend or otherwise, might try to tell you.
There are very few pieces of equipment in this game that are "mandatory" and the vermillion cloak is CERTAINLY not one of them. There is NO piece of gear that costs millions and millions of gil that you NEED to have to be effective at ANY job.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent.

Oh. Yeah. Sorry.

Anyway, I agree with you that it's senseless to bust your hump for a vermillion cloak if you don't have a steady income source. I'm not one of those weird elitist "everyone must use HQ equipment" people, nor do I think one needs to spend millions of gil to be effective at any job. I was only disagreeing with the point that "the only advantage" for vermillion is to regenerate MP with buncle out.

[Icemage]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Something to note: While you might be gaining 2-4 levels a day now at level 36ish, you're going to slam on the brakes once you hit 50. Limit breaks, AF quests, and greatly increased XP to next level will combine to slow you to a crawl for a while since is your first job through - I'd be surprised if you averaged better than 1 level per day in the 50s range, possibly less.


Icemage

[Vyren]

Re: Gear, which to use?

Where this WILL be my first job to 75, I have jobs at 60, 56, 55, 45 and so on, XD Even at 55 I was getting 2-3 levels a day. I believe I got 55-60 in two days, but I'm a weird player. :3

I think I'm going to skip the austeres mitts because where the hat was only 50k on Kujata, the gloves are 300k, and that's 300k I could do without spending. I only need 1 more elemental staff, and I think I'll wait till I have everything neceserry(sp) before I start looking at a vermy. I'll be doing alot of BCNM's with some friends though, they're letting me get a split of peacock charm if it drops SoOooOo one split = Enough for 3/4's of a Vermy. XD If I get two splits, that's almost all my SMN gear + Vermy. Hopefully I'll get lucky.

'Nother question too, earrings? D: I'm using energy earring+1 and an enhancing earring, I was thinking of getting two Geist when I get money but is there anything better I could get?