Balancing jobs with endgame gear

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I've had countless threads where I'm undecided on additional jobs for my characters. I've been pretty successful with Omgwtfbbqkitten since RNG and COR are incredibly compatible jobs from start to finish.

I think I should continue that train of thought. You can pick up a lot of R/E in endgame, which leads to an immense clutter in terms of inventory, and since I'm so consumable-oriented, that's something I don't need. Another thing is I'd prefer just to avoid ground HNMs entirely, as this point COR and RNG need nothing from them and what comes from Cerberus is purely lol. Behemoth Rings? I can buy those.

I'm looking at SAM and a lot of the God gear lines up well and any gear I would use at varying levels could be handed down to Foobar's BST later on. SAM is a very nice sub for RNG, too. So there's good reasons to look at that, plus I enjoy what I've played of SAM this far.

COR and RNG gear lend well to starting out as THF, but at high level the needs of THF are very different. MNK could also be good for Kitten, but Black Belt entails all three kings. And how annoying Brown Belt is to get, it doesn't help matters, though you can aslo BCNM for those.

NIN... consumables. I want a tank job, but I spend enough on RNG and COR, I don't want to be constantly pennyless at endgame levels. PLD is cheaper and I do have a Joyuse. The good Wyrmal Gear is all sky and I do some of that for COR and RNG already.

I really want to WAR tank... but God forbid WAR actually tank in this game. SE screwed WAR tanking the day NIN was added. I'd have to make a static just to tank as WAR. Much WAR v2 seems to go to waste on WARs that don't want to tank and that's what its for. Oh and that Ridill thing, but I've known WARs that get outdamaged with with one, so maybe that's not such a big deal.

So PLD would be most compatible tank for Kitten overall, though the thought of doing Taru PLD is very interesting to me. Foobar has less clutter to deal with as it stands right now. He'd need sky gear for BST. I have no interest in doing much for BRD other than supporting my LS as needed, but having god gear transfer over from BST would be a bonus, though its really just Osode that's best there for BRD.

Taru PLD is disadvantaged at endgame, but it could just be for the sake of fun and utility.

Additional interests outside of kittens jobs are PUP and THF. Addtional interest for Foobar are BLU and DRG. DRG is already at 60, I can't see a reason not to level it. There's Limbus gear that crosses over BLU, PLD and DRG. That could leave incentive to do THF on Foobar, too.

Its a lot to think about, perhaps someone with some experience in this endgame juggling act could give me some advice. Probably would be easier if I was just a mage, but I just can't stand that.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Balancing jobs with endgame gear

From my experience WAR/NIN and WAR/MNK are both capable tanks if played as tanks. The main problem is the mindset created by NIN; few WARs actually take into consideration things like maximizing def, prioritizing VIT over STR, bringing def food, etc., and then when tanking in such conditions goes sour, come quickly to the conclusion that WAR can't and shouldn't tank.

I have taken the opportunity to tank as WAR when there wasn't already a NIN or PLD in the party, and advertise my willingness to do so in my search comment. I've even quit a party in disgust because I was the ONLY tank-capable party member and the party leader kept telling me to stop voking the mob so the PL would keep hate.

That all said, I rarely invite WARs to tank... it is pretty much an act of desperation. This is because I have gotten extremely sick of the reaction of most WARs when asked to tank, and the complete lack of preparation of many of those who do accept the role when asked. I probably would consider a WAR tank who has {meat} {Shield} OK or somesuch in their search comment (the WAR-with-useful-search-comment -- myth, or merely extinct? heh...).

Endgame is a different matter, of course; my high-level friends actually make their own merit parties just so that they can do traditional xp setups (and often end up with very grateful PLD tanks). WAR would definitely be DD in your usual merit party as I understand the situation these days.

There's a fair bit of melee gear that's generically useful for most or all melees and a fair bit of mage gear that's generically useful for most mages. I can't speak to the highest level stuff, but I have several pieces of gear that see use across the board for most of my jobs:

Kumei:
Bounding Boots - First piece of OMG-type gear. This is still useful for THF in xp at 60, though I tend to use Rogue's Poullaines when I'm not in an xp party. The wide range of melee jobs that can use these, the low level, and the lack of much other really great foot gear has made this the standard melee foot gear from 7-29 (where Wonder Clomps become available) for most of my jobs; the only exceptions are a job that can't use them (think I borrowed equip off another character for this) and at 25 WAR (Greaves +1) and NIN (Federation Kyahan). DEX and AGI boosts can be useful for a few different things, even though the difference is most notable with THF and NIN. Even when these stat boosts aren't too useful, this is a capable equipment which is 'good enough' in many situations where your alternatives have no boosts and simply an extra point or two of def. No need to bother if you don't need the boosts for some job, but if you've got it, you may as well use it.

Royal Footman's/Kingdom Gloves, Legionnaire's Mittens - Good melee gloves, available to a wide range of jobs. I started with the Legionnaire's Mittens since Kumei had easy access to them; the only difference between L. Mittens and R.F. Gloves is that MNK can only wear the former and RNG can only wear the latter, so I sold the Legionnaire's Mittens and bought the Royal Footman's Gloves when I got RNG to 10. Later I sold R.F.Gloves and got Kingdom. The Attack +6 is useful and will last a good while before you start getting better gear; I tend to replace them at 27 with Wonder Mitts, but that's a matter of balancing needs even if your RSE is similarly useful.

Compound Eye Circlet - Easy to come by, and good for the jobs that can use it. You'll need alternatives sometimes, but it's worth consideration for most low-level melee.

Empress Hairpin - Another OMG-type equip for THF and NIN, but a decent bet for a lot of jobs. Unless you're a tank, there's not a whole lot of head gear that does anything for you in these levels, so I usually put most jobs on this when they're high enough.

Battle Gloves - An honorable mention here, many people find these to be fairly useful, but for my part I favor Kingdom Gloves. Note that PUP can use Battle Gloves and can't use Kingdom Gloves. Other than that, see the section below on Koren.

Republic Subligar - A few melee jobs can't wear this. Sucks for them. Everything else will be using this for a long time. Excellent gear.

RSE - This will depend heavily on what race you are, but I bring it up because usually a piece of RSE is either not worth it at all, or is useful for a number of jobs; note in particular all jobs can wear any RSE. For Tarutaru, I personally find that there are much better options for body and legs, so I only bother to get two pieces of RSE: Wonder Mitts and Wonder Clomps. Both of these raise one of a taru melee's main deficiencies: STR. They are reasonably comparable to equipment of their type and level, and at the very least make an excellent fallback for when you don't have a piece of must-have gear staring at you.

Koren:
Mage gear generally - Most gear a mage will end up wearing throughout their early career will be the only piece of gear that level they can wear, and sufficiently generic that any other mage job would also be wearing it. The main split in terms of boosts is INT vs. MND: White mage really only needs much MND, Black mage really only needs much INT. Red mage needs both, however, and most other mages are also not going to be particularly clear cut here. All mages can benefit from +MP, though, and a fair bit of equipment provides boosts to both INT and MND.

Pilgrim's Wand - Carrying an hMP+2 boost, this wand is basically of use from level 10 to level 50 as a swap-in for resting.

Battle Gloves - Worth a special mention here because of the number of mage jobs that can wear this melee-ish equipment. This is fairly useful a soloing mage who is actually doing melee rather than using avatar-melee, nukes, or both to take down their foe. If you want to try out hammer-melee as a WHM, these may be worth a look.

I can't speak beyond my levels, but as someone who's made at least a little progress in a few different jobs, I hope this is of some use to those looking to reuse equipment.

[Tirrock]

Re: Balancing jobs with endgame gear

I can see your problem. With 3 jobs at 75 and gear for a bunch of lower level jobs (usually 2 of those at a time, rest muled), my inventory weeps. It's especially bad when I get the urge to play RNG or BRD.

Since you can't really share much of your RNG/COR gear with any other jobs, it's a good idea to think about what you're going to use the next job you level for.

With my MNK, I only have gear for gaining merit points, because I don't fight high level NMs on it. (Er...unless you count that adamantoise that destroyed me in nyzul isle.) It saves me a lot of gear space that I would have had to spend on MND gear or evasion gear for /NIN tanking.

Some jobs are also inventory space killers. RDM, THF, BRD, and any job that uses consumables to hurt things always have me at near-full/full inventory/safe/locker/storage. WAR would probably would kill my gear too, if I had VIT/DEF gear.

If you can find space for another job, you may want to consider what works with those jobs too. You mentioned wanting a tank job... So if you take up THF, you could use a healthy amount of that gear for NIN. If you get damage dealing gear for NIN, it works well on SAM (or really...any job that can use haubergeon, SAM can just use o.kotes).

Since you seem to be doing sky gods... I'd recommend NIN or SAM. Byakko shorts are awesome. Shura haidate is definitely not without its charm (and a very solid piece for SAM). Shura togi is a great melee piece for all the jobs that can wear it.

I can't really give advice for not going broke while leveling NIN though. SAM will probably use less inventory space and cost less money than NIN, but it's not as flexible either. Depending on how much rare/ex gear you have, you may have to just have gear for 2 of the jobs ready at once, and have some of the other job's stuff muled away.

[Vyuru]

Re: Balancing jobs with endgame gear

Out of curiosity, would it be possible to play samurai as a tank now with Seigan and Third Eye?

Keep in mind that you could go Joyuse + axe as a warrior if you really wanted the extra tp gain.

It is kinda hard, ninja is expensive, but most/all sam gear can be worn by ninjas. Most pld gear can be worn by warriors, and so on.

I think a Gaxe, maybe even just Axe using war/sam would be very interesting, but you wouldn't get Hasso until lvl 50, which is a ways out there.

I agree that you are unlikely to be able to tank as war, most parties don't take everything into consideration, proper party support/healing, the right mobs to fight, because obviously you aren't going to want to tank spiders right when you first can exp in the Quicksand Caves.

I think I'd be more inclined to lvl either war or sam, and then perhaps let that determine what tank job I would like to exp, since some of the gear is interchangeable.

Of course I don't really care for blink tanking anyway, so I'd be learning towards pld from the start, so /shrug.

[Akashimo]

Re: Balancing jobs with endgame gear

Depending how well you balance out DD gear and SATA/WS gear for THF, it can really eat up inv space during end game. Wasn't until the 60's I started working on a DD and SATA set since until then most gear was just good for both. Also, seeing how you have cor and rng leveled, marksmanship would work great for you on thf, and most bolts are pretty cheap even in quivers. Though, I highly recommend also, work on SJ specific gear and food combos to work with /war, /drg, /sam, /nin, /rng and /cor. Granted, I haven't leveled off rng or cor to use actively as a sub, but messing around just to see the marksmanship ws, it can be pretty fun.

War, ehh, the TP burn mind set, I highly do hope you can make a static to play as a tank. Recently, just leveling war to finish off as a sub on nekoai,(34 atm), no nin yet, and majority of my skills are under leveled, (GA, Scythe, GS, marksmanship, shield, dagger, sword) but I have been able to hold hate using axe + shield, until these blms go chain nuke crazy making me having to use boost and provoke every 15/30 secs -.-; to just hold it off since a dead member means even slower kills. Don't forget eva gear to add to def if you can.

PLD, no real experience leveling it, so gl with that if you choose to level it.
Same thing with SAM, just because it seems so slow despite being able to get TP like crazy and mini tanking with Seigan + third eye. BLU and PUP, no comment.

[Tirrock]

Re: Balancing jobs with endgame gear

I don't feel that a SAM could efficently tank in most exp parties, short of those melee burn style parties where the monsters are usually no higher than VT and almost everybody is subbing NIN. Seigan is too random for the SAM to be able to tank full time. Two SAM/WARs though...

[Amele]

Re: Balancing jobs with endgame gear

I don't feel that a SAM could efficently tank in most exp parties, short of those melee burn style parties where the monsters are usually no higher than VT and almost everybody is subbing NIN. Seigan is too random for the SAM to be able to tank full time. Two SAM/WARs though...

seigan is basically as efficient as Utsusemi: Ichi (in fact, against mobs with several multihit TP moves or multiple aoe's, Seigan can even out perform Utsusemi) so pre 74 I'd put sam/war up against war/nin in terms of efficiency and tank-capability (allowing of course that the gear sets for each would be rather different)

I've successfully solo tanked as high as 48 samurai and dual tanked with a war/nin backup successfully at 52, in all cases using a normal (if slightly high end) sam/war gear setup. beetles and bats in both cases. antica gave me trouble but mostly because the defense is just too high to make weaponskills a reliable hate gain method - ninjas and war/nins have issues with antica hate too.

the new changes to samurai have brought the job in line with mid-level warrior in terms of tanking capability, as a tank that generates and maintains hate primarily through damage.

how this will translate to 74-75 when all blink tanks have two blink abilities to work with, except for samurai who will still have one, will depend alot on just how much saotome haidate improves third eye. (Third eye recast reduction might also be worth looking into for dedicated tanking, if in fact the reduction applies while seigan is up)