Your thoughts on gear

[Jinxie]

I recently farmed enough gil to buy Phalanx on my server (200K) and I'm now ready to begin upgrading my gear. I would like for you guys to tell me your thoughts (plz no flames....just honest opinions) on gear that I've got my eyes on:

AF1 replacement - Crimson Sword
RSE body Replacement - Steel Scale Mail
Shield - Viking Shield
Belt - Royal knight's belt
Ring- Turquoise or Solice Ring (replacing what I can't remember)
Earring-Moldavite Earring
Bow - Kaman or Composite

I currently have full RSE. I plan on replacing the rest of it as needed and as I get AFs done.

Things I'm not replacing yet or I'm not sure that I should replace:

Electrum Ring
Justice Badge
Red Cape

Anyways, thanks in advance for all of your inputs....

[Apple Pie]

I'm just wondering whether you plan to buy both Dark and Light Staff or not although you can't equip them till you reach LV51.

I'm not sure how you're doing in your XP PT but I think these staves help your entire PT to perform much better than those gears you listed do.

Anyway, if I'm in your shoes, I'll rather have these.

Main - T.K Army Sword (San D'oria R5)
Body - Tct. Mgtc. Coat (Windurst R5)
Shield - Whatever you like but I'll choose Balance Buckler.

Then, if I have enough money, I'll get

Belt - Ocean Stone
Ring - Solace Ring * 2 / Wisdom Ring * 2
Earring - Morion Earring + Wizard's Earring

> Electrum Ring

Unless you plan to have +3 INT ring, you should keep it

> Justice Badge

Where's your Holy Phial? Well, you're already able to have access to Promise Badge.

> Red Cape

You can use it till you get Rainbow Cape at LV71. Red Cape +1 isn't very expensive and you may want to replace it with this.

EDIT: Ice Staff >>> Light Staff

[Gman]

Re: Your thoughts on gear

Originally posted by Jinxie

AF1 replacement - Crimson Sword
RSE body Replacement - Steel Scale Mail
Shield - Viking Shield
Belt - Royal knight's belt
Ring- Turquoise or Solice Ring (replacing what I can't remember)
Earring-Moldavite Earring
Bow - Kaman or Composite

I currently have full RSE. I plan on replacing the rest of it as needed and as I get AFs done.

Things I'm not replacing yet or I'm not sure that I should replace:

Electrum Ring
Justice Badge
Red Cape

Anyways, thanks in advance for all of your inputs....

My thoughts:

Crimson Sword... make sure you dont overpay. Compare it to the cost of a Knight's Sword (level 47, 31 dmg) and if it's a ridiculous price because it's an NM drop, then ignore it and get Knights. You shouldnt have to pay more than 5k more for Crimson (IMO still not worth it) than Knights. EDIT: it's a good idea to keep a wand on hand for casting. I use Rose Wand +1, lvl 48, +6 mnd and int.

Body: My honest option is to buy a Tactician Magicians Coat. Steel Scale adds nothing at all to a RDM but defence. Plan on tanking? TMC adds +1 INT, +1 MND, +1 CHR.

Viking Shield: Got 1million+ gil? If not, forget about Viking Shield. Get something cheap and effective. Balance Buckler is level 40, give 9 def, and +3 accuracy. It should run you 2-5k gil. There are also numerous other shields available in that level range.

Royal Knights Belt: Excellent Choice. Best bang for the buck, and you'll use it a long time.

Rings: I don't know what those rings do, so I can't comment, but if youre a hume you might want to consider electrums or astrals for the MP boost. At 54, I bought one Zircon and one Aquamarine which have +3 INT and +3 MND respectively.

Moldavite Earring: Cant be bought. It's rare/ex. You will have to get help beating the NM goblin in ozonzo (probably several times due to poor drop rate) to get it. Go with Wizards Earring (100k roughly, +5 elemental skill) Moiron earring (+1 INT, +4 MP) or other MP boosting earrings like Enhancing etc.

Bow: You could go with the ones you mentioned, however RDM doesnt use bows in exp parties, so I picked up a Speed Bow. Much cheaper and effective. For your ammunition spot in parties, I recommend a moirion Tathlum. It gives +1 INT, and +3 MP and can be used where you would normally keep your insect paste

Electrum ring: see above
Justice badge: Upgrade to Holy Phail or Promise Badge
Red Cape: Best you can do to improve here is Red Cape +1, expensive but worth it.

[Humehero]

I agree with the previous posts. One suggestion, I use the Composite Bow/Scorp. Arrows so I decided to get the Ryl. Kng. Belt +1 for the ranged bonus and oddly enough it was cheaper than the regular belt. I also suggest to use a Mor. Talthum in parties and the Dark Staff is your Friend.

[Beener]

1. Crimson Sword: good if you simply MUST melee, but i prefer a wand any day of the week....i just don't think RDM are meant to melee in parties, and for solo work you should get the higher damage sword.

about the dark and ice staff, ice i like, dark i do not. If i'm sitting enough for a darkstaff to be worth what it costs, people are going without refresh too long for me to be doing my main job correctly.

2. on the body for that lvl i went with a gambison or upgrade of it, cuz, well....at least one piece of gear has too look good. and that let me use electrum/gold hairpin.

3. Shield, go with balance buckler, nothing rdm melee lacks more than accuracy.

4. rings: i use 2 INT and 2 MND rings, i don't need the extra mp really, but i have a bard in my set pt so...you might want those electrums, use mnd or int rings if you see debuffs getting resisted.

5 earrings: I'm more of a redmage/BLACKMAGE in that i nuke a lot, so moldavite/wizard's is my earring set of choice. Morions are 1000% overrated.

6. Bow? get a tathlum, i haven't used a bow since lvl14 and really don't see why you would want one

[Jinxie]

Cool Cool...Thanks for the replies..coupla other questions


Why the T.K. Army Sword instead of Crimson Blade?

T.k Army Sword gives you a 3 more DMG, but it is slower , and it doesn't have +10MP and +5 INT....I've also considered the Ancient Sword, however, I'm not sure if the Curse effect would land very often.

Tct. Mgtc. Coat Sounds like a more viable solution than Steel Scales...less def, but lots 'o' pluses

Staffs-THe Dark staff sounds great, but I don't rest enough to take full advantage of it. I'm usually busy keep up refreshes, backup healing and backup hasting, and also i have Elemental Seal/SleepII at the ready in case of aggro while the other mages are resting. The Ice staff sounds good too, but it's still only a maybe for me.

Wands- I am going to purchase a wand for pre-melee debuffs and mid-term debuffs.....just something I left out because it's pretty much a given...hehe Gonna set up Macros for it. I really enjoy meleeing and casting and I (and most parties I've been in) feel that as a player, I can handle RDM responsibilites and Melee.

Thank you all for your responses. I'll keep all of the comments in mind when I go AH browsing.

[Apple Pie]

I'm not sure when you use your sword because we usually use wand with INT/MND bonus when spellcasting. Anyway, here's the basic info.

- Crimson Blade: D28, Delay231 (= 3.85sec/swing)
- T.K. Army Sword: D32, Delay240 (= 4.00sec/swing)

Well, this "4" more dmg can be up to Int(4*2.4) = "9" more dmg per swing when your atk is much greater than their def (e.g., when farming too weak creatures).

In addition, hitting VT/IT cons by weapons with unnecessarily lower base damage should be avoided in XP PT because each hit gives them certain amount of TP (TP we earn + 3%) back. We don't want to cast one more dispel, do we?

however, I'm not sure if the Curse effect would land very often.

These additional effect hardly land against VT+ cons. Well, it maybe usefull in Ballista.

[AtraposBLM]

Just want to add my 2 cents here:

About Dark Staff:
I understand red mages don't get a lot of time to rest, so thinking that spending gil on something to improve that seems odd. However, Dark staff actually makes MORE of a difference the shorter the resting periods you take are. For example...when I sit at lv70, it takes approximately 12-17 seconds for the first tick of MP to come, and I get back 24 mp. I use Apple Pie +1 (+2 mp recovered) and Dark staff, giving me 36. I improved my resting efficiency by 50%.

Fast foward say...15 ticks. Now, instead of having a base MP of 24 given back, I'd have a base of 39 mp given back. Dark Staff and food make that 51, which is only an improvement of 30%. Do you see how dark staff is actually less effective the longer you're resting?


So...in actuality, a dark staff will make the MOST difference for rdm's. You only get to rest for 2-3 ticks at a time, right? At most? That would normally be 24+25+26 (+/- 2 mp) for 75 mp. Dark staff + mp recovery food (apple pie +1, roast mushroom, witch kabob, your choice) would make that 111 mp. Improvement of 48%. So now, your short bursts of resting will do MORE, and give you more of an incentive to sit for a tick or two when you finish refresh and the mob is almost dead.


Oh, and in case you're going to say something like "But Atra, you're a lv70 blm, rdm's don't get as many clear mind traits as you do!" Guess what, you're right. You know what that means? It's even MORE effective for rdm's.


No more of this "I don't rest that much anyways" bull crap. The fewer ticks you rest for in a row, the bigger difference dark staff makes. Rest long enough, and your dark staff is barely adding anything to your base mp recovery. Short term, however, the difference is enourmous.

[Jinxie]

Great info guys. Thank you very much

[Bamce Sylph]

the only thing u'll realy replace the elec rings with (in normal exp circumstances) are astrals for earing i wear an ehnacing and a black, i'm to cheap to afford the +1 int ones

[Patchinko]

Originally posted by Apple Pie
These additional effect hardly land against VT+ cons. Well, it maybe usefull in Ballista.

Additional effects kick in far more often on HQ weapons. If you are going to buy a weapon with additional effect, definately buy +1/HQ version of it, or don't even bother.^^

[Kilgraw]

Originally posted by AtraposBLM
Dark staff actually makes MORE of a difference the shorter the resting periods you take are.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the low-down Atrapos. Always like learning handy little tid-bits such as this.