Solo Gear

[Quietis]

I've been solo'ing for quite some time now (mainly for skill ups) but I've always been wondering whether or not I make the right choices when choosing solo gear. I see a lot of RDM opt for the +attack -evasion gear for solo'ing... but I never really liked the -evasion stat so much.

Currently I'm using:

Gold Sword
Master Shield
Warlock's Chapeau
Warlock's Gloves
Warlock's Tights
Warlock's Boots
Aketon
Survival Belt
Amemet Mantle
Fencer's Ring + Phalanx Ring (or 2x Phalanx Ring)
2x Drone Earrings
Spirit Torque

For Stoneskin casting I macro to:

Warlock's Tabard
Druid's Rope

I macro different equipment for the spell interruption reduction basically... although it takes away +10 evasion I was thinking that less spell interruption was probably better for putting back up a spell that takes a long time to cast.

Well here's my question... I'm currently a level 63 RDM and I was just wondering if there was any better gear I could be using at my level? As I said, I've seen RDM opt for a lot of +attack -evasion gear but it doesn't make sense to me considering I don't really want stoneskin to go down any faster than it should. Maybe my melee damage is lacking because of this and I'm not killing the mob fast enough (thus taking more over all damage anyways). So, I'm not too sure whether or not all my +evasion gear is worth it. If it's better to get +evasion gear, then should I replace my Amemet Mantle with a Dodge Cape (+5 Evasion)?

I tried out all +attack equipment (had close to +40 attack) and didn't notice much difference in damage. So I'm supposing +attack only helps with hard hitting weapons, which RDM has none of. Of course, I have no idea how +attack works . Does it just increase my chances of doing the higher end portion of my damage (ie: if I do 20-30 damage it usually does closer to 30 damage more often with more +attack) or does it just increase my over all damage?

My next question is... does +agil affect shield/parry rate? I've looked a lot of PLD and NIN forums, and a lot of people either say "It affects parry/shield" or "It does nothing". If it infact doesn't help my parry/shield rate then perhaps I should invest in some Dodge Earrings instead.

Well... any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. ^^

[magnius]

I think this all really depends on what kind of soloing you're doing. Capping weapon skills I would go all evasion and accuracy equip. Farming with thf sub I would balance attack and evasion so you're able to kill things faster but without taking as much damage yourself so less down time. For taking difficult stuff with ninja sub I would go more evasion equip so your shadows last longer. I personally would recomend getting a emporer's hairpin for use except when casting, I'm currently saving up for one of these myself. I'm not sure about this but i thought I noticed some difference with +att equip and I'm pretty sure it helps most WS.

[Macht]

Attack is mostly for WSs, Criticals, Abilities using your weapon. Attack sets the possibility to reach your max potential, STR acts as a transpose shifting you damage ability in an up or downward trend. However if STR is not high enough then Attack has less effect.

Not much of a RDM so I can't help you out with any of the other questions, just answered what I knew.

[Zempten]

I don't think you need a Druid's Rope. I can recast Stoneskin or any other spell just fine. If you feel that unsecure then use Aquaveil.

Attack does help. If you ever get a chacne to sub a 30 DRK you can notice a difference in your attack and it also does effect your WS as you can notice that by stacking up on Last Resort + Souleater + Vorpal Blade, compared to just a regular vorpal blade. You might want to try to eat some food to help boost whatever your trying to do. Meat for farming, Fish for skill up.

As for using a Phalanx Ring......... Well the way I'm seeing it right now is that you could have used an Astral Ring = 25 MP. Stoneskin needs 27....or maybe 29 MP which is easily gained thru Refresh. Stoneskin typically takes 300 HP for me. So I would say using another Astral Ring rather then a Phalanx Ring would be better. As the 10 ( or 20 if your using both) to Defense can be gained by a Fish Mithakakbob for skilling up.

Something you should keep in mind while skilling up is the type of mob your fighting. As previously stated MNK type mobs are best for skilling up Shield, Parry, and Evasion. However if your limited to specific places I would suggest you tackle on mobs that can help you increase duration of fight. What I mean is to fight against Crabs or Beetles because you can easily Aspir and Drain off from them. Also if you were skilling up Dagger you could Energy Drain of them.

Also you might want to keep Blaze Spikes up while fighting. My Blaze Spikes deal 11 damage atm, added up that's alot in a fight.

Another thing is Stoneskin is based off of MND as Grendal stated with an equation. Might want to look into that some more as well.

BTW, even if I did subjob NIN I would not take of my hat. Remeber we get 25% Fast Cast. NIN's Blink is a 30 second spell so 30 times .25 = about 7 seconds off of 30. So that is 30 - 7 for a 23 second recast time. Also note that Haste will lead to faster recast time. Don't quote me on this, but I think Haste causes NIN's Blink to lower 6 seconds if I remeber right from reading in NIN fourms. So thats 23 - 6 in 17 seconds to recast. BTW, don't quote me too much on the EXACT numbers, but hell I'll do a test tonight jsut to make sure. But even if my numbers are wrong, I'm sure that with Phalanx + Stoneskin + our Fast Cast trait will give you enough time to recast blink on even to tought mobs.

[magnius]

Correct me if I'm wrong since I dont have my hat quite yet but could you not cast utsusemi with the hat the switch to hairpin after its finished?

[sekaran]

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/profile.xml?36034

That's my current soloing gear. I'm also in favor of more +atk gear.. and try to balance +agi, +dex, and +str. Eating fishkabobs or meatkabobs pending what I'm doing. I also have Deulist's Tights.. the +5Dex and enhancement of "spikes" spells is pretty nice, but not worth the insane defense, +hp, and +atk from Dusk Trousers.

[Quietis]

Hmmm didn't expect to get this many replies so soon...

About the Druid's Rope comment. I'm just wondering whether or not +5 evasion is better than 10% interrupt reduction. If the 10% reduction is better there's no reason I shouldn't be swapping it. I do use Aquaveil too.

Astral ring... I rarely have MP issues unless I'm fighting a really tough mob. Usually if I run low on MP I can just sleep it and med. I'm not really too fond of Astral Rings for soloing really (unless I need a huge mana pool for some reason). Then again I'm only fighting tough mobs (crabs and mandies) in Boyahda Tree right now.

Blaze Spikes? I kind of prefer to stun from Shock Spikes. Suppose Blaze could be better against higher HP mobs.

The Emperor Hairpin swapping isn't a bad idea either. I've actually considered doing this... however EMP Hairpin's 550k on my server right now (and dropping... people are selling them out of fear of the Dec 9th update). So maybe I'll pick one up if it gets a little cheaper and try it out.

Attack is mostly for WSs, Criticals, Abilities using your weapon. Attack sets the possibility to reach your max potential, STR acts as a transpose shifting you damage ability in an up or downward trend. However if STR is not high enough then Attack has less effect.

Not much of a RDM so I can't help you out with any of the other questions, just answered what I knew.

Ok thanks for the info. That makes a lot of sense then. I didn't notice any increase to my maximum damage when I had +attack gear. That's probably why I didn't notice anything happening.

About Stoneskin being based off mind. Already knew this but I couldn't find any EQ that would help me boost my Stoneskin durability while allowing me to recast it easier. If there's any EQ I've missed out (possibly rare/ex) I'd like to know what it is ^^.

I think I might get my +attack gear back and macro swap it in when I use WS. I've been using the +evasion gear for quite a while and the Tough crabs in Boyahda miss me 1/3 (so long as I land blind). Which is not too bad IMO.

About food... I'd definitely use some against NMs, but for skill ups I think I'll do without. I've already taken that into consideration.

In response to Sekaran's EQ. Dusk Trouser's look really nice... unfortunately I'm currently level 64 (got my next level today). Can't wear those yet ; ;

[sekaran]

To answer you questions [Sorry, was EXPing at the moment so I didn't read it closely]..

I think once you get Utsusemi:Ni, you can afford to rely more on +atk gear than +eva gear, since stoneskin usually can last 2-3 hits in between the small amount of time Utsusemi is unable to be recast. At 64, I'd probably would invest more into +eva gear because you only rely on Utsusemi:Ichi. Now, if you aren't subbing NIN, then the above doesn't apply. Some people solo things differently. Before lv74, I didn't venture to solo much. I could take EP to EM mobs using Stoneskin/Phalanx/Utsusemi and fighting straight up, but some EM and higher, I had to use the sleep then nuke then sleep again strategy to be able to kill things.

I've heard AGI affects shield and parrying skills, which is why I use +AGI earrings. I rely more on parrying skills though since I'm usually dual-wielding and not using sword/dagger and shield.

I have alot of +atk gear.. +63, and could get another +10 adding Ogre Ledelsens for my boots. I do notice a large difference though.. such as today I was duoing Steelshells with another RDM who wore only AF, and I was consistently doing 20-30 more dmg, with my criticals hitting the upper 80-90 range.

As for the Druid's Rope.. I never really used it so I can't comment on it.

I also wouldn't take off my Chapeau for an Emperor's Hairpin, Fast Cast from the hat is very noticeable on the Utsusemi timers. I think it's 31 second recast for Ni and 24 for Ichi if I remember correctly with all the Fast Cast upgrades, Chapeau, and Haste. Now, if you don't sub NIN, the timers you really worry about is Stoneskin, which if you use a Hairpin, might balance out between added evasion and the recast time on Stoneskin.

[Patchinko]

I don't really understand the Drone earrings over Dodge earrings (or Bat earrings for extremeley hard hitting enemies).

As for the rest, I felt it depended on what I was soloing.

When I went after very difficult monsters or those that simply hit hard, I boosted DEF as much as possible, then evasion, and finally attack.

Our DEF can be extremely high and is easier to boost than our evasion, which is mediocre, so I felt it was a better investment. This is why I used the Tabard instead of an Aketon. Also, our attack isn't going to effect our damage much (as someone else mentioned), and since RDM depends on high speed and low damage hits for meleeing, it's silly to put a +attack item on for one or two more damage points when a +DEF or +evasion item could make Stoneskin last a lot longer and give us more attack rounds by keeping us from needing to recast it so often.

Blaze Spikes is better for damage output than Shock Spikes, and much better than Ice Spikes because the paralyze effect from Ice Spikes overwrites our much better Paralyze spell. You probably noticed that Shock Spikes stuns an enemy probably once in a battle, but does half the damage of Blaze Spikes. Except against strongly water-based mobs or those that use Shell often (specifically Sahagin), I usually used Blaze Spikes for those reasons.

Soloing RDM is too much fun.^^

[sekaran]

I use Drone over Dodge because +3AGI helps with Parrying, Shield [though I usually dual-wield], and adds to evasion. Overall, I think it's a better bet than a Dodge earring.. but thats my experience. +18ATK from Assault Jerkin was worth losing 2Def from Warlock's Tabard. The only thing I miss about the Warlock's tabard was the spell interruption rate down.

Again, my experiences are probably quite different to the RDMs who solo without Utsusemi:Ni

[Patchinko]

Were I at the level at which I could wear Assault Jerkin, I certainly would have also because the +18 attack and +3 accuracy are really worth the two DEF. In contrast, though, I don't think the five evasion are worth the five DEF for the Aketon, but it's just my opinion.