Is bazaar gear good enough ???Follow

Yes, 5K AC would definitely make a difference, but I think group tanks top out at 8-9K AC max and raid about 12-13K AC unbuffed these days.

I have my lvl 100 SK in class specific Latent Etheric visible gear (COTF T1 gear) which you can acquire by purchasing the drops ie ( __ of Latent Ether) in the bazaar and then combine (no fail) in the relevant container to produce the armor. In my opinion, visible gear in the bazaar (for multiple classes) are not worth it as a tank at the high levels, as their stats and focus are a bit lower and not customized for the SK class. The best group charms which require no "skill ups" or questing to max stats on nowadays are the ones that increase in power based on the amount of class specific visible armor the character has equipped. Using the class specific armor mentioned above or below gives the charm max stats with no skills raising sessions necessary, and the armor can be upgraded to Manifested armor once you combine the Manifested drop for creating the COTF T2 armor.

The same system goes for the TDS expansions lvl 100 gear re the "Castaway" drops and combine in relevant class specific container to produce the lvl 100 class specific visible armor which can also be upgraded at lvl 102 by combing the "Tideworn" drop in the container - this upgrade gives you the best lvl 102 group visible gear in the game and when you get the " "Highwater" drops you could upgrade again at 104.

35+ AC Augs with heroic stats and/or corruption resist where possible (important to tank now) are very highly priced in the bazaar-on my server. But, yes you can purchase the ones in the bazaar though I am not sure if there are enough tradeable ones to fill all of the SK's slots via bazaar alone..I may be wrong on that.

Good luck.

Edit: My lvl 100 SK in the Latent Etheric gear is currently tanking in the ROF T2 zones no problem. I haven't tried the T3 yet but will soon.



Edited, May 12th 2015 6:34pm by hexeez

Yeah. You kinda have to be clear on what is meant by "bazaar gear". There's wearable visible armor stuff that you can buy directly from the bazaar, which is usually sub par for the level requirements, then there's the combine gear drops, which are sellable (tier1). Each expansion past HoT (I think?) has some version of this. In some cases, the resulting armor is droppable (like abstruse stuff), and in others it's not. There's always some item you buy or get as a drop, which you combine in some expansion specific container, usually with some buyable class specific do-dad, and some other class specific pattern, into the final armor bit.

Those should be sufficient to tank with. Not top raid stuff, but pretty much everything you'll need to tank if you're not raiding (and if you are, you should have at least tier2 gear, right?). It's a pretty decent system that does a good job scaling what you get to the content you're actually dealing with and provides a reasonably shallow advancement slope. It's one of the things that I think EQ really did get right over the last 5 years or so. Back in the day, if you didn't raid and hadn't been raiding all along, you were pretty much stuffed for gear, especially as a tank class. Now? You can obtain sufficient gear solo to perform well in groups. And you can get sufficient gear grouping to perform well in lower level raids. And those get you the next tier, which makes you good enough for the next, etc, etc.

Edited, May 12th 2015 1:53pm by gbaji

I recently came back and am no expert, but have decided to go Castaway armor on my warrior and upgrade to Tideworn where I can since we have some nice farmers on my server that call out rot no-trade gear as they farm for the tradable stuff...or whatever it is they are doing. So I see Tideworn armor getting called out FFA a lot. Usually helm, boots, bracer and gloves, but I will take what I can get. Whether you can get something better or close enough to Castaway armor that makes you think replacing with Castaway is not worth it, it looks like Tideworn is the best you're gonna get without raiding and you'll need Castaway armor to combine with Tideworn. So, you're gonna need castaway armor anyway.