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At Legendary - it becomes a matter of preference if a player wants more raw damage/healing or if they want the bonus attributes.  Personally this becomes a toss up. At roughly 53 raw stat, its not enough to completely discount the additional rate/bonus that can be obtained on Hiram gear.

 

At Mythic - while it remains a matter of preference, there is so much raw damage/healing on the Erenor, it is hard to justify give up so much raw damage/healing even for the boosted stats especially considering we know down the road that Erenor will be able to be awakened.

 

The reason why Hiram gear remains competitive is because of the equip effects it gets.  While you do have some raw stat fall off, getting a single attribute and then two equip effects surpasses the Erenor weapons that have two attributes and one equip effect, plus the equip effects on the Hiram Weapons are better on a one-for-one comparison to Erenor gear.   The full list of the weapon stats can be found here with credit going to Raffin from Aria for the time and dedication to knock this out. 

 

Why bother with Hiram Weapons?

 

With the sheer difference in power between Erenor and Hiram gear at the highest levels, why do people even bother with Hiram weapons.  Quite simply, the price. On the day I’m writing this section there are a few Erenor one-handers available on the auction house.  Unless you are sitting with 165,000 gold in the bank, you won’t be buying a Legendary Erenor any time soon.  Even if you were to buy the Epic at 125,000 you are going to have to invest more than 40,000 gold into leveling it from Epic to Legendary.

 

So the reason why people bother with Hiram Gear is the price and how easy it is to acquire.  There are currently 7 dailies for getting infusions and scrolls, which allow you to grind through your gear very fast.  As talked about in the what you should be doing every day section, if you keep knocking out the Hiram dailies you wind up with an insane amount of infusions. Additionally, you can level all four of your weapons (Main Hand, Offhand, Bow, Instrument) for a fraction of the cost it will take to acquire just one Erenor weapon.

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Now of course, if you want to be the very best, you probably need to work towards an Erenor weapon, however, that will be a long term investment.

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Erenor vs Hiram Armor

 

My plain and simple advice for Armor is this.  Unless you know exactly why you want to use Erenor Armor, then you should be using Hiram.  The base pure defensive stats you can get on Hiram gear, in the forum of Resilience and a specific damage reduction type, is hard to surpass.  Additionally given the cost of acquiring Erenor Gear, you are going to be better served with Hiram Gear.

 

If you happen to have a lucrative income stream, then you might want to use Ayanad instead of Hiram and focus all your gold into your Hiram Weapons.  This will become a more popular option give the upcoming changes to gear acquisition where you will be able to get Ayanad gear from the Blue Salt Brotherhood.  Coupled with the Ayanad frosts that will be coming in the future, this might be a method to gear acquisition. The only downside to this, is that you’d have to tier up all your armor at one time to retain the enchant bonuses.

 

Obsidian Gear

 

As stated earlier Obsidian gear that is in existence is still usable.  For example Jahlon is using a set of

Epic T6 Obsidian Cloth with T7 Cloth Boots.  There is nothing wrong with using Old Obsidian Gear, if it suits your needs.  As a healer, I don’t see an improvement in my effectiveness by switching over Hiram gear.   I will most likely be waiting until the new Library and getting that set.

 

If you have Obsidian gear that you no longer want, or are not going to use, you can convert this Hiram Infusions or Erenor Infusions (if it is Celestial or above and is the right tier).  This is accomplished in Mirage Island at the last machine on the left.   For the cost of 1 Stone Brick you can create

 

How to obtain Hiram Gear  (Current Video on Hiram Gear.  To be redone)

 

Hiram Gear is obtained via drops in Diamond Shores, Golden Ruins, and all zones in Auroria with the exception of Exeloch and Sungold.  Killing the Abyssal Legion members has a chance to drop weapons or armor. Unfortunately these are basically triple RNG. The first RNG is if you get the type of item you want (weapon (1h or 2h) armor type (cloth, leather, plate), the second is when you open it do you get the particular weapon or armor slot piece you want, and the third is does it have even one of the stats you want.

 

As it is right now, random farming is the only place to get the Hiram Gear Drops.  There have been a number of events that have given people free gear. Whether or not those events will come back is anyone’s guess.   

 

Getting Hiram Gear is only one part of the equation.   

 

On top of random farming for the actual gear pieces, players also have to farm for infusions (to level up the gear) and scrolls (to take the gear up from T1 to T2 and T2 to T3).  These can be farmed in Diamond Shores, Golden Ruins, Sungold Field and Exeloch.

 

Luckily, when it comes to farming for these items there are seven dailies that will help you chip away at the things you need.

 

The first daily is in Diamond Shores.  This is to kill 50 things in Diamond Shores over by the Mistsong Dungeon Portal.  Completing this daily gives you 2 Unidentified Hiram Infusions.

 

Next up are quests in Exeloch and Sungold which require an additional 50 Kills each.  These will provide you either 50 Hiram Awakening scrolls or 2 Unidentified Hiram Infusions.  There is also a quest in Reedwind that has you killing 100 mobs, and for this you will receive 10 Scrolls or 4 Unidentified Infusions.  The scrolls you receive from these quests are the ones for taking gear from T1 to T2 Hiram.

 

In 5.0 a new zone was opened which brings with it 3 more quests.   In Western Hiram Mountains you can pick up three quests, that each require the killing of 50 specific mobs, and in exchange each quest will give you either 7 Radiant Hiram Awakening Scrolls or 3 Mysterious Hiram Infusions. These scrolls are the ones you will need for upgrading from T2 to T3.

 

When 5.5 is launched, there will be a new zone added, that will have new quests and new scrolls.  We will address that later when the time comes, however, I wanted to make sure I spoke of it here.   

 

The way Hiram upgrades follows this chart.

 

You will need 10 Scrolls to attempt an upgrade of a T1 Hiram Piece when it gets to Celestial.  After that you will need to level the T2 piece to Divine before using 25 scrolls to attempt to send it to Stage 3.    

 

Now, there are a couple of different avenues for how you go about upgrading, it all depends on how you feel about your RNG and chances.  The overall process can either reward you for taking a risk, or it can continuously punish you.  It really is up to how the game feels about you.

 

To quill or not to quill

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After I made my original Hiram Gear Video, I ended up having to do a re-edit because of a piece of flawed logic.  

 

If you do not have an overabundance of Honor, and you don’t want to risk crystallizing your gear and costing yourself 10,000 honor, then I recommend farming extra scrolls, buying a Quill off the Auction House, and using that instead.  Yes, it will add time onto your farming, however, for the 2 infusions you sacrifice per daily getting the 5 scrolls (or 4 for 10) you should make up this amount of infusions while killing the 200 mobs. This will also prevent you from having to divert 10,000 honor into a decrystalization scroll.

 

If you have plenty of honor, and you don’t want to grind up the extra scrolls, then you can always risk it.  If the piece crystalizes, then you’ll be out the honor. Some people get lucky and every piece goes in 1 or 2 attempts, and they never get crystalized gear.  Other people take 7 attempts and end up with crystalized gear every other attempt.

 

How to Obtain Erenor Gear

 

Let me preface this.  This is a process. A long process.  A difficult process. That is just for one piece of gear.  If you are going to try to deck your entire gearset out in Erenor, be prepared to spend a lot of time and a lot of gold making that a reality.

 

Now, there are two ways to work up the normal crafting line.  

 

The first is going up from Illustrious to Magnificent to Epherium to Delphinad to Ayanad to Erenor all at a crafting bench.  

 

The second is to use an Armorer's House and bypass the first step steps and start straight at Epherium.

 

There are massive advantages to using an Armorer’s House, so this should be the only way you go about doing this.

 

If you were to go up the normal method, to make an Epherium Dagger you’d have to

 

Spend 50 Gold on an Illustrious from a General Merchant or farm 500 Revenant Soul Stones in Diamond Shores

Invest 3 Sunlight Archeum Essence, 7 Sturdy Ingots and 12 Gold Ingots, 2 Gold, and 500 Labor to take the item to Magnificent

Invest 6 More Sunlight Archeum Essence, 10 Sturdy Ingots and 15 Archeum Ingots, 26 Gold and 650 labor to take the Item to Epherium

 

All in all that is 9 Sunlight Archeum Essence, 17 Sturdy Ingots, 12 Gold Ingots, 15 Archeum Ingots, 28 Gold and 1,150 Labor to make one dagger.  

 

If you use an Armorer’s House to make an Epherium Dagger you’d have to:

 

Spend 9 Sunlight Archeum Essence, 17 Sturdy Ingots, 15 Archeum Ingots, 26 Gold and 650

labor to make the Epherium Dagger.

 

While the saving sare not as big as they used to be.  That is still a savings of 12 Gold Ingots, 500 labor and 2 gold.  In the past you you used to get a reduction in Archeum required, and you still do at the Ayanad level, but that is the only time you see this benefit.

 

At Ayanad, you will need an additional Item called a Ayanad smithing scroll.  These can be purchased from a Premium Goods Merchant or in ynyster or Cinderstone Moor when those Community Centers are at Rank 3.   

 

At Erenor you are going to need Ipnysh Blessings which come from 4 Acidic Poison Pouches (Requires 50 Acid Gobbets from Aegis Island) 4 Cursed Armor Pieces (Requires 200 Cursed Armor Scapes from Whalesong Harbor) and 50 Dragon Essence Stabilizer.  This is a requirement per piece, so if you are going to want to have a full set of Erenor Armor, you are going to be farming a lot of Blessings.

 

World Bosses Drops

 

Another source of gearing is via world World Bosses, however, these weapons are not stronger than

Hiram or Erenor Gear at Epic level, although as they have a maximum level of Eternal they can be made stronger than Hiram Gear, at a price.  These weapons commonly used for their used abilities, so they are often swapped in for their use and then swapped back out.

 

The most common World Bosses for Gear Drops are:

 

Kraken - Glider and Shield are desired items.

Red Dragon - Weapons Hot swapped in for abilities

Thunderwing Titan - Weapons

Morpheus - Used to be a sought after off-hand, Hiram gear is now better

Rangora - Used to be a sought after off-hand, Hiram gear is now better

Anthalon - The Mage Set is no longer really used anymore

 

I want to point that in patch 5.5 (scheduled for 2019) we will be getting a new version of Red Dragon and the new Black Dragon.  These changes will be detailed at a later time, however, it is important to note that the Black Dragon weapons appear to be roughly 10% Stronger than their Erenor equivalents beginning at level.

 

It is also important to note that these weapons can be awoken to a higher form, but even then the difference is minor.

 

Previously these weapons were regraded like normal items, but now these items are fed other World Boss Drops in order to level them up, just like Erenor gear, although this is a very slow process.  
 

Dungeon Gear

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Much like the World Boss, there is gear from the Dungeons that is useful for some builds, but over all

with the Introduction of Hiram gear, if you are going to grind for something you are better off grinding Hiram gear with the exception of the Mistsong Shield.  Anyone who is going to use a shield may want to get this shield at any level, especially anyone who has a main-hand weapon with healing power.  This shield grants a very strong heal to 10 allies.

 

Like Erenor gear, Dungeon gear can be fed and leveled, but it can only be fed using other dungeon gear or Abyssal Enhancers obtained from CR/GR.  One round of CR/GR will give you 18,000 XP on a dungeon weapon so that is pretty solid.

 

I want to point out that in an upcoming patch we will be getting the new library dungeon and the new library dungeon gear sets.  These sets will be detailed at a later time, however, it is important to note that the Library sets may be a viable alternative to Hiram gear depending on your build and desired stats.  

 

Gems

 

On top of all the gear you will have to get, you will have a couple of dozen different gems to slot into your gear.   If you are looking for a singular chart for all the gems, you can get that here, and again Raffin gets the credit for the creation of the chart.   

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When it comes to what gems you should use in each slot, this is all about personal preference.  If you are looking for the absolutely best meta to follow, the best thing you can do is look up the player rankings, find someone who is running the same build as you are, and then slot your gear with gems the same way that they do.  

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Any recommendations I could give would pure subjective.  When and if I do specific class videos, I will certainly talk about recommended gems per class.

 

A word of advice

 

When it comes to gemming, gemming gets more and more expensive the more gems you put into your gear.  While it can be advantageous to throw in a few gems into gear that you are using, unless you are loading in T3 gems, you do not want to load a bunch of T2 gems into your gear, only to have to pay to extract them and then re-gem them later.  Instead, if you feel you must gem your gear, gem it just enough to be useful, or save up until you have T3 gems and start feeding those in.

 

Enchants

 

For returning players who are used to crafting enchants or getting them from the honor shop, enchants

now from crates.  

 

The two types of crates you are going to try be accumulate are Sealed Honorbold and Sealed Flawless.  Now, here comes the unfortunate part.   Getting a sealed enchant is RNG based on the crate drop rate.   Once you manage to get a fair stack of them, it’s RNG based on if you get the one you want.   I had to open a fair few of them in order to get the 2% Healing Enchant for 1 handers.      

 

Unfortunately there is no longer a list of all the enchants since they appear randomly out of boxes.

 

1 Handed Weapons: 2% Melee Damage / 2% Magic Damage / 2% Healing

2 Handed Weapons: 3% Melee Damage / 3% Magic Damage / 3% Healing

Bows: 2% Ranged Damage

 

Hands: Melee Crit Damage +12% / Magic Crit Damage 8% / Ranged Crit Damage +12%

Crit Healing Bonus +8%

 

Focus +375 Chest, Legs, Feet

Resilience +320 Chest, Legs, Feet

Toughness +335 Chest, Legs, Feet

-3 Dmg Received Chest

 

A special note for enchants for other slots and where they come from:

 

Back: Crafted

Undergarments: Honor Shop, Loyalty Shop

Costume: Honor Shop, Loyalty Shop

Accessories: Honor Shop, Loyalty Shop

 

Temper

 

For any returning players the Tempering system is totally different now.

 

Tempering is more like regrading now then it was in the past.

 

First you are going to need Tempers, either Solar Tempers for Weapons or Lunar Tempers for Armor.

 

Next you are going to need labor and gold for the attempt.

 

After that you are going to keep Tempering until you you reach +18.  After that, any time you fail, you

can go all the way back down to +17.  

 

Between +10 and +29 you can use Lesser Tempering Crystal for an automatic 100% upgrade chance.  After +15 you will need to use Tempering Crystals if you want a 1.5 chance or a Resplendent Tempering Crystal if you want a +2 chance.

 

Not to be outdone, you can also make Resplendent Temper, which will up the Temper by +2 instead of one.  To create these you need 10 tempers and a Lucky Moon/Sun point and you craft it at a Regal Alchemy Table.

 

Supplemental Gear

 

There are several pieces of supplemental gear that you can get for your character in the form of Costumes, Undergarments, Cloaks and Neck Pieces.  These pieces provide some of the best benefits in game because they are all percentage based boosts.

 

Necks

 

For returning players these are the ever-famous “Halcy Necks” that people use to cringe over because they would reset down to Level 7 making getting a max rank Necklace almost impossible.  The good news is now there is no RNG related to the Necklaces, instead all you need to do is have enough honor and Starlight Archeum and you can take your neck piece up to Rank 14 without fails.

 

This is done at the Proven Warrior Workbench in the Hero Hall, or in Sun’s End in Halcyona.  There are two options, but they share a common path up to level 7. When going to level 8 you will have to decide which necklace you want to use.

 

The most common “Halcy Neck” people use is the Archeum Evernight Necklace.  At max level it reduced received damage by 6%, Gives 112 Stamina, 200 Toughness and 240 Focus.   

 

For healers there is another option, not often used, but you can get the Archeum Daeier

Necklace.  At max level it gives 6% Cast Time Reduction, 112 Spirit, 125 Toughness and 240 Resilience.

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Cloaks

 

Guild Cloaks are another thing that have changed radically in recent patches.  It has now become easier to get Guild Cloaks to higher levels, but at the same time it has become more frustrating and more annoying.

 

To start, they are referred to as guild cloaks because they come from the guild shop.  One good change is that took the minimum guild level restriction off the cloaks which means you no longer need to guild hop in order to get the cloak you want.

 

Next up, they greatly reduced the items necessary to level your cloak up.  

 

When you first buy your guild cloak, all you need to do with it is run around Diamond Shores killing the mobs that spawn near the Fortresses, or in Auroria around the Mana Towers (provided the mana towers have been destroyed) for stones.  For Auroria, easiest way to check if you are farming the right mobs, is if they are dropping Queen’s Purses then they are the mobs that can drop Stones.

 

Once you level your Cloak to Divine Grade at the Epherium Level, you will need to go to the Proven Warrior Workbench and make an Epherium Cloak Awakening Scroll.   This will take 6 Honorforged Medals (2,000 Honor each) and 3 Moonlight Archeum Crystals. This is a much cheaper investment than previous, however, the problem comes in, that it is totally random if the cloak upgrades.   Yes, you are at the mercy of RNG. Your cloak will upgrade if you are luck, fail if you are not, and crystalize if you are really unlucky.

 

Once it goes up to Delphinad, you repeat the farming for stones, feeding of stones, and then the Awakening Scroll process, just make sure to make a Delphinad Cloak Awakening Scroll.  Yes, you will be facing the RNG nonsense again when it comes to getting your Ayanad Cloak.

 

Then, you will repeat the system yet again, until you have Legendary Ayand Cloak.  At that point you will need to get 2 Blazing Cloudspun Fabric, 10 Moonlight Archeum Essence, 50 Honorforged Medals and an Ipnysh Moonlight Blessing.  The good news, is that since this is crafting a piece of gear and not crafting a regrade scroll, you are 100% ensured to get the Erenor Cloak.

 

Once at Erenor you will have to level the cloak again from Arcane.  Hopefully, you get the stats you want while you are leveling your cloak, if not you will be investing 25,000 honor per re-roll.

 

On the topic of rerolls for the Cloak, one thing you need to understand is that you cannot roll from the “low” stat to the “high” stat of the same stat in a single re-roll.  For this example we are going to use my cloak.

 

Now, obviously I would prefer to have the 11% Received Healing and the 137 Spirit, instead of the lower stats I have.  However, to do this, I’m going to have to roll off Received Healing to get any other stat. Then, I’m going to have to roll of Spirit, in the hopes that in a Magic World I’d get 11% Received Healing back as my low spirit replacement.  Then I’d replace whatever stat I got when I rolled off Received Healing with Spirit 137. Easy right? Yeah right. There are 24 other line items I could end up with when rolling for the one stat I want. Putting your odds of getting the one thing you want at about 4%

 

Costumes and Undergarments

 

Costumes and Undergarments follow many of the same rules as Erenor Gear, Hiram Gear, and the Synthesis cloaks, with the exception that the stones that you need from them are a lot harder to come by.

 

Let’s start with the easy parts of Costumes and undergarments, the simple acquisition of the base item.

 

Combat Costumes:   Loyalty (100), Prestige (200), Evenbards, Arena Shop (100 Medals)

 

Undergarments: Loyalty (100), Evenbards, Arena Shop (100 Medals)

 

After that, it's all about getting a metric ton of different Synthium stones.

 

Clear Synthium Stones you get from World Bosses, Dungeon Bosses, and trash in some places.  I would never ever use loyalty or honor to get Clear Stones. You need these to take the item from Basic through Grand.

 

Vivid Synthium Stones you get from either upgrading Clear Stones, or for Honor or Loyalty.  Again I would not waste Honor or Loyalty for these. These are an easy thing to acquire, usually off the auction house.  You need these to take the item from Rare through Arcane.

 

Lucid Synthium Stones you get these from upgrading Vivid Stones or for Honor of Loyalty.  These aren’t a bad idea to acquire via Loyalty if you need nothing else, although its usually more cost effect to sell items you get from the loyalty shop and then buy the stones.

 

Radiant Synthium Stones can only be gotten for honor.  If you have a surplus of Honor, this isn’t a bad way to get them, although again you can usually sell something else for honor and then use the gold to upgrade your own stones through the process.

 

Now, I could attempt to do an explanation of the Costume system, however, there is an exceptional guide to costumes and under garments available here.  

 

Changes to Serendipity Stones

 

One change I want to talk about with Serendipity Stones is that you no longer have to accept the new

result.  In past you got to go from a stat you had to a totally new stat.  Sometimes this would infuriate you because you were going from a stat that might have been somewhat useful stat like Move Speed on an item for a Healer and getting Magic Attack.   In truth, the Move Speed would be at least somewhat useful whereas the Magic Attack has no value.

 

Now, the way Serendipity stones work is that you would roll off the Move Speed and if you got Magic Attack and you didn’t want it you could cancel it.  This allows you to have some more choice in what happens with your gear.

 

Note, although this should go without saying, rolling a stat when you level it up will still straight roll it from one stat to another with no accept the new stat.  

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Armor Sets

 

In the past you receive a significant number of benefits from having a 7/7 armor set.  Now, in recent years the number of benefits from the 7 sets has reduced, in fact they have produced an extra damage bonus for weapons.

 

There are a lot of different metas running around at the moment for gear.  I don’t like to teach to the meta because then when it changes, people get angry at me like I have a crystal ball of everything that is coming.

 

Weapon Passives and Weapon Damage

 

One final piece of information about weapons is that passives on the weapons have been taken away, this means no puncture on short spears, no stun on clubs, no critical on katanas.  Instead, weapons now have a damage type, and that damage type does additional damage to certain armor sets.

Slashing: 15% Bonus Damage to Leather users who are running a 7/7 set

Piercing: 15% Bonus Damage to Plate users who are running a 7/7 set

Crushing: 20% Bonus Damage to Plate users who are running a 7/7 set

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With gearing up finished we will now discuss Dungeons and Raids

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