Gear quality preference guidlines?

[Roybob]

<div></div>Greetings, I am confused over what makes some gear more desireable than others since the LU13/DoF changes. I understand that, all else being equal, Fabled is better than Legendary, which is in turn better than Treasured, etc.. And again all else being equal white gear is better than grey. But all things are seldom equal. Case in point... my earring. I am a Guardian. I have been using a Fishbone earring for some time. At 49 is it grey to me. But, it's also Legendary, and has better agi/sta than anything I could hope to buy or loot (Fabled gear is pretty much out of the question for me.) any time soon. Hearing that white gear was preferable to grey, I broke down and bought one of those new Pristine Beryllium Hoops (handcrafted), which has very nice fighter stats. But it's agi & sta are lower than the Fishbone. My Persona window reflects the drop in these stats when the Hoops in donned. So... is a white item item with, say, 5agi better than a grey item with 8agi, all else being equal? Is a white handcrafted/treasured item better than a grey legendary/fabled item that has equal or better stats? Why? I could go on with this, but I think you get the gist. Thanks in advance! <div></div>

[Bhuhdiy]

<P>Stats are stats.  A piece of armor or jewelry having a higher con color does not give it any advantage over grey armor with better stats.</P>

[Prufro]

<span><blockquote><hr>Bhuhdiy wrote:<p>Stats are stats.  A piece of armor or jewelry having a higher con color does not give it any advantage over grey armor with better stats.</p> <div></div><hr></blockquote>While this is true for jewelry, this is not true for armor.  You get no mitigation from grey armor, so a level 50 guardian is a suit of grey armor is going to tank like a level 10 one. With jewelry you still get the stat bonuses when it's grey, so wear the best jewelry you can get.  As far as i can tell they should just stop jewelry from going grey since it doesn't ever lose effectiveness.</span><div></div>

[Bhuhdiy]

<DIV>No mitigation from grey armor? That's a new one to me.</DIV>

[Chutta]

<P>Yes, new with the patch, the grey armor doesn't give mitigation.</P> <P>As far as I can tell, grey jewelery doesn't actully give you the benifits from the stats either.  There appears to be a display bug.  If you take grey jewelery on and off, I see my stats go up and down, but what they effect doesn't.  HP's,  migitation, resists all stay the same regardless of whether i'm wearing the grey jewelery or not, which leads me to believe that they don't REALLY have an effect.</P>

[Bhuhdiy]

Well as far as the jewelry goes, you definitely get the stats and benefits.  When I equip my fishbone earring, I get an increase in HP, Magic Resist, disease, divine, etc.  Don't have any grey armor to test any more.

[Will.]

I bought a grey cuirass after reading about this. It at least gave me the listed mitigation and stat bonuses. I didn't bother buying a full suit of grey and parsing my damage, though. Also, there's nothing in the recent change logs to reflect this, and seeing as I'm using a grey shield without any apparent issues I think this one can be chalked up to a misunderstanding. -Will <div></div>

[Roybob]

Greetings, Original poster here. Here's what threw  (throws) me off. If you follow the link to SOE's Combat Changes page and scroll down to the Item section, this (cut & pasted from the page itself) appears: "Items no longer change their con color based on your level. An item's name will be grey if it is ineffective against opponents of your level, white if you can use it, and red if you can't use it." Reading this on face value, grey armor, jewerly and weapons should not be effective against things we hunt for experience. Or it can be read as "ineffective against mobs your same level or higher." <div></div>

[Will.]

<span><blockquote><hr>Roybob wrote:Greetings, Original poster here. Here's what threw  (throws) me off. If you follow the link to SOE's Combat Changes page and scroll down to the Item section, this (cut & pasted from the page itself) appears: "Items no longer change their con color based on your level. An item's name will be grey if it is ineffective against opponents of your level, white if you can use it, and red if you can't use it." Reading this on face value, grey armor, jewerly and weapons should not be effective against things we hunt for experience. Or it can be read as "ineffective against mobs your same level or higher." <div></div><hr></blockquote>Assuming they haven't made any drastic changes to the way equipment works--just changes to the coloring system--all a grey con means is that the item's required level is 11+ below yours. The above quote from the combat changes page is simply SOE's recommendation based on the assumption that higher level equipment is always better than lower level equipment. This is frequently true with armor and weapons, but most jewelry has caster-friendly stats so a low level fighter-type item (+str, +sta, +agi) may be more useful than higher level items with +int and/or +wis. So ignore the color and compare the stats. -Will </span><div></div>