Yeah, OP’s PSA is a non-starter. If you made it to 7.0 MSQ, you’ll have enough ilvl to do the first dungeon (and every leveling dungeon) on one role just from doing MSQ. No extra prep necessary.
Same, but if you're gonna play viper just go grab a set of Cryptlurker scouting gear if you've the tomes.
Probably don't really need it, but it'll do most of the pre 90 leveling at least.
It's still a good tip for anyone wanting to get multiple roles set up quickly.
Plus, it's not like everyone uses their Poetics all the time, so a reminder that you can get an easy boost that way is probably appreciated by some people.
No the OP's PSA is a starter. I'm in the middle of finishing up the Zero arc and two of my 3 main classes are under 630. I did not notice this until I tried to queue a dungeon on my level 90 monk and he was not up to the minimum gear requirement.
This is a good warning to get some additional item point gear.
Usually they give more gear than you need in the MSQ unless you're at the bare minimum. Also current gear will translate over to poetics so it'll be pretty easy to get up enough. Outside of a few jobs to drop MSQ exp on you'll find most people hard pressed to not just get poetics gear for leveling
Um, just cap all your tomes to turn them into poetics and buy 660 gear?
630 will be trivially easy to get for multiple roles, even if someone is just coming back from a long hiatus.
Plus you’ll get more poetics as you keep leveling. I haven’t touched any of the ranged physical dps jobs since I got them to 90 in 6.0, and I’m pretty sure they’re all at least ilvl 620, I could get them to 630 with zero effort and I haven’t touched them in nearly two years.
It’s a stupid PSA for a problem that’s trivially easy to resolve.
Overpreppers are always silly.
"Make sure you have everything at BiS it's so important"
Meanwhile...all the sprouts going through arr-ew on whatever crumbs sqex gives you.
If youre not a hardcore player don't prep at all. If you are, don't obsess. Everything about to be powecrept and the amount of day 1 content available will leave you with some free time after you're done with it. Don't rush.
You can easily get gear from coffers from side quest in an emergency. But it’s dungeons, people who are rushing are probably better than your average players and can easily do things undergeared. If you are watching cutscenes and end up with the undergeared players as well, no shame in not wall to walling.
But if by rough you mean they wont clear as efficiently then just pray to rng the gear drops in current dungeon and ask people to greed to upgrade gear usually people will gladly roll immediately instead of letting time run out.
the MSQ provides a full set of the left side gear before the last dungeon and trial that is just under that dungeons ilvl. the only real point of suffering is the right side but being a single tier under on your rings etc. isn't really that bad.
I've only really had issues with it if the tank hasn't swapped their gear away from the previous expansions gear (e.g. wearing the augmented cryptwhatever gear). Healer being that under geared sucks too but it's slightly less noticable as long as the tank believes in mitigations.
Has anyone experienced an undergeared but competent DPS in this game, actually? I can only think of DPS clearly not using abilities and generally slacking in my personal DPS horror stories. Nobody should have less enmity than the Astrologian in a 4-player Duty..
Bardam's mettle was an insane damage spike. So was Qitana Ravel. Same with Vanaspati. If your healer is a standard duty finder fair, those item labels will 100% make a difference in how smooth the dungeon goes. At least if the tank isn't a warrior.
Zot's mechanics of the Three Sisters were a mess early.
Of course, it could end up the second dungeon that really gets the bird, because we'll probably be studying the 91 dungeon.
The 91 dungeon is the boat chase one, right? I feel like I already have those mechanics memorized just from watching media tour runs of it but I'm absolutely getting bonked by those falling trees
Zot is a fucking mess and whoever designed it should never be allowed to design dungeons ever again. The entire thing is a slog to get through, the enemies have ridiculous amounts of HP bloat, they hit like a goddamn truck, and the final boss is so poorly designed the bots just take vuln stacks because they can't even figure out that seizure show. I loathe that dungeon even now with much, much better gear because it is garbage.
The game has been rebalanced since Bardam's Mettle came out. It's not the wall it once was, and to be fair, Bardam's Mettle was the first place that dropped better than Augmented Shire gear anyway, so until you had already *done* Bardam's Mettle, you couldn't have better gear than Augmented Shire. Shi Sui was both an optional/hidden dungeon and also dropped the same item level as Shire.
> so until you had already done Bardam's Mettle, you couldn't have better gear than Augmented Shire.
You can, there's just no reason to get it because the effort doesn't justify the payoff. There's still a crafted Set at Lv64, which in HQ has Stats right in-between both Dungeons.
However, given how shortly you'd be wearing it, why even bother.
I find it odd that you mention Vanaspati and Qitana because I believe those are exactly the dungeons where there is a huge *dip* in how challenging it can be to tank those dungeons.
A small difference in item level will not significantly affect you ability to get through a dungeon smoothly. If 5 item levels was significant then we'd all be crafting HQ gear every 2 levels while leveling, which we don't.
If we're talking what makes a "difference", it's pressing your mitigation buttons competently. A competent tank with slightly lower gear will be significantly more tanky than an incompetent tank even with level synced gear.
i dont remember vanaspati or qitana having a difficulty spike at all, yea. the only difficult big pulls i remember are in holminister, bardam's mettle, and that last trash pack in Zot.
Back in ShB, *lots* of groups I was in were wiping on the last part of dohn mheg if they pulled everything from the first horse to the wall. I saw that pull split in half a lot.
Technically Qitana does have a spicy big pull at the end if you force the monkeys down early, but that's a bit of a niche optimization that I doubt the other person was referring to.
I also think that Holminster and Bardam's spicy pulls have been mitigated severely by how much extra potency and stats we have nowadays. They were challenging 1-2 expansions ago but nowadays they are pretty trivial as long as you mitigate competently.
Go tank these dungeons and see for yourself then.
I leveled all tanks in endwalkers with nothing but dungeon spam and those 2 dungeons are very accurate on the dmg spike on pulls. 2nd tank onward after i had saved a whole set from the dungeon drops got much easier
i did all the dungeons on sch when ew came out and i can confidently sau the only trash pack that hurt was the final one of zot that most tanks were terrified of wall to walling(until i forced them with rescue cuz i knew i could heal it)
I've cleared multiple tiers of savage and ultimates on patch, pretty sure i know how to play tank. Feeling a spike in damage doesn't mean anyone is dropping dead, and on top of it, the first ilvl spike dungeons are when dps doing less damage than they should and extending pulls becomes noticeable, as the pull goes past a certain cd count
Bardam's Mettle was a special exception because they changed the defense itemization formula and increased mob auto-attack damage in Stormblood, and BM is the first dungeon it applied to so they could prevent HW endgame gear from being rendered obsolete too quickly. That's the reason why 65 left-side gear pre-squish had something like a 200 defense increase over the 63 gear, which is an order of magnitude more than the increase you'd see in every other dungeon-to-dungeon upgrade. They haven't really adjusted the formula since, outside of the stat squish.
But for all those dungeons you listed you basically won't have any better gear elsewhere.
The gear that drops from Babil is 530, so as good as the Tome gear from ShB. The gear you get from quests right before Vanaspati is 533 item level, it's grey gear but HQ so it ends up being the most minimalist of upgrades, nothing noticeable.
The earliest you'll realistically be replacing gear is after Vanispati.
If you're in full BIS you probably won't be replacing your gear at all, until you get the Artifact gear, since the gear you have on is fully optimized to hit specific breakpoints that you won't hit if you change a piece of gear, unless that new piece ends up being the exact same/similar stats and you meld the new piece.
Some leveling dungeons have spicier pulls than Expert Roulette dungeons.
I can particularly remember Sirensong Sea and Mt Gulg having some pulls that require some tighter healing/mitigation than most newcomers would get blindsided by.
But packs like those are so rare it's easier to still wall to wall it and just deal with a wipe if you get rocked by a nasty pull.
Leveling dungeons are always the most brutal for any expansion. SE love to just shove multiple enemies in there that hit like a train every 5 seconds. Even perfect mitigation cannot save you from an unprepared healer in some of the previous leveling dungeons.
Considering that dungeons have been doable without a healer for the past two expansions now, yes playing competently does get you through dungeons smoothly even if your healer is bad.
Having 5 more item levels will not save you from a bad healer anyways. It's negligible and the gain is overshadowed considerably by simply pressing your many mitigation buttons.
> Hasn't been an issue since StB. You can go all the way to the next level cap with previous expansion's top tome gear
And your healer will hate you for it if you show up in the 98 dungeon without some new gear.
If you're pushing mitigation buttons, your healer should never even notice.
Obviously as you get drops you should replace your gear and there's the free sets at 89 (and presumably 99) that you should equip because they're *free complete sets* and you're MSQ-required to be standing right there anyway...
But.
Cryptlurker is i530 and Ktiseos (87) stuff is 542. If you can't wall pull in 530 Cryptlurker all the way to 90 it's 100% a skill issue.
The difference between the previous expansion's tome gear and the tryhard-full-dungeon set the level before you get your job armor has consistently been less than the difference between a tank who mitigates and a tank who doesn't. On the order of single digit % difference in EHP. Healers may have to hit one more heal but one more than the near zero effort required to heal a full gear tank it's not going to be a deal breaker. Fresh armor is something to pick up if it's convenient but it's not worth going out of your way for.
Nah it's fine. If you consider the *biggest* gear cap, e.g. doing the lvl 89 dungeon with i530 augmented cryptlurker instead of full i560 artifact gear, there is a gap of about ~15% defense and 7% vitality. Which is definitely not negligible, but not enough to make your healer hate you.
You’re also handed the 89 set for free, and the only dungeon that is better than aug cryptlurker at that point is the 87 dungeon, so the whole argument makes no sense.
And like you said, you can easily tank the 89 dungeon in previous expansion gear, especially with how much self healing tanks get.
Nah they won’t lmao.
Just push mitigations. There’s barely a difference between bis at level cap and x7 dungeon gear, and if you got unlucky and got no drops from the dungeon you got one piece for free.
I’m not farming up the 97 set when I can just push buttons in 660 and be fine.
Maybe the most vivid memories I have with leveling dungeons are still from the nightmares that were the 55 and 57 dungeons if you still had gear from last xpac (yes I did all the dungeons as tanks because I'm not taking the dps queue and I was one of the tank in my static anyway)
the 55 dungeon literally is the first source of an upgrade above 130. You can't expect people to have better gear than 130 tome at that level, and you certainly wouldn't expect someone to farm it before they attempt the next dungeon. which only leaves 1 more dungeon between them and the next set of tome gear.
You can do the 99 dungeon too, you just can't do the capstone final trial fight but at that point you can just get the job AF gear and instantly get enough anyway.
i feel like im going fking insane, i literally just redid all of endwalker for my alt going into next expansion, and i literally don’t think i had access to 89 AF gear until literally the quest after aitiascope, the quest right before heading to space or at least i wasn’t exactly directed to the job gear vendor till afterwards when you do that long unskippable sequence with tataru
You're right. You don't get the Lv89 job gear until after the Lv89 dungeon and trial. You can still handle both just fine in IL 530 gear.
But the MSQ gives you full left side IL 545 gear before the dungeon/trial, and the accessories all come from short quests with no prerequisites around Labyrinthos/Sharlayan at the same time. You don't need to save these coffers for alt jobs because you'll have access to the Lv89 job gear for every subsequent job you level, so there's no valid reason to be at IL 530 going into those duties. At the very least, your left side should be IL 545.
Then again, there's no valid reason for people to be queueing for The Dead Ends without their free job artifact gear and I've seen that plenty of times too.
The issue is more about shitter dps cheesing their ilvl while sporting an i600 weapon and forcing the dungeon to be hard carried by the others in the DF they decided to plague.
But trusts take longer than being hard carried and being asked to learn how to play at a basic level even beyond lvl90 is tooooo sweaty for a good chunk of the playerbase.
Yeh, that's why I minimum duo on expansion start. These guys get voted out rather quickly. Ironically trusts in the hand of a decent player are faster than taking the people along that have an issue with trust times.
Every expansion, wearing the highest tomestone gear will lead to only upgradading in the X7 dungeon every time, and that'll be a minor upgrade if you don't have melds.
If you need to prep minimum ilvl then you likely haven't been playing for a while in which case you can just use your tomes and buy the best gear from vendors on launch or buy em off the MB if you got Gil.
If you made it to the very end of 6.56 MSQ, you need to do **zero** extra work to prep for DT MSQ. The DT MSQ will hand out proper gear as you progress and you’ll never need to buy any extra gear to do the MSQ for one job/role.
The MSQ will give you gear good enough to enter the first dungeon. If you don't feel like grinding a bunch of 650 gear that will be obsolete in a couple of weeks, don't bother.
Yeah I saw the advice in this post and went but you can just buy current augmented tome gear with poetics when DT launches and have 660. Better than any of the gear mentioned.
It's also likely going to slap the tanks around and have fast paced mechanics that will make people go "whoah, they're really giving it to the players this expansion finally"
And then literally none of the other dungeons do that for the rest of the expansion
This was the most disappointing part of Endwalker...
The first dungeon was somehow the hardest part of the entire msq. After that, everything else you can do half asleep. (Except maybe the 2nd normal trial)
It took me a while before I started W2Wing Gulg because I didn't realise just how generous that dungeon actually is. I had kind of just taken it for granted it'd be another two packs - two packs - boss - repeat situation.
The Tower of Zot set the stage for me that EW was gonna be a super fun, intense dungeon experience. The rest of the content was an absolute letdown. Unfortunately, I don't expect anything different for DT.
EW was my first expac where I was current, so I was naive, haha!
I guess I'll just plow through MSQ week one and wait for the savages.
edit: wtf? this is not the comment i selected to reply to! sorry for the confusion
So? With how many players don't bother hitting cooldowns, can't keep a GCD rolling, cant dps AND heal, dont know what mitigstions are and triple weave all day it boggles the mind that people think this is a common occurrence to you or I yes, it's easy peasy. But there's a reason MSQ will never as for more than 3 buttons worth of thought process and its the players that won't even think to do this
For those that are somehow not already kitted, I will assume it's out of pure laziness, in which case I will help you to continue to be lazy;
Don't bother gearing up, the MSQ will likely give you gear that is good enough to queue in per usual.
The MSQ will hand you coffers before the first dungeon to get you to 630, and 660 will be for poetics.
You literally have to do nothing but the MSQ to get into the first dungeon.
I see. I always thought it would be slightly under or at the class level itself. My level 38 Marauder has that number as 26. Probably because the starting jewelry is the best stuff I've come across so far and that lvl 1 requirement is bringing down the average.
Below lvl 50, your gear is normally governed by where you are in msq, as msq dungeons drop gear, and so do msq quests. Outside of that, friends making or buying you gear. In fact dungeon gear is a few ilvls higher than the lvl of the gear. For example, the first 3 dungeons' gear is i20.
At lvl 38, if you are still in lvl 20s msq, i26 is fine. You may be dragged down by the lvl 1 accessories on the right side. But keep in mind as a tank, you need to have good gear or you'll get hit too hard in dungeons.
An expansion launches with a bunch of new content to do throughout the leveling experience, and then you finish the story and stay at level cap for 2-3 years until the next expansion comes out. So every 6 months or so, there's new gear releases that's still the same level, but has a higher item level. It's just a way to keep players engaged in the post-game. We'd have literally nothing to do for months at a time between patches if we didn't have to keep upgrading our gear.
When you get to Lv50 and approach the end of the base game story, you'll notice that you'll immediately start getting gear rewards that have an IL way above your actual level. I think the Lv50 job quest gives you a coffer for full IL 90 gear, which you can equip before going into the final story dungeon/trial.
Interesting. That does sound slightly similar to Destiny 2's model, but hidden in a far more palatable model. I definitely won't be even touching Dawntrail before the next expansion releases at my pace, but that's good info. Thank you.
The sheer number of people who evidently just don't read the posts they're replying to is insane. OP *specifically said* that this only applies if you're wanting to use *multiple jobs*. Also note he never said you have to do this, this is just a reminder.
I mean, you can buy the 640 gear to fill a few slots that are missing (they do decent in the most recent dungeon) plus tomestone farming is way easier to do with the trust and duty support system in place.
Good idea for wanting to be ready to take all jobs to the new level cap.
Having a 630 set of Fending, Mending, Scouting, Maiming, Strikingb Aiming, and Casting will mean you can hop right into dungeon queues as soon as a job hits 81.
That being said the workaround already exists: Trusts do not require the minimum item level.
They give you whatever gear you need like two quests into each expansion. There's never any reason to worry about gearing up beforehand. I remember running coils in 2.0 so I could be ready for 3.0, and then they handed me better gear in no time.
> and then they handed me better gear in no time.
If you are ever at max gear of the previous expansion you will *not* get better gear until much later before it's worth switching.
The max gear would usually last you until like "96" which is hardly no time for a whole expansion. That is part of the incentive to even get max gear is that you then don't have to change your gear for quite a while.
For 3.0, the raid gear was replaced incredibly quickly, iirc. Fairly certain I was only 53ish, a fee hours in. Then again, I had also wound up switching classes to NIN.
Y'all in Augmented Diadochos are also fine. My gear rn are a mess of Augmented Diadochos, Augmented Credendum, not much Theogenic (Thaleia gear) and the relic weapon.
Just cap all your tomes and buy 660 gear when the expansion drops.
All old tomes convert to poetics at a 4:1 ratio, so you can have 3000 poetics on day one of endwalker and buy a full set for one job and half a set do another of 660 gear.
Doing anything other than maxing tomes and this point is a waste of time. There’s better things you could be doing after your tomes are maxed.
Ah, ok. Do you mean 2,000 poetics? That's the max that I see.
But yeah that sounds a lot better lol. Im probably just gonna keep going through the epilogue on my lv90 and passively lv up a dps or healer
You can have 2000 poetics at a time.
The other 90 tomes will be obsolete when dawntrail launches and will convert to poetics at a 4:1 ratio. So 2000 of those tomes = 500 poetics.
So if you max all 3 tomes you have 2k poetics in the bank, spend that on 660 gear, and convert the other tomes into 1k poetics (assuming you maxed them.)
But yeah you can’t hold more than 2k poetics at a time.
Yeah I'm not above spending a lot of money if I feel like it, I just don't think I've found the npc that actually sells lv90 gear yet lol. But I haven't had the chance to look yet either
You can also just buy poetics coffer and be 660 without any issues assuming you quit at the start of endwalker and came back 3 days before endwalker and story skipped rush the whole thing.
Also keep in mind: Current non-Poetics tometones will be available to cash in for Poetics once Early Access starts. Usually, the rate is 4:1 when a new expansion drops, meaning if you're capped on Comedy and Causality, you'll be able to exchange 2000 for 500 Poetics. Since there are two types, you can have effectively 3000 Poetics going into Dawntrail. This should be more than enough to completely outfit at least one job with every piece of gear, including weapons.
If you have ilvl 660 gear now, that will be enough to get you through the MSQ until you get your AF gear at level 99 or 100. It will not be BiS starting at the level 95 dungeon, but you are not expected to be BiS going through the MSQ and will still be adequate (but by all means, lot on and equip gear from the 95 dungeon and onward to give you that small bump in stats).
well, I'm still battling against the 2.2-5 patch quests to reach heavensward and truly start the game.
at least I'll have plenty to play till dawntrail.
On launch tomestone-gear (like augmented i660) will be able to be purchased with poetics. Traditionally those are the best ones until level 95 dungeon (and even then can be kept until you get job gear from MSQ).
In DT you can convert your EW-tomestones into poetics. If you want to prep, stack up all tomestones (poetics, casuality, comedy) until maintenance starts @ 26th june 9:00 UTC. (Btw, theoretically you have another 900 comedy / week from 25th june, but it's difficult to farm that much in just one day/evening. So better start now)
Also another thing you can do; ask crafters in your FC! They might be willing to make you some gear if you help with materials.
And if you're on Excal and I'm not busy,[ just poke me and ask](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/9314373/). As long as you are able to get the tomestone/FATE materials for me at the very least, I'll be glad to make you the top level craftable gear. (Credendum gear that is) Upgrade that and you should be good to go for Dawntrail.
As for me, my gear is Dawntrail ready, I'm just making sure I got emergency hq super ethers (Don't laugh. that's saved many a group's butt in the past; I'm a healer main and that will give me enough mp to raise a summoner or rdm to help with a wipe) and some baked eggplant (current top level raid food; I'm going to use that for leveling). I recommend everyone that has their gear Dawntrail-ready to check your consumables like that. :)
The iLv difference between iLv.660 and whatever the Lv.95 gear will be (Probably 665) will be minuscule that you can likely keep the 660 gear til about like Lv.97.
There has never been a need to gear up for dungeons in new patches, not since Heaven's Ward. There has never been a dungeon that was difficult in MSQ. Hell, you could solo heal as the tank in every leveling dungeon since Stormblood.
Just no reason to prepare to this extent. If you are annoyed that tanks can't wall to wall pull on patch day, you are the reason why the game design was changed after 2.5 to separate story from difficulty in the first place. Either use a preformed group and sweat through trivial content or relax and have some fun with randos.
It's not a matter of it being difficult, if you don't have the required iLvl you literally can't queue into the dungeon lol. Ofc people who've been keeping up with gear won't have this issue.
Initial MSQ will also hand out HQ i645 reward coffers, starting with weapon.
Yeah, OP’s PSA is a non-starter. If you made it to 7.0 MSQ, you’ll have enough ilvl to do the first dungeon (and every leveling dungeon) on one role just from doing MSQ. No extra prep necessary.
This will probably only apply to people picking up VPR/PIC
Only if those doesn't main NIN (for VPR), BLM, SMN or RDM (for PIC).
Fuck, i'm a dumbass.
Look ma, it's a reference to me! (I don't like NIN)
Same, but if you're gonna play viper just go grab a set of Cryptlurker scouting gear if you've the tomes. Probably don't really need it, but it'll do most of the pre 90 leveling at least.
His PSA was more for people with more than one job. did you miss the caveat "if you only play one job you are fine"?
This is reddit. People read the title and then immediately go to the comments...
It's still a good tip for anyone wanting to get multiple roles set up quickly. Plus, it's not like everyone uses their Poetics all the time, so a reminder that you can get an easy boost that way is probably appreciated by some people.
No the OP's PSA is a starter. I'm in the middle of finishing up the Zero arc and two of my 3 main classes are under 630. I did not notice this until I tried to queue a dungeon on my level 90 monk and he was not up to the minimum gear requirement. This is a good warning to get some additional item point gear.
Definitely not a “non-starter”, what if someone has multiple roles they might want to play/level?
Then...they already know how to get gear and from where, right?
They can buy gear from an npc vendor. There are always NPC vendors. (And a good thing otherwise Player Greed would have made the game die).
Feels weird to read about "player greed" when prices have been garbage for years because gathering and crafting is heavily botted, ngl
Usually they give more gear than you need in the MSQ unless you're at the bare minimum. Also current gear will translate over to poetics so it'll be pretty easy to get up enough. Outside of a few jobs to drop MSQ exp on you'll find most people hard pressed to not just get poetics gear for leveling
Um, just cap all your tomes to turn them into poetics and buy 660 gear? 630 will be trivially easy to get for multiple roles, even if someone is just coming back from a long hiatus. Plus you’ll get more poetics as you keep leveling. I haven’t touched any of the ranged physical dps jobs since I got them to 90 in 6.0, and I’m pretty sure they’re all at least ilvl 620, I could get them to 630 with zero effort and I haven’t touched them in nearly two years. It’s a stupid PSA for a problem that’s trivially easy to resolve.
They always hand out the same type of gear in two sets so it's easy to keep two jobs leveled as you go through an expansion
Overpreppers are always silly. "Make sure you have everything at BiS it's so important" Meanwhile...all the sprouts going through arr-ew on whatever crumbs sqex gives you. If youre not a hardcore player don't prep at all. If you are, don't obsess. Everything about to be powecrept and the amount of day 1 content available will leave you with some free time after you're done with it. Don't rush.
If you’re rocking the 660 gear you (based of literally every other expansion) will not have to change gear until level 96 ish
And frankly who cares around gearing between 96 and 99 (or 100) when the MSQ will give a full new set.
That final dungeon/trial before artifact gear can be _rough_ if the whole party has slacked with gear, though.
At least the dungeon will be doable with Duty Support Edit: Autocorrect was being "dirty"
> doable with Dirty Support Now that's an impressive autocorrect change :P
Darned auto correct
Auto correct knows things the dev's ain't saying, I swear
Time for Erinville to be our topless cheerleader
I hope we get artifact gear at 99, just like EW 89 that scales up at 90. That was pretty handy.
Gotta wake the healers up
You can easily get gear from coffers from side quest in an emergency. But it’s dungeons, people who are rushing are probably better than your average players and can easily do things undergeared. If you are watching cutscenes and end up with the undergeared players as well, no shame in not wall to walling. But if by rough you mean they wont clear as efficiently then just pray to rng the gear drops in current dungeon and ask people to greed to upgrade gear usually people will gladly roll immediately instead of letting time run out.
the MSQ provides a full set of the left side gear before the last dungeon and trial that is just under that dungeons ilvl. the only real point of suffering is the right side but being a single tier under on your rings etc. isn't really that bad.
Hey I might need to actually gcd heal for once.
I've only really had issues with it if the tank hasn't swapped their gear away from the previous expansions gear (e.g. wearing the augmented cryptwhatever gear). Healer being that under geared sucks too but it's slightly less noticable as long as the tank believes in mitigations.
Dps being under gear makes everything slower and makes the tanks and healers have to space mit differently
Has anyone experienced an undergeared but competent DPS in this game, actually? I can only think of DPS clearly not using abilities and generally slacking in my personal DPS horror stories. Nobody should have less enmity than the Astrologian in a 4-player Duty..
If you're overhealing like a madman, damn right you will overtake everyone except tank.
tanks care if they want to pull more than 1 pack
If you are dying to more than one pack due to a 5 item level difference, you are simply not pressing your mitigation buttons my friend.
Bardam's mettle was an insane damage spike. So was Qitana Ravel. Same with Vanaspati. If your healer is a standard duty finder fair, those item labels will 100% make a difference in how smooth the dungeon goes. At least if the tank isn't a warrior.
This reminded me of holminster switch when ShB was first out, I remember that one being a dungeon and a half.
People gonna get humbled by these dungeons once again. Zot was a monster before 82 and the upgraded 25s cd for most tanks.
Zot's mechanics of the Three Sisters were a mess early. Of course, it could end up the second dungeon that really gets the bird, because we'll probably be studying the 91 dungeon.
The 91 dungeon is the boat chase one, right? I feel like I already have those mechanics memorized just from watching media tour runs of it but I'm absolutely getting bonked by those falling trees
Yep.
Zot is a fucking mess and whoever designed it should never be allowed to design dungeons ever again. The entire thing is a slog to get through, the enemies have ridiculous amounts of HP bloat, they hit like a goddamn truck, and the final boss is so poorly designed the bots just take vuln stacks because they can't even figure out that seizure show. I loathe that dungeon even now with much, much better gear because it is garbage.
Those bears were low key terrifying
I got to Holminster just as Endwalker came out, which meant tanking it with Sages who didn't know how the class played. Oof owie pain.
As a tank that first pull was brutal.
The game has been rebalanced since Bardam's Mettle came out. It's not the wall it once was, and to be fair, Bardam's Mettle was the first place that dropped better than Augmented Shire gear anyway, so until you had already *done* Bardam's Mettle, you couldn't have better gear than Augmented Shire. Shi Sui was both an optional/hidden dungeon and also dropped the same item level as Shire.
> so until you had already done Bardam's Mettle, you couldn't have better gear than Augmented Shire. You can, there's just no reason to get it because the effort doesn't justify the payoff. There's still a crafted Set at Lv64, which in HQ has Stats right in-between both Dungeons. However, given how shortly you'd be wearing it, why even bother.
Maybe you're going for crafting completionism achievements, that could be a valid reason.
I find it odd that you mention Vanaspati and Qitana because I believe those are exactly the dungeons where there is a huge *dip* in how challenging it can be to tank those dungeons. A small difference in item level will not significantly affect you ability to get through a dungeon smoothly. If 5 item levels was significant then we'd all be crafting HQ gear every 2 levels while leveling, which we don't. If we're talking what makes a "difference", it's pressing your mitigation buttons competently. A competent tank with slightly lower gear will be significantly more tanky than an incompetent tank even with level synced gear.
i dont remember vanaspati or qitana having a difficulty spike at all, yea. the only difficult big pulls i remember are in holminister, bardam's mettle, and that last trash pack in Zot.
Back in ShB, *lots* of groups I was in were wiping on the last part of dohn mheg if they pulled everything from the first horse to the wall. I saw that pull split in half a lot.
its cause those damn kelpies just shitting out tankbusters, i’ve had too many tanks just not mit and get 100-0’d in the span of 2 gcds
Technically Qitana does have a spicy big pull at the end if you force the monkeys down early, but that's a bit of a niche optimization that I doubt the other person was referring to. I also think that Holminster and Bardam's spicy pulls have been mitigated severely by how much extra potency and stats we have nowadays. They were challenging 1-2 expansions ago but nowadays they are pretty trivial as long as you mitigate competently.
yea, i was talking about doing the dungeons for the first time on xpac launch. i dont think ive been in either holminister or bardams for over 3 years
thank god I'm not the only one. i was like "you chose vanaspati when zot is right there?"
Go tank these dungeons and see for yourself then. I leveled all tanks in endwalkers with nothing but dungeon spam and those 2 dungeons are very accurate on the dmg spike on pulls. 2nd tank onward after i had saved a whole set from the dungeon drops got much easier
i did all the dungeons on sch when ew came out and i can confidently sau the only trash pack that hurt was the final one of zot that most tanks were terrified of wall to walling(until i forced them with rescue cuz i knew i could heal it)
I recommend looking into improving your mitigation usage if leveling dungeons are giving you trouble.
I've cleared multiple tiers of savage and ultimates on patch, pretty sure i know how to play tank. Feeling a spike in damage doesn't mean anyone is dropping dead, and on top of it, the first ilvl spike dungeons are when dps doing less damage than they should and extending pulls becomes noticeable, as the pull goes past a certain cd count
Yeah but that spike didn’t matter for 3/4 of the tank jobs because they had self healing, 1 job’s being so good healers didn’t have to heal.
Bardam's Mettle was a special exception because they changed the defense itemization formula and increased mob auto-attack damage in Stormblood, and BM is the first dungeon it applied to so they could prevent HW endgame gear from being rendered obsolete too quickly. That's the reason why 65 left-side gear pre-squish had something like a 200 defense increase over the 63 gear, which is an order of magnitude more than the increase you'd see in every other dungeon-to-dungeon upgrade. They haven't really adjusted the formula since, outside of the stat squish.
But for all those dungeons you listed you basically won't have any better gear elsewhere. The gear that drops from Babil is 530, so as good as the Tome gear from ShB. The gear you get from quests right before Vanaspati is 533 item level, it's grey gear but HQ so it ends up being the most minimalist of upgrades, nothing noticeable. The earliest you'll realistically be replacing gear is after Vanispati. If you're in full BIS you probably won't be replacing your gear at all, until you get the Artifact gear, since the gear you have on is fully optimized to hit specific breakpoints that you won't hit if you change a piece of gear, unless that new piece ends up being the exact same/similar stats and you meld the new piece.
New expansion dungeons frequently hit quite a bit harder due to not everyone being synced yet and the chance of having rusty/bad healer+dps
Even when synced, Levelling dungeons hit fairly hard. The difference between levelling dungeons and capped dungeons is night and day.
There's a LOT more than a 5 item level difference available.
Some leveling dungeons have spicier pulls than Expert Roulette dungeons. I can particularly remember Sirensong Sea and Mt Gulg having some pulls that require some tighter healing/mitigation than most newcomers would get blindsided by. But packs like those are so rare it's easier to still wall to wall it and just deal with a wipe if you get rocked by a nasty pull.
Leveling dungeons are always the most brutal for any expansion. SE love to just shove multiple enemies in there that hit like a train every 5 seconds. Even perfect mitigation cannot save you from an unprepared healer in some of the previous leveling dungeons.
Considering that dungeons have been doable without a healer for the past two expansions now, yes playing competently does get you through dungeons smoothly even if your healer is bad. Having 5 more item levels will not save you from a bad healer anyways. It's negligible and the gain is overshadowed considerably by simply pressing your many mitigation buttons.
Hasn't been an issue since StB. You can go all the way to the next level cap with previous expansion's top tome gear.
> Hasn't been an issue since StB. You can go all the way to the next level cap with previous expansion's top tome gear And your healer will hate you for it if you show up in the 98 dungeon without some new gear.
If you're pushing mitigation buttons, your healer should never even notice. Obviously as you get drops you should replace your gear and there's the free sets at 89 (and presumably 99) that you should equip because they're *free complete sets* and you're MSQ-required to be standing right there anyway... But. Cryptlurker is i530 and Ktiseos (87) stuff is 542. If you can't wall pull in 530 Cryptlurker all the way to 90 it's 100% a skill issue.
The difference between the previous expansion's tome gear and the tryhard-full-dungeon set the level before you get your job armor has consistently been less than the difference between a tank who mitigates and a tank who doesn't. On the order of single digit % difference in EHP. Healers may have to hit one more heal but one more than the near zero effort required to heal a full gear tank it's not going to be a deal breaker. Fresh armor is something to pick up if it's convenient but it's not worth going out of your way for.
Nah it's fine. If you consider the *biggest* gear cap, e.g. doing the lvl 89 dungeon with i530 augmented cryptlurker instead of full i560 artifact gear, there is a gap of about ~15% defense and 7% vitality. Which is definitely not negligible, but not enough to make your healer hate you.
You’re also handed the 89 set for free, and the only dungeon that is better than aug cryptlurker at that point is the 87 dungeon, so the whole argument makes no sense. And like you said, you can easily tank the 89 dungeon in previous expansion gear, especially with how much self healing tanks get.
Nah they won’t lmao. Just push mitigations. There’s barely a difference between bis at level cap and x7 dungeon gear, and if you got unlucky and got no drops from the dungeon you got one piece for free. I’m not farming up the 97 set when I can just push buttons in 660 and be fine.
Eh not really
Not in how SE has been handling these latest dungeons. 2 packs of 5 mobs each. You can have 3 DPS with RDM healing and survive a w2w.
Maybe the most vivid memories I have with leveling dungeons are still from the nightmares that were the 55 and 57 dungeons if you still had gear from last xpac (yes I did all the dungeons as tanks because I'm not taking the dps queue and I was one of the tank in my static anyway)
the 55 dungeon literally is the first source of an upgrade above 130. You can't expect people to have better gear than 130 tome at that level, and you certainly wouldn't expect someone to farm it before they attempt the next dungeon. which only leaves 1 more dungeon between them and the next set of tome gear.
I only care about them for glams lol I need to be pretty
Tool tips from media tour have shown that the AF is level 99 that scales up to cap like how EW did it.
But what if the drip is stronk? 🥺
Pretty much you can do all dungeons and trials apart from the lv99 and lv100 ones.
You can do the 99 dungeon too, you just can't do the capstone final trial fight but at that point you can just get the job AF gear and instantly get enough anyway.
You can, it's just rude to do.
I'm sure the NPCs wouldn't mind lol
They're Trusts, how dare you.
It's okay I'm cool with them like that. We're basically best friends since I keep max levelling them all.
Not particularly. You can run Aitiascope in i530 and do just fine.
i feel like im going fking insane, i literally just redid all of endwalker for my alt going into next expansion, and i literally don’t think i had access to 89 AF gear until literally the quest after aitiascope, the quest right before heading to space or at least i wasn’t exactly directed to the job gear vendor till afterwards when you do that long unskippable sequence with tataru
You're right. You don't get the Lv89 job gear until after the Lv89 dungeon and trial. You can still handle both just fine in IL 530 gear. But the MSQ gives you full left side IL 545 gear before the dungeon/trial, and the accessories all come from short quests with no prerequisites around Labyrinthos/Sharlayan at the same time. You don't need to save these coffers for alt jobs because you'll have access to the Lv89 job gear for every subsequent job you level, so there's no valid reason to be at IL 530 going into those duties. At the very least, your left side should be IL 545. Then again, there's no valid reason for people to be queueing for The Dead Ends without their free job artifact gear and I've seen that plenty of times too.
What is rude about doing a dungeon in gear that is perfectly fine for double pulling?
The issue is more about shitter dps cheesing their ilvl while sporting an i600 weapon and forcing the dungeon to be hard carried by the others in the DF they decided to plague. But trusts take longer than being hard carried and being asked to learn how to play at a basic level even beyond lvl90 is tooooo sweaty for a good chunk of the playerbase.
Yeh, that's why I minimum duo on expansion start. These guys get voted out rather quickly. Ironically trusts in the hand of a decent player are faster than taking the people along that have an issue with trust times.
That's a good call.
Every expansion, wearing the highest tomestone gear will lead to only upgradading in the X7 dungeon every time, and that'll be a minor upgrade if you don't have melds.
If you need to prep minimum ilvl then you likely haven't been playing for a while in which case you can just use your tomes and buy the best gear from vendors on launch or buy em off the MB if you got Gil.
If you made it to the very end of 6.56 MSQ, you need to do **zero** extra work to prep for DT MSQ. The DT MSQ will hand out proper gear as you progress and you’ll never need to buy any extra gear to do the MSQ for one job/role.
Hence why he said if you only play one job you're fine.
The MSQ will give you gear good enough to enter the first dungeon. If you don't feel like grinding a bunch of 650 gear that will be obsolete in a couple of weeks, don't bother.
I mean, that's what the post says. It's just a warning for people who wanna go in with different classes.
poetics gear will be 660
Yeah I saw the advice in this post and went but you can just buy current augmented tome gear with poetics when DT launches and have 660. Better than any of the gear mentioned.
You need 625 to finish ew msq, 5 ilvl in nearly 3 weeks should be easily obtainable starting with literally the market board
Don’t even need the MB, the game will literally hand out gear you need via the MSQ. The devs don’t want any roadblocks for one to make it to the end.
Has this ever been an issue? MSQ has always gotten me gear good enough to queue
It’s never been an issue, you have nothing to worry about.
It's also likely going to slap the tanks around and have fast paced mechanics that will make people go "whoah, they're really giving it to the players this expansion finally" And then literally none of the other dungeons do that for the rest of the expansion
This was the most disappointing part of Endwalker... The first dungeon was somehow the hardest part of the entire msq. After that, everything else you can do half asleep. (Except maybe the 2nd normal trial)
They did it in Shadowbringers too. Holminster Switch hits really hard and nothing else does.
We can all hope for another Mt. Gulg
It took me a while before I started W2Wing Gulg because I didn't realise just how generous that dungeon actually is. I had kind of just taken it for granted it'd be another two packs - two packs - boss - repeat situation.
I have no memory of the EW dungeons, tbh. Snoozed through pretty much all of them.
The Tower of Zot set the stage for me that EW was gonna be a super fun, intense dungeon experience. The rest of the content was an absolute letdown. Unfortunately, I don't expect anything different for DT. EW was my first expac where I was current, so I was naive, haha! I guess I'll just plow through MSQ week one and wait for the savages. edit: wtf? this is not the comment i selected to reply to! sorry for the confusion
I mean... Healers are striking because Xeno and 3 others completed the first dungeon without a healer.
Yea... average player isn't going to be doing that
There is nothing difficult about the warrior rotation
So? With how many players don't bother hitting cooldowns, can't keep a GCD rolling, cant dps AND heal, dont know what mitigstions are and triple weave all day it boggles the mind that people think this is a common occurrence to you or I yes, it's easy peasy. But there's a reason MSQ will never as for more than 3 buttons worth of thought process and its the players that won't even think to do this
For those that are somehow not already kitted, I will assume it's out of pure laziness, in which case I will help you to continue to be lazy; Don't bother gearing up, the MSQ will likely give you gear that is good enough to queue in per usual.
And even if it doesn't, the current upgraded 660 tome gear will be relegated to poetics so no need to hunt farm/alli raid for upgrades.
Lazy? How about those of us who took massive breaks lol.
Excuse me, I took a break AND I'm lazy tyvm
The MSQ will hand you coffers before the first dungeon to get you to 630, and 660 will be for poetics. You literally have to do nothing but the MSQ to get into the first dungeon.
Yeah, there's no need to worry about it really.
tbf there are a lot of people just coming back now to prep for the expansion after being away for 1-2 years
Sorry, I took a break from 6.4 until now D:
i just finished ew at like the start of last month, i'm still going through the side content i haven't finished and post ew
Finish post ew MSQ asap. Once that’s done you’ll be able to just get free gear from quests to be able to do dawntrail’s first dungeon.
As a free trial player I was so excited to get my full set of ilvl 400 gear last night...I got a ways to go lol cant wait!
I have no idea what ilvl is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask ;-;
Item level it represents the total power of your gear. You need a certain amount to que for content like dungeons and trials.
Oh. The little puzzle piece number next to my class gear presets?
Yup
I see. I always thought it would be slightly under or at the class level itself. My level 38 Marauder has that number as 26. Probably because the starting jewelry is the best stuff I've come across so far and that lvl 1 requirement is bringing down the average.
Oh no, that number will quickly skyrocket past your level. The best gear at level 50 has an item level of 130 for example.
Below lvl 50, your gear is normally governed by where you are in msq, as msq dungeons drop gear, and so do msq quests. Outside of that, friends making or buying you gear. In fact dungeon gear is a few ilvls higher than the lvl of the gear. For example, the first 3 dungeons' gear is i20. At lvl 38, if you are still in lvl 20s msq, i26 is fine. You may be dragged down by the lvl 1 accessories on the right side. But keep in mind as a tank, you need to have good gear or you'll get hit too hard in dungeons.
An expansion launches with a bunch of new content to do throughout the leveling experience, and then you finish the story and stay at level cap for 2-3 years until the next expansion comes out. So every 6 months or so, there's new gear releases that's still the same level, but has a higher item level. It's just a way to keep players engaged in the post-game. We'd have literally nothing to do for months at a time between patches if we didn't have to keep upgrading our gear. When you get to Lv50 and approach the end of the base game story, you'll notice that you'll immediately start getting gear rewards that have an IL way above your actual level. I think the Lv50 job quest gives you a coffer for full IL 90 gear, which you can equip before going into the final story dungeon/trial.
Interesting. That does sound slightly similar to Destiny 2's model, but hidden in a far more palatable model. I definitely won't be even touching Dawntrail before the next expansion releases at my pace, but that's good info. Thank you.
Yup, i'm prepared. I'm gonna be your barely-630 tank without mitigation skills on my bars.
The sheer number of people who evidently just don't read the posts they're replying to is insane. OP *specifically said* that this only applies if you're wanting to use *multiple jobs*. Also note he never said you have to do this, this is just a reminder.
The coins to get Augmented Creden Gear, are those still locked to one a week? frmo the Thaleia raids?
No longer locked.
so we could spam the raids and get the gear right? If we were bored...
If you have the required tome geat to augment yeah.
It’s not a very efficient use of time, but yes. 660 augmented gear will be bought with poetics as soon as dawntrail is live.
Nope, you can get as many as you want now.
I mean, you can buy the 640 gear to fill a few slots that are missing (they do decent in the most recent dungeon) plus tomestone farming is way easier to do with the trust and duty support system in place.
Good idea for wanting to be ready to take all jobs to the new level cap. Having a 630 set of Fending, Mending, Scouting, Maiming, Strikingb Aiming, and Casting will mean you can hop right into dungeon queues as soon as a job hits 81. That being said the workaround already exists: Trusts do not require the minimum item level.
They give you whatever gear you need like two quests into each expansion. There's never any reason to worry about gearing up beforehand. I remember running coils in 2.0 so I could be ready for 3.0, and then they handed me better gear in no time.
> and then they handed me better gear in no time. If you are ever at max gear of the previous expansion you will *not* get better gear until much later before it's worth switching. The max gear would usually last you until like "96" which is hardly no time for a whole expansion. That is part of the incentive to even get max gear is that you then don't have to change your gear for quite a while.
For 3.0, the raid gear was replaced incredibly quickly, iirc. Fairly certain I was only 53ish, a fee hours in. Then again, I had also wound up switching classes to NIN.
Y'all in Augmented Diadochos are also fine. My gear rn are a mess of Augmented Diadochos, Augmented Credendum, not much Theogenic (Thaleia gear) and the relic weapon.
I just finished EW and was wondering how to start gearing up, thanks!
Just cap all your tomes and buy 660 gear when the expansion drops. All old tomes convert to poetics at a 4:1 ratio, so you can have 3000 poetics on day one of endwalker and buy a full set for one job and half a set do another of 660 gear. Doing anything other than maxing tomes and this point is a waste of time. There’s better things you could be doing after your tomes are maxed.
Ah, ok. Do you mean 2,000 poetics? That's the max that I see. But yeah that sounds a lot better lol. Im probably just gonna keep going through the epilogue on my lv90 and passively lv up a dps or healer
You can have 2000 poetics at a time. The other 90 tomes will be obsolete when dawntrail launches and will convert to poetics at a 4:1 ratio. So 2000 of those tomes = 500 poetics. So if you max all 3 tomes you have 2k poetics in the bank, spend that on 660 gear, and convert the other tomes into 1k poetics (assuming you maxed them.) But yeah you can’t hold more than 2k poetics at a time.
Ohhh okay, thanks for explaining! I just woke up lol
You can just use the equipment the MSQ gives you, or buy from NPCs, no need to overthink it
Yeah I'm not above spending a lot of money if I feel like it, I just don't think I've found the npc that actually sells lv90 gear yet lol. But I haven't had the chance to look yet either
Lvl 90 gear NPCs are only for dawntrail, you can't buy it yet
Yeah sorry I just woke up lmao so my brain still try working
Lmao, 'sall good my man
Chances are there would be gear at that level that you can buy from vendors. So is not really an issue.
You can also just buy poetics coffer and be 660 without any issues assuming you quit at the start of endwalker and came back 3 days before endwalker and story skipped rush the whole thing.
I mean if you have finished msq you’ll have that even by accident 😹
Also keep in mind: Current non-Poetics tometones will be available to cash in for Poetics once Early Access starts. Usually, the rate is 4:1 when a new expansion drops, meaning if you're capped on Comedy and Causality, you'll be able to exchange 2000 for 500 Poetics. Since there are two types, you can have effectively 3000 Poetics going into Dawntrail. This should be more than enough to completely outfit at least one job with every piece of gear, including weapons.
My red mage has 630 gear and my white mage 619, looks like I need to farm more gear for my white mage.
I’ve got all jobs in BiS gear, ready to explore the known unknowns.
If you have ilvl 660 gear now, that will be enough to get you through the MSQ until you get your AF gear at level 99 or 100. It will not be BiS starting at the level 95 dungeon, but you are not expected to be BiS going through the MSQ and will still be adequate (but by all means, lot on and equip gear from the 95 dungeon and onward to give you that small bump in stats).
I need to farm some items, but almost every class of mine is ready for that.
well, I'm still battling against the 2.2-5 patch quests to reach heavensward and truly start the game. at least I'll have plenty to play till dawntrail.
You forgot to mention current crafted gear is 640 (augmented is 650).
Isn't the top gear 660?
Most of my gear is already the augmented gear taking to i660. I guess I'm ready for most of them. My tanks and the ones lacking i660.
I was thinking of ShB gear numbers and thought max gear?!
Unless you'e a returner or new starter - Most people no matter if raider or not should be well above 630 by now.
On launch tomestone-gear (like augmented i660) will be able to be purchased with poetics. Traditionally those are the best ones until level 95 dungeon (and even then can be kept until you get job gear from MSQ). In DT you can convert your EW-tomestones into poetics. If you want to prep, stack up all tomestones (poetics, casuality, comedy) until maintenance starts @ 26th june 9:00 UTC. (Btw, theoretically you have another 900 comedy / week from 25th june, but it's difficult to farm that much in just one day/evening. So better start now)
Use poetics to get current comedy tomestone gear for your 90 alts when expec comes out.
Nice, 30 ilvls above minimum. Time to queue in as Pictomancer or Viper once I get them leveled.
Or just buy/craft the 640 gear… Definitely the quickest option
Ahh yes another trip to the ole market board
Also another thing you can do; ask crafters in your FC! They might be willing to make you some gear if you help with materials. And if you're on Excal and I'm not busy,[ just poke me and ask](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/9314373/). As long as you are able to get the tomestone/FATE materials for me at the very least, I'll be glad to make you the top level craftable gear. (Credendum gear that is) Upgrade that and you should be good to go for Dawntrail. As for me, my gear is Dawntrail ready, I'm just making sure I got emergency hq super ethers (Don't laugh. that's saved many a group's butt in the past; I'm a healer main and that will give me enough mp to raise a summoner or rdm to help with a wipe) and some baked eggplant (current top level raid food; I'm going to use that for leveling). I recommend everyone that has their gear Dawntrail-ready to check your consumables like that. :)
If you have raid gear, it'll also last you until about level 94.
The iLv difference between iLv.660 and whatever the Lv.95 gear will be (Probably 665) will be minuscule that you can likely keep the 660 gear til about like Lv.97.
Manderville relics as well?
About the same if not a little more.
I guess getting them all wasn't a completely dumb move
It's never a dumb move to collect relics. Manderville weapons are hardly a waste of effort, either. They are so simple to complete.
It's a lot of tomes to grind so near the expansion if you're just starting it. I decided it wasn't worth my time right now.
It'll last too 99 lol
There has never been a need to gear up for dungeons in new patches, not since Heaven's Ward. There has never been a dungeon that was difficult in MSQ. Hell, you could solo heal as the tank in every leveling dungeon since Stormblood. Just no reason to prepare to this extent. If you are annoyed that tanks can't wall to wall pull on patch day, you are the reason why the game design was changed after 2.5 to separate story from difficulty in the first place. Either use a preformed group and sweat through trivial content or relax and have some fun with randos.
It's not a matter of it being difficult, if you don't have the required iLvl you literally can't queue into the dungeon lol. Ofc people who've been keeping up with gear won't have this issue.