My suggestion for looking at gear in the mid levels would be to think about what you'd buy if you were equipping two different naked characters at different levels - say, 30, 40, and 50. Suppose you have 500pp at 30, 3k at 40, and 7k at 50 (adjust those amounts a bit as needed, just trying to estimate about what you'd be likely to have accumulated).killspree said:
At 30, for most classes you'd probably be best off getting a full set of wyvernfang armor, primary/secondary/range/charm, and maybe some silver jewelry, almost no matter what class. That's pretty reasonable. You're going to have quite a bit of distinction in AC, if nothing else, because plate classes will be wearing plate, chain chain, and so on.
At 40, consider two melees--one monk, one tank. For both, you'll likely spend a good chunk of your money on primary/secondary/range. If you have 2k left for armor and jewelry, what are you going to go for? I think it's pretty obvious--100-150pp jewelry (4/45 jewelry), possibly blue dragonscale wrists/gloves for the resists (which monks can wear, same as plate tanks), and as much wyvernhide as you can get. There might be a couple pieces where you'd be better off with something else (Gaia's Step, for instance, again for both classes--though monks would get more use out of it than pally/sk, since the latter don't kick), but that's limited.
At 50, with some more plat to spend, with both a monk and a tank, you'll probably have all plat jewelry, possibly with a few upgrades (earring of the betrayer, ring of the scale, ring of frost, etc... all equally useful to all melee classes), and a full set of wyvernhide that you're working on upgrading. You've probably found a haste item (likely the same one for either class), and blown a wad of cash on a couple of nice items. It's really not until you start getting those nice items, though, that you see much differentiation. A nice BP (Butcher's Apron or Chestplate of the Warlord), some Heavy Shelled Boots, that kinda thing. But even those require higher levels to get. Butcher's Apron needs a 65-ish group to get, CP of the Warlord a solid mid-50s group (possibly with a higher level tank, if the group isn't quite well put together), and the boots are from a mob that needs a 60+ group.
In terms of stuff you can obtain yourself at those levels, there's almost no differentiation at all. You get a little more when you start buying gear, but it's still limited until you start getting the quest armor. I mean, hell, I'm still using probably 8 pieces of wyvernfang or blue dragonscale--the same stuff I see a lot of monks and bsts in the 30s and 40s wearing. And I'm not badly equipped.
that's a good start.
