How Does Gear Progression Work In ESO?

FuryV

I'm at CP 160 right now, and was just wondering how the gear progression is once I hit proper endgame.  Is there always better gear to run dungeons for, or can I just outright craft the best gear in the game?  I've got 3 gear crafting professions maxed, so is it just gonna be a case of making a piece of gear and upgrading it to legendary, then I've got the best gear in the game?

Ideally I'd like some form of meaningful gear progression so that I'm always on the lookout for an upgrade or something when I'm running dungeons and playing PvE.


TLDR:  Can I craft the best gear in the game, making dungeons/trials pointless in terms of any further gear progression?

ConquerorWorm

CP 160 is the highest gear level. The quality of gear is determined by the set bonuses you get from wearing matching set gear. Some very good and viable end game gear can be crafted with nice set bonuses (need research not just craft levels) at certain crafting stations in the world. However, the absolute best gear sets are found in Vet Dungeons, Trails, and Maelstrom Arena.
So you can craft decent end game gear if you have done enough research to make the sets (Hunding's Rage set needs 6 traits researched for each piece crafted), or buy them from guild vendors.
But end game dungeons, pvp, and arena will get you the best stuff (although it will probably drop purple/blue and need to be upgraded to legendary).

Iselin

For most builds BIS gear can be crafted gear... or not.

Pretty well all builds (except healers) will have a monster mask and shoulder set as part of the BIS set-up. You get those from undaunted pledges and killing the last boss in a dungeon in veteran mode.

Healers are sort of lacking in monster mask sets that help much with healing. Part of their BIS is armor, weapons and jewelry dropped in the White Gold Tower dungeon (Spell Power Cure set.)

Depending on what you play, you might want to have a look at a site like Deltia's paying particular attention to end game gear for the different builds.

FuryV

So could I go the whole game without relying on crafted gear, and get by with drops from pledges, trials etc?  I know the crafting is there, but once I've crafted the best gear I've got nothing else to come, so I don't like relying on it.  I crafted all my armour in GW2 up to Ascended and got bored real quick.  I'm not really in any hurry to get to endgame or be the best there is either, as long as I could still get by with dropped gear.

Iselin

FuryV said:

So could I go the whole game without relying on crafted gear, and get by with drops from pledges, trials etc?  I know the crafting is there, but once I've crafted the best gear I've got nothing else to come, so I don't like relying on it.  I crafted all my armour in GW2 up to Ascended and got bored real quick.  I'm not really in any hurry to get to endgame or be the best there is either, as long as I could still get by with dropped gear.

Yeah you can get by with dropped gear but you will need to improve the drops by crafting. Weapons in particular make a big difference if you improve them to legendary (gold.) 

Anyone can do those improvements but the higher your crafting skill for the item you're trying to improve, the less mats you'll need. And those gold mats are expensive.

Also, max enchanting is very worth it since sometimes you'll want to change the enchant that comes with a piece of dropped gear. Weapons for example never drop with weapon power or spell power enchants. You'll need to craft those enchants to if you want that on your weapons... and you often will.

FuryV

Iselin said:

FuryV said:

So could I go the whole game without relying on crafted gear, and get by with drops from pledges, trials etc?  I know the crafting is there, but once I've crafted the best gear I've got nothing else to come, so I don't like relying on it.  I crafted all my armour in GW2 up to Ascended and got bored real quick.  I'm not really in any hurry to get to endgame or be the best there is either, as long as I could still get by with dropped gear.

Yeah you can get by with dropped gear but you will need to improve the drops by crafting. Weapons in particular make a big difference if you improve them to legendary (gold.) 

Anyone can do those improvements but the higher your crafting skill for the item you're trying to improve, the less mats you'll need. And those gold mats are expensive.

Also, max enchanting is very worth it since sometimes you'll want to change the enchant that comes with a piece of dropped gear. Weapons for example never drop with weapon power or spell power enchants. You'll need to craft those enchants to if you want that on your weapons... and you often will.

Thanks for that info.  I was definitely planning on improving my gear to gold via the crafting stations, although I just didn't want to actually craft the gear itself from scratch if I don't need to.

Regarding the enchants you mentioned, can I not just buy the glyphs from a guild store instead?

gervaise1

The best gear is "a long way down the line" and only attainable via crafting. (Jewellery excepted).

The "best" gear is (gold) Legendary gear. And Legendary (non-jewellery) items do not drop.

To get Legendary gear you will need to be a crafter or need the services of a crafter. Not to make the gear but to "upgrade" (boost) lesser gear. (Note: this does not apply to jewellery.)

To upgrade you need Legendary (yellow) reagents / enchantments. If you have are a crafter with a high enough skill level you can invest skill points to increase the chance of obtaining reagents when refining ores etc; so that means more legendary reagents per batch of x items refined. And you can use skill points so that you need fewer legendary reagents to 100% guarantee that the upgrade does not fail.

And some drops are bound .....

At the end of the day though you don't really need "optimised" purple gear to get by; yes better gear helps but knowing "what to do" "on the fly" knowing kicks in as well. A lot of fights can be pretty free flowing and often don't follow the exact same pattern.

Iselin

FuryV said:

Iselin said:

FuryV said:

So could I go the whole game without relying on crafted gear, and get by with drops from pledges, trials etc?  I know the crafting is there, but once I've crafted the best gear I've got nothing else to come, so I don't like relying on it.  I crafted all my armour in GW2 up to Ascended and got bored real quick.  I'm not really in any hurry to get to endgame or be the best there is either, as long as I could still get by with dropped gear.

Yeah you can get by with dropped gear but you will need to improve the drops by crafting. Weapons in particular make a big difference if you improve them to legendary (gold.) 

Anyone can do those improvements but the higher your crafting skill for the item you're trying to improve, the less mats you'll need. And those gold mats are expensive.

Also, max enchanting is very worth it since sometimes you'll want to change the enchant that comes with a piece of dropped gear. Weapons for example never drop with weapon power or spell power enchants. You'll need to craft those enchants to if you want that on your weapons... and you often will.

Thanks for that info.  I was definitely planning on improving my gear to gold via the crafting stations, although I just didn't want to actually craft the gear itself from scratch if I don't need to.

Regarding the enchants you mentioned, can I not just buy the glyphs from a guild store instead?

Yeah you can also buy the glyphs. Enchanting is easy though and the mats are plentiful. It's probably the lowest effort crafting in the game.