What armor for an SK ?

So it's for the first time I am playing an SK and around 30 I have banded .
It is not really bad but I wonder what kind of armor I could have at 30-35 that would be significantly better than banded .
I saw the Sol Ro quests but the armor is not significantly better and there is Nothing that could be done solo (never found a group in CT) .

Any suggestions ?

Most items are tradeable, so level doesn't matter too much (except that you can't get into the planes to get planar armor until level 46). I don't always agree with their rankings, but this is a good place to start: eqitems.com

Here's the search I usually use (be sure to change your deity):

http://eqitems.com/?frmSearch[class...IgnoreEffects]=1&DoSearch=Search Best in Slot

It will also depend on which server you are on and which expansions are unlocked.

I just upgraded from banded to enameled black chest and fine steel armor for the visable peices mainly for looks. I will probably still be in some banded peices all the way to 50 or close to it until I can get my plane gear. If you have krono to burn you can use eqitems.com like the above poster mentioned and buy the b best droppable gear.

I noticed your usage of the word "significantly" and thought it worth mentioning that any upgrade is worthwhile. 1 AC doesn't sound like much, but it counts. For the most part, if it's more AC its probably an upgrade worth getting. Like @Ming Tee, I used an enameled black chest (25 AC, no other stats) until I got a planar chest and it worked out great. Fine steel is a natural progression from banded and it's worth the upgrade, if you can't find anything better.

Like most tanks, I favored AC and HPs. Agility is a big boost to your AC numbers and Stamina = HPs. But once you are "tanky" enough to handle the mobs you are fighting, increasing your DPS becomes the most important thing. High strength and dexterity (for aug/weapon procs) really help with DPS.

Don't fall into the Int trap. Ignore Int, it is never more important than your other stats. The single most important piece of gear for an SK? MITHRIL TWO-HANDED SWORD. Get it as early as you can. I got mine before lvl 20 and didn't outgrow it until lvl 50.

Yes I forgot that . I am on Agnarr so it is Classic with Kunark in 3 weeks or so .
As weapon I use the Dark Reaver .

Hnnngh

Darkforge is significantly better than banded, but it's quite pricey on Agnarr. Fine Plate is only slightly less AC than Darkforge, but considerably cheaper.

How is Darkforge not significantly better than banded?

If ur talking bout the above poster he said it was significantly better, but I don't think it's worth the price. Go banded tI'll 50, FS if u got a couple thousand pp and dark forge if you want to waste some krono.

PS fbss+babs or mithril 2 hander better dps?

I was looking around for gear for my SK and I saw that hero bracers are ridiculously expensive. Is the mino hero super rare or something?

I agree that Darkforge is pretty much a waste of krono/time and I skipped it (except legs) on my way to planar gear. Some people claim the Darkforge legs are better than the Umbral legs, but I do not share that opinion (I own both). If you are level 46, you are better off spending all your time in the planes and getting Umbral.

Regarding dropable weapons:

Mithril 2h (31% haste) = .68775 ratio, 30.53435 delay, 21 damage, 103 bonus

FBSS (21% haste) + BABS = .74462 ratio, 32.23140 delay, 24 damage, 100 bonus

Belt of Iniquity (16% haste, SK Plane of Sky belt) + BABS = .71385 ratio, 33.62069 delay, 24 damage, 100 bonus

I never bought an FBSS (21%), but I do have the SK Sky belt (16%). I usually still preferred using my Mithril 2h, because of the slightly lower delay (theoretically means more hits and more procs, both of which help with aggro). But both swords were very close and I could not discern a meaningful difference despite using a parser. The Mith 2h is far cheaper than a BABS+FBSS, and the PoSky belt is better overall than the FBSS, despite the lower haste.

I did drop both BABS and Mith2h in favor of my Skarlon blade and subsequently the Soul Leech.

Some No Drop weapons for reference:

Skarlon + BoI (16% haste) = .725 ratio, 34.48276 delay, 25 damage, 103 bonus

Soul Leech + BoI = .77333 ratio, 38.7931 delay, 30 damage, 113 bonus(!)

And our one hander:

Blade of Abrogation (1 hander, +7 str) + BoI = .59487 ratio, 33.62069 delay, 20 damage, 26 bonus

Snide note: Technically, the Bloodmoon is a better one hander, but since it isn't Ogre-usable it doesn't matter. Any SK who isn't an Ogre doesn't care about being the best

Post-haste ratios calculated using http://gaming.invisibill.net/eq/hastecalc.html

Speed of a weapon has very little to do with procs. An effect will have a certain proc rate over time and a faster weapon will give you a bit more consistency but over the long term will not impact the overall proc rate. Also once Kunark comes out, Int will suddenly be your most important stat since you largely become a dps class on raids and with Discs a very large part of that will be from chaining lifetaps which very much requires a good bit of mana.

You are right about proc rates having little to do with weapon speed, but I still prefer faster weapons when everything else is similar. Just seem to work better when I need them to, and faster hits seem to hold aggro better.

As for the Int debate...I haven't played kunark since it first came out, so I can't comment on that except to say that Int only means mana pool. So if, in Kunark, SK's start to get most of their DPS from spells, and they don't need to worry about taking hits or doing weapon damage, and if fights in Kunark are all about burning through your mana until you are OOM (and not about mana regen), then yeah...Int would probably be more important. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case

But here in classic, and on Live, Int is absolutely not a consideration in prioritizing gear.

Dark Forge armor is almost free. Just go into CT, and ask for rotts. I ended up with 75% of a suit in about 3 hours. Got everything the next night except 1 of the arms parts. All you need to do then is get the other quest parts, worst part being the SolA drops. Everything else is easy.

Or you could do the same thing in Fear and get the best armor available. And no extra questing. <shrug>

Yes but he was asking around level 30. The "just go get fear loot!" statements aren't really helpful with his question.

That is a good point, and I agree. Until he hits level 46. I still consider Darkforge to be overly expensive, 2nd-rate gear. Meh - I'm not saying you shouldn't buy it or use it, just that I was able to skip it entirely without ever missing it. It might be cheap enough to be worthwhile now, since the price can only go down on it.

Thanks for this advice which was the best on this thread .
I discovered that there was 1 easy static camp (23 min spawn) in CT and on every spawn 1 or 2 dark forge pieces dropped .
So yesterday I got everything but 1 leg part in a few hours . As a bonus I got also rubicite boots, legs and 2 bracers .
To my big surprise when I asked a PC, a guy came and offered me 1.3 k for the rubicite boots that I promptly sold him

I really can't understand the many people who said on this thread that Darkforge was EXPENSIVE when in reality it just takes a few hours of camping to get a full set .

Now to the rest of the quests my biggest problem that I couldn't solve is the helm . I need 2 FP guard helms but all guards are 50 . There are 2 lower ones at NRo gate but in their middle stands a third who is also 50 .
I could use my main but he is high elf and I don't want to be KOS in FP .
So apparently I'll need to wait to be 50 on my SK (and get additional help anyway) what kinda destroys the purpose of a lvl 30 quest .
Or is there some deeply hidden way how to get those FP guard helms with a lvl 29 SK ?

Funny enough, I JUST did this part. The 2 guards at the NRO gate were pretty easy for me at lvl 40 - especially Guard Orpheen. I didn't see the 3rd one you mentioned so I'm thinking he wanders about. I was able to pacify the 2 that were sitting there with my enchanter (then I zoned him out for good measure but probably didnt need to do that) so I'm betting if he is still there, he could be as well or just wait for him to wander off.