What's the first set of gear that is better than defiant and worth going after? Any ideas on a good path for gear progression after that? I'm currently closing in on level 70.
Next break is House of Thule armor, starts at 80. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:House_of_Thule_Armor_Guide 75 is when you can start the CoTF HA's for loot and currency
I would suggest also taking a look at the Broken Mirror expansion: https://tbm.eqresource.com/ You can unlock full sets of gear with req70/rec75 by just doing a couple of quick tasks and a single, fairly easy heroic adventure. The base gear at 70 will be about as good or better than anything else at that level. After that, every 5 levels, you can use currency from TBM Heroic Adventuers to upgrade your gear by buying augs. For example, these are the level 75 augs: https://tbm.eqresource.com/gearaugs.php?lvl=75 - those augs will slot into the base pieces to scale their stats up to be level 75-appropriate. This continues all the way up to 105, so if you keep farming TBM HA's (or buy currency from the bazaar), you'll be set until 105. At that point you could continue to 106, buy conflagrant from the bazaar, then use that to get to 110. Call of the Forsaken has a similar HA/gear system. I'm not as familiar with it but you could look into that as well.
The direct upgrades to defiant (that occur after defiant and before the suggestions above) are rewards from achievements in the hero's journey section of the /achievement window.
I recently went through this. Here was my path. I was 3 boxing, might not work if you're molo. Levelled to ~74 in dragonscale hills wearing defiant Did hero's journey quest series in oceangreen hills to get some pieces of paragon (~800 HP/mana) and a good weapon. This got me to 77 Grind to 80 in gyrospire and hills of shade. Used the cash drops to buy lvl80 attunable bazaar gear from house of thule which is very cheap on my server. Tried to go to house of thule T1 but it was too hard so I did 80-85 with gribbles. I needed 2 J1 healer mercs to keep my tank up in gribbles. As soon as I got 85, did the J5 task, now I could use a single healer merc. 85-87 in the grounds, named drop modest gear upgrades and better weapons. That's where I am currently.
Consider looking at SoD gear after 70. Note that in 70-75 range, you need a group to do quests there. Rewards is Paragon gear that is a significant step above defiant. One note though- pretty sure Paragon is prestige (must be subbed)
Note on CotF Mark of Valor bartered gear: it kinda sucks. Generally wirse than about any other option at a given level. It also almost instantly goes obsolete - focus effects on this gear expire at its required level (i.e. gear that requires lvl 80, focus effects won't work on 81+ spells) Save your marks of valor for augments and merc gear updates.
