I recently restarted playing Everquest and have a 70 ranger, monk, shaman. I need help finding out my path for new gear as I level above 70. I have mostly level appropriate defiant and a few scattered extras I got along the way. I have no experience with the newer expansions. Thanks for any help. I also have only a little pp, about 30k.
Pretty soon they're going to to be doing the summer revamps, aka Hardcore Heritage. That's your best bet for the 70s. The armor drops are tradeable, as well as many of the other drops. Look for Athlai or Othni for the armor pieces. You might find some up from last year, but I'd wait for the event to run again so the prices drop. Many of the other drops had a naming theme (Lost for Cazic Thule, Enameled for Lower Guk) but there are plenty of drops that didn't, so you'll want to search by slot. Another good option is to check out the Hero's Journey in your achievement window. Many of the achievements have gear rewards. The Paragon set that starts at 75 is a nice leg up from Defiant.
At 70/71, your best options will be Elegant Defiant, then Archaic (a minor upgrade) or Othni (much better, from the summer zones). At 75, Paragon from Hero's Journey (Jonas Dagmire's Skeletal Hand quest series), then at 80 HoT tier 1, and so on up the expansion progression. For 70, Archaic is likely to be reasonably cheap, less than Defiant or Othni, and Paragon is of course free. See also: Armour Progression.
Honestly, your best bet is to save your money and grind through the 70s. The average amount of HP per slot will go from 250 at level 75 to 850 hp for level 80 group gear in the bazaar.
