I'm currently playing in Phinny (current expac TBS), 75 War/Mag/Shm combo. I'm looking for a few group level gear recommendations, particularly for the warrior. I'm mostly geared with defiant + a few TSS tier 1 group pieces I managed to get hold of from Sunderock and Stepps. I've struggled to keep the warrior alive in the higher TSS tier zones to get those upgraded so I think anything from Ashengate/FC is out at the moment. I'm thinking maybe the Praetorian sets in TBS might be the best option, but are there any older zones/raids perhaps that might be worthwhile either? Most of my experience in this era was of the raid zones with groups of raid geared players from my guild rather than how I'm playing at the moment.
Is there a reason you are not raiding? Just about every raid gear on the server has rotting TSS visibles now. There is probably no better time in the entire server's history than the next month to join a guild and get geared up fast as an applicant. Also with SoF just around the corner, there will be some decent droppable plate gear (Warped Steel) that will be a significant step up from defiant (and praetorian). How are your AC augs? There a dozen or more 30 or 25 ac augs you can easily box, from GoD/OoW/DODh. If you are using mostly defiant, and have no augs currently, picking up AC augs in ten or fifteen slots will do a lot more for your AC than moving up from defiant to praetorian. Plus, you should still get some decent xp farming RSS or dreadspire for augs. And, of course, you get to keep the AC augs even when you upgrade armor. If I were in your situation I would focus on AC augs for the next few weeks until either SOF launches or I had every slot augged. On the other hand, if you already have AC augs in every slot, then by all means, Praetorian would be a decent upgrade path between now and SoF launch.
Praetorian was easy to come by when TBS first launched because the missions were paying 150 orux / 75 faction. I did Coral Diving until the reward started to go down. Then I switched to Gorillas in the Garden. Both can be done in 20-30 minutes with a five box so figure 40 minutes or so with a 3 box. The key to Coral Diving is to kill the minimum on the way down. Puddles all see invis, as do the kedge. Everything else does not see invis. Without an evaccer you'd have to be pretty careful to spot see invis and fight in corners where its safest when you do have to kill see invis. FWIW, one of my configurations includes SK and Shaman healer. I did all of Ashengate and most of FC that way. I'll admit the mob DPS is pretty spikey in those zones and I kill the tank now and then but it's doable. Now that we have campfires you have more options, too, because getting back to camp is easy.
I would not worry about group gear right now, in a few weeks SoF drops and group gear gets a huge boost, lots of dropable / attunable 300 hp / mana stuff and you can take it up to 550 hp tier 4 group gear in Crystallos if you want. Even Cultural will get a boost with new 76-80 gear and Slot 11 augs.
Thanks for the tips. Working on a few more Augs in the short term sounds like a good call. I had a look at the cultural armour, is there anything obtainable for the slot 12 or is that raid only (last blood)? They still look like a good upgrade but I feel I'd be missing the real befit of that extra slot. Any recommendations on weapons, currently wielding a BoC (mainly because nothing was ever cooler than owning a BoC right? ) and a 1hb I picked up in icefall (Stone kanbo 20/21 ac15 180hp). I felt I could probably get a blood frenzy for more nostalgia but not really an upgrade, POP raid mobs are probably too hard as well for my trio. I'll hopefully get back to raiding, work and other comitments don't really give me the play time, at the right times of day atm.
You could join an EU guild they raid at like 10 am pst. Cultural armor slot 12 is raid augs. Weapons are gonna get a lot better in SoF but if you can't wait I would look up stuff on raidloot.
You might consider the evolving weapon that drops in stoneroot falls. Blade of the Eclipse. It is relatively easy to farm (a bit time consuming) and will be a nice dps upgrade over BoC. Plus it will sell for a decent price, once you have an upgrade. There are definitely better options in TSS/TBS group content, but the mobs that drop blade of the eclipse would be easily doable by your group. (Just pay attention for wandering witherans.) As others have said though, there are big (and easy to farm) weapon upgrades in SoF, so I wouldn't worry too much about it until you are finished with augs. Not sure how you would fare with the pop elemental raid mobs, but you might consider some LDoN and GOD raid content. MotM went away at ldon so the ldon stuff is probably actually easier than pop right now. You could definitely farm the primal arachnid et al for the blessed shard aug, and I bet you could handle the Everfrost LDoN raid for the 35 AC warrior aug. You'd have to get 3 people to join you to trigger the LDON raid or if you wanted to do the primal guys in an instance, but that should be pretty easy if you tell people what you'll be locking them out on.
