I'm not new to EQ2, however, I have yet to fully understand the adornments. I have a max level Illy with max AA's, however I have almost zero adornments. I understand that white adornments are from crafters, Yellow are from faction merchants, and Red are from raids. Is it feasible to use only adornments from faction merchants, or do I really need to purchase crafter made ones as well? Are faction adornments still primarily from the Velious xpac? (Othmir, Thurgadin). I just kind of need pointed in the right direction on where to get started with adorns. Also, any tips on good adorns for an Illy would be appreciated.
Pretty much a newbie regarding adornments myself, but the different colored adornments have correspondingly colored slots on the equipment and if you've got a lot of white slots then surely you're better off filling them?
Faction adornments only go in yellow and red slots. The majority of adornment slots are white.. which require crafted adornments. You can get a few white adornments from quests, but not enough to adorn out your gear.
It really depends on what you're doing and what you can afford. Every adornment provides an advantage and if you're doing any kind of serious content/raiding you'll be expected to have every adorn filled with the best level of adornments and for them to be ideal for your class. If you're curious what other illys are using you could look up individuals on http://u.eq2wire.com/ and see how they are adorning. Look for illys that are doing similar content to what you want to be doing.
Faction adornments do give the biggest bang for your buck, so to speak, but in the long run you have way more white slots which add more than all of your red/yellows. Taking critical chance as an example, red give +10%, yellow give +5%, and white give around 1-4%. Especially with WL solo/group gear, you have way more white slots now - many times two per item. Basically, I'd try to fill ALL the slots, especially red/yellow, but if you're not raiding, at least shoot for filling all the white. You asked if you really need to purchase crafted ones, and my answer is yes. Faction adorns can only go on as many things as you have red and white slots for, but you're missing out having white slots in all of those pieces if you just aim for faction ones.
Thank you everyone for the helpful replies. At level 92, does that mean I only want level 92 adorns? I'm not sure how level ranges work with adorns, if there is a wider range or if I just need to stick to max level adornments only.
NrthnStar5 wrote: Right now ther are no player made adorns for L92. The basic precept is that adorns come in 3 qualities, Lesser, Greater and Superior and available to make within each tier ar level x6, x8 and x0, so for example Flickering, the tier 1 adornments are level 6, 8 and 10 whilst the tier 9 Ethereal adornments are level 86, 88 and 90. Also adornments cannot be applied to gear at a lower level than the adornment, but lower level adornments can be applied to gear at a higher level. So a level 90 adornment can be applied to a level 90 item, but that same item can also take a level 88 adornment or even a level 6 adornmentt. One other point to watch for, the Greater and Superior - levels x6 & x8 adornments are usually better than the next tiers level Lesser & Greater adornments - take crit chance as a example: Smoldering Greater (level 78 ) = 3.4% crit chance v. Ethereal Lesser (level 86 ) =2.9% crit chance Smoldering Superior (level 80 ) = 4.2% crit chance v. Ethereal Greater (level 88 ) = 3.8% crit chance. Depending on you gear level, it could be more effective to drop down a tier and quality when looking for adornments, and depending on how savvy the crafter is they could be cheaper.
To answer your first question, I'll ask you another question. Would you consider wearing a new piece of gear if it gave you an additional + 54 int or + 27 int + 3.8 crit chance over your current gear? Of course the answer is yes. It's a no brainer and it's the type of improvements you can make to an item with two white adornment slots. Level 88 adorns (the most common, reasonable stat adorns on the broker suitable for level 92 gear) can add 27 to your main stat (int), 18 to your casting skills, 3.8% crit chance, bonus or potency, etc. They all stack, so over your 15 or so pieces of gear you can have a lot of extra stats, making you more powerful. Crit chance is useful to have as a lot of GU63 gear is missing the stat and you need over 280 to crit 100% of the time in the final group zone in Skyshrine (Underdepths). More for raid mobs. After that, potency, crit bonus, spell casting skill, ability modifier are all useful. You can't put any one on any item, some will only go on certain slots, so you should be able to get a good range.
One final thing to consider doing is to visit the reforger. Your gear is likely to have many stats that are les than helpful and can be reforged into something more helpful for your class. Kind of hard to give specifc advice, other than to knpow your class and playstyle and to identify anything that you don't use that can be reforged into something more useful. For example my Mages don't use wands as autoattack weapons, so any item of gear have spell weapon based stats generally will get reforged down in favour of ability cast speed/reuse or ability mod. Feel free to "inspect" Kandar and Juhar over at EQ2U to get some ideas.
NrthnStar5 wrote: As previous posters said: There are no level 92 adorns yet. Of course you want the closest adornments to your level, but if the ones you need are unaffordable, get whatever you can afford. Even a level 10 +2 to Stamina is better than +0 to stamina that the blank spot offers. Leaving any adornment slot blank really messes with my personal OCD on the matter. There was a guy that joined our guild to raid who had like 1 adorn on all his bits of gear. His reasoning was 'well, I'm raiding now, I'm going to get better gear..so why spend the money on adorns?'. As a fellow raid member who IS all adorned, that made me gnash my teeth. If you show up to any group or raid looking like you are at least trying to improve yourself, people will most likely help you in return.
