When should I dirty stat my gear?
You don't really need to mod your gear until you reach level 20 or 25. The equipment you
get from quests will be more than enough to get your questing done.
Theoretically, you could get all the way to level 70 without modding any gear except
maybe your weapon. However, mobs in some zones like Savages Lands jump up in difficulty
quite a bit. So having many items dirty statted by level 50 will help you kill them a lot
faster and therefore quest a lot faster!
You can also dirty stat some purple gear when you reach level 55. There are many good
cheap items you can get with just a few hours of memento farming for each item. You may
be tempted to clean stat these items but I strongly recommend you don't and that you wait
until you're max level so you don't waste any purified fusion stones that cost a lot of
diamonds/gold. If you really want to clean stat something you can clean stat your wings
since there's no level on wings. But it's costly because you'll have to buy expensive
5mil to 20mil stats to make some that are still useable at high level.
Your weapon really determines most of the damage you do. So any gold you get from
questing and selling extra drops should go towards keeping your weapon as good as
possible. Having a good weapon really makes questing a breeze.
What's a good weapon?
At lower levels you want a green or blue weapons because they do much more damage then
white weapons of the same level. The only problem is that MOST of them bind to you and they are not worth unbinding to sell. So any money that you spend on a weapon that binds to you at low levels will be lost.
You can upgrade your weapon by plussing it with cheap jewels you buy from NPCs. There's
an NPC in Varanas West and Obsidian Stronghold Glory Square. Make sure you buy the right
jewels for your weapon level and that you buy weapon jewels which always have star in the
name.
These cheap jewels fail alot but you can get your weapon to +2 for fairly cheap. You can
get +3 but it would be fairly costly and you won't be using the weapon very long so it's
probably not worth it.
You should always know which weapon options you'll have in a few levels so you can make
the best decision on when to plus your weapon. The easiest way to do this is to search
the auction house and limit the results to 3 or 4 levels above your current level.
What's durability?
Every item has a durability number. If your item has a durability over 100 you will get a
20% bonus to the weapon's damage, ghost/base stats, added stats and even the runes added to the gear or weapon. However, if you don't repair your gear and the number drops to 100, you lose the 20% bonus.
So it's important to get items with a durability over 100, especially for your weapon.
And it's important to keep your weapon repaired or over 100 durability all the time. You
can repair gear at almost any NPC merchant and you can repair gear using simple repair
hammers you buy from the auction house or that you get free doing mini games. You can
also get a free master repair hammer everyday from the gobline mines mini game and that
will repair all your gear at once. You can also buy simple and master repair hammers with
mementos and honor points from codex vendors.
If you have a really good weapon but it has a durability of 100 or under, you can use a
golden hammer on it so you get the 20% bonus. You will get the bonus until the weapon
reaches it's original durability. Everytime you die your gear loses 10% durability, so a
weapon you golden hammered will last a long time as long as you don't die too much.
Ranged weapons will last longer but as long as you don't die durability loss is very
slow. In case you're wondering, there's no way to permanently change an item's
durability. So any item with 100 durability or less, you either use it without the 20%
bonus or you golden hammer it.
What's DPS?
If you're a melee class, read your skill descriptions and you will notice that most
skills actually use your weapon's dps number and not it's damage number to caculate
damage. So always take the highest dps weapon. A very slow weapon with only a little more
damage won't hit as hard as a faster weapon with almost the same damage. You should
always see the dps number of your weapon in brackets next to it's physical damage number.
It even says dps so you can't miss it.
What's tiering?
Every item also has a tier level. It's always below the item name so it's hard to miss.
It is possible to increase an item's tier level. When you do this you get a 10% boost per
tier level increase to a weapon's damage or to an items base stats like defense and magic
defense. However, wings don't have any base stats so tiering up wings is useless.
You don't have to worry about tiering up armor until you're at max level. But tiering up
your weapon makes a huge difference. When tiering up armor you use high level mana stones
with good stats on them. When you tier up a weapon you use high level mana stones with
useless level one stats. The reason is simple, it's a lot cheaper.
Making high level mana stones can take several hours or more but there is an addon called
fusion that makes it much less work and does it much faster than doing it manually.
Making mana stones is very easy. All you need is a cheap, 2K gold, random fusion stone that you get from NPCs in Varanas West or Obsidian Stronghold Glory Square. They are next to the guy who sells gems, you can't miss him. You also need an item that will be destroyed, as well as a charge for your transmutor. Simply put the fusion stone and the item in the transmutor and hit ok.
The level of mana stone created is determined by the tier level of the item you
destroyed. There are cheap belts in the level 62 zone called Limo Desert that cost only
3.5k each. They make tier 4 mana stones! You can also use lower level blue and purple
items, I forget exact levels needed, but most people just use the cheap belts instead of
saving crap that clutters their bags. If you can't get to Limo Desert, you can ask a
guildy to buy you some belts or you can buy some off the AH. They are overpriced on the
AH but if you only need 3 or 9 and the price is only 8k each then it's not bad and saves
you bugging anyone to get you belts.
To make a tier 5 mana stone for example, you simply combine 3 tier 4 MANA stones in your transmutor but that also takes one charge. To make a tier 6 mana stone you need 3 tier 5 stones, and so on and so forth.
So, for example, if you're low level and have a tier 2 weapon, you could simply ask a
guildy to send you 9 tier 4 belts and pay him for the belts. Then you get 9 of the
cheapest fusion stones (1.9k each). Then you make 9 tier 4 mana stones. Then you combine
3 mana stones into a tier 5 mana stone. And repeat that last step 2 more times. Now you
have 3 tier 5 mana stones. Now you simply put all 3 mana stones along with your tier 2
weapon into the transmutor and combine them. What's left is your weapon but it's now tier
5 with 6 low level 1 stats on it. But now your weapon does 30% more damage!
Note all stats on your weapon will be lost because only the 6 lowest stats from all the
stats on your mana stones are used. Just remember that stats on your weapon is not
important! Only the tier level is important! The only time you want stats on a weapon is
if it's your offhand weapon or a weapon for your 2nd class. For example, a priest/scout's
bow could have priest stats on it instead of being tiered up because the priest doesn't
actually use any scout skills like shot, because he doesn't normally use/stack physical
attack stats on his gear.
How do I add stats to my gear?
Adding stats to gear is similar to tiering a weapon in that you need 3 mana stones and
you combine the 3 stones with an item.
But there's two ways to add stats to your gear. One way, you use what we call dirty
fusion stones. They are the same ones you used for tiering. They have low level 1 stats. The other way is using costly purified fusion stones, which have no stats on them.
When you combine a dirty stone with an item, both the dirty stats and the stats on the
item end up on the created mana stone.
Since you can only use the 6 lowest stats on your 3 mana stones, you must use dirty
stones that match each other to reduce the number of dirty stats that is put on your
gear.
For example, if you use 3 fusion stones that all have Stamina I and Whiff I, then only
those 2 dirty stats will be added to the modded gear you're making. Basically, identical
stats are considered only 1 stat!!!
Another example is if you use two fusion stones with Stamina I and Whiff I but have a
third with Stamina I and Dexterity I, you'll end up with 3 bad/dirty stats on your gear.
You really don't want more then 3 dirty stats on your gear.
It's important to know that dirty stones come with 1, 2 or 3 dirty stats on them. It's
much easier to find 3 matching stones if they only have 2 stats on them since there are
much less variations.
Having the advance auction house addon is a must if you plan to find matching stones on
the auction house. However, the 2 stat stones are often greatly overpriced in the auction
house so I wouldn't buy them off the auction house unless you're missing just one to
finish a matching set.
I strongly recommend you buy fusion stones from the NPC that come with a guaranteed
stamina I stat and 2 random stats. They are about 5k each and located at the bottom right
of the NPC's menu. It says 2 random stats, but ACTUALLY you get several stones with just
1 random stat.
So I recommend you clear about 3 bags of space and buy 3 bags of these stones, then
delete all the 3 stat ones, and then buy some more. Until you have several sets of 3
matching stones. Spending about 1mil to 2mil will get you several sets of matching
stones. Your cost should be about 40k to 50k which is much less then the 75k to 300k
auction house prices.
Note you may also get a fusion stone with just 1 stamina I stat!!! This single stat
fusion stone sells on the AH for a lot and, if you get one, you can easily make back most
or all the money you spent on fusion stones.
So now you know which fusion stones to use, where to get them and how to get them. All
you need now is a source of good stats. There are several source.
Where do I get good stats?
If you're level 55 and farming the instance Dungeon of Dalanis with your guild, you have
access to many decent yellow stats.
If you're lower level you can always ask guildies for these stats that they often sell to
NPC vendors. But you'll have to supply them matching stones and pay them for the charges
they use making the mana stones for you. If you have diamonds, gifting them charges is
better so they don't have to replace their charges.
Another way to get stats is buying the lvl 70 or 72 accesories that now drop in the new
zones inside bags. They have decent yellow stats that are perfect for dirty modding low
level gear. They are about 400k to 800k each so it's a little costly. But you only need 3
per gear so it's not too bad. About 10mil to 15mil, will get you 10 pieces of dirty
modded gear, done the way you want.
Keep in mind that when you're done with the gear you can resell them for most of your money back if not more then you spent. But to do this you have to dirty stat gear that does not bind to you. If you dirty stat bound purple gear you can simply buy a matching dirty fusion stone and make a dirty mana stone from the gear, which you can then sell as is or use it with blank DIRTY stones to make a white dirty piece to sell for easy gold.
You can make the gold you need from quests and upgrade as you go. You can also make gold farming wood/plants/ore or instrument mats from low level instances also sell good. Farming dailies to sell like dogmeat is something you'll notice many people doing. Ask guildies how to get to the dogs or more about making gold.
I bought diamonds, what should I buy?
If you buy diamonds early on with little game experience, I strongly recommend you only
sell enough to get about 20mil to dirty mod some gear. As you progress you'll learn a lot
about what you need to spend diamonds on. And you will need a lot of diamonds! So save
them!
What stats should I use?
When picking stats, you always want some stamina of course. Stamina gives you HP, defense and HP regen. But your priofity should be stats that give you physical attack or magical attack depending on your class.
For tanks and priests, when you dirty mod gear you want to focus on increasing your
damage because it will help you quest a lot faster. Once you're max level or near max
level and you're making clean statted gear, then you can focus on statting for your class
and what you need to perform your roll well in groups if that's what you decide you want.
So don't stack stamina thinking you'll be the best low level tank in the world, you'll be
wasting your time and make your life hell for questing!
For rogues and scouts, you mostly want stats that give you physical attack. Dexterity is
good because it gives physical attack and accuracy but you don't usually get as much
attack power as a straight physical attack stat. What you don't want is wisdom, magic
attack or magic defense. Wisdom does help your shadow prison hit rate but I wouldn't use
any wisdom stats and I rely on potentials that increase all stats, pet stats and hero pots which boosts all base stats by 20%.
For casters, like mages, priests, druids, using any dex, strength or patk stats is pretty
much useless. Wisdom also does very little for you. You really just want stamina,
intellect and magic attack stats.
Should I "perfect" stat my gear?
You don't have to be perfect. A mage for example doesn't need to use 2 stam/ma and 4 int/ma on every piece which might be considered "perfect" by some people. Using a intellect/defense or a intellect/hp stat is more than fine for dirty statting and clean statting to some point. You want defense and hp so as long as it comes with some magic attack or intellect then it's great. What you want to avoid are things like wisdom/hp and intellect/magic defense.
However, if you're using cheaper stats to clean stat gear don't use too many perfect stats along with them. If you're using 4 "perfect" stats don't decrease their resale value by adding a int/def to the mix! Instead wait for 2 more perfect stats.
Please note, statting your gear is just one small piece of the RoM puzzle. Some people
focus too much on perfect statting when their damage is based on many other factors.
For example, having a +16 necklace will add over 11% crit rate. Having +16 rings will
increase your crit damage by 110%, that's huge! Having a level 50 holy pet will give you
10% more crit damages, 10% more HP, 10% more heals recieved along with over 500 more stam and 1k more dex, str, int or wisdom, depending on the element type you choose. Having your housemaid buffs at max level will give you 6%+1k more HP, matk or patk!!! Having runes in ALL your gear will probably add a good 5k HP and 5k patk or matk easy.
But all that combined might not even mean as much as going from a lvl 60 tier 7 weapon to
a lvl 70 tier 10 weapon.
Also using the right foods, pots, skill rotation and maxing the right skills is also all
very important. There's also siege titles, ISS skills, cards and music. So you're much better having all these things then only having a few of them and perfect statted gear.
So get it all done, get everything statted, everything plussed, everything rune slotted,
max your skills, level your pet, max your housemaid buffs, etc etc, and most importantly get your tier 10 weapon, and then, you can focus on perfect statting and clean tiering gear!
Hope that helps. Have fun!
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