How should I go about upgrading gear?

[Jedward]

The gear (huge image warning)

Yes, I know. Most of it is badly scrolled. I'm waiting for Innocence scrolls to come back to the Cash Shop (or for a period of time where I can just throw cash at cubes and buy new Empress gear). In the meantime, though, what can/should I do to improve my damage?

My meso budget is 4b and my NX budget is currently nonexistent (for the next couple weeks.. we'll see about after).

Thanks in advance.

[Icedemontrihorn]

I remember going through that scenario before....at least you have full empress gear compared to me back then. :b

Ok, the first think I noticed is your empress gear. 2 of them specifically, the shoes and the hat were chaos'd and have no atk. If you think you can get better ones with the same luk% and atk, go for it since atk can help your range a lot if you have a good Luk:atk ratio.

The next thing that could be upgraded afterwards is split between the cane, the card or the earrings. The cane because 142 atk is kinda low for a cane with no slots left. A clean empress cane is 131 atk so scrolling that with 50% pinks will boost your range up by a lot. (142 atk + 1 star and some atk% < 185 atk + 1 star and lame potential lines). You could probably get a cheap one for a cheap price now compared to back then since phantoms aren't as popular compared to when they were released. The earrings because I think you could get some decent ones with some atk with your 4b. The card, you could either cube or buy a decent one with the mesos you have right now.

That's all I got. Out of the two options, I feel that changing your empress gear to have some atk is cheaper but if you think you can get more mesos, scrolling your own cane will probably help you gain some range in the long run. Hope that helps!

[hadriel]

I'll just note that you could get a lot more lines with a top/bottom than an overall, but at the loss of all the WA and 7th Empress bonus should you consider upgrading to an Empress shoulder. Your Tinker shoulder is not any better than what an Empress shoulder would provide directly (before set effect).

Scrolling stuff... I'll leave you to the others to advise. You've reached a point where you'll need quite a number of cubes to make a significant different to your damage. We're talking about those 3% items being cubed to 9% and above. It's going to be very expensive on your NX, and you are much better off improving your base stats by scrolling, so you decide.

Oh, get a pocket and roll for a good (4WA+) ES square. You're also missing a title, which you should use the current ones from the event (those 5WA ones but they expire) then swap out for the Legendary Hunter from Silent Crusade. Monster card collection time, if you're willing to go through the trouble for 3-4 stats on your codex?

I may also suggest the Mystic Set if you're willing to spend all the NX on cubing and Return-scrolling, because those give pretty good stuff for their set effect and are Tier 3 so they can be cubed to good effect. The face and eye all come with WA and can be Chaosed, but the main thing is replacing that branch nose, spectrum goggles and tinker belt. Understandably there is a big risk to doing that (needs a fair amount of investment so it's a pretty big barrier i.e. a long way to go) so it is a possibility but not a definitive.

Last bit from me: if you do indeed get an Empress shoulder, consider a Nova or a Tyrant cape. You must EE them for the stat gain, because right now your stats could do with a little more love, whereas your WA is most strongly dependent on your weapon and choice of stolen skills.

Hadriel

[MountLag]

You should be able to buy a 15% or higher luk earring pretty easily to replace your 9% earring. I guess that would be 1b for 15% in most servers.