Hi folks!

I've been playing the game for about 10 days now and will soon finish campaign on hard and look forward to bringing Kael up to 6* quite soon! This means I'll soon be farming equipment on brutal in campaign to get those 5* pieces on the champions I make use of.

Having read many equipment guides, one thing that I find frustrating is how much of the second row equipment (gauntlets, chest, boots) goes to waste when farming for not having the "right" main stat. It seems the thinking goes: an Offense set should have gauntlets with CR% or CD%, a chest with ATK% and boots with speed - else it is rubbish. Well... that's only 1/7 or 1/8 keepable pieces even if you do get a 5* piece! That's a horrible grind. What if we could up these odds and simplify the equip process?

One of the things I found very confusing starting out is that there are set bonuses that do the exact same thing as main stats do. Like Offense sets giving 15% extra ATK per 2-piece, but then a humble 3* chest/boots/gauntlet with +8 upgrade with Offense as main stat will give 14% too - after that, that one piece only pulls ahead even more. Starting out, it seems those set bonuses are crucial, but it takes two of them just to match a mediocre piece with mediocre upgrade! So actually, the set bonus is more like "fine tuning" as you start coming out of the early game, and the main stat is where it's really at. This got me thinking!

The scarcest main stats are CR%/CD% on gloves and (flat) speed on boots. So what about if all boots were in fact Speed set boots, and then the Speed set boots with speed mainstat would be for guys that wanted to really go first, like Apothecary, and then Speed boots with ATK% or some such would be good for attackers that want a bit more extra speed. Similarly, what about if all gloves where Critical set gloves? Then every character would get a small welcome boost to CR (even apothecary - he attacks too after all, better make it count), but the Critical gloves with CR% would be for folks that really need to make their criticals. Then you don't have to have Defense gloves for DEF-based champions, HP gloves for HP-champion and Offense gloves for ATK-champions - they'll all just use different varieties of Critical gloves with the appropriate main stat% instead and be better off for it - a little less CR%, but alot more of their defining scaling stat that was previously just "available" in that chest slot on 1/8 of all chest pieces!

Speaking of chests, we of course need matching pieces for the Critical and Speed sets. It seems to me, Speed chests will give the largest number of keepable chests. Since we're freeing up main stat space in gloves and boots, attack champions no longer need to have just the right main stat on their chest as well - or rather, few do. Someone like Saurus for food XP farming might want ATK% on every single second row piece, but otherwise, 1-2 of them will be fine for most. So you could do an attacker with CD gloves (Crit set), HP% chest (Speed set) and ATK% boots (Speed set). This gives you many outs to get good main stats on each champion, and fights RNG problems. But the great thing about Speed chests is that all those 5* Resistance and Accuracy main stat pieces have value. Just put them on and buffers and debuffers - who will of course enjoy the speed set, and get plenty of DEF% or HP% from their boots or gloves. This means you can now also ignore farming the corresponding sets (resistance and accuracy - just use the right chest piece of the speed set instead). So now you only have to discard that flat hp/atk/def chests and keep 5/8 pieces, one set fits all! The only chest you'll ever be farming is Speed set, and most of the time that you get a 5* piece, it will be very useful and you'll have no trouble deciding what goes where and how it all matches up. 

Okay, we still need a matching set piece for Critical - I suggest helmets. This frees up the weapon and shield slots for fine tuning your champion with whatever you wish. I've noticed many of the "special" equipment you get as rewards are indeed weapons and shields, so if you want to equip something fancy here you can, without having to disrupt your general main stat management and basic set bonuses. I also recommend farming Critical set and Speed set weapons and shields for the same reason as above - they go with everything, and many aggressive champions would not mind a second Critical set whereas many support/defense would not mind a second speed set bonus. Of course, it's just as easy (infact easier) to farm Offense/Defense/HP etc. weapons and shields, so don't hesitate to have a few 5* equipment here too to equip as needed. 

As for advanced (4 piece) sets like Lifesteal, just farm first row equipment and gauntlets. This keeps your speed set plan intact and missing out on a crit set bonus will be more acceptable for the vast majority of characters than missing out on a speed set bonus. All the gloves except flat stats will of course still be keepable and subject to matching with the right champion.

TLDR; it seems best and least grindy to:

Chest and boots: Only farm speed sets, match main stats accordingly. Note that every single champion in every single format/environment will be wearing this. 

Gloves and helmet: Only farm critical sets, except for 4-piece sets that you actually want/are useful, match main stats accordingly

Weapon and shield: Farm whatever set bonus you need the most to complete your champion's stats. Later you can use Critical Damage sets here, for example.