Leveling Subjobs

So for the last few weeks I've been gather gear so I could level my subjobs.  This meant spending gil, camping NMs, working logistics, identifying gear, and basically getting up the nerve to actually level the jobs.  As one of those packrat type players, I have four mules just for gear alone, one holds my Ninja gear (though not much, he mostly holds Ninjutsu crafting materials), one holds mage gear, one holds melee gear under level 25 and one hold melee gear over 25.  Between all those mules I had good gear for each of my subjobs, so the first thing I needed to do was identify what gear I did have and what gear I would need to upgrade on the way to 49.  Once I had the gear identified I had to decide if I was willing to spend the gil, camp the NMs or do the quests to get it.  What this ultimately meant was, for example, was I willing to purchase/camp Bravo's Subligar for my Thief (no), or would I be willing to do the quests to obtain a Promise Badge for my mages (yes).  After I vetted my top choices, I had to backtrack a bit and decide what gear I was going to get instead.

The next stage was to start purchasing the gear (and spells) as well as track down the R/E items I planned to get.  Took me about two weeks camping the AHs to track down all the purchasable gear I wanted.  During this time I camped a number of NMs (like Qull the Shellbuster and Nue) and picked up quite a few things, but there were a couple snags, Jujitsu Gi, Brown Belt and Gothic Sabatons.  Camping the Jujitsu Gi reminded me of why I didn't have it to begin with, there's always someone there and the drop-rate is crappy, at the same time the price was dropping on the AH and I ended up buying it for around 100k.  Camping the Brown Belt was a slightly different issue, I had Dodo Skin from way back in the day, so I only needed to kill the tiger and marlboro.  Nue was easy, no one was ever there, but I went 0/15 on the damn drop and became despondent, I checked in on Morbolger a few times, but he was never up.  In addition, the prices on the Brown Belt started plummeting on the AH (it was 380k when I started all this), eventually I said to hell with the camping and bought it for a measly 200k.  The Gothic Sabatons have been absurdly tough to get, they are a brown casket drop in Behemoth's Dominion and at one point I saw 2 brown caskets and 50 blue ones, the percentage odds have not favored me.  At this point I just plan to wait for the Kupower Mystery Boxes: Frontier Lands because trying to camp it as is has pushed me to the edge and I consider this piece necessary for WAR and DRK.  Aside from the Gothic Sabatons there is one piece of gear left to get and that's a Voyager Sallet.  I haven't went after this item because I'm waiting for the level cap to be removed for the CoP zones, so this is something that will have to wait til June.

The final step in all of this was taking inventory of my gear and determining what to move, when I was going to be done with it, and what to sell.  This was easy, but it took some time to coordinate everything between nine subjobs and four mules (this also includes R/E stuff I have in storage).  What I have in place now is a level by level gear guide for each of my nine subjobs and all the gear and spells I'll need to go with them and when I need to change my gear (and sell the gear in some instances).

I plan to level my subjobs solo as I'd rather do something than wait on a party, but all of them I leveled over the weekend were invited to level sync, so it seems like solo will be more of a personal choice depending on the job (everything is skilled so I don't lose much from syncing anyway).  My plan is to get everything to 40 first and then 45 if I have time, getting to level 49 will probably come later in the year.

My tally as of today:

WAR 52 - WAR was my first job, I gave up shortly after reaching level 50 to become a full-time Ninja, all I did here was modernize the gear.
MNK 40 - This isn't much of a subjob for NIN, but it's something I've kept up with in the event I want to break it out.
RNG 40 - This isn't so much of a subjob as it is my next job to 75+
SAM 40 - Like MNK, this gets used every so often, the last time I subbed it was for ZNMs.
DRK 39 - I started on this last night, Horror Voulge, Bloody Bolts and Drain have made this a formidable job to solo on.
WHM 38 - When I solod WHM to 37, it was surprisingly easy, I'm hoping for more of the same.
RDM 37 - IMO, RDM is going to be the subjob of choice for NIN tanking once we hit 99, NIN/RDM looks more exciting than ever!
SCH 37 - This will be the worst job to solo, I'm going to have to pray for party invites because it's going to take a long time by myself.
THF 37 - I plan to do this after I get DRK to 40, but damnit if I would rather leave it be.

There are two other subs that I have thought about in passing, but I doubt I ever bother to level, those would be BLU and DNC.  BLU looks like it will have a number of the spells that will make RDM so useful, so it's something to be mindful of.  DNC is probably the ultimate solo subjob, but that doesn't mean I have to level it (prancing around and doing pirouettes is NOT something I want to see Drakus doing).