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Except that you need i170 to unlock the Expert roulette, which is kind of hard to do without a few Esoterics pieces. (Well, if you want non-terrible secondary stats at least. Some Law items are pretty much a downgrade.)
Not really complaining, it's just that this is the very first time in the game I've been seriously gear-locked. Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in Catch-22: you can easily cap Esoterics once you have enough Esoterics first.
Actually it's really easy to get to i170 without esoterics. Law tomestones (paltry i170 items though they be) rain from the heavens, and the actual Law gear is dirt cheap. You can even buy the upgrade items with Law tomestones if you want, though you don't need to.
I understand the feeling of being locked behind a grind, but I would suggest that in this case you're aiming for the wrong target. If you're sub-i170 right now, your focus should be on farming Law, not on trying to squeeze Esoterics out of things.
EDIT: Caveat to this... while you're farming Law, you should also be doing daily and weekly hunts (A and S ranks if you really want to, but the normal Hunt bills will be fine) for Law upgrade items. Once again, that's Law upgrade items, don't worry about the Esoterics upgrade items right now.
Edited, Nov 18th 2015 3:41pm by Callinon