ALCHEMY -- Worst profession in the game

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Originally Posted by ZachFair

Even taking potions out of the equation, ALC is still money because potions are my lowest priced items. I have a black mage and I'm trying to work on a white mage and I'm trying to get my Arc up to level 30, so the ethers and int/mind boosts do come in handy. With that said, my ALC money maker items are those that other crafters need, and my Goldsmith is much more useful in terms of crafting items that I actually use.

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Yeah when you take potions out of the equation, there's no way ALC can compete with GSM. GSM is pretty much the top dog in terms of profitability.

The reason I favor ALC over GSM is because GSM's bread and butter is accessories. There are a few things a GSM can stack like silver or electrum ignots, but for the most part...it's stat boosting accessories. The problem is I can craft a level 30 accessory fairly easy and sell it for 4-6k depending on whats going on. So let's say I craft another, I have another slot at 4-6k. Unless it's rings, anyone who buys only needs 1 accessory and if you put too many on the exchange, youre actually devaluing your items. Therefore, you need to craft other items which increases the amount of mats you need, which costs gil and takes up inventory space. Now lets say instead I sell shark oil, gamma growth formula, or even clear glass lenses. Those will fetch 1700-2500 a piece, and you can stack em in bundles of 5 at a higher price and bundles of ten or more at a lower price. You have now have two retainer slots valued at approx 30k vs the 10-15k of items the GSM items.

Granted I'm only referring to easy mid level crafting. If you're crafting high level relic items, GSM is the way to go. I don't go that route because I have to buy most of my materials and some of the materials needed for high level crafting are insanely expensive.

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Originally Posted by Bufkus

Yeah when you take potions out of the equation, there's no way ALC can compete with GSM. GSM is pretty much the top dog in terms of profitability.

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GSM isn't really top dog. If anything weaver is top dog given that vanya, sb gear, and it's subset will sell much more often and at much higher profit then gsm ever will due to the stupidness of SB on accessories. Sure GSM will get more meld requests, but that's minor.

alchemy can't meld(except acn) and can't really produce end game crafts, but their regents are very high premium since no one mains alchemy enough to craft them. You can say something as simple as clover oil which cost2 shards production cost can go as high as 1k on the AH. Not to mention glues and oils which has 2000% profit margins or more sometimes.

So alchemy is good gil, just not excellent gil. More or less in the same league as carpenter and such.

The only real difference is that with comfort zone many dedicated crafters have already capped alchemy much like every crafter has crp(due to brgyot), and both are very easy to level.

Ach will never get into the same league as wvr, leather, bsm, etc since they are the goto crafts for spirit-bonding, but it does alright on a pure profit margin basis.

Ach has one of the lowest 1st teir mat crafting recipe. Which keeps profit margins pretty fat. And even I sometimes make some nice gil from achemy (i'm not giving away my secret) despite having many other crafts to choose from.

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Originally Posted by Espon

I agree that Comfort Zone seems lousy. Sure it's 14 free CP... which you don't start making back until the 9th step... but compared to what you get at level 15, it just feels dumb. Most other DoH classes get something that actually stands out at 50.

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I'd rather use comfort zone at the beginning of the synth and make the cp back overtime then use tricks which will waste a Good node (little extra quality) AND potentially waste a steady hand or waste not depending on when the good nodes proc. With TotT it's luck based on when it procs. Comfort zone is guaranteed CP back over time

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

GSM isn't really top dog. If anything weaver is top dog given that vanya, sb gear, and it's subset will sell much more often and at much higher profit then gsm ever will due to the stupidness of SB on accessories. Sure GSM will get more meld requests, but that's minor.

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I don't agree with weaver being #1 anymore. It used to be prior to 2.05, but now demand for vanya has dropped considerably and most people are selling the items at a loss on the AH (for 150-200k instead of the good ol' day prices of 1m+). Because of this, crafters are better off selling materials like ingots, undyed cloths, etc.
GSM can craft SB gear as well, the accessories are actually cheaper to make than the militia gear that weavers make. And at least on my server, prices are about the same.

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Originally Posted by Bufkus

I don't agree with weaver being #1 anymore. It used to be prior to 2.05, but now demand for vanya has dropped considerably and most people are selling the items at a loss on the AH (for 150-200k instead of the good ol' day prices of 1m+). Because of this, crafters are better off selling materials like ingots, undyed cloths, etc.
GSM can craft SB gear as well, the accessories are actually cheaper to make than the militia gear that weavers make. And at least on my server, prices are about the same.

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No sane SBer would ever sb with gsm, except...gsm, and even they don't. there are 3 simple reasons
1: You always always wear all your SB +1 accessories if possible
2: accessories have lousy rng converts
3: they have too many alternatives

GSM is just a bit above alchemy now a days if you play the market. Sure it's great to get fat profit margins from mid-level, but any craft can do that, even alchemy. There is plenty of nice quick pocket change to go around.

The big money belongs to the big 3, which is why SB has been taking off.

Alchemy is nowhere near the bottom of the gil barrel. It's an easy craft to level and can make moderate gil in bulk, a good 50 skill, and low shard cost.

and you know that philo items have also gone down a lot as well right?.

Even after PvP is out, I still feel Alchemy is a little too underwhelming. Potions should should last longer, we should get PvP oriented potion recipes, the two star potions should NOT be common drops in dungeons, and we should get even more potions. Here are the changes I feel would benefit Alchemist:

- The potency of stat buff potions should be lowered, but they should last 1 minute per use. Maybe 2 minutes. 15 seconds is just ridiculous.
- It would be great if we could use potions on other party members. Food can be personal use as it currently is
- Party potions. These can offer the entire party a buff that lasts 15 seconds. It would override w/e potion buff any party members have active.

I feel that at the moment, the Alchemist class just feels thrown out there. I'd love to see my ideas implemented, of course, but I'm sure they can think of even better ideas for ALC.

I think the cooldowns for stat boosting potions are terrible and stuff like hi-elixirs aren't worth the cost of the philosophy mats for the healing they provide. Stat boosts should be half of the cooldown on a separate cooldown than things like elixirs. Status removing items like echo drops and stuff should be on their own cooldown as well.

TBH, all craftings need new creativity. For weapon/armor crafting jobs, they are lucky because ppl need those to push thru the contents with greater ease.

However, consumables are not working right. Consumables do not give you noticeable advantage in pushing end game or even mid game contents. AND you can still pass the contents comfortably as long as your group is doing the right things. That is another reason killing the consumables. You are using them just for your own pleasure.

Weapon/armor/accessory demand is going to decrease, be it slow or fast with passing time. I believe that is one of the reasons behind the implementation of furniture. This is to ensure crafting do not go completely useless as players progress thru battle contents. Something new or newer has to come. Or else crafting is going to be their most creative backfiring invention. But hey, fix consumables first really.

It amuses me how ridiculously expensive some of the 2 star recipes are for this. I don't know of a single person who makes Hi-Elixirs because they cost 42 Allagan tomes each. :-P

Indeed, they do recipes suck and take too many different ingredients to produce lackluster products. How about only requiring one or two ingredients instead of like six.

The entire purpose of Alchemy is for the cross-class skills. Once you get it to level 50, you should never be using the class again.

I played swtor and was a biochemist, and just started leveling alchemy in this game - they're basically the same job. It bums me out to hear everyone say its not a very good crafting job (I took it because I'm a sch and at the game launch some website recommended it for schs...)

But in swtor, it was considered the most useful job. Because the skill buffs lasted 1 hour for the low-quality ones, and 2 hours (thru death) for the higher quality ones. And biochemists got reusable versions only biochemists could make, so they only had to worry about making them for other people. But I guess that's basically the food culinary makes in this game. So maybe I should just switch to that...

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Originally Posted by Spald

The entire purpose of Alchemy is for the cross-class skills. Once you get it to level 50, you should never be using the class again.

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Not the entire purpose. You also get a cool outfit and that was my main reason for bothering to get alchemy to 50.

Been a while since i posted this, mega ethers and mega potions have been selling pretty well on my Server suprisingly. About 60k per 99 For both. Still, i have yet to see a dev response on this profession. It would be nice to see how they are veiwing this class.

Toddmounts69, I suspect they view it the same way we do. With disdain and avoidance.

i like using mega potions as a DD class when i eat an aoe i wasn't supposed to. they are pretty expensive still. just have fun making those cool things.

For all you nay sayers please look on to this post http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ooking-potions
Also there are many crafts that the Alch makes that sell's extremely well. Overall it seems that complaining is what most of what you do best.

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Originally Posted by SolusekRo

For all you nay sayers please look on to this post http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ooking-potions
Also there are many crafts that the Alch makes that sell's extremely well. Overall it seems that complaining is what most of what you do best.

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I saw that thread. It doesn't change much. Alch had Comfort Zone nerfed and all things shard related removed from their recipes. It was one of the heaviest hit crafts in the 1.00 to ARR transition.

Your the type that complains about everything, are you not? This is A Realm Reborn and no longer 1.0. Stop living in the past and get over it. alchemist still gives an incredible amount of CP back. For shards, its not that hard to farm for a hour and gain two or three stacks worth of any particular shard. Laziness is what I see when looking at this thread. There are many items that one can gain a profit off of, you just need to do the research first.

i have all crafting jobs lvl 50. i have maxed out materia hq 55 gear for every one of them... however i have yet to have a single request or reason to take the 10 minutes to craft myself a set of 55 gear for alchemist let alone the hour of force melding materia into it, so i have not done it yet. i dont even have the job set on my crossbar. there's really no reason to level alchemist other than to be able to say you have it done. se definately needs to balance this class out.