Initial Preparations and Specialist Actions?

Anyone playing around with these abilities. They seam promising I just haven't figured out where best to use them.

If you have most of the important level 50+ cross class skills, you won't need to worry about them unless you have low base CP.

These skills are very useful for single class crafters with minimal low level cross class skills (only TOT, HT, and ingen1 required; SH2 highly recommended), however, as they'll allow you to reliably HQ even 2* crafts from all NQ. When playing around with single class crafting, I often opt to use Refurbish for the CP, but at times I'd use Reflect or Reinforce instead. It's situational and will depend on how much durability you have remaining (and how many more IQ stacks you need), how much CP you've gained through tricks of the trade, and so on.

"The triple R's" of specialists - Reflect, Reinforce, Refurbish - are all pretty damn versatile and powerful.

A pretty common opening for Reflect is:

Init Prep
Comfort Zone
IQ
Reflect

This adds 3 stacks of IQ at the earliest stage, so as to increase the power of each upcoming touches, and also helps guarantee a high IQ stack at the Byregot finisher phase. Once Reflect is used, however, you lose Init Prep, and you lose the advantages of random CP reduction for the rest of your rotation. So this use of Init Prep is assuming that you have a very healthy CP pool, and you don't need Init Prep to help with conserving CP.

Reinforce (adds 25 durab) and Refurbish (restores 65 CP) are really more situational... In both cases, you will likely NOT be using Reinforce/Refurbish too early, but using them towards the end of the rotation. Thus, if you forfeit the aforementioned advantages of Reflect (but going after Reinforce or Refurbish instead), you will get to keep Init Prep active for a prolonged period of time, and you will likely be saving a lot of CP in the long run. How much CP is saved though is entirely random.

Has anyone figured out the proc chance on Init Prep yet? 20% chance maybe? Hard to convince me to give up Muscle Memory for Init Prep :).

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Originally Posted by Ostwar

Has anyone figured out the proc chance on Init Prep yet? 20% chance maybe? Hard to convince me to give up Muscle Memory for Init Prep :).

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Not sure, but RNG is RNG... and when you need it, it usually doesn't happen XD

Personally, I prefer to use Mus Mem instead of Init Prep... I think most omni crafters will do the same, as we prefer something that we can use across all our class. In other words, if we can figure out something that can work well without the need of specialist skills (but using multiple lvl 50+ cross class skills instead), then we stick to that so that we don't need a different way to hand specialist stuff. Of course, Init Prep itself isn't a specialist skill. But without the advantages of the Triple R's, Init Prep's randomness does not seem to outweigh Muscle Memory.

You can do a near infinite quality craft by abusing initial preparation and whistle.

Other than that, reflection is crazily useful to achieve 100% HQ from full NQ mat with minimal stat.

I will say that having IP proc on Manipulation II, Master's Mend II, and especially Comfort Zone is the best feeling in how much CP it saves you. It's sad that the Specialists Rotations I see only let it proc for CZ and IQ.

Almost makes me want to try a silly RNG heaven rotation with keeping IP much longer into the rotation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

It's sad that the Specialists Rotations I see only let it proc for CZ and IQ. Almost makes me want to try a silly RNG heaven rotation with keeping IP much longer into the rotation.

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It does not have to be a "silly" rotation, it just has to use Reinforce or Refurbish. Thus, allowing you to do like 25 steps before you turn it off.
The reason these options are less desirable than a Reflect rotation is because these rotations become 5-10 steps longer, requiring a 3rd macro button for completion and almost no improvement in reliability.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

I will say that having IP proc on Manipulation II, Master's Mend II, and especially Comfort Zone is the best feeling in how much CP it saves you. It's sad that the Specialists Rotations I see only let it proc for CZ and IQ.

Almost makes me want to try a silly RNG heaven rotation with keeping IP much longer into the rotation.

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The current rotation is meant for stability within the minimum step.