The easiest way to buff Specialists - free Heart of the -whatever-

Make "Heart of the -whatever-" free to cast, and not require any item to use. There's no reason a specialist should have to use CP for this skill that can theoretically result in no Goods, and requiring an item to use it makes it annoying.

Make it require the item if someone wants to use it and isn't a specialist.

Yeah I was getting ready to document a "useful" specialist rotation... and while doing so I had a heart of the XXXX with ZERO @#$%#$% procs. At which point I pretty much threw specialist down the toilet and cursed the developer who thought this was a good idea.

It should require an item, be available once a rotation and ensure at least one proc.

The heart skills are the worst. They cost CP and an item and only last a short time. There's so much room for improvement in them it's ridiculous.

Another option is to remove the CP cost, 45 CP is a huge gamble for a chance at a small gain.

My issues with specialization:

1. Honestly I don't think the heart abilities take into consideration that SE lowered the frequency of good/excellent procs on the higher tier synths.
2. Why would I want to use heart ability on culinarian? I get it on per se a 2 star offhand but a single food item? No thanks.
3. The lowered procs wreck it's utility on anything useful to craft. Delineations should be a bonus not a requirement.

I don't think they factored the lower proc rate either. It feels like the built the system with the normalized proc rate... and then reduced it and didn't recheck specialization rotations.

As I see it, the low proc rate of Goods and Excelents at high levels was specifically SE's method for encouraging specialization. The idea was that low procs would make it troublesome for players to craft stuff at high levels unless they specialized, in which case they could use Heart of the XXXX to cancel out the proc rate penalty. It's no guarantee, of course; even low-level synths sometimes go the entire synth without a single Good or Excellent, after all.

The problem is that Heart of the XXXX is just too darned expensive for its duration. 45 CP is a huge investment, and even if it DOES provide a couple of Goods you may well need to spend them on Tricks of the Trade just to have enough CP leftover to properly finish the synth. It can provide, at the very most, four Goods, and if you're going to be spending two of them to recover CP, that depends on an awful lot of good fortune... Of course, those Goods could also be advancing your Whistle stacks for you, which I'm sure was also partly the point, but that's a whole other can of RNG weirdness.

The fix for specialization is just to remove it from the game altogether.

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Originally Posted by Waeksyn

The fix for specialization is just to remove it from the game altogether.

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Or you know, make it so specialist get specialist-only recipes instead of making it only mildly useful for people that can't be bothered to level all the jobs.

There are plenty of other things they need to do as well, like never making battle potions 1-per-craft ever again, replace Whistle While You Work, etc. This just seemed like an especially-glaring oversight, considering how annoying it is to even use, and being subject to RNG.

Honestly, at 45 CP there's no reason to use it. Adding an item requirement just makes it extra-useless.

The best fix is remove it.

The second best solution is to redo the powers so that they're actually useful in general, not purely RNG.

The way to make the system as a whole worse is to add specialist recipes.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

The problem is that Heart of the XXXX is just too darned expensive for its duration. 45 CP is a huge investment, and even if it DOES provide a couple of Goods you may well need to spend them on Tricks of the Trade just to have enough CP leftover to properly finish the synth. It can provide, at the very most, four Goods, and if you're going to be spending two of them to recover CP, that depends on an awful lot of good fortune... Of course, those Goods could also be advancing your Whistle stacks for you, which I'm sure was also partly the point, but that's a whole other can of RNG weirdness.

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I'm pretty sure that the main purpose of the heart ability is to reduce the number of whistle stacks, allowing you to use satisfaction for CP restores and nymeia's wheel for cheaper durability restores. From what I've heard, you usually get 2 or 3 good procs only, basically recouping the CP cost. I would not advise using precise touch when these good procs appear, unless you have already recouped the CP cost and have extra CP to spare on top of that.

Unfortunately, the use of delineations kills the system, in my opinion, as well as its heavy reliance on rng. However, without the heart ability, you'll have a hard time using the specialist abilities to help with CP and durability restores. Most level 60 crafts tend to have 2-3 good procs only but specialization is absolutely reliant on them.

Aside from promoting specialization, the reduction in the good proc rate was probably designed to prevent the abuse of precise touch. When you get 6-8 good procs like we did in the past, you could simply spam tricks of the trade and precise touch.

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Originally Posted by MN_14

Aside from promoting specialization, the reduction in the good proc rate was probably designed to prevent the abuse of precise touch. When you get 6-8 good procs like we did in the past, you could simply spam tricks of the trade and precise touch.

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Even with heart, you're still at the mercy of RNG because I've gone through an entire heart with only one good proc (which is still a net loss of CP considering the amount used for WWyW and heart itself). The reduced good proc rate itself goes against the whole point of specialization, especially since WWyW is an investment of itself that costs CP and relies completely on getting good procs.

Increased proc rate or not, the entirity of crafting high end recipes were still reliant on RNG because it fell to your HTs and RSs succeeding. The goods themselves had always been a bonus, but whne you introduce something that is contingent on that to work, welp.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

The reduced good proc rate itself goes against the whole point of specialization, especially since WWyW is an investment of itself that costs CP and relies completely on getting good procs.

Increased proc rate or not, the entirity of crafting high end recipes were still reliant on RNG because it fell to your HTs and RSs succeeding. The goods themselves had always been a bonus, but whne you introduce something that is contingent on that to work, welp.

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I'm not denying that there's an issue with specialization, which is why I've stated that it's broken due to it's reliance on rng and use of delineations. Right now, you rely on luck to recoup the cost of the heart ability and rely on satisfaction/extra good procs to recoup the cost of whistle. CP savings come only if you get to use satisfaction for a third time or use nymeia's wheel for cheaper durability restores.

The issue with a high good proc rate is due to crafters using the old fashioned cross class approach. The moment they introduced precise touch, they had to reduce the rate. I've tried level 50 recipes recently and often get 2-3 good procs within the first 70 durability. Bam, possibly 3 bonus stacks of IQ right near the beginning of the craft (which is what I did).

If you're using cross class abilities, you can steamroll your way through any 1* or 2* craft at the moment as long as you use a dynamic approach to crafting. There hasn't been much discussion about this on the forum, but there are more choices that you can make besides replacing hasty touches with basic or precise touch....

I'm with the taru. Drop the CP cost entirely. Keep the item requirement. That seems like a good enough balance. Maybe revisit proc rate under the effect.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

I'm with the taru. Drop the CP cost entirely. Keep the item requirement. That seems like a good enough balance. Maybe revisit proc rate under the effect.

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I was thinking along the lines of "maybe if they added a comfort zone type effect to it, it might be worth it" but then even the delineation becomes a factor... Also, a longer duration of the increased procs of goods would help (without increasing the cp cost)... at least 10-15 turns or so?

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Originally Posted by dspguy

I'm with the taru. Drop the CP cost entirely. Keep the item requirement.

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The only problem with this is that it breaks the model that forces crafting rotations to end. Every crafting action in the game costs CP, reduces durability, or can't always be used so that you can't sit around fishing for Good procs forever in order to restore CP (via CZ/ToT) and thus durability indefinitely. Yes, the delineations are a limiting factor so that this wouldn't truly be unlimited, but I don't want "bring 3-4 stacks of delineations so you can rescue your synth in an emergency" to become the norm.

I like the idea of a free Heart skill, but there would have to be limits. Either restrict it so you can't use the skill again while the effect is active or have it last a lot longer (the entire duration of the craft would be lovely, but they'd likely have to tweak the rate modifier) and restrict it so you can only use it once per craft.

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Originally Posted by MN_14

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The problem is that specialization should be something that reduces or removes the RNG that end game crafting generally has had rather than introducing more RNG to the mix. There are a lot of very good skills in there: I see great interaction between Byregot's Miracle and Trained Hand, Nymeia's Wheel has amazing utility and the 50% progress boost from 3,6,9 Whistle stacks gives a great balance between CP gain and Progress gain. I'd argue that the lower proc rate works to the advantage of using whistles for progress gain. The problem is there is a lot of ifs and buts that go into using these rotation most of it linked to HotX.

HotX has several great uses:

1) Advancing Whistles for specialist skill use
2) Precise Touch for adding IQ stacks
3) Baiting a good proc for Great Strides plus Byregot's Blessing

HotX would be far more useful if the results were a bit more normalized or predictable. As another said, I've used HotX and gotten 1 good proc during the 7 steps. If you are using HotX for advancing Whistles this is pretty awful return, which is kind of pathetic considering you'd expect specialist skills to synergize with one another.

My reasoning for not relying on HotX is because there is that chance it could screw me, so it's not much of an improvement of Hasty Touch rotations.

Frankly, I'm disappointed in their approach to increasing difficulty of crafts. I'd rather see recipes that remove cross class abilities or reduce CP, like Ixali beast dailies, than see recipe difficulty increase by means of big HP bars. Designing recipes like the Ixali dailies might actually force people to look at specializations as a good alternative.

They are also using band-aid fixes for poorly designed skills: Brand of Elements were meant to be used on Aspected Element recipes, which never gets used. So instead of making Aspected recipes more common, or doing something innovative, they just make Name of Element so people will use them. Just off the top of my head they could've given all recipes a chance to proc either of the two elements associated with the craft (ex: Fire/Water for Cooking, Fire/Earth for BSM) so that cross classing these would serve a purpose. The introduction of the Name of Element abilities doesn't change the fact that you'd never cross class these abilities as you already get the Brand/Name combo that you'd need for that strategy.

I apologize for getting side tracked. On the topic of HotX specifically, I think making it free wouldn't be a good option nor do I think increasing the duration. I'd rather they fix the number of procs to specific steps. I'd happily pay 45 cp and farm delineations if I had an ability that I could predict good procs on for specific steps. I'd also use WWYW if I could guarantee 3-4 good procs minimum.

I thought that they made specialization to offset the proc, and that makes a lot of sense since to be fair we barely got any new skills besides specialization. Also Heart of the Specialist costs 45 CP, but I went up from 398 to 455CP so I kind of figured the new CP values more than made up for the extra skill cost.

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

The only problem with this is that it breaks the model that forces crafting rotations to end. Every crafting action in the game costs CP, reduces durability....

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Honestly, I'm fine with leaving it as is. Keep specialists actions useful for those w/o the other cross-class abilities available. We don't need them anyway.

And my statement is EXACTLY why they SHOULD do something about specialist actions. They aren't doing what Yoshi, etc probably designed them to do. Are there many single-craft-only people using specialists actions to make HQ 2-star items? That's not rhetorical. I really want to know.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

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I'd like specializations to be more than just a way for a crafter to craft without relying on cross class abilities, otherwise they are mostly trivial and pointless. However, given the RNG that is involved with the specialist skills they aren't even useful for that.

Honestly, I'd like to see them design crafting around something other than just dice rolls and bigger HP bars. Gathering got more interesting in the expansion. Crafting feels like it has gone backwards when there is a lot of areas that it should be improved on. It's a pretty bad sign when crafting potions and food for raid becomes a chore because crafting has to be a Rube Goldberg machine.

I'm not trying to hate on the mini-game design of crafting, but when crafting an HQ potion/food takes 30+ steps and you need to make them in bulk (especially true for potions) it gets real old real quick. There was no reason to make potions and food single yield again.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

I think making it free wouldn't be a good option nor do I think increasing the duration. I'd rather they fix the number of procs to specific steps. I'd happily pay 45 cp and farm delineations if I had an ability that I could predict good procs on for specific steps. I'd also use WWYW if I could guarantee 3-4 good procs minimum.

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I don't think making people farm delineations is going to make the system more accessible, which is what the system was supposed to solve. Farming delineations is a time sink pure and simple, and if you're specializing in a craft, you shouldn't be subject to spending more time/gil in prep in order to have an easier time crafting than someone who is not a specialist.

Also, are you talking about guaranteeing Goods in WWYW, or that you would use WWYW if HotX guaranteed 3-4 Goods? If the latter, that would make it too easy to recover CP, as -45CP becomes +35CP while you only spend a few durability to buy time.

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Originally Posted by Mindy_Macready

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The latter. If you are using the good procs for TotT, I feel like you are doing it wrong (I'm assuming that's how you got +35 CP). I'm assuming the aim of HotX was to allow precise touches to build IQ stacks, but this idea falls on its ass when getting only 1 proc during it's duration is possible or when it's possible the proc will pop up after your SH2 buff drops off.

It seems overpowered and broken when you look at it from the stand point of someone that is using optimal/max melded gear and food. However, my first 2* attempt was done with 373 after food buff with 718 Craft and 695 Control. Given that the aim of Specialization is to allow casual crafters to have a real shot at doing high end crafting without requiring tons of cross classes I fail to see how the WWYW system or HotX would ever be usable unless you are looking at high end melds, which is stepping outside of the realm of casual crafter.

Also, when I saw delineations my first thought was it was a buff to allow you to do 2* crafting specialist only recipes. I actually agree that it's stupid to require these just to use a skill, especially something as lack luster as HotX.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

They are also using band-aid fixes for poorly designed skills: Brand of Elements were meant to be used on Aspected Element recipes, which never gets used. So instead of making Aspected recipes more common, or doing something innovative, they just make Name of Element so people will use them.

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There actually is a purpose for these abilities if you think about it from a single class perspective at least. With the Name of Element abilities added, each class has a method of knocking down significant portions of progress without having to worry about high level cross class abilities or relying on heavy rng based abilities like rapid synthesis. It gives the single class specialist some more options.

Arm - PbP or Ingenuity 1 + Name/Brand Abilities
Wvr - Ingenuity 1 + Name/Brand Abilities
Ltw - Ingenuity 1 + Name/Brand Abilities
Bsm - Ingenuity 2 + name/brand abilities
Crp - Ingenuity 1 + Name/Brand Abilities
Alc - Ingenuity 1 + name/brand abilities
Cul - Muscle Memory
Gsm - Maker's Mark/Flawless Synthesis

How to fix specialization:

1. Have Specialized class synths get 80/40 max durability wherever a non-specialist gets 70/35.
2. Have Specialists ignore the Good proc nerf for endgame crafts restoring the old rate of 25%. This could be either always or only when Whistle is active.
3. Instead of #2, Rework Heart of the Class to instead be a permanent buff that removes the Good proc rate nerf and give a Good proc rate of 25% for any craft. Reduce the cost to 20 CP.
4. Instead of #2 or #3, reduce the cost of Heart of the Class, increase the Good proc rate to 50%, and allow Goods to follow Goods while it is active.
5. Make Whistle cost less CP (possibly 0).
6. Make Trained Hand cost less CP (possibly 0). The requirements to trigger Trained Hand are difficult to come by and you can generally only use it once per synth. Having it cost so much CP makes it a skill I never want to use when I meet the requirements. It should be a skill that's always good that you'd always want to use if you could to give a solid incentive to balancing IQ and Whistle stacks. As it stands, I've never wanted to use it when it came up, especially since using it makes Name Brand crafting less effective, negating the progress bonus, and Ingenuity II is never up when it's available since, on a good synth, TH becomes available in the middle of the synth. Another change that would be very welcome is to make TH a 100% success action instead of 80%. That means it's always a valid skill to use even if SH is down (as long as you have 15+ durability, of course).
7. Make the free and mandatory 200% progress hit from Whistle ending have a 100% success rate, or not cost Duability, or both.
8. Document more clearly the quality increase from doing a Progress action while on a Whistle stack multiple of 3.

Any of the above changes would be very welcome. 3+ of them would make me actually use my specialist skills.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

How to fix specialization:[*]Make Trained Hand cost less CP (possibly 0). The requirements to trigger Trained Hand are difficult to come by and you can generally only use it once per synth. Having it cost so much CP makes it a skill I never want to use when I meet the requirements. It should be a skill that's always good that you'd always want to use if you could to give a solid incentive to balancing IQ and Whistle stacks. As it stands, I've never wanted to use it when it came up, especially since using it makes Name Brand crafting less effective, negating the progress bonus, and Ingenuity II is never up when it's available since, on a good synth, TH becomes available in the middle of the synth. Another change that would be very welcome is to make TH a 100% success action instead of 80%. That means it's always a valid skill to use even if SH is down (as long as you have 15+ durability, of course).
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That just gave me an idea for a rotation for specialists: get your 11 IQ stacks, pop whistle, then spam trained hand to completion (ignoring byregots of course, because of the quality you'd get from trained hand). Might be feasible with lots of CP?

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Originally Posted by TechnoTechie

That just gave me an idea for a rotation for specialists: get your 11 IQ stacks, pop whistle, then spam trained hand to completion (ignoring byregots of course, because of the quality you'd get from trained hand). Might be feasible with lots of CP?

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Why would you ever do this? It's 32 CP for a Standard Synthesis that's also an Advanced Touch. If you have 11 stacks of IQ and GS+BB won't get you to 100%, even with minimal stats, you're doing something wrong. Trained Hand is barely more progress than a 0 CP Careful Synthesis II, and it's an 80% action. Whistle also costs 36 CP right now, so you're talking 68 CP to get a 15 CP action that comes with a little unneeded quality as a bonus. Even with all the buffs I suggested (and I wasn't saying implement them all, I was saying implement a few), that isn't a useful strategy. Well, unless they made TH cost less than a Standard Synthesis, but I don't think they should do that.

I just want comboing Byregot's Miracle into Trained Hand followed by Byregot's Blessing (or Brow at that point) to actually be a cool thing you can do that's not a waste of CP over just BB by itself.

well for one thing, it might be useful for people that don't have their crafts leveled up as an alternative to cross-classing things that you've mentioned (two slots from CS2 and BB or if they don't have their WVR or CRP leveled to 50 quite yet). A fully charged byregots blessing is 300% potency, comparable to the potency of two casts of trained hand, but yes as you mention the CP cost is quite monstrous.

But yea, I didn't quite think out the CP costs before posting that idea; it was just something that randomly came to me as a potential use of the ability as it is now.

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Originally Posted by MN_14

There actually is a purpose for these abilities if you think about it from a single class perspective at least. With the Name of Element abilities added, each class has a method of knocking down significant portions of progress without having to worry about high level cross class abilities or relying on heavy rng based abilities like rapid synthesis. It gives the single class specialist some more options.

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The point I was making is the skills were designed to be used with Aspected recipes, hence the double progress you get from them. Instead of actually designing recipes to utilize such a mechanic, you know something that might actually be interesting, they chose instead to lazily make Name of Skills so that all the classes get a version of Maker's Mark. Thanks for reminding me that Maker's Mark is the equivalent of Name of X, but for Flawless Synth: a way of making a shitty ability useful for a few steps without actually fixing the underlying problem that made it useless in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

good ideas

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Another option would be to provide ways for the player to manipulate Whistle stacks that doesn't require RNG. To my knowledge you can drop whistle stacks in only 2 ways: 1) Good/Excellent and 2) Using Satisfaction. It's really easy to get nothing out of WWYW which is part of the reason I can't see a reliable way of using it.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

The point I was making is the skills were designed to be used with Aspected recipes, hence the double progress you get from them. Instead of actually designing recipes to utilize such a mechanic, you know something that might actually be interesting, they chose instead to lazily make Name of Skills so that all the classes get a version of Maker's Mark. Thanks for reminding me that Maker's Mark is the equivalent of Name of X, but for Flawless Synth: a way of making a shitty ability useful for a few steps without actually fixing the underlying problem that made it useless in the first place.

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Whether you like these abilities or not, a lot of players find maker's mark to be very useful and it added an additional small element of strategy, so all of these abilities do have a purpose. It would be hypocritical if you trashed maker's mark, yet used it for your own 2* rotations. At least the older abilities can be used again even if their purpose is a bit different from their original design.

It also neatly takes care of the problem of single class crafters who can't easily take care of progress.

This is kind of off topic, but flawless synthesis did have it's purpose too prior to 3.0. It was useful when HQing low level leve quests if you didn't have a lot of other cross class abilities. Helped me out a bit when leveling some of my classes in the past.

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Originally Posted by MN_14

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I do use Maker's Mark in my rotation and have never said that I don't or that people shouldn't use it so I don't really see how criticizing it makes me a hypocrite. It's easily one of the best openers you can use. However, Flawless Synthesis is a shit skill outside of Maker's Mark just as Brand skills are shit outside of Name. I don't see how using a skill in your rotation means that you are not allowed to criticize it for not actually fixing Flawless Synthesis itself.

They really haven't tried to change anything with the crafting meta. They could've created recipes in the same manner that Ixali dailies were handled, but they didn't. They could've utilized elemental aspected recipes, but they didn't. They could've added more types of conditions that proc in a recipe, but they didn't. Instead we continue to get larger progress bars and quality bars as the only form of variety we see between recipes.

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Originally Posted by Sibyll

They really haven't tried to change anything with the crafting meta. They could've created recipes in the same manner that Ixali dailies were handled, but they didn't. They could've utilized elemental aspected recipes, but they didn't. They could've added more types of conditions that proc in a recipe, but they didn't. Instead we continue to get larger progress bars and quality bars as the only form of variety we see between recipes.

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I consider this to be the biggest problem myself, aside from the lack of actual new skills other than precise touch and the specialist abilities. It would have been great if they gave us really difficult recipes with debuffs similar to the Ixali dailies from before. Successful completion of these recipes could be a way of getting a larger red scrip bonus or something.

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Originally Posted by MN_14

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I agree. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to shit all over the crafting system just for the sake of complaining. I think the frame work they have here has some serious potential, but what I'm seeing in the expansion is not promising. I'd be content with garbage i180 gear if crafting was at least satisfying, but at this point it's no different than 2.x. We are still trying to build IQ stacks for Byregot's with most rotation variations aimed at minimizing the reliance of Rapid Synthesis for progression and maximizing the number of touches you can fit in.

The entire design of the new skills really paints a picture for them not wanting to make any effort to change the meta. Like you pointed out, with the exception of precise touch (which in all honesty could've just been a level 53 Trait for Basic Touch), Nymeia's Wheel, and Trained Hand there really aren't any interesting skills. Most of the skills are inferior hybrid skills to reduce cross class dependence (Innovative Touch and Byregot's Brow) or skills added to fix pointless skills (Maker's Mark and Name of X). I mean honestly an entire thread could be made just on how awful Byregot's Brow is.

Even something as class specific traits could be interesting. Something along the lines of how Blood for Blood is cross classed, but Dragoon still gets the best version of it. The crafting system also suffers from skill redundancies, the most obvious being Basic Synthesis and Careful Synthesis I. To an extent Ingenuity I is redundant and Standard/Advanced Touch are pretty useless except for crafting stuff you grossly outlevel/outgear. Those touches sort of had a use if you got a good/excellent condition proc early in a synth, but given the reduced frequency of procs and the addition of Precise Touch you would have a hard time arguing a scenario where using these is non-trivial.

And yea, I realize I've gotten really off topic.

Crafting traits would be pretty cool, I have to say.

The point of the brand-name skills and the MaMa/FS combos are that they take two cross class skill slots to cross class instead of one. That was an interesting choice for limiting their usefulness cross-class.

I personally prefer Muscle Memory over MaMa even if MaMa is theoretically better just because I dislike the finicky and RNG nature of MaMa. Muscle Memory is simpler and easier to work into set rotations. I find I make way more mistakes with MaMa, miscounting progress and attempting but failing 80% precise touches and so on. Or, overspending CP because I have a different amount every time due to getting 0-3 Good procs during MaMa.

I feel that Advanced Touch has its place. I use it in low level crafts to quickly HQ them, but I also use it in mid-level crafts. My old level 50 two star or less 80 durability macro rotation ended with SH, GS, Ing2, AT, GS, BB, CS2, CS2. It also had a ST in there earlier because I had the spare CP to replace a BT with an ST, and I could do it under Inno for even more quality. Without that ST/AT, I couldn't HQ on a poor BB. With that ST/AT, it was 100% HQ all the time no matter how many poors I had.