Personally, I've liked the idea of wanting to specialize in a craft or two and receive buffs to still be able to craft recipes. However, I can say that I strongly oppose specialist only recipes. It's easier to focus and see the bad, but it seems like most people I know that are serious about crafting, and craft a majority of their time, have ALTs to cover the 3 specialist lock out. This often leads me to wonder what was the point in making specialists a thing.
I'd like to know what other people think on the subject.
How Do You Feel About Specialists?
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10-14-2017, 05:01 PMJunseiKeiHow Do You Feel About Specialists?
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10-14-2017, 05:37 PMZiggyzapps
Alts really don't seem necessary, especially when custom deliveries gives you 3 easy souls of the crafter each week on top of the yellow scripts. Unless you want to level up another char for fun, do the msq, and gear it up each update... doesn't seem worth it at all. The time spent leveling up another crafter could be spent making 500 mil, at which point you aren't really worried about finding a niche in the market.
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10-14-2017, 06:00 PMAlisiHonestly, I don't really care so much about it this expac. I hated them last expac because changing them was a pain in the bootie. The penalties were huge last expac, especially during the favor farming part (where you had a choice of gear, crafting material, or holding them all for a week.) Now it's incredibly easy to switch and you get three switches a week. As for specialty only recipes? I'm kind of meh about it. It's easy enough to find another endgame crafter to make a trade with or you simply have a list of all the things you want to make and get those ingredients together before doing the specialty changing. Alchemy is really the only class you need to keep really. The other two are easily switched up.Quote:
Originally Posted by JunseiKei
It feels like all my HW vs SB crafting comparisons comes down to the point that SB has no favor farming. xDD I think I'm just realizing how much I truly loathed that system. -
10-14-2017, 11:30 PMuvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu
I have more objections over Ornate/Augmented than specialists, especially when the crafted version lacks 5 materia slots.
At the very least the specialist recipes should be on par with the stuff they throw for luck/free.
I know they will lower the yellow scrips mats in later patch but (shrugs) it's very demotivational to craft atm. -
10-15-2017, 01:33 AMRoth_Trailfinder
The Specialist stones do not do enough.
They *should* confer ALL OTHER cross-class moves (the ones that the class does not learn innately) as well as the small stat boost they provide now.
They *should not* have any recipes locked behind them, for any length of time at all. -
10-15-2017, 05:57 PMArchvile78Recipes are fine, personally what isn't are the materials required for said recipes, those shouldn't be locked behind Specialists.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder
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10-15-2017, 07:36 PMKseniaRight now you can solo a craft at 70 with no cross class requirements, Steady Hand II being the exception. If Prudent had been base 80 instead of 70 all crafting could be done with none of the original 50 cross class stuff. You would still need cross class to level to 70 but once there you could specialist without them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder
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10-16-2017, 12:43 AMShinkyo
I’m ok with the current state.
The stat increase is nice and with the 4.1 recipices, there’s finally a reason to use the specialist actions.
I’m also ok with the recipe lock out but what’s really annoying is the distribution of said recipies making certain craft way too favorable.
CUL in particular is pretty much useless until they make it necessary for relic upgrade again (the king cake era was soooo profitable for CUL).
IF they are going to make ALC necessary for all creaft, they might as well make a CUL specialist recipe that’s required/near required to meet stats cap for the latest recipes.
It’s somehow mitigated by the ease of re-spec but that defeats the purpose of committing to a particular spec. -
10-18-2017, 09:53 AMNicodemus_Mercy
Specialists as they exist currently are better in SB than they were in HW but still suffer from a number of skills that are really off-putting (at least to me). I dont touch most of the specialist skills because its rng with a side of rng and some rng on top.
Whistle While You Work should just be a plain buff of some sort. Not this weird "buffs certain skills when quality is good or excellent and stack is at a multiple of whatever" nonsense. My head spins just reading that friggin tooltip. WWYW should be as simple as a slightly better Comfort Zone. Have it cost 60CP and restore 9CP per step. Rng heaped on to rng does nothing to help someone who doesn't want to level every craft and WWYW as it is, is just a poorly thought out idea.
Innovative Touch should have a 70% chance of success so its guaranteed to work when coupled with Steady hand II. If it worked like this it would be a better alternative to Innovation for omni-crafters and a replacement for Innovation for single-classed crafters.
Byregot's Miracle is decidedly inferior to Byregot's Blessing when it SHOULD be better. Byregot's Miracle should do exactly what Byregot's Blessing does but at 100% success rate and the same low cost it has now Again it gives access to one of the best cross-class skills to single-classed crafters and still offers an upgrade to omni-crafters when using their specialist craft.
Trained Hand is again inferior to another skill that is often cross-classed with a ridiculous rng component thrown in for the lawls. Trained Hand should be a better version of Careful Synthesis II. It should have Efficiency: 150% Success Rate: 100% and cost 0CP.
The "Heart of <crafting job>" might be nice... if it wasn't so expensive and also require a reagent to use. Failing that, if they wanted to keep the reagent and the high cp cost, let it last for the entire craft.
SB added the new specialist skills that consume Initial Preparations and those skills are actually good. Outside of those the only other specialist skills I find even remotely useable (I hesitate to say useful), are Innovative Touch (which I used a fair bit in HW but hardly ever in SB), and Byregot's Miracle on those rare occasions I'm lacking the CP necessary to finish with a Byregot's Blessing. -
10-18-2017, 04:25 PMLelila38
I wouldn't mind specialising in a few crafts, if the stuff I wanted to craft wouldn't constantly require specialist mats from other crafters. Having to buy even though I could easily produce it myself is annoying.
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10-18-2017, 09:32 PMSylvain
I don't really mind specialist having exclusive craft but alchemy having required mats from everyone is a bit of a bummer as it makes alchemy specialist mandatory.
I also dislike the crafting list disparity.
Armorsmith, cooking and wood got the short end of the stick here.
Concerning specialist skills, they need some rework as it is overall no worth using those. -
10-18-2017, 10:14 PMSylvain
I don't really mind specialist having exclusive craft but alchemy having required mats from everyone is a bit of a bummer as it makes alchemy specialist mandatory.
I also dislike the crafting list disparity.
Armorsmith, cooking and wood got the short end of the stick here.
Concerning specialist skills, they need some rework as it is overall no worth using those. -
10-19-2017, 06:07 AMAlisiCooking has always gotten the short end of the stick regardless. That's just one of those things. Alchemy used to be that way until the end of HW with the ironworks set (where everything needed that one special thing that only alchemy specialists could make.) This feels like they're following in their footsteps with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvain
I think it's also important to remember that these aren't the only recipes that'll be out. There will be a later 4.1 patch that'll put out more recipes. We're just seeing the first half of things. They always do this. They put out the crafting/gathering sets first, allow people time to make them, then they add the other recipes. We got that with the two star recipes, which weren't released at the very start. This is sort of the way they do things. The fact that there's no offhand, belt, or accessories just points to that. They do it to level the playing field. So there will be more recipes for armory and carpentry, and for the rest of the classes as well. -
10-19-2017, 07:00 AMMrydeen
Specialist SHOULD make a crafting profession easier, and negate the need for having an OMNICRAFTER toolset... That was its purpose and should be its purpose.
Specialist should not lock out recipes, that only hinders the market negatively. This greatly affects/hinders everyone who is not an omnicrafter.
Instead of setting out what it is supposed to do, it is now doing the opposite, and making the original issue worse. -
10-19-2017, 12:30 PMDarkDedede
Instead of simply locking recipes, I think specialists should affect the number of materials required to use a recipe. Perhaps specialists could have a less artificially bloated recipe compared to non-specialists.
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10-19-2017, 09:31 PMSylvainShrug, so the materia price bane isn't going to be over anytime soon...Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisi
I wish there'd be a better way to get cracked crystals and lower ranks in general. Even rank 2~4 cost 20~50k each now on my server. -
10-22-2017, 03:06 PM-BlueGreen-100% agree. The specialist lockouts is the main thing I disliked from all of 3.x, and seeing it show up again now in 4.1 is really making me wonder if I'll bother renewing my sub when it runs out. I basically didn't participate at all in crafting during HW due to the lockouts until the very end when I went ahead and prepared for 4.0 which made much of 3.x feel empty to me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrydeen
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10-23-2017, 05:30 AMRoth_TrailfinderThat’s practically a license to print gil, if you can sell T2 and t3 materia for that king of cash. You can get quite a few daily just from doing the Ixali - get some t4 directly (your choice of three, per task) and several per Oakknot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvain
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10-23-2017, 05:52 AMKaurhz
I like the idea of what specialists, give, I just think it can be so much more. The abilities are good, some of them could do with a slight buff for monocrafters. Although I know the 'meta' has never really supported this idea. For starters, I have mentioned before, but Initial Prep should, in reason be a stacking buff, and it should have abilities added to what it grants. An Ingenuity equivalent I would be in favour for, for example. With it giving a chance of reducing CP, I do think that it should still be a thing, however, the amount of stacks of Initial Prep you currently have should determine the likelihood, or how much CP is reduced on a given action. Of course not something completely overpowered. But I would like this buff to give the vast majority, if not nearly the entirety of the 'crafting community' to use specialist actions, especially over Maker's Mark.
A little bit of salt, I'm sorry, but I really do think that Manipulation II and Prudent Touch shouldn't exist, or at the very least be a specialist only action and have CP cost increased drastically, considering what it gives. Yes I made that comment - Crafting should have RNG element to it, especially to craft HQ, otherwise the idea of an item being HQ is meaningless and everything by default should be HQ, or have the stats of a HQ piece. Starred pieces should be of the 'difficulty' of reinforced spruce plywood to HQ.
I know this last suggestion has some significant logistic problems likely to solve, but being a specialist, rather than granting the ability to just craft a given item entirely, should allow for a second bar allowing for the possibility of a third materia slot opening as a guaranteed slot. Perhaps granted by something equivalent to a delineation which requires yellow scrips to get, and has some form of cap on it. This has been suggested elsewhere I do believe, or something similar to it, albeit with much less a cap on it. -
10-23-2017, 02:07 PM-BlueGreen-Sadly that's already the case. HQ isn't that 'special' currently. It's basically on par with dungeon/trial/raid/tome gear of the same ilvl. NQ is below that to the point where only retainers are likely to really benefit from it, and only because for some reason DoW/DoM retainers (unlike DoL) use ilvl instead of primary stat to determine what they can/can't do. If HQ were as hard as you're suggesting to get, that'd put it in a position to not be worth it compared to alternatives in most cases. It'd only survive if NQ was what HQ is right now and HQ was an actual bonus at the same ilvl as anything else. Of course, the problem with that is that then everyone would only want the HQ crafted gear and there'd be a riot about 'requiring' crafting gear because it's BiS or that sort of thing that has caused problems before (it's why a tanks can't cram 5 strength materia into accessories anymore).Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaurhz
So respectfully, I must disagree. With the way the crafting skills are balanced, you're given options, some of which involve RNG currently:
1. You can craft slow and steady, using a lot of steps to up your success rate (even more if you don't use a macro). This can essentially wipe out the impact of RNG on a craft, but it comes at the cost of being difficult on someone (in terms of time/energy) wanting to mass produce items (presumably to sell on the MB). This approach is more for people looking to keep costs minimal and probably for personal crafts.
2. You can macro a craft. Many macros have a few weak spots that a particular 80% or two chance failing at the wrong times can prevent HQ or similarly, having a very poorly timed poor condition can do the same. RNG is present, but often acceptable for mass production.
3. You can use an RNG-heavy setup to reduce the number of steps to produce more items in a shorter time. Useful if the NQ product has some value (food and potions can often be this way)
4. You can become a specialist to basically do #2 and #3 with higher success rates to the point where #1 might even be a waste of time for a specialist.
Basically, #1 comes down to a basic skill check (like a DPS check... do you know your rotation?) while #2 and #3 are more of a higher risk, higher reward sort of thing with RNG. -
10-28-2017, 12:24 PMwhyarenamesalltaken
specialist actions are confusing, unpredictable (which is just the thing we need when the materials are soooooo expensive for whatever you might want to use them for), and plainly useless considering you can craft HQ top-level items without it. So why bother learning a way to craft items that only can be used in certain classes, instead of a way that can be used for every class and be better at that one?
creating items only specialist by design is just such a lazy way to force people to engage with your poorly designed, failed mechanics. Please get your shit together SE.
The only thing I've ever benefitted from being a specialist is the crystal, for its stats. -
10-30-2017, 04:00 PMmagnanimousCynic
At least the Souls are vastly easier to obtain now, with two NPCs to do Custom Deliveries with. >.>
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10-31-2017, 07:33 AMRojGardoth
As far as I'm concerned nothing is really locked. Because there are ways to make this production work and it's really not all that hard. I've already made all my own new DoL and DoH gear, and all tools except WVR and FSH. I was originally GSM, WVR, and LTW spec but switched GSM to ALC to make fibers and snakefish oil. Many yellow scrips later I made the WVR and LTW gear. Then switched LTW to BSM for all those tools. Then BSM to ARM for the ALC and CUL tools. And ARM back to GSM so I can make WVR tool and be almost back to where I started, spec-wise. But I think I'll keep ALC spec for a bit to sell some Alchemic and Oil if I'm not totally burnt out by then. And at some point switch to CRP for FSH tool then back to LTW (maybe). And I never had to switch my WVR spec. So I'm basically done 3 weeks later and the recipes that all this trouble is for AREN'T. EVEN. OUT. YET. and who knows how much time to spare. So, see?!? There is plenty of time to do this folks! Beside, SE knows it can work this way so doubtful they are changing it.... xD
As far as specialist actions, tho...no thanks :) -
11-01-2017, 02:35 AMAlisiNo. No no no. No NO NO! Forgive her, Father. She knows not what she's talking about. Please stop this insanity. We've had insanely hard crafting and gathering processes, shrouded behind gates and all that BS. Did you craft HQ gear in HW? Not the easy Ironworks shit, but the actual class pieces? Did you do the favor farming? Did you use a weeks worth of red scrips to get all the material, then spend 5 or 10 hours gathering all that, and another hour or two making all HQ stuff to make that one HQ piece a week that you could make? Did you get it up to 99% HQ chance and get a NQ? I have. Please don't advocate going back to that system. It wasn't fun. There wasn't any real joy getting an HQ item -- it was just relief in knowing you didn't waste a full weeks worth of work on something that became an NQ. Why do you think Ironworks was SO easy to craft and they took out favor farming entirely by the end? It sucked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaurhz
Getting an HQ item shouldn't be RNG based. You can have the best crafter in the game gather everything and spend all his knowledge to get HQ stuffs, doing everything right, and end up with all NQ items while joe shmoe can just walk up with a 1% chance and craft a full HQ set. That's how RNG works. It's not fun or fair. If you want a game that relies on RNG, go play WoW. Go ask any WoW player how much fun their RNG system is. They based almost everything around RNG in the current expac. Their legendaries are RNG drops. It's not based on skill. It's based on luck and it freakin' sucks. Getting an HQ item should be based on ability. I actually like the new 2 star recipes. Yes, the FS are hellishly long, but it forces you to actually craft it. You can't just macro your way. You could, but you're depending more on RNG and less on skill. I think that's the right approach and balance. You want something easy? Then you risk a NQ. You want an HQ for certain? You actually have to craft yourself. -
11-01-2017, 05:40 AMKaurhzOn the note regarding Heavensward class items I wouldn't class those difficult, but more so just outright obnoxious. Yeah I've experienced the favour farming at a glimpse. It was fairly grim and yeah I would support that having RNG on top of a favour-based system would be hell on earth. The favour based system on top of something entirely RNG is nothing short of hell. I think that would be mutually agreed by anyone except people that love grinding. The possibility of getting maximum quality should be a possibility, and in fact, favourable in terms of probability. But, it shouldn't be guaranteed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisi
My primary point being is that there's very very little satisfaction out of making anything currently in the game. I've actually read the extracted piece and found it came off a bit harsh, but then again I'm not in support of crafting something that has 100% success rate for quality, particularly when the materials, for the most part aren't exactly difficult to get. Manipulation II, and Prudent Touch are far far too CP efficient for their own good. Least of all Manipulation II should cost more CP, same with Prudent (Or, Prudent shouldn't be a guaranteed hit). Or, Inner Quiet should extend to around 14-15 stacks. But again, logistic issues. At this point Hasty Touch isn't even viable.
EDIT: Referencing Reinforced Spruce Plywood probably wasn't the best example to give for the point I was trying to make.
I would argue however, that the new gear can in fact be macro'd to guarantee a fixed quality rating, much like you would with a manual craft. Macroing Maker's Mark certainly isn't feasible on time, but is however doable. IP is also comfortably doable. You need only separate Byregot's Blessing into a separate macro. These crafts shouldn't be doable with a macro, at all. -
11-01-2017, 11:04 AMMN_14
There’s nothing really wrong with RNG based crafting. I went through all of the HW 2* crafted pieces and the difficulty of the crafts themselves was not high, although they were a bit harder than the 3* and 4* recipes that came after.
At min requirements and low cp, you could simply start with ~1100 quality and then HQ 95%+ of the materials easily. Final products weren’t an issue of course since you could use a few HQ mats for added insurance. I didn’t NQ any of my gear/tool pieces and HQed literally 96% of my materials from my first 50 synths. Once I upgraded to 471 CP, I could comfortably craft them from all NQ.
I’m going to be honest here. It seems to me that most of the complaints about RNG in crafting stem from technique issues more than anything. In HW, you couldn’t use a mere 11 HT static rotation and not expect RNG to mess you up a third of the time. 11 touches simply wasn’t enough to reliably build 11 stacks of IQ (and land a one or two more touches on top of that). Even worse is that your synth was highly susceptible to poor RNG because those 2 or 3 early misses could kill your craft right out of the gate. Such a rotation was definitely not reliable enough for final gear pieces/weapons starting from all NQ mats and that would have been a technique issue, not a RNG issue.
I found that to craft endgame recipes effectively in HW, I had to use a variable number of touches with 85% or more of my synths using 14 touches. If I’d managed to build up IQ stacks and quality quickly enough, I’d intentionally shorten my synth by using CP for RNG free abilities instead of durability restores as I’d have locked in that 100% via a RNG free finish. I also strategically timed my use of precise touch as I obviously could not expect the procs to always magically pop up at the ideal time. So that was a judgement call that I had to make. This made crafting anything from all NQ a total breeze.
A decent middle ground, imo, is to include a batch of crafts that are at the difficulty of the SB 2* i320 DOH/DOL pieces at minimum craftmanship/control requirements and from all NQ. If you understand the finer crafting mechanics, you’d be able to easily hit 90-100% for the vast majority of your synths. These crafts aren’t even terribly sensitive to misses so RNG can’t be blamed. If you fail to understand how to craft properly however, you’d get <20%.
For the current i320s, if you over-gear or start with a bunch of HQ mats, you’re more or less getting your HQs easily by skipping mechanics. The experience is completely different. -
11-01-2017, 01:50 PMAlisiThe way the quality step works is to get it to 11 IQ stacks asap and keep going. The best way of doing this is capitalizing on goods and excellents. You get both of these frequently. Once you get to a certain level, HT and HT2 are actually viable. I personally use Prudent touch for the first 5 quality steps (minus any goods or excellents) and after that, things are much freer. The rotations on these recipes aren't cut in stone. For example: if RNG is terrible and you can't recover most of your CP doing the progress phase, you can use Man 2 at the start with Prudents for the first half and use HT or HT2 during the second half. You get normal amount of goods or excellents? You can start with full dura, one step from completion, and use Prudents for most of the quality phase. You get a ton of goods/excellents? You can start with all your CP and several stacks of IQ and shorten the load. They're flexible, if you're actually doing them by hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaurhz
They are doable but they aren't 100%, and that's the point. You risk RNG if you want to be lazy. You either do it by hand and basically guarantee 100% HQ plus a much shorter time in crafting or you risk a NQ and take twice the time with macros. These rely on a system that can't be macro'ed (the proper use of goods and excellents.) I think this is basically the only way you can make something unmacroable. Allowing us to build stacks about 11 or making it easier to build stacks would only serve to make macroing much more easier. Either they make gathering for materials so long and so hard and so expensive that you don't want to risk using a macro (as well as making the NQ utterly useless -- back in HW endgame crafting in the beginning, you actually would gamble on losing all your material via reclaim because NQ was utterly useless) or they use a function that is completely out of your control (ie, the RNG nature of status.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaurhz
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11-02-2017, 06:11 PMZfz
I feel that specialists have made crafting more of a pain than anything.
Specialists were designed so people no longer feel the need to level every craft.
But the actions themselves are too RNG based, making them inferior to cross-class actions, which again encourage people to level every craft. When faced with the choice of whether to level every craft, the determining question has become "do I want to settle for more unwieldy actions or invest in the time to level everything?"
I have heard the argument that people who put in the effort to level everything should be rewarded, and they are rewarded so with better actions.
But that claim itself shows how the design has violated its goal in the first place. The goal was never to reward leveling every craft! The goal was to make sure people don't feel the need to do so, and rewarding doing so creates the feeling that one needs to do so.
My opinion on specialists:- There should be no locked recipes. The goal was to let people feel comfortable having only a few crafts they're interested in. Nothing in the original goal of the specialist system was about exclusivity.
- Specialist actions should be equivalent to cross-class actions. The reward for leveling every craft is that you can craft everything.
As it stands, the specialist system feels like a good start that went sour because some bright mind thought it'd be a good idea to "build on it", "make it more elaborate", "make it more exciting"; and in doing so, completely lost track of the original purpose of the system, going off on a wild tangent and creating a monster that no longer has anything to do with the original goal. -
11-11-2017, 08:58 PMErryKCUL and ARM got more than GSM.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sylvain
But at the same time, potentially LTW, GSM and CRP will get more seeing as we should get accessories next patch, but also offhands. So BSM will also luck out.
As far as the topic of specialists goes, I feel they're redundant as is, and the skills need to be reworked like Nicodemus has said, because as is, it's way too much RNG when the recipes are daunting and challenging as is. -
11-12-2017, 11:18 AMZfzIf anything, the RNG element should be reversed. Non-specialists should be facing more RNG, while specialists, being specialists, get that innate ability to be largely unaffected by RNG. For example each action simply consumes one stack of Whistle regardless of actual action, while CP recovery abilities also recover Whistle stacks. Then Whistle stacks grant a flat 30%/20%/10% bonus to action success rates when exceeding 8/5/1 stacks etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by ErryK
It should take more thinking and luck when a non-specialist crafts something. Not when a specialist crafts. Or, to stay true to the whole reason for specialists: both should face the same amount of RNG and a specialist should be indifferent to whether a craft is done using specialist actions or crafted with cross-class actions.
I've had some more time on my specialists, and without the delineation I could often go without any Good conditions throughout my whole craft and end up just wasting the CP on Whistle and rely completely on my cross-class actions. It feels backwards. -
11-12-2017, 07:54 PMSolarra
My feelings about the Specialist system are that it's an irritation but one I can live with.
Having levelled all my crafters to 50, continuing as an omni-crafter in HW and SB made more sense to me than just limiting myself to three classes.
For a system like this to be attractive, I think it needs to start a lot earlier, say around level 20-30. Since I like being able to craft everything in the game, the locked recipes are annoying, but now it's easier to acquire and swap soulstones, I can plan ahead and get round this without resorting to an alt.
I don't think the system really helps people who don't want to level all the crafting classes. The specialist actions are too unreliable and you need to choose your class(es) carefully or you may end up very few recipes compared to others.
So, in conclusion I don't think Specialisation works, but I doubt it's going away.
Personally, I hope it stays much the same as it is now: i.e. relatively easy to get round and ignore.