Why is Crafting still in the game?

[RegnumMagik]

But you can get the best gears without doing zero end game content. Just run HM dungeons (the very same dungeon you run to buy stuff for crafted items!) over and over, get myth and buy equip from vendor. With some jobs they are better than most coil/ct stuff. In fact, it's probably harder and time-expensive to penta-meld some stuff (getting the right material, the gil, the materia) than simply buying iLevel 90 equipment.


Super-hardcore.

It's gonna take a month+ to grind for the "best" gear due to lock out. And some pieces such as accessories for certain classes are completely crap.
At that point, there's 3 opitions: Pray to RNG god in coils, waste your weekly tomestone on a piece of crap that you can potentially use on an alt, or craft a piece that can substitute with better secondary stats.

I don't necessarily want crafted gear equal to Allagan gear. I've said previously that gear dropped from the high end dungeons has every right to be a bit better than crafted.

What I find particularly irksome about high-end crafted gear, is that its requirements are exactly the same as for darklight. So, even if I wanted to use crafted gear for that mid-level area of i70, I'd STILL be required to get the same amount of tomestones as I would for darklight. Which means the same amount of dungeon grinding. In addition to the dungeon grinding, I'd have to gather/craft the rest of the materials for the i70 crafted gear.

That just doesn't make sense to me.

For a person that enjoys min-maxing, I like squeeze out every bit I can get. And like I said, some pieces with correct meld can be potentially better.

Is the amount of tomes required to craft a piece justified? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean it's not worth the extra.