Thanks for removing all fun in crafting.

[Kenji1134]

I think the root of these problems is the weird combination of SE greatly increasing the effective progress and quality requirements for these items, so that we have to start with HQ materials... Then making the bulk of the ingredients not available in an HQ form.
Quality went from 2921 on 2 stars, which were deemed "too easy to HQ" by people with perfect gear, skills, and rotations.
To 4980 (+70%) on 3 stars, which along with the progress and lvl difference increases meant we needed to spend more turns on progress, resulted in these recipes all but demanding HQ mats for a decent hq chance.
Then to 5781 (+16%) on 4 stars, along with more progress increases, and a lvl difference which reduces the effects of Ingenuity 1 and 2 to nearly nothing. So more progress steps, but now many of the ingredients do not exist in an HQ form. Most 4 star recipes start with ~25-30% quality, which means we now need to put out 4000+ quality to reach 100% HQ, using "similar" stats to what we had on 2 stars.

So progress needs more steps. Quality needs more steps. Starting quality is lower. Durability remains the same. Yet our stats did not magically double as we became 4 star crafters. So we turn to other methods, ones which involve greater risk for greater reward.
Even then... back we 2 star crafting was "easy", you would want to start with ~20-30% quality, did a 100% chance rotation which typically involved 6 touches, then a buffed BB, and finish.
Now we need 9-10 successful touches, at an 80% chance each, AND often need to fish for a Good or Excellent condition for BB... Its just a crafting lottery. And given the rather LARGE stat difference between NQ and HQ, losing the crafting lottery will often cost you a million+ in materials alone.

[Rath]

SNIP

I honestly don't feel this way at all. I used NQ mats for 2 star recipes since Vanya was selling for 1mil+. I now use NQ mats for 3 star and 4 star unless I am synthing for someone else. Besides the artisan/forager synthes, 4 star are super cheap to craft. I target my cousin and tell him step-by-step what action to do because he cannot do the master 2 books because he is just so set in his old methods like a lot of crafters are. He now has almost all 4 stars unlocked this way with very few failures (1-2 per book). I find crafting now to actually require some amount of skill or thought process. Before it was just hit macro A.../echo done hit macro B, /hurray I am doing something absolutely everyone can do without thinking.

[Empty-handed]

4 star crafting is actually fun.

whats not fun is the amount of shards needed for the tokens. all the reclaims cause a massive loss of shards. gathering shards is very tedious and time consuming.

thats the only thing killing it for me. i wish i was rich enough to buy shards from MB

[RiceisNice]

...

You could macro to craft because you were pretty much overgeared for that level of crafting. Before that, you needed HQ materials, and if you didn't have that you needed a bit of RNG to favor you to get a good amount of quality. With something like master II books, you can't HQ and you need a relatively good amount of luck to even get it to the 65% HQ rate threshold. There's no skill involved, just watching and praying that you get plenty of good conditions for TotT and hope you land an excellent at the end for BB.

It's just Atma all over again in a different form. People say its not too bad when they can get to 100% HQ...when they reach over 40 steps in the crafting process and land an excellent for their BB finisher. They either cherry picked those moments or got absurdly lucky when they said they had 10 TotT procs.

[Rath]

...

It just seems like everyone wants a 100% HQ macro again for a recipe book called MASTER. If that is what they want, wait until we are lvl 60 in the expansion and you will most likely be able to do so. Right now, you have to actually make decisions based on what you get as you go. To me, that is how crafting should be. It takes time.

I will give you an example that just happened earlier today when my cousin tried to do one himself after me talking him through 5 books. I will edit it into my post.

So he had 8 stacks of IQ 30 durability 2 stacks of CZ and 214 CP, progress was at 761/801.

I made him stop and tell me what he planned to do at this point. What would you do? He was going to use manipulation sh2+htx4. Then finish his synth. This was a very reasonable thing to do as he could obtain 11 stacks. I would not do this. I would have done 2HT at 50 (any ToT would allow me to SH2 after MM2) then done CZ+MM2. I would have had 8-9 stacks 70 dura and 12 CP if no ToT. I would then HT at 50% until 30 dura if no ToT, or SH2 if ToT within the first two HT after mm2 and go to 20 dura. He did it his way and got to 52% quality and finished his synth (he got HQ).

I understand that 50% is scary to some people, but most of the time I would have gotten at least 3 success at 50% out of the 6 50% HT. But, 1 ToT would have bumped me to 80% and extra quality increases over what he got. I am done all my books, and I talked him through most of his and I have only seen 2 goods and 1 excellent on BB out of all of them (I have a stats sheet). It usually takes 5-6 attempts per book (using reclaim). There is no way you can compare 5-6 synths to ATMA.

[RiceisNice]

...

I don't think anyone is even asking for macros for something like the master books (Which hasn't even been the case for master I books until you overgeared it)

I don't want macros for current content crafting; It shouldn't be like that. However, it shouldn't also be a messy lottery to this degree. Something like current 4* crafting is fine for this. I mean I agree that it should be based on making decisions based on what you get, but in the context of master II, you're looking at very specific RNG to be favorable with enough TotT procs and sucessful HT/RS to get a minimum of 10 IQ stacks and land your full BB finisher on an excellent to get a 100% (good would only get you to 60-80% depending on your stacks).

[scarebearz]

There's no skill involved

This is nonsense to be honest.

Currently getting HQ on the tokens and on the 4* craft themselves is skill based.

It's like the difference between 2 BLM's using "the same rotation" but one is doing 250dps and the other doing 400dps. (usually the one doing 250dps will blame RNG too ;D)

[RiceisNice]

This is nonsense to be honest.

Currently getting HQ on the tokens and on the 4* craft themselves is skill based.

It's like the difference between 2 BLM's using "the same rotation" but one is doing 250dps and the other doing 400dps. (usually the one doing 250dps will blame RNG too ;D)

Same Rotation, or "same rotation? Being completely serious here because I get enough CP half the time to get a second MMII in from TotT procs.

[scarebearz]

Same Rotation, or "same rotation? Being completely serious here because I get enough CP half the time to get a second MMII in from TotT procs.

Like like the BLM dps'ing, there is no fixed rotation, but chances are a lot of people are using the same base rotation, yet yeilding vasty different results, due to "skill". I.e. those situational judgement calls.

[RiceisNice]

...

Right. Thats why I'd mention no one uses macros in regards to master book because it's not set in stone. I should've clarified if I mentioned rotation, but these sort of things I do as they appear. On average, my master II crafts don't go beyond 30-35 steps because I can't fit a second MMII (instead using manipulation or nothing at all if it came to it), because in the end, I did not have CP to invest into increasing my durability and be able to have enough to do a BB finisher. I mentioned this a while back, and you (or someone else) straight up said I was doing something wrong if I did not have enough CP.


I can see where you're getting at, and I play bard as dps so I know the context, but I also do this for my 3-4* crafting, espesically for master books that have a huge quality pool. In my example, I only had about 5-6 TotT procs in the entire crafting progress, getting up to 30 or so steps with 7 IQ stacks. Nowhere near enough to get a reasonable HQ % unless I landed on an excellent,