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

[Joronas]

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.

[MN_14]

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.

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.

[RiceisNice]

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.

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.

[MN_14]

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.

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....

[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.

[TechnoTechie]

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.

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?

[PirateCat]

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

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.

[Sibyll]

snip.

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.

[Teppie]

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.

[dspguy]

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....

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.