Propositions to address crafting/economic woes circa 3.0.

[TechnoTechie]

@TechnoTechie: I would hardly consider Alex: normal a "raid". It can be easily pugged by anyone and was available well before the actual raid content was released.

you might not think so, but the devs clearly do: thus why it's in the "raid" section for heavensward. Of course they're going to balance with this in mind, and even with the difficulty of acquiring it now, I think they planned for the materials to be in much greater abundance after all of the gatherers are done gearing themselves (aka at least 3 months after the release of the system for the solo-class gatherers). I could see square not wanting the i180 gear to be quite so "available" until people have made it through alexander 4 savage and trampled all over it without the gear. I mean that was their plan wasn't it? to remove viability of gear as "content clear-worthy" and push it out to "catch-up" for people getting to 60 much later on.

[Ohiuu]

you might not think so, but the devs clearly do: thus why it's in the "raid" section for heavensward. Of course they're going to balance with this in mind, and even with the difficulty of acquiring it now, I think they planned for the materials to be in much greater abundance after all of the gatherers are done gearing themselves (aka at least 3 months after the release of the system for the solo-class gatherers). I could see square not wanting the i180 gear to be quite so "available" until people have made it through alexander 4 savage and trampled all over it without the gear. I mean that was their plan wasn't it? to remove viability of gear as "content clear-worthy" and push it out to "catch-up" for people getting to 60 much later on.

Hmm, perhaps, but 3.1 is going to (if I understand correctly) add in the new "CT" and presumably weekly i200 gear rewards...also more time people can farm esoterics which would further make an i190 set (even if it is implemented in 3.1) even less relevant. The current gates and cost and whatnot seem sufficient to prevent crafted 190 from overshadowing their intro raid content but waiting until the patch after for "catch-up" gear seems senseless. It's a tragic system that's discouraging a large and robust element of the game from being utilized. It needs to be addressed one way or another.