Hardcore crafters, SE has rewarded you big-time in this patch.

[Sollux]

-Snip-

While you make very good points, my original opinion still stands that without a bit of luck it didn't matter how good your rotation was, you still had around 30% chance to HQ. Of course you can reach 60%+ with a normal for Byregot's IF you managed to MMII. IF you got that extra touch. IF you got an Excellent for one of your HTs. It may have happened more often than not, and you could always stall for a Good on Byregot's IF you had the CP, but in the end it all came down to luck. In comparison I've been able to come up with a rotation that can guarantee 100% Progress and Quality for a 3* when starting with 3.6k Quality, even less IF I get a Good.

[MN_14]

While you make very good points, my original opinion still stands that without a bit of luck it didn't matter how good your rotation was, you still had around 30% chance to HQ. Of course you can reach 60%+ with a normal for Byregot's IF you managed to MMII. IF you got that extra touch. IF you got an Excellent for one of your HTs. It may have happened more often than not, and you could always stall for a Good on Byregot's IF you had the CP, but in the end it all came down to luck. In comparison I've been able to come up with a rotation that can guarantee 100% Progress and Quality for a 3* when starting with 3.6k Quality, even less IF I get a Good.

The thing is anyone can copy a RNG free rotation and excel by getting 100% like the level 50 1 star and 2 star crafts. What happened when they got to 3*? RNG based crafting was a different thing altogether so many of them floundered, especially on the master book 2 tokens, 4* crafts, and artisan's offhands. Skill differences when it came to understanding your abilities and maximizing your probabilities of success accounted for massive differences in HQ yield. When RNG is involved, the challenge isn't about getting 100%, but by manipulating your probabilities to get better and better HQ yields. It's impossible to get a 100% yield with RNG involved so the best crafters can maximize it.

This large failure rate created the myths that you had to reclaim excessively on those master book 2 crafts and that you could only get 30% on a normal. A failure to be able to handle RNG effectively locked out some crafters with some describing dozens and dozens of lost FC3s (I lost a total of something like 6 FC3s on all 8 books).

It's true that you can get a RNG free rotation for 3* crafts at high starting quality, but if you start with all NQ mats and properly adapt to RNG, you can craft up to 3x faster and still come up with a 95%+ HQ yield. That's the most important part when it comes to pushing out product onto the market board.

[Alahra]

Except you can't hit 3* with just scrips, that has been shown already.

You can. You have to use Beet Soup, which locks you out of CP food and pretty much requires you to use all HQ mats to have a solid chance of HQing the final product. That's what I've been doing, as I went with the i180 Scrip gear originally. I've not really been able to make any money this way, though, as the folks who maxed out gathering and their pentameld sets early on have a far greater impact on the market, due to their ability to use fewer HQ mats and to gather NQ ones in bulk.

It's great that their work finally paid off, but I feel like SE didn't balance the i180 gear properly if their stated goal of having an alternate progression method is still their goal. If the goal of crafting is to be able to sell items to other players in a manner that's profitable, it seems, at least from my experience on my server, that the alternate progression method doesn't really get you there with respect to 3-star crafting.

[Duuude007]

If the goal of crafting is to be able to sell items to other players in a manner that's profitable, ... the alternate progression method doesn't really get you there with respect to 3-star crafting.

People want to half-ass their way to high end crafting gear, they are going to get access to recipes, but without the extra perks.

Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

[Sollux]

The thing is anyone can copy a RNG free rotation and excel by getting 100% like the level 50 1 star and 2 star crafts. What happened when they got to 3*? RNG based crafting was a different thing altogether so many of them floundered, especially on the master book 2 tokens, 4* crafts, and artisan's offhands. Skill differences when it came to understanding your abilities and maximizing your probabilities of success accounted for massive differences in HQ yield. When RNG is involved, the challenge isn't about getting 100%, but by manipulating your probabilities to get better and better HQ yields. It's impossible to get a 100% yield with RNG involved so the best crafters can maximize it.

I won't deny that manipulating RNG effectively is a skill, however my main point is still that RNG is RNG and anything less than a 100% guaranteed rotation can be ruined by poor RNG, and such a rotation was impossible at the time regardless of gear, rotation, or skill.

It's true that you can get a RNG free rotation for 3* crafts at high starting quality, but if you start with all NQ mats and properly adapt to RNG, you can craft up to 3x faster and still come up with a 95%+ HQ yield. That's the most important part when it comes to pushing out product onto the market board.

This is true when you're Crafting to list it on the MB, however the prospect of a guaranteed HQ Craft brings in way more in commissions as well as lifelong buyers who will come to you first the next time something new drops.

[Alahra]

People want to half-ass their way to high end crafting gear, they are going to get access to recipes, but without the extra perks.

Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

But that wasn't the trade-off we were told the Red Scrip system would have in place. It was supposed to trade cost (materia melding) for time (in the form of the weekly lockouts), but it's also now giving up effectiveness. It didn't work that way prior to 3.2, since the Red Scrip 180 gear was more than enough for 2-star crafting—it didn't just get you to the bare minimums and let you compete on the same level as pentameld crafters once you had invested the time. This paralleled the way gear for battle classes works: if you don't raid, you can, in time, still gain access to top item level gear as they introduce new ways to gain upgrade items and the like. That gear is slightly less effective (since you're not able to create a best-in-slot set without raiding), but by and large the difference is minimal.

But it's not like that now for crafting.

The problem is that they changed direction without warning, and those of us that took them at their word (that we would have an alternate advancement path that would end up at the same point after enough time had passed) now face the decision of either stepping away from 3-star markets, or moving to pentamelded sets (which is a significant waste of Red Scrips all told). If we had known the direction was going to be changing, I'm sure many of us wouldn't have ever gotten the 180 gear to begin with. I know I would have gone with pentamelds from the start had I known the time I put in was going to leave me at a significant disadvantage.

The i180 gear has "pseudo-melds" on the left side that makes it comparable but a bit weaker than a fully pentamelded left side 170 set. But the 180 right side has nothing comparable, and that's where the problem ultimately lies. The i180 accessories should, if they want the gearsets to be comparable, have bonus stats much as the left side pieces do.

[Zelzubub]

I feel your pain, however,

The problem is that you misinterpreted the trade off. The i180 gear is far less effort to aquire then the i170. Your doing the absolute bare minimum in effort by only doing your weekly red scrips and using them buy the i180 gear. The rest of us are capping our red scrips, then A: either fully farming all their normal, folklore and favor materials themselves which takes a ton of time and effort, or B: using their crafting prowess to run the market board and make Gil to buy the materials they cant harvest themselves. Either way that's a ton of time and effort - time and effort you've chosen to circumnavigate. Its also a ton of fun and satisfaction, which is why I harvest and craft almost everything myself.

If all you do is less then an hour a week to cap your red scrips and buy fully i180 gear, then you've done nothing more then the absolute bare minimum - which is what you've gotten. You can make the items, but not much more.

[Seyb]

If all you do is less then an hour a week to cap your red scrips and buy fully i180 gear, then you've done nothing more then the absolute bare minimum - which is what you've gotten. You can make the items, but not much more.

Actually, that is not entirely correct. You can go full 180 minus belt and accessories and still reach 3 star stats with enough CP to craft 3 star recipes using Rath's rotation. Belt and accessories will be the standard white ones. No favour gathering, no spending millions of gil.

This is the build; I have added it to my "casual 3 star" post.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/TBZ4
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...stats-casually

[Zelzubub]

I was responding to her choice to gear herself in pure i180 vs taking the time to make i170 and meld it, not just reaching 3 star stats.

Your talking about what it would take now bare minimum to reach 3 star stats, sure your route would work. Not the way I would go, but sure. She's spent the last what, 7+ months doing the bare minimum each week, and wants to be equally rewarded.

[Sardonia]

I was responding to her choice to gear herself in pure i180 vs taking the time to make i170 and meld it, not just reaching 3 star stats.

Your talking about what it would take now bare minimum to reach 3 star stats, sure your route would work. Not the way I would go, but sure. She's spent the last what, 7+ months doing the bare minimum each week, and wants to be equally rewarded.

I understand your point but also theirs. Time is supposed to be the trade off, not effort. It takes probably close to 10weeks or so to get all 180 gear for a crafter. I can technically gather and craft all the components of the 170 set for one craft in a day. And too me that effort if fairly minimal since to me it is quite easy to get. The problem lies in then melding the equipment which is a giant gil sink.

To me the 180 gear should be on the same level as 170. The trade off again is the time it takes to that of the gil needed for over melding.