Trying to craft.

[Dubah]

Ok, so maybe someone can help explain some of these crafter skills. like:

15 Rapid Synthesis - Improves progress. Efficiency: 250%, Success Rate: 50%. This one I just don't understand, I have enough trouble getting something with a 80% success rate to be a success, so 50% would just be pure painful.

And

15 Ingenuity - Lowers recipe level to current level for the next 5 steps. (24 CP cost). This one I think it's saying if you're level 30 trying to do a level 34 recipe does that mean the recipe now becomes a level 30?

Then:

15 Rumination - Removes Inner Quiet effect and restores CP proportional to the number of times control was increased. - I have only used inner quiet a hand full of times, mostly because i just don't have the CP to maintain it and everything else, but is the CP restored worth using this?

The rest of them i can see a use for, those kind of seem useless, but that may be my lack of crafting experience lol. But that 50% one is just something I don't think I can even attempt to rely on. RNGesus does not like me. If I use a touch ability it's gotta be with the one that increases success rate by 20% other wise it's all fails, 80% success sounds like a lot, but it's already a 50/50 chance to succeed (And I have recorded this, 348 touches used 163 fails, a little under 50% but still nowhere near 80% chance to succeed.) And it's things like that don't make crafting very enjoyable for me. But again maybe I'm doing it wrong.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Ok, so maybe someone can help explain some of these crafter skills. like:

15 Rapid Synthesis - Improves progress. Efficiency: 250%, Success Rate: 50%. This one I just don't understand, I have enough trouble getting something with a 80% success rate to be a success, so 50% would just be pure painful.

Steady Hand, and later, Steady Hand 2 (from Culinarian at level 37). Add 20% (30% with SH2) to that 50% bringing it to 70 (or 80) percent chance of working. It is 2.5 times as strong as a Basic Synthesis, just a hair over twice as strong as a Careful Synthesis 2. And, it costs no CP to use. It's really a skill for when you have a lot of Progress left to make, though there are other, better, options available at high levels.
And

15 Ingenuity - Lowers recipe level to current level for the next 5 steps. (24 CP cost). This one I think it's saying if you're level 30 trying to do a level 34 recipe does that mean the recipe now becomes a level 30?

Sort of. I don't recall the previous mechanics, nor how exactly they got changed, but suffice it to say that the move (and its upgrade, Ingenuity 2, at level 50) make the harder recipes easier. The effect is that the level-based penalty is lessened. Recipes higher level than your own have a level-based penalty. Heavensward recipes have a worse penalty than Realm Reborn recipes, by the way. This penalty reduces the amount of Progress and Quality you can add with any given move. Ingenuity and Ingenuity 2 serve to reduce the recipe level somewhat, which then reduces the penalty. Now, if the penalty is not there anymore, these moves have no effect (you get no benefit from it for being a level blacksmith trying to make bronze ingots). Also, if the level differential is too great, these moves will not have any apparent effect either - this was observed prior to Heavensward, with the 3 and 4 starred level 50 recipes.
Then:

15 Rumination - Removes Inner Quiet effect and restores CP proportional to the number of times control was increased. - I have only used inner quiet a hand full of times, mostly because i just don't have the CP to maintain it and everything else, but is the CP restored worth using this?

I found this to be a worthless skill. Inner Quiet is a skill you want to hit first off, pretty much always. It increases your Control by 20% each time a Touch is successful. This has the effect of increasing the Quality added by the next touch by around 10% of the base, starting Touch. If your first Basic Touch was 30 points, your second will be about 33, then about 36, 39, 42, 45, and so on. That is much better than simply adding 30 Quality per Basic Touch!

Rumination, however, I found worthless, as I said. There are two reasons for this. First, it teaches a bad habit. Using the skill suggests adding Quality first, then using Rumination to get the CP needed to push the Progress through. This is backward compared to what you are going to be doing once you get Byregot's Blessing. Byregot's Blessing is a move that also kills your Inner Quiet stack - but it adds a TON of Quality when it does so, based both upon the fact that Inner Quiet raises your Control (for more Quality) and that BB gets a bonus to the Quality with each IQ stack! Once you get Byregot's Blessing, you will be focusing on Progress first, until you are one Careful Synthesis (1 or 2) from finishing the synth, then building your Inner Quiet stack as high as possible before using Byregot's to maximize your Quality. The other reason I never found Rumination useful is I never saw it add enough CP to Waste Not, much less any other Durability-affecting move. No Durability increase meant that whether I used Rumination or not, I was about to finish the synth when I was done with my CP anyway.

The rest of them i can see a use for, those kind of seem useless, but that may be my lack of crafting experience lol. But that 50% one is just something I don't think I can even attempt to rely on. RNGesus does not like me. If I use a touch ability it's gotta be with the one that increases success rate by 20% other wise it's all fails, 80% success sounds like a lot, but it's already a 50/50 chance to succeed (And I have recorded this, 348 touches used 163 fails, a little under 50% but still nowhere near 80% chance to succeed.) And it's things like that don't make crafting very enjoyable for me. But again maybe I'm doing it wrong.

The other 50% chance move is Hasty Touch. This move costs 0 CP, enabling you to use your CP for Steady Hand 1/2, and for "Durability games" - effects that reduce Durability losses or that restore spent Durability.

[Cleanse]

Ok, so maybe someone can help explain some of these crafter skills...

Of these, Ingenuity is the only 'useful' one. It can, in some cases, save you a whole synth step.

[LineageRazor]

15 Rapid Synthesis - Improves progress. Efficiency: 250%, Success Rate: 50%. This one I just don't understand, I have enough trouble getting something with a 80% success rate to be a success, so 50% would just be pure painful.

Roth touched on this one already, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail.

Probably the most important thing to learn in crafting, is how to ration your CP. The longer you can stretch your CP, the more quality and progress you can add to a synth. A lot of crafter strategies are, basically, to get the most possible bang for your buck.

Rapid Synthesis and Hasty Touch both have ZERO CP cost, but the tradeoff is a painfully low success rate. That said, because it's so cheap, Hasty Touch is a very important part of high-level crafting. Crafters almost always use Hasty Touch combined with Steady Hand or Steady Hand II, which boost the success rate of the ability to 70% or 80%, respectively. To put it into perspective, if you use Steady Hand II and then Hasty Touch five times, you're likely to get four successes and one failure, all for only 25 CP. If you were to use Steady Hand II and then Basic Touch five times, you'd get five guaranteed successes - but the CP cost is a prohibitive 115 CP.

People tend to pooh-pooh Rapid Synthesis as there are so many better options available at high levels. However, those high-level alternatives DO still cost CP, and sometimes a considerable amount of it. If your CP budget is aching, Rapid Synthesis offers the same advantages that Hasty Touch does, just for synthesis progress instead of quality. There's been more than one occasion, as well, when I realize that I miscalculated and do not have enough durability left to finish the synth with Careful Synthesis II; Rapid Synthesis, even without Steady Hand, can offer a 50% shot of recovery, where the chances would be 0% otherwise.

[jmanfrw]

Rapid synth is basically useless until you get steady hand 2 which increases success by 30% for 5 steps

Ingenuity helps increase progress and becomes essential in end game crafting not really needed in the mid levels though as I find steady hand + rapid synth does fine as a nice boost

Rumination is a good way to nab some extra CP in a bind you'll get more inner quiet stacks once you get hasty touch used along side steady hand. Once you get byregot's blessing you're better off using your IQ stacks for that

Maybe a more experienced crafter can shed some better light but this is How I use these skills.