Problems with the strength of gear coming from easy mode Alexander

[Brian_]

How would you balance what crafters and gatherers make then so to keep the time and effort it takes to create crafted items reasonably rewarding? As of now the new materia set up means that overmelding is only useful if a crafter's products are potent enough to actually be worth using at some point. Considering the cost and time investment it takes to get to the point were you can actually craft those items, crafters should be able to create items of worthwhile value.

I would also say that if its so easy to get Savage raid gear on the first day of the patch it rather undermines the value of the last teir of Savage gear anyway.

I am a fully melded and geared omnicrafter with enough gil to live off of until maybe 6.0. Even without crafting a single piece of combat gear, you can make a fortune. Release more glamour gear, housing items, minions, bardings, maybe even mounts, rare orchestrion rolls that require more varied materials outside of the faded roll, etc. Maybe actually do something new and interesting with crafters like giving them the ability to contribute to Idyllshire's reconstruction by turning in 3 and 4 star crafts. As a reward, they can be given special status, get immortalized on a plaque of contributors, get special access to certain parts of town and maybe get early access to future housing, etc. If you really want to release crafted combat gear, release combat gear equivalent to un-upgraded tomestone gear @3.5 with 5 guaranteed meld slots so that when it's fully melded with grade Vs, it can situationally out-class Savage gear and give people flexibility with their BiS set-ups. It'll actually help mid-core groups still struggling with progression and will still be relevant to HC raiders pushing for higher fflogs rankings.

There are so many ways to keep crafting desirable without throwing raiders under the bus. If you want to challenge for world first, you either need to be filthy rich or have multiple omnicrafters backing you. Even if you are in the tier below and just want to push earlier progression, you still dump a small fortune on gear. That's just stupid.