Quote Originally Posted by Laerune View Post
I was confused at first when it came to crafting, but after reading the guides and leveling all my crafters (all are around 57-59), I am starting to understand them alot better. I have so far never used any macros and been able to HQ craft stuff with no difficulties. My question to the experienced crafters is: When is the best time to start using macros?
If you want to be an effective crafter, never.

If you're overgeared, they will work fine for scrip turn ins and other easier starred recipes. For the latest 4* crafts, they also work but everything will take 3x as long since you have to run the macro for a lot of intermediate materials. If you’re effective, you should be able to NQ all of the intermediate materials and then do one manual synthesis for the final product. You only have to craft from 0-13187, but from all NQ you should be able to build up 13400-15000 quality on 70%+ of your synths. You’ll be a few hundred quality short on most of the remaining 20-30% synths, but that’s enough for 91%+.