Is Prudent Touch too much?

[Lebenoshl]

People are missing the biggest change to crafting in 4.0

When a recipe's level is higher than your crafter level, the difficulty of raising quality will increase, while the difficulty of raising progress will decrease.

Before, recipes were only hard because you had to spend more CP and Durability in advancing progress.

Just 1 BB will not be enough now. 1 BB gives about 6k/13k Quality for a lvl 60 crafter doing a 4* 60 craft

I think the the rough outline for a specialist stormblood 'rotation' will be

1. Initial Preparation
2. Keep Wheel and Comfort Zone up
3. Advance Progress to 90%
4. Build IQ stacks up to 11
5. GS+Innovation+Ingenuity 2 Byregot's Miracle (Ingenuity 2 can be dumped on the 4* version, since ingenuity doesn't do much for 4* recipes anyways)
6. IQ stacks get halved to 6, build it back up to 11 (maybe use the Specialty: Reflect here? Refurbish seems better though)
7. GS+Innovation+Ingenuity 2 Byregot's Blessing
8. Finish the Craft

[Elamys]

Right after Stormblood dropped, I made a few 4* level 60 weapons for a raffle for my FC. My crafters were still level 60. Ingenuity 2 pretty much completely nullified the penalty. I was still achieving roughly the same results as Ingen2 was a core part of my rotation during HW. In fact, it was arguably easier as I had to spend less on building up progress.

That says nothing for the difficulty of future crafts, but if Ingen2 continues to basically erase the penalty, I don't foresee too much changing.

[MN_14]

People are missing the biggest change to crafting in 4.0

Just 1 BB will not be enough now. 1 BB gives about 6k/13k Quality for a lvl 60 crafter doing a 4* 60 craft

This is what I've noticed from the change:

Before 4.0, for a level 60 4* recipe, Byregots and Blessing gave around 5800/13187 quality. Innovation improved it by about 1200 quality and ingenuity 2 improved blessing by around 700 quality (I'm assuming it was around 12.5% increase meaning that a combined innovation, ingenuity 2 and gs buffed blessing should have given 7700-7800 quality). To get 100%, you generally either built 11 stacks, landed 2 extra touches and then used a gs/blessing finisher, or you built 11 stacks, landed 1 more touch, and then used a gs/inn/blessing finisher.

After the change, at Level 60, GS and byregots gave around 3500 quality only (meaning crafts became nigh impossible to HQ effectively without ingenuity) but by combining it with innovation and especially ingenuity 2, it gave you 8200 quality, a slightly larger boost even compared to when fully buffed in HW. New recipes introduced in SB have lower quality requirements comparatively, most likely to offset the loss in quality built up prior to the ingenuity 2 buffed finisher.

At level 60 and on a level 65 recipe, the fully buffed byregots still gave 7900 quality. So far, each increase in level barely reduces your quality loss as long as you're using ingenuity. Because the quality requirements are comparatively lower, you don't even need extra touches beyond 11 stacks for 100% anymore. Everything actually seems to be far heavier weighted toward your finisher than even before.

I'm not expecting a whole lot of changes unless they drastically increase the quality requirements especially as there's no indication that the effectiveness of ingenuity 2 lessens dramatically due to recipe level increases.

[Nixxe]

Crafting anything in the game right now is utterly trivial. I wouldn't blame Prudent Touch for that when about the only reason you can't HQ level 70 one star stuff in pentamelded Ironworks gear is because the game won't allow you to even try.

[Katlyna]

I've made posts on my opinions of crafting difficulty and the issues with the system. I think this post is a good place to mention my viewpoint again. The crux of the problem with crafting is the difference between HQ and NQ being so great and "unrepairable" with materia or secondary crafts. And HQ is consistently obtainable by skilled crafters (nearly 100% for those of us at the top). Consequently NQ equipment are essentially considered worthless (while intermediaries and foods still have plenty of usage).

The solution is really stupidly simple in my opinion. All crafted equipment qualities should have the same STATS and instead quality should change the number of guaranteed materia slots. I would give NQ one guaranteed materia slot, HQ two slots, and a new EQ (excellent quality) three slots. I would then increase the difficulty of HQ endgoods. And make EQ endgoods really stupid difficult. My expectation would be your after crafter should be able to make HQ goods often and EQ very very rarely. While very good crafters prepared with HQ intermediate parts should frequently HQ endgoods, and sometimes/rarely EQ endgoods. If tuned appropriately crafting would in theory be more interesting with endgood synths that are actual interesting battles, which sometimes rewards with higher market price or easier time melding for your own usage.

Personally I think until they take a different approach to NQ and HQ stat differences the player base on average will demand that crafting be easier. Which makes sense to me as the base system is essentially broken.

[IllyriaKnotfred]

Decent Idea

I don't think that would really work though- as gear is capped at melding TierVI materia in one slot only, and no overmelding. Unless you mean those guaranteed new slots would allow for additional TierVI materia to be slotted.

[Katlyna]

I don't think that would really work though- as gear is capped at melding TierVI materia in one slot only, and no overmelding. Unless you mean those guaranteed new slots would allow for additional TierVI materia to be slotted.

The root of the idea is that fully melded there would be no difference between NQ, HQ and EQ. Instead the difference is in the cost of optimizing the equipment. There is a huge difference in having to fill a 4th overmeld slot, 3rd overmeld slot and 2nd overmeld slot. So by making the gear potentially equal in stats, but vastly different in cost to fill out with materia no equipment would be worthless, while gear with lots of slots would be fantastic.

I think its something they really need to do.

[IllyriaKnotfred]

I suppose yeah that could work. Sadly I dont see any drastic changes happening before 5.0

[Nezerius]

I don't think that would really work though- as gear is capped at melding TierVI materia in one slot only, and no overmelding. Unless you mean those guaranteed new slots would allow for additional TierVI materia to be slotted.

That's not how Grade VI materia works. It's limited to 1 overmeld slot, not just one slot only. Any guaranteed meld slot can be filled with VI materia.