The "Hand-out" sacks from Potd.

[Krotoan]

Soooooo making the ...

hardcore people spend more time playing: more time to farm mats
Elite people can farm harder encounters: more drops of "hard to get" mats/items
It's very relevant to the economy of the items.

I'm still confused what you mean by "giving meaning to the crafting recipes"

The content has been around for a long time, for a while they were the only way to get those weapons. Now the weapons are much easier to attain. Their time as a "premium" weapon has expired.

I'm failing to see how 3 types of weapons being devalued hurts you so much as a crafter. Yes, you might have lost 3 (ok ok, like.. 30 something different weapons I get it) , likely very lucrative , sources of income. But you don't SPECIALIZE in mog weapons. It's not a job or a class. You're a BSM or a GSM, find another rare thing?

Maybe I don't understand because I don't craft ONLY. But it sounds greedy to forever want something rare just so you can ride that demand.

[Lildragora]

Stuff said here.

Again, no correlation to hardcore or elite farming as the context is making mats easier to obtain through PotD, and if you fail to see how giving mats instead of the final product gives a recipe more meaning there's nothing left I can say to you on that matter.

But you're right; it is greedy to want something to be rare forever, which giving mats achieves the same thing without devaluing the crafters time as much. Again if you cant see this I dont know what to tell you.

As a side note I only level crafts to have max level crafts. I make my money through other means so this really doesn't affect me at all.

[Krotoan]

other stuff

I'm saying the PoTD dropping the weapons drops value of mats, so the more hardcore/elite players don't have such a monopoly on the supply of those weapons which I support. I apologize If I didn't make that as clear as I should have. I understand getting mats means people will have to ask crafters to make the weapon instead of just having the weapon. I don't think it makes the recipe useless to HAVE though. If you get the mats you can still use them. But many weapons have alternate easier methods of acquiring them now.

I see how it would "devalue" the crafters time IF they ONLY farmed those weapons and spent all their time trading in the items that suddenly have become cheap. Otherwise the crafter should move on to more valuable crafts.
EG: Table Orchestrions. In demand, valuable stuff and the mats are farmable. I don't think they drop anywhere either.