The RMT fear and fast levling has killed the value of gears and ruined crafts a bit

[NanaWiloh]

Crafted end game dungeon gear is the only gear that you will keep for a decent amount of time outside of end game crafting gear. Crafting end game dungeon gear now is pointless as i380 is no longer needed and we are heading into Shadowbringers. Players at max level are better off going for i390 or i400 right now. As for leveling it always gets replaced fast been that way since ARR..

[Pepsi_Plunge]

Crafting end game dungeon gear now is pointless as i380 is no longer needed and we are heading into Shadowbringers. Players at max level are better off going for i390 or i400 right now.

You can upgrade the crafted i380 gear to i390.

[Kalise]

You can upgrade the crafted i380 gear to i390.

That's actually a downgrade though. Since you can't penta-meld the i390 stuff...

With penta-meld the i380 stuff can outperform the i390 stuff.

On Topic:

Crafted gear really hasn't had much use at all during leveling really.

Since, you've always been able to just purchase vendor gear for pretty much every item slot for cheaper than anyone sells crafted gear for on the MB. Which has always been serviceable for getting through content.

Not to mention, the MSQ has routinely given out HQ gear for your first job to boot.

Even self-crafting gear is basically not really enticing, since the amount of work you have to put into to craft the items (Which more or less requires omni-crafting, due to the number of cross-class material requirements as well as the plethora of different pieces of equipment i.e. Blacksmith/Carpenter/Alchemist/Goldsmith for weapons/shields, Armourer/Leatherworker/Weaver/Carpenter for armour and Goldsmith for accessories) is not particularly worth it.

Not when you can instead put that time into crafting actually relevant end-game stuff and sell it for Gil to just buy what you need from vendors.

Since really, it's just max level gear that is really worth crafting at all. Mostly only early-mid way through an expansion though, where penta-melded gear is competitive or even BiS comparatively to Raid/Tome gear. Later in an expansion, it falls off, especially due to the silly "Upgrade" feature that prevents penta-melding on the upgraded item...

It's a shame that crafting has such a limited niche of when it's actually good.

I'd personally like to see crafted gear get some love. Especially for crafters themselves.

Like, what if they could "Upgrade" their crafted gear for a fraction of the materials it'd cost to make the higher level piece of gear from scratch. So making your own gear and upgrading it into each future piece of gear becomes a worthy use of time.

If end-game crafted gear could be upgraded to keep up with at least tomestone gear with the additional meld options to boot - Perhaps using special materials only obtained through duties so you can't cheese into World First clears of content.