Final Skybuilders' Tool

[TaleraRistain]

They don't really seem worth it, even for a more casual player. It's locked behind Expert recipes, which from what I've seen just come down to fishing for certain procs. I tried some of the "right" ways I read about and they were so boring. I don't use macros so I've been playing around with it to do it my own way. I've managed to find a comfortable medium that gets me the minimum for 1 item, lets me take advantage of the procs as they come up if I want to experiment with pushing, but doesn't have me sitting around bored fishing for step after step after step.

RNG is frustrating but there's a difference between frustrating and challenge. SE has a habit of equating the two and using RNG for their challenge. I really wish they'd steal an idea from EQII. In EQII you have skills that move forward progress and quality like here. There are procs while crafting but they require you to hit a specific skill (that you may have just used) and there's a short time limit to hit it. If you miss it, there's a negative effect either in your craft or even to you if it's severe enough. Hell, I've died crafting there before. You have to pay attention. You have to react quickly. And you have to react quickly with the right skill. I applaud SE for the new conditions. Those are fun. But fishing for them is not fun and doesn't really seem to be much of a test of skill except someone's ability to resist boredom.

I'll do them because I like shinies, but ugh.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

They don't really seem worth it, even for a more casual player. It's locked behind Expert recipes, which from what I've seen just come down to fishing for certain procs. I tried some of the "right" ways I read about and they were so boring. I don't use macros so I've been playing around with it to do it my own way. I've managed to find a comfortable medium that gets me the minimum for 1 item, lets me take advantage of the procs as they come up if I want to experiment with pushing, but doesn't have me sitting around bored fishing for step after step after step.

RNG is frustrating but there's a difference between frustrating and challenge. SE has a habit of equating the two and using RNG for their challenge. I really wish they'd steal an idea from EQII. In EQII you have skills that move forward progress and quality like here. There are procs while crafting but they require you to hit a specific skill (that you may have just used) and there's a short time limit to hit it. If you miss it, there's a negative effect either in your craft or even to you if it's severe enough. Hell, I've died crafting there before. You have to pay attention. You have to react quickly. And you have to react quickly with the right skill. I applaud SE for the new conditions. Those are fun. But fishing for them is not fun and doesn't really seem to be much of a test of skill except someone's ability to resist boredom.

I'll do them because I like shinies, but ugh.

Sorry, I just wanna say, I disagree with pretty much everything you said here.

Firstly, whether the tools are worth it or not really comes down to what you're trying to achieve. If you just want glamor, they're totally worth it. If you were sitting on lightly-melded i490 or the Skysung i500, then the i510 Skybuilders are definitely a boost to your stats. The only time when it's not worth it, is when you're already sitting on a heavy-control-pentamelded i490 while seeking more control.

Secondly, they're not "LOCKED" behind anything. Anyone can do Expert Recipes.

Thirdly, although some fishing for procs is required, Expert Recipes is NOT just about fishing for certain procs. It is actually more about utilizing whatever conditions that come at you. I dunno what "right" ways you've been reading about but here's what I came up with: http://ffxivrealm.com/guides/caimie-...ers-tools.201/

I had only Aesthete tools with +6 CP melds, and I only used mostly HQ Matcha and sometimes HQ Blood Bouillabaisse without using any Chilli Crab. I used only NQ Cunning Syrup as well. And yet, I was able to get enough tool parts from merely crafting 21 collectables for 4 classes. "Skills" are CLEARLY involved, even though it's not the kind of "real-time skill" that you were talking about.

RNG is frustrating, but there's a difference between crafting by pure RNG vs crafting with brain. You actually need to be VERY quick with your head to make complex decisions based on your current CP, durab, condition and quality acquired/needed. This IS a kind of intellectual skill.

If you had studied the Expert Recipes that we did back in Phase 2 of the Ishgardian Restoration (in one of the earlier threads here https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Recipes/page16), you'd see that a good number of us were able to achieve at least 80% of our crafts getting max quality. I started off with only about 36% of my crafts getting max quality... Then improved to 40-ish%, later ~70% before finally reaching above 80%. Are we just all super lucky? No. We just "got better"... i.e. becoming more "skilled". (Although, in Phase 3 and Phase 4, I have to admit more RNG was involved, and I was only able to achieve about 45% of my crafts max quality. But that's because of the changes in our stats, changes in the crafts' difficulties and even changes in the conditions available that affected the weighting of RNG importance.)

Again, Expert Recipes is NOT just about fishing for conditions. Some fishing is needed, but you're ONLY fishing for conditions, you'll be very heavily relying on RNG, and you are likely to do poorly on these recipes.

[Liam_Harper]

Question for anyone who has one, but do they still go in the Glamour Dresser even at the final stage?

[Jojoya]

Question for anyone who has one, but do they still go in the Glamour Dresser even at the final stage?

Yes, they will. No Armoire as usual.

[Kaurhz]

Question for anyone who has one, but do they still go in the Glamour Dresser even at the final stage?

Late..

But for me nope, because the craftsmanship gain outweighs the control loss.. So I can go from 26 > 20 steps without reducing quality, even factoring in the control loss too. They are bad if you look at them in a vacuum, but it's not that simple.

Comes down to the simple question of.. Does the craftsmanship gain allow you to reach an important breakpoint, and is it a breakpoint that you will regularly make use of (2735, 2754, and 2797), 20-step, Experts, and 19-step respectively. Can slate the control loss as much as people like, but if that control isn't the difference between 1 HQ mat and 2 HQ mats, then it's an irrelevant loss. Similarly for the craftsmanship.. If you don't reach one of those breakpoints then the gain is irrelevant

[Jojoya]

Late..

But for me nope, because the craftsmanship gain outweighs the control loss.. So I can go from 26 > 20 steps without reducing quality, even factoring in the control loss too. They are bad if you look at them in a vacuum, but it's not that simple.

Comes down to the simple question of.. Does the craftsmanship gain allow you to reach an important breakpoint, and is it a breakpoint that you will regularly make use of (2735, 2754, and 2797), 20-step, Experts, and 19-step respectively. Can slate the control loss as much as people like, but if that control isn't the difference between 1 HQ mat and 2 HQ mats, then it's an irrelevant loss. Similarly for the craftsmanship.. If you don't reach one of those breakpoints then the gain is irrelevant

I would love to see a sample situation where you were able to reduce a level 80 Master recipe from 26 to 20 steps solely by increasing Craftsmanship 48 without the original rotation being inefficient in the first place.

HQ materials are obviously better to use, reducing control and/or number of touch steps needed. SE clearly expects us to be using them even if some players want to stick to only NQ materials.

But then we have Expert without any HQ materials. If the gain in Craftsmanship won't be enough to replace a synthesis step with a touch step, better to have the control to offset touch RNG and increase rating as high as possible.

There's a reason why Aesthete gear ends up BIS over the Handsaint gear despite being 10 ilvls lower. SE should have followed suit with the Skybuilder tools.

[Kaurhz]

I would love to see a sample situation where you were able to reduce a level 80 Master recipe from 26 to 20 steps solely by increasing Craftsmanship 48 without the original rotation being inefficient in the first place.

HQ materials are obviously better to use, reducing control and/or number of touch steps needed. SE clearly expects us to be using them even if some players want to stick to only NQ materials.

But then we have Expert without any HQ materials. If the gain in Craftsmanship won't be enough to replace a synthesis step with a touch step, better to have the control to offset touch RNG and increase rating as high as possible.

There's a reason why Aesthete gear ends up BIS over the Handsaint gear despite being 10 ilvls lower. SE should have followed suit with the Skybuilder tools.

Here goes..

26-Step rotation in question


20-step rotation
which I deviated to when taking Skybuilders' tool over Aesthete's tool- Has marginal quality loss by comparison, but it is irrelevant since you still require the same amount of HQ mats until you deviate onto Specialist rotation. Needless to say, 19-step is for 2797 where you swap Focused for Careful. I probably should've clarified "Without reducing it by any meaningful amount, but semantic


It isn't that neither rotation is inefficient, but that simply put Preparatory Touch is absurdly efficient, especially when buffed by Innovation. The only issue we've had since, is you already had to have a fairly specialized build for it on Aesthete's. Arguably you can achieve the same, albeit with a higher step count and some quality deficiency, but if you ask me a simple tool swap is beneficial enough, especially taking into account you still require the same amount of materials in HQ, unless you of course use specialist, but that's an entirely different case

2754 allows you to take a Delicate Synthesis on Malleable, which gives you both Inner Quiet and the necessary progress to be within 1 Basic Synthesis of finishing the craft, but as is with Expert this heavily depends on which route or method you use with crafting them. There's no real right or wrong, but it's a good breakpoint all the same.

Handsaint and Skybuilders' are 2 entirely different things considering the latter is not only +20 iLv above Aesthete's, but factoring in it also has +6CP. So I'm not entirely sure why this was highlighted.

[Jojoya]

snip

You didn't mention you were also increasing available CP. Your second rotation would have failed if you were limited to the amount you had available in the first.

So what is your result when you limit yourself to 639 CP?

As for bringing up Handsaint versus Aesthete, it goes show the power of being able to customize through melding. Skybuilder tools don't give us that power.

A truly BiS tool shouldn't force us to remeld other gear to achieve a noticeable difference. You would have had to remeld other items to get that additional CP you needed to make your second rotation work.

A truly BIS tool should make us feel good when we get it. Do you feel good every time you have to remeld?

[Caimie_Tsukino]

A truly BiS tool shouldn't force us to remeld other gear to achieve a noticeable difference. You would have had to remeld other items to get that additional CP you needed to make your second rotation work.

A truly BIS tool should make us feel good when we get it. Do you feel good every time you have to remeld?

Well... You seem to be a little bit harsh on this... I do remember some BiS battle gear not always being the relic weapon, so some ppl chose to use something else instead.

Anyway, I'm curious... If the Skybuilders' tool is not as good as the pentamelded, control-heavy Aesthete, shouldn't you be happy about it that your Aesthete is not obsolete yet? So you pentameld effort is still worth another patch... If I were in that situation, I'd be quite happy about that, and just glamor the Skybuilders' on top of the Aesthete.

Another question, how does remelding other gear help you to achieve better stats if you were already pentamelding the Aesthete mainhand? I'd assume your other gear would also be pentamelded and control-heavy, right? So you probably can't gain more control from other gear by remelding them, in order to make up the loss control from switching to Skybuilders'.

Btw, Happy CNY and happy Valentines'!!!

[Kaurhz]

You didn't mention you were also increasing available CP. Your second rotation would have failed if you were limited to the amount you had available in the first.

So what is your result when you limit yourself to 639 CP?

As for bringing up Handsaint versus Aesthete, it goes show the power of being able to customize through melding. Skybuilder tools don't give us that power.

A truly BiS tool shouldn't force us to remeld other gear to achieve a noticeable difference. You would have had to remeld other items to get that additional CP you needed to make your second rotation work.

A truly BIS tool should make us feel good when we get it. Do you feel good every time you have to remeld?

Well technically as far as the CP goes, that is the difference between using tea and using Syrup which is wholly irrelevant if you're gaining the materials in a self-sufficient manner. So the base CP remains the same, the only difference being you go from Tea to Syrup, which factoring in a 15-minute buff for 8 steps, still turns out more efficient. The only case for argument would be if I went from no additional consumable tea/syrup to requiring a tea/syrup, so contrary to what you believe no remelding was even necessary for this endeavor, simply swapped out my tools, discarded my Aesthete's, and didn't look bad. Ironically though I could swap out a Craftsmanship V CP on the Hands and stick back a CP+1 since I'm still on 2746, and that would be sufficient enough to swap down from Syrup to Tea, so yeah. Increasing the available CP is moot when both crafts require a combination of Food/Tea(Syrup) and nigh on capped CP anyway.

BiS is very situational, so like anything, it is subject to change as newer equipment, recipes, and rotations are found. I am inclined to agree with you that a true tool should not require the need to remeld in order to achieve results, however, in this situation no remelding even occurred in the first place so it is indeed a moot point. Not to mention there's a difference between significant melding required and minor, but whether or not remelding is worth it, is entirely deterministic on the frequency that you craft. If I'm pumping out hundreds or thousands of crafts between now and 6.0, then it is a more than a justifiable point of view. I feel this was entirely semantic and trying to make a point.

TL;DR: No remelding was even necessary for this endeavor, the only differentiation was stooping up from Tea > Syrup. You could even clarify this through Teamcraft yourself if you wanted to.
26 Step requires the use of both Chili Crab + Either HQ Tea, or NQ Syrup, for a bonus of 13CP
20-Step requires the use of both Chili Crab + HQ Cunning Syrup
Both sets still retain the same base CP of 554. Given how crafts have been the entirety of this expansion you'll find it a tough case to justify entirely cap CP, especially when and where going with 42~ Craftsmanship can have more of an objective benefit over that +3CP.

In fact, using my actual build currently, 2746/2820/554, I can drop the tea/syrup entirely from the 26-step rotation whilst still maintaining the same requisite HQ materials.

If you don't feel that this is for you then that is fine really if your preference aligns with something else. But given the scope of this discussion, it's factually incorrect to imply that Skybuilders' tool has no real benefit over Pentamelded Aesthete's.