I've read all of the above and all of the above is true. The obvious fact here is that SE wants this stuff to be extremely difficult to craft. I'm referring to the new "Difficult to Synth" items, of course.

First off, these items are pleasing to the eye (for the most part), but other than that, the stats on them aren't even great! Second, they are limited to "Classes" and can not be used on jobs. Third, to even have a decent shot at success, you pretty much need to have all of your DoH classes capped to obtain the necessary skills. Now I for one can tell you that I spent a hell of a lot of time leveling up ALL of my DoH classes (with exception of cooking, and it's about 30 now). Now, even after leveling up all of these classes, we have this random BS, which is totally under the control of the SE developers. We have no idea how they have coded their algorithms. The percentages are basically meaningless as Lux_Rayna has so skillfully pointed out.

All this being said, SE has obviously set it up so VERY VERY few of us will succeed in making any of this gear. My advice... leave it alone till they modify their algorithm to allow more success.

I can understand that SE wants to make some things difficult to craft but I believe they have gone overboard on these items. After all, they aren't very good items, and even if they were, the fact that you nearly need all of your DoH classes capped makes these synths difficult enough to succeed at. They could code the algorithm to actually make the percentages based on 100 attempts rather than 1,000 or more (which is probably what they've done).

I know I for one will simply sell the materials I farm rather than waste my effort gathering these HQ mats only to loose most of them trying to synth junk. Just a thought.

Good Luck everyone.