Level 15 HQ Crafting Help

[Maelwys]

Ok - first off, I'm printing all of this now so I have it. I made some proper gear last night and was able to equip to most of my crafters (all level 15ish so that was fairly simple). What I'm most struggling with is what each of these skills actually do, when to use them, when not to - I'm hitting buttons then sitting there with 3% HQ, 0CP, 0 durability 90% of the time, seems like "synthesis fails" likes me an awful lot. Can someone help me with a simple level 15ish rotation using skills that I have access to now (all crafts are at 15 or above)? Assuming I have the necessary HQ items for the recipe, what is a simple rotation of skills I have now that can help boost this chance? What I'm doing now, hit the steady hand thing - get normal progress bar within one act away from completion then play around with the HQ part until I run out of CP then finish the craft. Any feedback is much appreciated.

There are usually three parts to any Synth:

(i) The "Setup" phase - Comfort Zone and Inner Quiet

(ii) The "Building Quality" phase - Hasty Touch spam when levelling, with a Byregot's Blessing at the very end if you have it.

(iii) The "Building Progress" phase - Careful Synthesis II if you have it, a mixture of Basic Synthesis and Careful Synthesis if you don't.

The rest of the abilities you use are mainly just there to make sure you don't run out of CP or Durability whilst you're using the above abilities: In order to not run out of durability, you need to use Manipulation (or Master's Mend) and Waste Not. In order not to run out of CP, you eat food, upgrade your gear and use "Tricks of the Trade" at opportune moments.

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There are also a few buffs to consider:

In order to make sure your Hasty Touches have as large a chance to work as possible, use "Steady Hand II" if you have it, or "Steady Hand I" if you don't. If you use Byregot's Blessing or Basic Touch, these also have a 10% chance to miss (fail) unless you use "Steady Hand"... but Careful Synthesis I and Careful Synthesis II can never miss. Great Strides (and Innovation if you have it) is handy to use for more Quality if you have spare CP but not Durability.

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In terms of a rotation, it depends on how much CP you have, what the durability is of the item that you're synthing is, and how many Synthesis actions you need to use in order to complete the synth.

I'd do something like the below:

Comfort Zone (from your Alch)
Inner Quiet
Waste Not
Steady Hand
Hasty Touch x5 (You should now be at 5 Durability on 40 Durability Items)
Manipulation
Steady Hand (Manipulation recovers 10 Durability here, and 20 more over the next two steps)
(A few Hasty Touches to use up your remaining spare Durablity)

Make sure you leave yourself enough Durability at the end to complete the synth via Basic Synthesis (if under Steady Hand) or Careful Synthesis (if Steady Hand has worn off)
If you don't know how much you need, you can use a Basic Synthesis immediately after the second Steady Hand and measure how much it grants you (be careful of one-shotting the "easy" synths this way though!)

Once you get comfortable with that rough rotation you can start using Tricks of the Trade to recover extra CP, which will allow you to use "Basic Touch" in place of "Hasty Touch" a few times, or add a few extra buffs in, etc.

Finally: since you don't have Byregot's Blessing yet, you may want to look at "Rumination" - this uses up all your Inner Quiet stacks to grant you extra CP.
It might be worth using this at the very end of the synth once you have no CP left for any good "Touches" but still have some spare durability.