Questioning yellow vs. red

[VisionHolder]

Per Lodestone:

When the glowing light is white, the materials are extremely stable, and the chances of success of synthesis commands are increased. The light may also turn from yellow, to red, to multiple colors flashing rapidly. Though these states represent progressively lower chances of success when executing commands, they also indicate times at which the quality of the synthesis can most easily be enhanced, therefore increasing the likelihood of creating a high-quality item.

Before this guide came out and we were all figuring things out on our own, some friends and I came to the conclusion that the order of stability (from most to least) went: white -> red -> yellow -> flashing. Working from this has worked well for me, but today a LS-mate wanted to know the details, so I decided to look it up on Lodestone to see if my experiences matched up with their instructions. That's when I discovered the quote above.

I've been doing crafting leves since, and reversing my handling of red and yellow to see if I've been wrong all along. However, regardless of the conditions, my success rate seems noticeably lower on yellow than it does on red. Elements destabilize more regularly on yellow than red, and failures are also more common. Am I the only one, or have others noticed the same trend?

[Deatheye]

hmm I've read that when they posted it. Since then I'm working along that. I never noticed anything beeing wrong with it.
Yellow seems to have a higher chance for progress and red for quality gain.
For me it always felt like white - yellow - red -flashing. Also normal synthesis has genererelly a higher sucess rate then the others.
I'm alyo starting to get the feeling that how long you wait before the timer runs out has influence on success. I'm still not so sure but it looks like for harder synthesis (10 level higher then my rank), the suces rate is higher when I wait till the timer nearrly run out.
Also weather seems to influence it. Try out fire base synthesis while it's raining. I assume since the moon chances color according to elements that propably influences it too.

E nice guide was posted there: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...one-(with-link)

[Wynn]

It has always felt like white -> yellow -> red -> spaz to me. Bold (now called careful) synthesis seems to really work well on red, though anything else tends to fail. I've yet to find anything that works well on yellow at all and I usually just wait it out.

[Eruantien]

I too have also always found white->yellow->red->flashing was the correct order. I never thought red was better than yellow.

[Zelkelion]

I initially assumed red was worse than yellow. I've been testing a bit over the last couple days and I have a tentative theory.

It seems to be that obviously white is the most stable. If you're going to do Rapid synthesis, this is the only safe place to try it.

Yellow is bad. Just all bad. Higher chance of failure. I always select Wait for yellow.

Red is probably also bad. An increased rate of failure... perhaps. I find on Red it's either a complete success or a complete failure (explosion!) most of the time.

The flashing status is really random. I'm only guessing at this point, but the speed and colours you see might determine the general success rate. I've noticed times when it's mostly yellow and red flashing I've failed more. But overall I've failed more in general when it's flashing because I don't even try on yellow. The problem is using Wait will often land you on yellow or red from flashing.

What do you think?