How come the Artisan mainhands got a huge nerf but the Forager mainhands didn't?

[TheodoreMcIntyre]

I'm not trying to be a smartass or anything, I'm just genuinely curious why the i70 mainhands for crafters would get a huge nerf but not the mainhands for gatherers.

[Lemuel81]

Im guessing it just didnt happen in the same patch, I bet it will happen in 2.5 but we'll see.

[Alistaire]

Easy. Because the mainhands for min/btn were already much easier than the crafting ones, and the adjustment had nothing to do with that balance; it was about cul being (supposedly) much easier than the others, and so people were spamming cul for repeated tools for desynth.

In reality the crafting ones didn't need that much of an adjustment; ltw had already been just about as easy, and arguably easier, than cul, to spam for desynth fodder. Now it's easier than cul along with a couple others, but it didn't really fix anything because nothing was broken. SE still overreacts when 1 "path" is better than others. The situation as it was was not game breaking, and wouldn't be much different now if they had just halved all their requirements instead of min-maxing which them to a point they thought they'd be balanced. Any change made like this is just gonna produce another path that's the new "best way", and it takes a much bigger differential than they think to truly merit a nerf.

Fisher's another story; that was the hardest to get by a longshot, but with the introduction of i75 it actually became skippable, so there's not much a need or benefit to nerfing the requirements. It had a minor adjustment where 2 hq fish were enough, but the likelihood of having 2 hq before 3 nq was pretty low to begin with.

[Ephier]

Because they are MUCH easier.

[Garlyle]

Easy. Because the mainhands for min/btn were already much easier than the crafting ones, and the adjustment had nothing to do with that balance; it was about cul being (supposedly) much easier than the others, and so people were spamming cul for repeated tools for desynth.

Personally I understood it as part of their philosophy they've stated that they wanted to introduce ways for newer players to 'catch up' to the status of current ones for crafter/gatherer classes - that's why in general they all saw some level of nerf (the value/rarity of materials being different is what prompted different values for each of the classes, however).

Forager's difficulty for BTN/MIN actually did get nerfed recently when 1* nodes were dropped down about 17 Gathering in requirement (from 370 to 353). More importantly though, the only cost involved is the stat requirement (which crafters also have to pay to meet on their end). You just need to visit location x so many times.