Quote Originally Posted by Donjo View Post
Catch up was what the crafted gear was intended to be. It is not currently what it is. It's not expensive because the materials are particularly hard to get... it's expensive because people really want it because of how powerful it is. To actually get to crafting it? Well, you could put a price on the time it takes to get there but there's no true skill involved... just time and RNG. I think the dev's original idea was that someone who hadn't played for a while could just buy a set of the crafted gear and instantly be ready to hit the next raid. This is clearly not what happened!
Take the i110 crafted vs. i110 tomestone gear. Tomestone plate chest costs 895 sld, wootz plate chest costs 1350 sld worth of materials AND a bunch of other stuff.

My point was that the vast majority of people that hadn't played in a while will be able to earn the Soldiery for an entire set of i110 gear faster than they could raise the money to purchase all the pieces of a crafted set, let alone melding it. If it's supposed to be catch up gear, it's too expensive for that purpose. Most people who want to get caught up don't have that kind of $$ lying around.