Crafting is dead

[LineageRazor]

Please explain to me exactly how anything the expansion added removed/reduced the necessity of cross class skills for end game crafting. I'd be interested to see your argument.

If I had the answers, I'd gladly share them. I don't, but that doesn't mean there are no answers to be had.

This isn't the first time the crafting paradigm has shifted. Before 3- and 4-star crafts (and especially the Mastercraft II books), skills like Reclaim and Piece-by-piece were all but pointless. When it became obvious that the old methods for crafting just weren't going to cut it on the new recipes, that's when tactics like fishing for Good or Excellent procs started to pop up. Folks who were used to being able to gear up enough to macro craft everything under the sun finally started having to pay attention to what they were doing, gauging probabilities to get acceptable results, and working with the knowledge that there was no 100% foolproof way too succeed on many synths.

I feel like folks are being too hasty in assuming that SE has flat-out dropped the ball with their promise of making solo-crafting viable. Pretty near everyone that posts in the crafting forums is ALREADY an omnicrafter. Why? Because damn near everyone that comes to the forums asking advice on how to craft is immediately told, "Level everything to 50. It's the only way." Some may rise to the challenge, but I'm betting a whole lot more get discouraged and turn away. Those of us that remain, we don't NEED to rely on Byregot's Brow or the specialist abilities because we already have all these cross-class bells and whistles.

I'm hopeful that an upcoming crop of new solo-craft crafters will appear that aren't scared off by the old guard's moaning and weeping, who are forced to rely on the new skills. None of us here have put more than a token effort into crafting like a solo-crafter would need to, because it's wasteful and unnecessary. The question isn't whether solo-crafting is the best way - that's almost certainly false - the question is whether it's a VIABLE way. In searching for a viable way, these solo-crafters may come up with techniques that surprise the rest of us.

Edit: And for the record, since many folks seem to be misinterpreting what I mean by all this, I'm NOT implying by any means that level 60 2-star crafting materials are casual-oriented. That is a seperate discussion. My only concern is whether or not casual crafters can effectively craft using those materials, not whether or not obtaining those materials is a casual activity.