The part I don't understand is I, a full on crafter who's first MMO was SWG, who lives and dies by the crafting as gear source said back in 1.00 they should give reward gear as good as any crafted. There should never be an opportunity for me as a crafter to exploit people who aren't interested in doing it. I want people to make a choice to buy stuff I make. I also want anything I make to have natural decay. I want to be forced to price it accordingly. My gear should be good for around 120 hrs of use, then it's trash, buy new stuff, make new stuff.

All that said, I know why they gimp it in 2.00 and 3.00 and what ever variant we are in. They have no restraint ability. Raid gear is over powered. If players could do any given raid with the best raid gear available, they would face roll the dungeon in 2 or 3 tries. They of course can't because they need to do the dungeon 200 times under geared to become over geared. I've said this 100 thousand times, there is no hard in a video game. There is can, there is can't. You either meet the iLevel requirements and know your rotation or you don't. Reward gear forces you to play content throttled. Crafted allows you to skip that. I feel kind of bad for Devs. They need to rely on an optic to keep us entertained. It's why I don't often put up much of a stink when I see design choices. I know they have their back up against a wall.

I'm going to go level up a few more retainers now. They never complain that my crafted stuffs is useless or that it sucks. Crafting for my NPC army.. not what I had in mind but I'll take it!