I don't know what to do

[MeridaQ]

Op you can get the 60 chim/serpent gear and over meld them to be a 2star 60 crafter. I would suggest just getting your red scrip capped each week and see what happens. Right now if you made the i170 gear unless you have tier 5 materia you can max meld. Plus there is nothing needing that high of stats ATM.

[MeridaQ]

Snip

Let me explain then, just FYI I am doing progression raiding (AS3) and "end game crafting." As you explained this is end game, but the problem is that currently there is no real endgame. If you choose to make the new gear there is no gain, it doesn't unlock the ability to crafter better/harder gear. While getting the next eso piece does. Each new eso gives your group the ability to progress farther. Crafting and gathering red scrip gear does not, it is circular and unenjoyable.

[Thrustie]

Grade 5 melds are not really required on most 170 gear to make it superior to red scrips 180 gear. Only the main hand needs grade 5s.

[Iagainsti]

So it takes 3 weeks to get your eso weapon
It takes 3 weeks to get your DoH weapon

I'm not seeing the problem here

[PotatoWafflez]

I've gone down the red scrip gear route because:

I don't have a lot of gil saved up to buy the ilvl170 gear and would rather not deal with the headache of trying to get the ilvl170 gear at HQ
I don't play any of the top end markets so I don't need the best gear anyway

So I've just been focusing on buying my CRP set because its what I use to cap so it helps me most in the short term just because it makes that slightly easier on paper and I can attempt my accessories later on if I want to.

Mainly just going through the motions and getting what little "upgrades" I can get for minimal effort till we find out if its going to be like tomes or not and we get something like "Green" scrips in 3.1 and the whole thing starts all over again while red gets smooshed together with blue which is what I've been thinking since the system was introduced but I hope isn't the case.

[MeridaQ]

So it snip

Because getting your new tools does not change the endgame progression, it is still cyclical. Get new gear to get more new gear, no new recipes no new progression/content. You can make everything with the i150 gear, ergo no reason to upgrade. Compared to raiding where each new piece gives you that little bit extra needed to progress farther. If this still is hard to understand I apologize for not explaining it well.

[Thrustie]

Uh no. You could fill them with tier 4s or even 3s and they'd be significantly better than fully melded 150 gear.

[Katchoo]

How do you craft the ilvl170 crafted gear? Well you have to use ilvl150 gear initially right?. So if you can craft ilvl170 with ilvl150 why would you even craft the ilvl170?

It's really about them needing to release more crafting recipes for DoW to make it all worthwhile but it remains to be seen if they will do so. The stance has been is that they did not want crafted gear to be used as it was in 2.00, but hopefully they will see that thats what actually worked and what people enjoyed.

The progression seem so strange to me in 3.00.

It used to be: No star Crafted > 1* Crafted > 2*Crafted and now its ... No star crafted > 2* Crafted?? How does that make sense?

[Iagainsti]

Because getting your new tools does not change the endgame progression, it is still cyclical. Get new gear to get more new gear, no new recipes no new progression/content. You can make everything with the i150 gear, ergo no reason to upgrade. Compared to raiding where each new piece gives you that little bit extra needed to progress farther. If this still is hard to understand I apologize for not explaining it well.

You are, but it was the same in 2.0. Your grinding for the wep/gear so the new patch recipes will be craftable. Then, like 2.x, the next round of gear will show up in 6-8months to grind again. Just like raiding. You do savage now to get SA4 down, get your wep and gear for the next content to drop. Cyclical yes, but not as shortsighted as you make it.

[Alahra]

You are, but it was the same in 2.0. Your grinding for the wep/gear so the new patch recipes will be craftable. Then, like 2.x, the next round of gear will show up in 6-8months to grind again. Just like raiding. You do savage now to get SA4 down, get your wep and gear for the next content to drop. Cyclical yes, but not as shortsighted as you make it.

There's a significant difference for crafting, though. In 2.0, release ARR, you did the grind (well, it was mostly materia melding there) in order to craft things that were entirely relevant at that time. You weren't doing the grind to craft things that came out in 2.1 or 2.2--you were doing so to craft stuff that was released in 2.0 that people *wanted*. This repeated for each major patch. In 2.2, you did a new grind, at the end of which you could craft the i90 3-star gear that had significant demand. Same for 2.4. Now, the stuff you can make once you hit the 2-star level is both incredibly arduous to produce and overall not in demand. The grind essentially has no purpose in the patch it's introduced in.

Yes, in 2.x, doing the grind in 2.0 also prepared you better for the one in 2.2, and the one in 2.2 better prepared you for 2.4. But there was worthwhile stuff to craft the moment you finished the grind, too. The difference now is that there's very little that's worthwhile to craft.