HQ i170 vs i180 Main Hand Tools

[AdamZ]

Hey, if you want to try 2* with your current melds, use HQ Baked Onion Soup and more or less the first rotation from Katlyna, found here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...fting-Rotation
As you are short on CP there are two edits to this rotation:
- You NEED to get a Good in the opening Makers Mark, and then can not use it on a Precise/Basic touches (would need a second outside of the opener ToT to get the 20 CP before you can use Precise/Basic touches, given opener is 15 steps I find you generally should get a good during it, I get sad when I do not)
- The rotation has you do Careful Synthesis II until Ingenuity II falls off, you will want to do one more Careful Synthesis II after that
What this will allow you to do is finish without needing a second Ingenuity II in the final 2 steps (saving 32 CP)
Now I would recommend higher starting quality (3000 min) as you have one less touch for quality, should have a very good success rate.

[Katchoo]

I find that the current issue between these two decisions is that we don't know what the the requirements for future recipes will be.

Currently even with an un-melded 170 you will have enough stats to use the rotations listed here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...fting-Rotation

So the question is do you want to future proof yourself for potential new recipes? Personally i would forgo the main hands and craft more of the off-hand first.

[Lexia]

I got my carpenter the crafted main hand and melded it cause my blacksmith was able to make it and I didn't want to wait for 3 weeks worth of scrips. Otherwise my weaver and blacksmith have the 180 main hand.

My weaver is
Craft:836
Control:759

Blacksmith
Craft: 834
Control 778

Carpenter
Craft:831
Control:776

and they shares the cp of 382 which i then use HQ baked onion soup to add more cp and craftmanship. The rotation I use i find pretty easy to do 2 star items.

So for the main hand I think more personal preference of which road you want to go down cause even if you can't get max melds you can still get them to be equal in stats.

[blueruckus]

Even with no overmelds, the 4 CP in the guaranteed slot of the 170 is more valuable to me than the 15 craft/9 control on the 180. If you are tight on money, you can overmeld with cheapy tier 1-3 materia and you'll be reaching either 15 craft or 9 control on the 170. Either way, the 4 CP is most valuable.

[Katchoo]

Well it depends tho. Sure i would NEVER underestimate how useful 4cp is, every crafter knows the pain of being 1cp short on something ... BUT that extra craftsmanship and control is more useful if it allows you to achieve a better rotation.

again here http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...fting-Rotation

Thing is with rotations these days it's easier to tell exactly how much CP you need. Balance up the rotations you can achieve and the different variables.

[MN_14]

At the moment, I think CP is far more valuable than craftsmanship and control, but of course, you have to take a close look at your stats. 4 CP from the i170 main hand alone might not make much of a difference, but when combined with all of your other CP upgrades (you have to pass a certain CP threshold), as well as CP gained from using tricks of the trade, you can easily accomplish a lot more than what you could do with even maxed craftsmanship. I initially started crafting using around 435 CP and made huge improvements to my strategies after upgrading to 455 CP and then to 471 CP. Having CP levels in between 455 and 471 doesn't seem to dramatically improve my rotations (still helpful though).

With high craftsmanship, you can definitely create a better base 2* rotation easily achieving 12 touch attempts. However, the more CP you have, the easier it is to change your base rotation to either improve it during the craft or to respond to bad situations like the times where you find yourself with a lot of hasty touch failures.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I originally traded the CRP i180 mainhand because of such impressive stats, which helped me out in making my accessories. But in the end, I still spent the extra time and money to craft out an HQ i170 saw and melded 4 CP there.

Something tells me that at this point, a lot of us already have red tokens to spare... So, apart from making more HQ astral lumbers / adamantite ingots etc to sell, it's also not a bad idea to think about the possibility of acquiring some i180 mainhands / chest pieces. Maybe not now, but some time in the future when we need even more stats to craft 3 star items in patch 3.2..... So having some spare tokens saved up isn't a bad idea.

Heck, one can even use an i180 chest, but glamor it with an i170 chest so one can dye it! That's not a bad idea since it saves soooo much melding fee, yet one can enjoy the dyeable version of it! I'm long gone from the game now, but hey, it's something you people can consider in the future!

[blueruckus]

Something tells me that at this point, a lot of us already have red tokens to spare... So, apart from making more HQ astral lumbers / adamantite ingots etc to sell, it's also not a bad idea to think about the possibility of acquiring some i180 mainhands / chest pieces.

Heck, one can even use an i180 chest, but glamor it with an i170 chest so one can dye it! That's not a bad idea since it saves soooo much melding fee, yet one can enjoy the dyeable version of it! I'm long gone from the game now, but hey, it's something you people can consider in the future!

I've started to trade my Red Scrips for Soul Crystals instead of tokens. I'm already swimming in tokens and have my 170 main hands and chests melded to achieve equivalent 180 stats.

But yeah, if one doesn't have the means for heavy melding and is focusing all 8 classes, then maybe consider a 180 for each job in at least 1 slot. I would recommend chest.

I get the feeling Specialist recipes are not going away anytime soon and it really does suck to not being able to do everything yourself like it used to be. Having Soul Crystals saved up is a viable way around all of that. When 3.1 landed, I quickly loaded up on about 400 titanium alloy ingots then swapped that BSM specialist to ARM the following week allowing me to start making some good money off all those ingots.

[Mature]

Cp is king in this game. Well so far.

I haven't meld any of my ilvl170 MT just waiting for 3.2 to see if they add materia V in diadem.

For now if you really wanna meld both tools I would probably go for :

IV CP
IV CONTROL
IV CONTROL
IV CRAFTSMANSHIP
IV CRAFTSMANSHIP

gl!

[Katlyna]

I personally get more use out of the extra CP than the extra stats. So for me the 170HQ are an automatic win, as without the CP I would loose a significant move in my rotation (an extra Precise/Basic touch).