Quote Originally Posted by Culfinrandir View Post
I've never used the Specialist Abilities at all. They're not even on my hotbars. If I am able to craft everything using the abilities that come with levelling crafter up to lvl60 then I don't need to complicate my life further!

Of course, there's some excellent theorycrafters in this game who help everyone with the more complex parts of crafting. I always try to find my own rotations before using, say, Rath's 437CP wonderful creation. That's all part of the fun to me.
Pretty much. I don't normally use specialist abilities either other than when experimenting with a way for single class crafters to HQ the latest items. With cross class skills, you can can craft from 0-100% on all items released so far the majority of the time, with most other results falling to around 90-94%. Getting a mere 80% is a disaster that doesn't happen too often as it normally requires 5-6 misses.

Rotations are useful for beginners who haven't fully mastered the use of all of the crafting abilities. But they'll ultimately hold you back. You should actually be crafting with the mindset of doing whatever it takes to get that 11 stacks of IQ while building up ~7300 quality (or 6100 quality if you're able to add innovation into the mix). If it takes 8 touches, great. If it takes 16, that's fine too.

Ironically, in the absence of level 50 cross class skills, specialist abilities force you to take the harder non-rotation based approach. Free form crafting in the truest sense as even your timing/method for completing progress is unpredictable (for 3* and 4* anyhow).