How would you change Specialization?

[MN_14]

Specialist abilities are largely useful only if you’re lacking somewhere:

1) Are missing a lot of the useful level 50+ cross class skills
2) Have low base cp

The reason for this is probably because they decided to introduce a system that could be combined with cross class skills so they also had to put in a limiter (much heavier rng) to not completely bust the balance. Anyone who has experience with ARR level 50 end game crafting knows that the effectiveness of a crafter is determined by their HQ yield (% of crafts that HQ overall). AFAIK, it wasn’t possible to guarantee 100% on a 4* craft even with 50% starting quality, never mind the ones that forced you to start from 10-30%.

The specialist abilities achieve the following:
1) Greatly boost your HQ yield if you have no level 50 cross class
2) Greatly boost your HQ yield if you have the cross-class abilities but also have really low starting cp
3) Do little to improve your HQ yield if you have enough cp and cross class abilities to reliably craft without specialist abilities. In fact, they probably lower your potential HQ yield.

Seems like check list design to me….

From my experience (assuming that you care to farm delineations), they will help you 75% of the time and hinder you 25% of the time. I’ve crafted probably close to 1000 4* synths from all NQ mats and can state with confidence that you can HQ them 95% of the time with usually 70-80% of your synths ending at 100%. With those numbers, you don’t want to be hindered 25% of the time.

I haven’t tested 4* from low starting cp, but I did test 3* back in 3.2 while equipped with my usual cross class. I started my synths from all NQ materials and 370 cp which was over 100 cp less than what I normally started with. Just by using the heart ability, whistle while you work, satisfaction, and nymaea’s wheel, it was possible to HQ around 75% of the synths. If you ever wondered why the devs bothered releasing red scrip gear (especially the accessories) that is rather weak in terms of the cp they provide, there’s your answer .