Level 50 skills advice

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I think what I need to look at now is changing my approach slightly. Up until now I've been focusing all of my first moves on Quality, pushing as far as I can, and then going for Progress. And that's often why I would need Rumination and/or Waste Not, just for the times that I waited too long for synthesis and need an extra step or two.

But maybe it's time to swap to the "one synthesis away from finishing" method so I can blow everything on Quality without worrying. Think it might still take some time to get a good feel for how far I need to get before I'm confident Byregot's will get me to 100%. Seems like something best learned from time and experience.

Don't limit yourself to just one way. You will find that you will need different strategies for different items.

For instance, when you were as low as level 8 - level 12, you had barely any skills available to use. The "Good" condition became your only tool. Thus, it's better to keep pushing progress with Basic Syn, until you encounter a "Good", then you go Basic Touch. If you could catch 2 Goods with Basic Touch, it's already equal to having 1 extra touch for free. Similarly, if you have extra CP to spare, but no extra durability or room for progress, then you may also use "Observe" to bait for a Good condition (This is very rare once you past level 20+). Anyway, this is an example which you start off by pushing progress constantly first, while pushing quality occasionally. But of course, when progress is 1-step from completion, you will be pushing quality every step until the end.

For instance, if you're dealing with an item that can be just completed with 4 strokes of Careful Syn II under the effect of Ingen2, you might as well save all the progress until the end. Because you can then activate Ingen2 just before your Byregot's Blessing, and then followed by the 4x CS II. This way, you can maximize all 5 steps of Ingen2 to push quality on the Byregot, and to help complete the item in 4 secure steps. This is an example, which all progress are saved until last.

For instance, if you're depending on very unreliable skills like "Rapid Syn" for progress. Then perhaps you should push progress first, until you have 1 Careful Syn II away from completion. Then you push quality, and finish up with that one CS II. Despite Rapid Syn being so unreliable, this strategy may work out for some difficult items for you (Hell, if you do "SH II, Ingen2, Rapid Syn spam", your progress will fly soooo fast. It is, however, a very heavy CP investment and not very reliable, and should not be utilized unless you don't have Piece by Piece or other similar skills. It is, however, a valid strategy for items like highly difficult elemental aspected items, which your progress is terribly crippled by half.). This is an example of how progress is done first, and then quality after.

For instance, if you're dealing with an item that is soooo difficult to HQ that you need to activate Comfort Zone 3x to gain more CP (+14 x 3 = 42 extra CP), then perhaps you can throw down some CS IIs as "step fillers" to help retrieved the invested CP. This way, you may gain more CP for pushing quality. After quality is done, then you go back and finish the rest of your progress (making sure you have enough durab though). Sometimes, you might arrive at a spot where you have 1 or 2 steps of Comfort Zone left before you activate a cascade of "Steady Hand II + Waste Not + HT spam". Then perhaps you can just throw down some CS IIs as "step fillers" again. This way, you can activate Comfort Zone again before you start your Waste Not phase. This is an example which you focus on quality first, but pushing progress occasionally for the sake of lengthening the total number of steps.

Any tips for what to do with some of these that I might not have thought of? If it matters at all, so far I've been using the Inner Quiet-Steady Hand II-Hasty Touch-(Tricks of the Trade) method with pretty good results. But with the 1- and 2-star crafting I'm hitting, just want to be sure I'm not wasting some of my skills that could be helping more than I realize.

Please use Manipulation (at least once) whenever you try to take on a difficult 40 or 35 durability item. And do your best to activate it when durability is not at max or at min.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

Two non-specialist abilities increase progress by 33%: PbP and Muscle Memory. The thing about MM is you can only use it at step 1 of a synthesis, but is 100% success rate, while PbP can be used at any point with a reduced success rate. Remember to read the tool tips. It increases remaining progress by 33%. So it is the most useful at your initial progress increase. If you use it after, there is a high chance the progress will be even less than a careful synthesis 1. I cannot tell you if it ignores elemental affinity as I've never tried.

I can confirm this for you. PBP and MuMe both ignores elemental aspects.
Back then when lvl 50 was max, PBP used to be the skill of choice for making the Leviathan Fountain (I forgot the real name... and there were two versions of this fountain. I am talking about the more difficult one). I remember nearly botching it one time when I forgot to equip PBP. I barely struggled through with Ingen2+Rapid Syn. After that scary moment, I always just spam PBP on all the furniture of the highest difficulty, and then finish with Ingen2+CS IIs.

For this, I am going to task you with something. Actually three. Pick something to craft that is currently one level above yours and right down the progress from Careful Synthesis II. Then I would like for you to do it again with the same item when you are the same level as the recipe. Then one more time when you are one level above it. Make sure you use the same equipment during these crafts. You will notice a SIGNIFICANT increase in progress when you are one level above the recipe, and this is what Ingenuity 1 and 2 are for. Basically ingenuity 1 for same level, and ingenuity 2 for recipes higher than your current level. The less progresses it takes to complete a synthesis, the more durability you can spend towards quality.

That's a very good suggested experiment for Hasrat!

[Hasrat]

Please use Manipulation (at least once) whenever you try to take on a difficult 40 or 35 durability item.

Now that's probably one of the earliest tricks I learned. And further refined to mostly using it at 20 durability, to both reduce the likelihood of wasting stacks (if used at 30 and need to use other skills, wasting Manip after recovering to 40) and to have a little wiggle should an Excellent pop (still able to take advantage of at 20 and just use Master's Mend instead).

I think for now I've got a pretty good grasp on how to handle most of the crafts I have coming up. I haven't bought HW yet, so having a little pause at 50 for now, and seems like most of the harder complexity will come once I transition that way. Have heard plenty about how the difficulty starts to spike at that point, so probably better that I get a good grasp on how to utilize all my skills now before jumping into the deep end.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

A note about Innovation : if you are going to use 100% Touches for the three moves after it (Basic/Precise Touch covered by SH2) it can provide more Quality than using those 18 CP on a fourth Touch. That said, it does NOT bump your IQ level, leading to less overall Quality of the entire rotation if used earlier and not as a BB booster.

There's a reason Innovative Touch (specialist action) is so low chance of success. Innovation is actually fairly powerful.

[LineageRazor]

One thing to keep in mind is that certain skills get more or less powerful depending on how advanced the recipe is. For example, Ingenuity and Ingenuity II are very powerful for 1* and 2* recipes (starred recipes are the "advanced" recipes for a class; they are listed as level 50 or 60, but are actually much more difficult than level 50 or 60 recipes are, and get more and more difficult with each star), but their benefits drop off sharply when used for 3* and 4* recipes. Piece-by-Piece, on the other hand, becomes MORE powerful for higher star recipes, as they continue to complete 1/3 of the progress even though the progress bar is much longer, and the potency of Synthesis steps is lower.

I'd hazard to say that EVERY level 50 cross-class skill has a use at some point, a moment where it shines. Part of the fun of solving the great crafting puzzle is figuring out when those moments are!

[Caimie_Tsukino]

EVERY level 50 cross-class skill has a use at some point, a moment where it shines. Part of the fun of solving the great crafting puzzle is figuring out when those moments are!

Triple LIKE!

[Shadygrove]

You have gotten some of the BEST crafters and theorists advising you here. Congrats!

To illustrate the synergy in our abilities:

If you have good stats, and this will require overmelds at 50 (or 60 when you get there). This closer will get you from 17% and 7 IQ stacks too 100% on one star stuff.

/ac "Steady Hand" <me> <wait.2>
/ac "Ingenuity II" <me> <wait.3>
/ac Innovation <me> <wait.3>
/ac "Great Strides" <me> <wait.2>
/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <me> <wait.3>
/ac "Careful Synthesis II" <me> <wait.3>
... whatever

Note that the CS II is still under Ingenuity II

Its total overkill on L50 or 60 no star stuff with only decent gear for the level.

[Hasrat]

I'm still debating on the melding bit, tbh. Starting out working on the class-specific gear sets, and then I'm not sure how much trouble it will be to get the artisan gear (plus all the Master books). And still need to work on some sort of desynth to build up some demimateria for more upgrades. Melding will probably wait until I start feeling particularly inadequate.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

I'm still debating on the melding bit, tbh. Starting out working on the class-specific gear sets, and then I'm not sure how much trouble it will be to get the artisan gear (plus all the Master books). And still need to work on some sort of desynth to build up some demimateria for more upgrades. Melding will probably wait until I start feeling particularly inadequate.

I do not recommend melding anything until you reach level 60, and have already acquired the i190/i195 gear/tools. If you do want to meld something, do it on a shared gear at least... not on class-specific gear sets... and don't go overboard with it.

The i70 artisan gear is fine, but another option is just reach lvl 51 and craft out the i65 archeoskin gear set instead. You may also start acquiring the Holy Cedar accessories. Please see Chapter 33 of my HW Crafting Guide. In fact, nowadays I do not recommend obtaining the master books when you're only level 50 (Back then, it was a lot of fun doing these at level 50 as a challenge though, and I truly enjoyed the difficulty!). When you reach level 52 or 53, the task of obtaining those books would be cake for you, especially when you acquired new mainhand/offhand tools from Heavensward recipes.

Not sure if it's worthy to work on desynthesis anymore. It's a giant gil investment, but the return lately hasn't been that great. I do not know if desyn would be useful in Stormblood though.

[Hasrat]

Ehh, but I'm playing a bit differently than most would. I haven't even bought HW yet, so I'm having a bit of a pause at 50 to appreciate all this content I have available. Sure, I could've bought to keep leveling and make life easier probably. But I think it's kinda nice not skipping through so much so quickly.

Definitely didn't plan to go too overboard with melding, though. But, with what the Ixali can sell me, it sounded like a simple enough proposition to get a few nice stat boosts if I need.