How Do You Feel About Specialists?

[JunseiKei]

Personally, I've liked the idea of wanting to specialize in a craft or two and receive buffs to still be able to craft recipes. However, I can say that I strongly oppose specialist only recipes. It's easier to focus and see the bad, but it seems like most people I know that are serious about crafting, and craft a majority of their time, have ALTs to cover the 3 specialist lock out. This often leads me to wonder what was the point in making specialists a thing.

I'd like to know what other people think on the subject.

[Ziggyzapps]

Alts really don't seem necessary, especially when custom deliveries gives you 3 easy souls of the crafter each week on top of the yellow scripts. Unless you want to level up another char for fun, do the msq, and gear it up each update... doesn't seem worth it at all. The time spent leveling up another crafter could be spent making 500 mil, at which point you aren't really worried about finding a niche in the market.

[Alisi]

I'd like to know what other people think on the subject.

Honestly, I don't really care so much about it this expac. I hated them last expac because changing them was a pain in the bootie. The penalties were huge last expac, especially during the favor farming part (where you had a choice of gear, crafting material, or holding them all for a week.) Now it's incredibly easy to switch and you get three switches a week. As for specialty only recipes? I'm kind of meh about it. It's easy enough to find another endgame crafter to make a trade with or you simply have a list of all the things you want to make and get those ingredients together before doing the specialty changing. Alchemy is really the only class you need to keep really. The other two are easily switched up.

It feels like all my HW vs SB crafting comparisons comes down to the point that SB has no favor farming. xDD I think I'm just realizing how much I truly loathed that system.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

I have more objections over Ornate/Augmented than specialists, especially when the crafted version lacks 5 materia slots.
At the very least the specialist recipes should be on par with the stuff they throw for luck/free.
I know they will lower the yellow scrips mats in later patch but (shrugs) it's very demotivational to craft atm.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

The Specialist stones do not do enough.

They *should* confer ALL OTHER cross-class moves (the ones that the class does not learn innately) as well as the small stat boost they provide now.

They *should not* have any recipes locked behind them, for any length of time at all.

[Archvile78]

They *should not* have any recipes locked behind them, for any length of time at all.

Recipes are fine, personally what isn't are the materials required for said recipes, those shouldn't be locked behind Specialists.

[Ksenia]

The Specialist stones do not do enough.

They *should* confer ALL OTHER cross-class moves (the ones that the class does not learn innately) as well as the small stat boost they provide now.

They *should not* have any recipes locked behind them, for any length of time at all.

Right now you can solo a craft at 70 with no cross class requirements, Steady Hand II being the exception. If Prudent had been base 80 instead of 70 all crafting could be done with none of the original 50 cross class stuff. You would still need cross class to level to 70 but once there you could specialist without them.

[Shinkyo]

I’m ok with the current state.
The stat increase is nice and with the 4.1 recipices, there’s finally a reason to use the specialist actions.
I’m also ok with the recipe lock out but what’s really annoying is the distribution of said recipies making certain craft way too favorable.
CUL in particular is pretty much useless until they make it necessary for relic upgrade again (the king cake era was soooo profitable for CUL).
IF they are going to make ALC necessary for all creaft, they might as well make a CUL specialist recipe that’s required/near required to meet stats cap for the latest recipes.
It’s somehow mitigated by the ease of re-spec but that defeats the purpose of committing to a particular spec.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Specialists as they exist currently are better in SB than they were in HW but still suffer from a number of skills that are really off-putting (at least to me). I dont touch most of the specialist skills because its rng with a side of rng and some rng on top.

Whistle While You Work should just be a plain buff of some sort. Not this weird "buffs certain skills when quality is good or excellent and stack is at a multiple of whatever" nonsense. My head spins just reading that friggin tooltip. WWYW should be as simple as a slightly better Comfort Zone. Have it cost 60CP and restore 9CP per step. Rng heaped on to rng does nothing to help someone who doesn't want to level every craft and WWYW as it is, is just a poorly thought out idea.

Innovative Touch should have a 70% chance of success so its guaranteed to work when coupled with Steady hand II. If it worked like this it would be a better alternative to Innovation for omni-crafters and a replacement for Innovation for single-classed crafters.

Byregot's Miracle is decidedly inferior to Byregot's Blessing when it SHOULD be better. Byregot's Miracle should do exactly what Byregot's Blessing does but at 100% success rate and the same low cost it has now Again it gives access to one of the best cross-class skills to single-classed crafters and still offers an upgrade to omni-crafters when using their specialist craft.

Trained Hand is again inferior to another skill that is often cross-classed with a ridiculous rng component thrown in for the lawls. Trained Hand should be a better version of Careful Synthesis II. It should have Efficiency: 150% Success Rate: 100% and cost 0CP.

The "Heart of <crafting job>" might be nice... if it wasn't so expensive and also require a reagent to use. Failing that, if they wanted to keep the reagent and the high cp cost, let it last for the entire craft.

SB added the new specialist skills that consume Initial Preparations and those skills are actually good. Outside of those the only other specialist skills I find even remotely useable (I hesitate to say useful), are Innovative Touch (which I used a fair bit in HW but hardly ever in SB), and Byregot's Miracle on those rare occasions I'm lacking the CP necessary to finish with a Byregot's Blessing.

[Lelila38]

I wouldn't mind specialising in a few crafts, if the stuff I wanted to craft wouldn't constantly require specialist mats from other crafters. Having to buy even though I could easily produce it myself is annoying.