Hawk's Eye Sand ~100% HQ rate rotation / macro from pure NQ mats

[Caimie_Tsukino]

As usual, I'm late to the party, but I always bring booze!

For these Hawk's Eye Sand / Veteran Sap, Liam_Harper has a pretty nice rotation here too:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...43-29579/page4
Craft: 1573
Control: 1420
CP: 532
Required starting quality with HQ mats = ~2400

It has extremely low stats requirements, which is wonderful.
As for me, I have my own versions here (for slightly higher stats with slightly better outcome), which are listed below.

First, before you have acquired any of the new 4.3 gear, you can try this low CP rotation:
Crafts: 1621 (1674 after food&med)
Control: 1452
Mininum CP: 460 (527 after food&med)
Food: HQ Tempura
Med: HQ Cunning Tea

This stats is achievable with Ala Mhigan gear before acquiring any of the new 4.3 gear. If your stats is low, I recommend going through the rotation manually. Even though this does not reach 100% HQ rate, you can simply use 1 piece of HQ mat, and then improvise on the spot. E.g. the first Basic Touch can move to 1 step earlier if a good pops, and the substitute with a Precise Touch. Then just move the Hasty Touch II to after the Precise Touch. This sort of little actions, together with some Prudent Touches landing on goods will be sufficient to bring the final quality to 100%.


If you have more CP, you can try this rotation:
Crafts: 1621 (1674 after food&med) [minimum just need ~1640]
Control: 1452
Mininum CP: 475 (542 after food&med)
Food: HQ Tempura
Med: HQ Cunning Tea

This stats is actually still achievable with the Ala Mhigan gear if you have done some nice overmelds without any of the new 4.3 gear. At this point, you can already macro this rotation, especially if you use 1 HQ mat (This macro has been written out for you below. Please scroll down).

Then, after making your first patch 4.3 ALC Offhand (i325), your control will be higher than 1500, so the above rotation will give extremely good results - almost 100% HQ without the need of any HQ mat at all:
Crafts: 1621 (1674 after food&med) [minimum just need 1633]
Control: 1500
Mininum CP: 475 (542 after food&med)
Food: HQ Tempura
Med: HQ Cunning Tea
Below is the SAME rotation as the above picture ran with 1500 control:



Below is Caimie's Hawk's Eye Sand macro:

Hawkeye #1 - 542CP

/ac "Initial Preparations" <wait.3>
/ac "Comfort Zone" <wait.2>
/ac "Inner Quiet" <wait.2>
/ac "Specialty: Reflect" <wait.3>
/ac "Steady Hand II" <wait.2>
/ac "Piece by Piece" <wait.3>
/ac "Hasty Touch II" <wait.3>
/ac "Precise Touch"
/ac "Basic Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Observe" <wait.3>
/ac "Focused Synthesis" <wait.3>
/echo Hawk's Eye Sand (542cp) #1 Ends <se.2>

Hawkeye #2 - 542CP

/ac "Comfort Zone" <wait.2>
/ac "Manipulation II" <wait.2>
/ac "Ingenuity" <wait.2>
/ac "Steady Hand II" <wait.2>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Steady Hand II" <wait.2>
/ac "Ingenuity II" <wait.2>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Great Strides" <wait.2>
/echo Hawk's Eye Sand (542cp) #2 Ends - CHECK! <se.4>

Hawkeye #3 - 542CP

/ac "Innovation" <wait.2>
/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <wait.3>
/ac "Careful Synthesis III" <wait.3>
/ac "Observe" <wait.3>
/ac "Focused Synthesis" <wait.3>
/ac "Careful Synthesis II" <wait.3>
/echo Hawk's Eye Sand (542cp) #3 Ends <se.7>

Note that there is a Precise Touch already fitted in there to replace the Basic Touch in case a Good popped on that step, so there will be an error message, but you can ignore it.

After the end of the 2nd macro, if an Excellent pops, just skip the Innovation and jump to Byregot right away to avoid the Byregot falling onto a Poor.

A nice design here is that the final Ingen2 is actually running before Innovation. Thus, even if a Good pops (instead of Excellent) before Innovation, you can still skip Innovation, and get a much better quality output from the Byregot on Good (and then manually finish off the rotation). This is because Ingen2 is a critical action which you cannot skip even if a Good pops, but Innovation is something that you can skip if a Good appears.

With all these measures of further increasing quality ([1] chance of Precise Touch increasing IQ by one early in the rotation, [2] chance of a Good/Excellent falling on the Byregot, [3] chance of a Good/Excellent falling on the Innovation which can be manually applied onto the Byregot.), together with some occasional Goods along the way, even if the first Hasty Touch II fails, chances are that you will HQ the item anyway.

Once you have even more CP from the new 4.3 accessories, you can substitute the first Hasty Touch II with a Basic Touch, which will make it even more secure.

Bottomline: There is absolutely no need to go through the long and painful Maker's Mark for Hawk's Eye Sand. Since both the sand and the veteran sap are made from ALC, I think it makes sense to just keep ALC as specialist if you're just beginning to craft these items. And just use Initial Prep rotations like the ones listed above. It will save a lot of time.

[Seyb]

Hey Caimie. Nice description!

The following rotation is a stronger alternative that needs less craftsmanship and CP.



Edit: Didn‘t see that Liam‘s had a starting quality of 2400.
The above rotation should reach 100% HQ with 1450 control.



You can choose not to use Innovation to save 18 CP for about 1800 less Quality.

[Kalayel]

Nice rotations here, I've been trying to make some myself but I only ended between 61-75% HQ chance. However, I have tow questions:
- how do you take a picture of the rotation? I can't seem to find this option on the simulator. Is it a screenshot that you crop out?
- Even though Seyb's rotations are nice, I noticed that they have a base cp of minimum 482. How is it possible, since the maximum with ala mhigan set is 476?

[Seyb]

Nice rotations here, I've been trying to make some myself but I only ended between 61-75% HQ chance. However, I have tow questions:
- how do you take a picture of the rotation? I can't seem to find this option on the simulator. Is it a screenshot that you crop out?
- Even though Seyb's rotations are nice, I noticed that they have a base cp of minimum 482. How is it possible, since the maximum with ala mhigan set is 476?

Yes, I just took a screenshot (from my phone) and cropped it.

As for CP: always look at the CP requirement after buffs. In this case it is 530 CP.

Matcha HQ gives 56 CP
Tempura HQ gives 54 CP
Baked Onion HQ gives 48 CP

Cunning Tea HQ gives 13 CP

You‘ll need at least 461 base CP for the rotation (matcha + tea). 463 with Tempura Platter. 474 without cunning tea.

So 476 CP + Tempura Platter HQ will be sufficient for the rotation.

[Liam_Harper]

You can achieve the required CP for Seyb's rotation with Tempura and tea. He's using Onion Soup.

The rumination rotation can also be used for crafting 4.3 gear in cheap melded Ala Mhigan without Makers Mark, but you will require mostly HQ mats. I've simmed with Matcha but Tempura works if you have 471 base CP and will yield about 1200 less quality. This sets you a bit low for the 4.3 Rings, even with all HQ.
With better melded Ala Mhigan and 1500 control, you'll hit 24900 quality, requiring 4600 starting quality (less with Tempura, but enough for the rings with all HQ mats).



Note if you're manual crafting, there's a tiny chance an Excellent proc before the Miracle will force you to use Miracle with a poor. If you don't want the risk and have all HQ mats you can use this rotation too.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

That is a very strong rotation there, Seyb! It is even stronger than my listed rotations here. But it does require adding Rumination to the cross class panel.

I am currently trying to come up with a non-specialist, non-Maker'Mark, macro-able rotation with no RNG for the 4.3 gear. But it seems quite difficult with ala mhigan stats. Maybe I will just stick to Maker's Mark manual crafting until I get more pieces of 4.3 gear.

[Kalayel]

@ Seyb : Thanks for your answer! It was weird to see a base that exceed 476, now I understand that buffs were already counted.

As for me, I tried to come up with something with my base stats but didn't go as far as this:

I don't have great stats and I'm sure it could be improved, but it's not too shabby I think. As for 4.3 gear, I've found nothing worth mentioning beside MaMa.

[Seyb]

@Kalayel: It‘s always great to try your own rotation! And yeah, sorry, forgot to reduce the base CP and change the food to Tempura.

@Caimie: Found this on reddit. I think it shows how much stronger specialist rotations are.

[Espritduo]

I'm currently using a no-RNG, no-MaMa, no-HQ mats, no-speciaist 100% HQ rotation for my 4.3 crafter/gatherer gear, using HQ Matcha and NQ Cunning Tea (with no-tea, vendor-bought NQ tempura platter rotations for spec classes and i350 battle gear). The stats required are OBSCENE, and there is no way you can do it with the Ala Mhigan set. My current non-spec Craftsmanship is 1709, Control 1799, CP 491 and the rotation finishes without a single point of Craftsmanship, Control, or CP to spare. I would not recommend it unless you are a crazy masochistic meld fetishist like me though :P

[Liam_Harper]

The best I can come up with is scraping 20k quality with 1450 control, 469 cp, Matcha HQ and Commanding Tea. That would manage most of the pieces non-specialist with all HQ mats.

I opted to rotate specialists instead though to make my initial set. Much easier to non-specialist the gear once you have a 4.3 set to work with.