Not Happy With The New Changes

[Nashred]

Steady Hand is no longer necessary for the most part. The only skills that are basically boned without it now are Hasty Touch, Rapid Synthesis, and Patient Touch. For the time being, these skills are entirely unnecessary to use for max level crafting so the lack of Steady Hand has zero impact. All other skills that had lower than 100% of success have been changed to have 100% chance of success outside of Focused Touch and Focused Synthesis which require Observe to be used prior for 100% success (exactly how they worked last xpac).

Basically once you get your action bars sorted you'll have to figure out new rotations (or find them on the forums or elsewhere). But once you have your new rotations figured out, it should be business as usual as far as HQ crafting goes. RNG is basically circumventable. This may change in the future, but I don't believe it will change beyond requiring us to take advantage of good/excellent procs intelligently.

So they basically up the success rates of some of them.
Sounds like they made crafting easier which it did not need to be either.
I mean I crafted to 80 with level 70 gear which means it was already to easy.

I also noticed the specialist actions gone?
I always used initial preparations and reflect.
I did not see them..

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

So they basically up the success rates of some of them.
Sounds like they made crafting easier which it did not need to be either.
I mean I crafted to 80 with level 70 gear which means it was already to easy.

I also noticed the specialist actions gone?
I always used initial preparations and reflect.
I did not see them..

They didn't exactly make it easier to craft endgame really. At least it doesn't feel any easier (or harder) than it did before.

If anything changed it's that they made it easier to level a crafter and the elimination of cross-class skills allows those who only wish to focus on a single crafting job to be as effective at making stuff as someone who is an omni-crafter with all jobs maxed. Obviously non omni's are going to have to rely on other crafters for certain materials, but they aren't incapable of making the same crafts at the same degree of ease as an omni-crafter since cross class is no long a thing.

As for Steady Hand, you basically had 100% with most skills once you had Steady Hand. It basically became a "must have" skill and you didn't use certain skills without it if you had a choice. Case in point, Hasty Touch, Rapid Synthesis, and Patient Touch won't be used by anyone now except out of desperation with the removal of Steady Hand. The only real difference the removal of Steady Hand really makes is a) less steps required and b) less cp spent to make a craft. With that said, we also lost Comfort Zone so whatever gains we might see in cp from no longer needing to use Steady Hand are not going to be as impactful since we no longer gain CP from Comfort Zone.

As for specialist actions... well there's only one now: Careful Observation. This works just like Observation except it costs 0 CP and it suspends your buffs during its use so you don't lose any steps. It can only be used 3 times per craft and it has a reagent cost. The benefits to this are a) you can use it to skip a "poor" state after an "excellent" without wasting any buffs like Great Strides, and b) you can use it to fish for "good"/"excellent" procs to either pump up a Byregots to ensure HQ, or get CP with Tricks of the Trade at a critical juncture.

Reflect is now a skill every crafter has and it has changed slightly. It applies the Inner Quiet buff AND 3 stacks now but can only be used on the first step. So now you have to choose between Reflect, Muscle Memory, or Trained Eye as your opener.

Ultimately, now that I have my new rotations down, crafting feels the same as it did prior to 5.1... for now at least. Things may feel different when the Ishgard crafting content becomes available and/or new tiers of crafts become available.

While not directed at you specifically Nashred, in case it wasn't already apparent to everyone, "skill based" crafting is not possible in FFXIV. Once someone has the requisite stats, has figured out the ideal rotation, and that info spreads, that's it, crafting is figured out. I'd say its more accurate to call FFXIV "Gear and Information Based" crafting, as the more informed you are, and the better your gear is, the easier crafting will be for you. RNG does not make crafting "skill based" and in the case where it isn't possible to guarantee a HQ result, its more of a "persistence based" crafting system as those who are willing to keep at it through multiple failures to get that one successful HQ will rise above those that won't stick it out. So far we are still in the realm of being able to guarantee HQ... in many cases without needing any HQ mats if our stats are high enough.

[Maeka]

So they basically up the success rates of some of them.
Sounds like they made crafting easier which it did not need to be either.
I mean I crafted to 80 with level 70 gear which means it was already to easy.

I also noticed the specialist actions gone?
I always used initial preparations and reflect.
I did not see them..

Reflect is now Lv69, and it is definitely there. It's a "First Action Only" skill, so you essentially choose between it and Muscle Memory now as your first action.

[Nashred]

Thanks for the detailed reply Nicodemus_Mercy

I did play around just a little last night with crafting.
I kind of welcome some of the skills going away. Crafting was getting a little bloated with to many of them.
It certainly is harder right now till I get a new rotation. I just got so used to some of those skills.
They really give barely any reason to be a specialist anymore and feel they should have at least left reflect there.
I try to do rotations myself without calculators or others rotations. I also do not use macros for crafting either.
I hear you on skill based crafting and is disappointing because it is one of the reason I liked crafting in FFXIV.
I defiantly hear you on RNG and seems to be SE way of making things tougher. My problem is RNG seems to be off.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Thanks for the detailed reply Nicodemus_Mercy

I did play around just a little last night with crafting.
I kind of welcome some of the skills going away. Crafting was getting a little bloated with to many of them.
It certainly is harder right now till I get a new rotation. I just got so used to some of those skills.
They really give barely any reason to be a specialist anymore and feel they should have at least left reflect there.
I try to do rotations myself without calculators or others rotations. I also do not use macros for crafting either.
I hear you on skill based crafting and is disappointing because it is one of the reason I liked crafting in FFXIV.
I defiantly hear you on RNG and seems to be SE way of making things tougher. My problem is RNG seems to be off.

We'll have to see if there's more to the crafting changes than what we see right now. I'd wait till ishgard and 3star recipes are out to make a final judgement.

As for your rotation, a good start for most rotations seems to be:
Reflect>Manipulation>Ingenuity>Innovation>Delicate Synthesisx4

After that its really a matter of your stats. The higher they are the less likely you'll need to use HQ mats.