Is making your own gear worth it?

[Magnedeus]

I'm working to get my SAM to lvl 80 but is making your own gear worth it? Never been into crafting much and i know in some mmos crafted gear tend be the best in some cases. What are the pros and cons of crafting?

[DrWho2010]

crafted gear is a good way to gear up alternate classes that you haven't been farming the main tomestone/savage for. if you can make everything yourself - there is no "cost" other than the time you put in to gather the mats to make everything.

[Vidu]

First things first: Crafted gear is usually 10 ilvls higher than the gear bought with unlimited tomestones, has the same ilvl as the 8-man-NM-raid and is 10/20 ilvls below the 24-man-raid, the (unupgraded) tomestone and Savage-gear. That basically means its not the best gear you can get but its decent enough for 90% of all content - with the exception being Savage and maybe some current EX-primals aswell as Ultimate (sidenote here: World-First groups clear stuff like Savage wearing mostly crafted gear, so its possible if your skill level is high enough)

Crafted gear can also be fully overmelded, aka holding up to 5 materia - this has lead to cases in the past where crafted gear was actually BiS for some jobs, mainly tanks aswell as a few cases for bard and blm. However those were already pretty rare and afaik they're currently not a thing.

With that being said, some general pros and cons in regarding to crafting:

Pros
- access to fairly cheap gear, both while leveling as well as endgame
- being able to meld your own gear
- being able to repair your own gear (dont underestimate that one! Carrying a stack of darkmatter and you'll never have to worry about your stuff breaking in the middle of a dungeon again!)
- crafting your own food and potions - I know your original question was about gear, but I consider this probably even more useful, at least for anyone intrested in raiding!
- being able to make various glamour items, aswell as minions, mounts, bardings etc.
- access to some crafting-exclusive questlines: Ixal, Moogle and Namazu beasttribes (plus whatever beasttribe we'll be getting with Shadowbringers eventually), Custom-delivery-questlines, Ishgard, class-quest (some good, some not so good - as always) and the replacement for class-quest with 5.0 (which I really enjoyed)
- ...making some gil, obviously

Cons
- only really cheap when you level up all professions, including gatherers
- while leveling seems to be fairly quick now and you dont need to level up all jobs from crossclassskills anymore, theres still the issue of gearing your crafters. To use macros for endgame-crafts (ilvl450-gear, raid-food etc.) you'll need crafting gear thats at least slightly overmelded. So the road doesnt end at getting your crafter to 80!
- potential inventory issues when leveling all jobs at once or being a hoarder

Overall advice
My personal advice would be to at least level your crafters to 80 - with the buffs to crafter-exp and the like that should be fairly quick and easy and it will allow you to repair your own gear. On top of that there are some fairly cheap and easy ways (mainly the custom deliviers) that will allow you to make some gil by selling materials and materia that are bought with a special crafter-currency that is awarded for the weekly crafts.
So even if you dont invest the time, materia and money to get yourself some overmelded endgame-ready crafter gear that would allow you to make your own endgame-battle-class gear you can still profit a lot from just "casual crafting"!
Crafted gear is not going to be BiS in 98% of the cases, but its still decent gear and a good way to gear up alts that you take into more "casual content" - dungeons, non-savage raids, ex-primals.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Quite honestly, I like crafted gear at a time like this. I won’t like it again until the end of the expansion’s patch cycle. In a word, Retainers.

I like to ensure that my retainers are bringing back a full load of whatever I sent them on. Typically, that is 10 skins/teeth/jellies/whatever’s per hour. I want to be sure to be getting the full amount on the highest level ventures, which does not usually come at the basic level x8/x9 gear, need some x0 gear (ie - not at 58/59, 68/69, 78/79 gear, but at 60, 70, 80). I loathe that Unique tag on tomestone gear, it makes replacing combat retainer gear annoying when they are both the same combat class. Crafted gear, by not having that tag, is the answer.

[Pepsi_Plunge]

First things first: If you want to craft, you need materials. Often, especially for the latest gear, those materials can cost more on the market board then the finished product. Also, leveling a crafter will be very expensive if you need to buy everything too. Therefore, the first thing to do is level gatherer so you can get the materials you need yourself (doesn't count for everything, of course. Some materials can't be gathered and are from dungeons/trials or only available from special merchants).

Is it worth it? Well, usually.
The newest crafted gear often costs a lot. If you can gather most of the items and can craft it yourself afterwards, you can save/make a lot of money. But the hard and money saving part is usually not the crafting one, but the gathering.

[Hasrat]

Probably it comes down to a balance of time available and what you enjoy. You've basically got two choices, right? Either make (or buy) your own crafted gear, or you can farm dungeons and raids and trials to gear yourself up.

May also factor in the content you want to keep busy with.