I don't even consider myself a "crafter." I just enjoy trying out all the content the game has to offer (otherwise known as the Skinner Box lab rat). But, I really appreciate broaching the subject of what "harder" crafting is. I've sorta vaguely paid attention to the conversations for a little while, off and on, and yeah, what players consider "hard" does seem to vary.

I do like the idea of many more new condition procs. That may be the best/only way to really steer crafting away from "figure out the macro, and all difficulty is gone." That seemed to me to be the most contradictory point of the discussion. "We want harder crafting, but we also want more macro crafting."

Personally, not being a very serious crafter, I've never really used macros, and I always thought it was more fun to actually react to conditions, and adjust skill usage on the fly. I haven't really felt that as much since starting HW content, but I'd attribute that more to just not feeling like I needed to craft as much as I did before I bought the expansions and was capped at 50.

Which kinda leaves me wondering a little bit if there's anything that can be done to make crafting pre-level cap actually relevant. Maybe it's just because, again, not too deep into it myself, but, seems like a lot of what was big and important at, say, end of HW, is all just obsolete and skipped now, same with 70. I'd even go so far as to say that was actually sorta one nice thing about those Master Book 2 nightmares. Could be a direction your Grandmaster suggestion goes in, something that feels like you want to stop and take the time to do (or otherwise massively overlevel until you can bruteforce it).

On that subject, what might be the possibility of creating "synced" crafting content? I guess some of the Ixali crafting might sorta fit that description. That may even be somewhere to look at ways to implement variation in the future. It may be nice to see some recipes that you aren't allowed to over-gear. Or maybe not. Idk.

A jumbled collection of casual thoughts that may or may not apply to the consideration of high-end crafting.