Magic Craftsmanship and Orb Change

[tymora]

What's your sample size? You need ~1,067 samples (1,000 is good enough for a ~3.1% margin of error) otherwise you run the risk of getting skewed results that don't show the actual rates. I did synths varying from -15dLVL to +5dLVL and those were mainly in the last 2,000 or so synths, and they show the same rates of orbs.

Only a couple hundred.
Yes, I know the values are inaccurate. Unfortunately no time to do more tests.

Clean slate is a good skill to do testing with. Effectively doubles the sample size from 1 synth.

[Kestiel]

I've not used it since the update, if it doesn't refresh abilities too it incurs the risk of synth action failure having an effect on orb color (which can erroneously skew results) and disregarding that, would make the synth take longer on average than using the 100% progress abilities. Of course if failed synth actions don't attribute to color change then that'd definitely be a preferred way to go. After I saw the new updates (recently returned ~1mo ago) to clean slate I pretty much disregarded it and haven't looked back on it.