Always HQ?

[Mjollnir]

Curious why everyone is choosing to use standard touch instead of basic touch or advanced touch?

If you multiply the efficiency of the skill by the success rate you get the "expected output" of the skill. If you then divide the expected output of the skill by the CP cost you get the "quality efficiency" of the skill. Or the expected quality boost per CP point.

Basic Touch is the most efficient skill by this method.

It seems like standard or advanced touch would be of situational use only when you have a good or excellent orb to craft on to maximize your quality boost.

If you have Steady Hand up, the success rate on a Standard Touch is raised from 80% to 100%. The way I craft is to ensure Touch abilities are only used on Good/Excellent and to focus on coaxing out the Good/Excellent orbs. I 100% Quality with NQ mats on every craft that's up to two levels over my level - all my crafts are 22-27 at the moment.

So by your calculations, sure Basic Touch is more efficient, but you can influence your situation to make it irrelevant. The only time I ever use it in is when I only have a few CP left as a preference to Hasty Touch. Different methods may make it useful though.

I'm confused about the crystal thing. I assume you mean the little ball that the crafter works with when making something. But what's the meaning of the different colours?

The colours influence Quality gain through Touch actions only.

• White = Normal. Only Touch while on this if absolutely necessary (ie last tick of Great Strides, penultimate Durability and out of CP)
• Red = Good - Successful Touch actions result in 150% Quality. I aim for this, combining with Standard Touch (125%) and Great Strides (200%). An 87 Quality synth turns into a 322 with this method.
• Multicoloured = Excellent - Successful Touch actions result in 300% Quality.
• Violet = Poor - Always and only follows Excellent. A Touch action will result in a much-reduced Quality increase. Use another ability or Synthesis action at this point.

They took Gold out for ARR

[Conradus]

• White = Normal. Only Touch while on this if absolutely necessary (ie last tick of Great Strides, penultimate Durability and out of CP)
• Red = Good - Successful Touch actions result in 150% Quality. I aim for this, combining with Standard Touch (125%) and Great Strides (200%). An 87 Quality synth turns into a 322 with this method.
• Multicoloured = Excellent - Successful Touch actions result in 300% Quality.
• Violet = Poor - Always and only follows Excellent. A Touch action will result in a much-reduced Quality increase. Use another ability or Synthesis action at this point.

They took Gold out for ARR

And if you don't want to strain your eyes trying to make out the color of the synth crystal, the condition is written right there in the synth status window.

[Alenghil]

My rotation is:
Inner Quiet
Trick of the Trade when possible
Steady Hand II (refreshing every 5 turns)
Hasty Touch
At 20/40 (Manipulation)
At 20/80 (Master's Mend II)
When I don't have any more cp I cast Rumination, Inner quiet II and Rapid synthesis.

This gives me HQ in every 1 star item.

[Apatheia]

As a CUL currently in the late 30s, it is very simple to HQ every food item my level or 1-2 levels above. My current rotation:

Step 1- Great Stride
Step 2- If normal, Steady Hand (II if you're high enough level). If good/excellent, Standard Touch (will be Advanced when I get it).
Step 3- Great Stride if Touch was used. Touch if it is good/excellent and was not used last turn.
Step 4- Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's that easy. HQ every time. Adjust to your durability, but Mend is never necessary for CUL.

[Vyniea]

You guys need to specify if you use HQ mats or not.

HQing something with HQ mats is pretty much guaranteed (and seriously, if you can't there's something wrong with your gear or rotation), with some (the ones that actually give some quality) it's still easy.

It's without HQ items that getting HQ starts being somewhat challenging on on-level recipes, and I think it's better to discuss how to do just that instead of circlejerking one another over our HQ items made with HQ mats prowess.

[Conradus]

You guys need to specify if you use HQ mats or not.

HQing something with HQ mats is pretty much guaranteed (and seriously, if you can't there's something wrong with your gear or rotation), with some (the ones that actually give some quality) it's still easy.

It's without HQ items that getting HQ starts being somewhat challenging on on-level recipes, and I think it's better to discuss how to do just that instead of circlejerking one another over our HQ items made with HQ mats prowess.

True. I meant my part of the discussion, at least, to be about working from NQ mats. One word on the subject of HQ mats; if the item uses intermediate materials also made by your craft, these are usually of a lower level than the final product, and you can often start at the beginning of the production chain with NQ mats and make HQ mats for your final product. I had great success with this in making Fire Brands for a triple-triple leve, making 7 of the nine wands HQ at GLD 36, by consistently being able to synth HQ Eyes of Fire out of NQ Fire Rocks. I probably could've made them all HQ if I'd synthed my own Silver Ingots instead of using NQ ones I had in stock.

[suzaku333]

So I'm not sure what you mean by end control as that's not something I can see. Unless I'm blind , I'm pretty much over 320-340 control on all crafts starting, and I've never seen what my number is towards the end, but I'll check tonight when I log on. I made a few more end weapons and they were all HQ with minimal HQ mat's IE an HQ normal item not something like the main spear head for an Obelisk. I find it's extremely easy to HQ items that are higher durability then the lower ones with the method I listed above. I've almost completely stopped trying to HQ the mats needed to make the item and just focus on the HQing the whole as it's much easier. The one thing I have noticed on higher level items is the failure rate of Hasty touch even when Steady Hand II is active. This combo nets you an 80% success rate with Hasty Touch however I have noticed that it fails on higher items a lot more then that. There could be some hidden penalty that drops success rate when crafting higher items so I'll have to do some testing. I've crunched and done the math for my complete cycle of abilities to get an HQ so squeezing in something like Ingenuity II would really need to pay off to be worth while. More testing is in order!

Also The above rotation is designed to get you HQ without HQ mats at all, the one thing that I can say I have is maxed gear at this point with control in the 320+ and craftsmanship in the 350+. However I did not always have this and the above rotation made it possible to craft all my HQ gear and get my stats to the current level. If anyone needs any more detailed info just let me know and I will be more then happy to help!

[Vyniea]

In the stat panel, you can see your control stat, at the end of a Synth it should be much higher thanks to Inner Quiet.

This is my current record , which isn't that high considering my stats aren't optimal and I'm not using Innovation.

[Mikita]

Here's the skill's I use:
1. Inner Quite
2. Waste not II
3. Steady Hand II
4. Hasty Touch

Hi. Your rotation is very similar to mine, but on synths that start with 40 durability I will use Waste Not I rather than II, and usually activate Steady Hand II first. They will then run out at the same time, and at that point with 20 durability left and depending on the progress needed to complete the synth I will either use Careful Touch II to build up some progress (before using Master's Mend to give back durability), or another Hasty Touch if it's one of those recipes that I can complete with a single Careful Touch II.

Oh, I usually also start with Comfort Zone on higher level recipes. It costs 66 CP, but eventually gives back 80 and my higher level synths always go for more than 10 steps... so it does give a decent enough return to make it worth using.

at 2 ticks left in SH2 I have to decide if I'll have enough CP to activate both Great Strides and Byregot's Blessing

Oh, I didn't know Great Strides affected Byregot's Blessing since it's not named a "Touch" action. I will have to try that tonight!

For me, Byregot's Blessing is also the skill that really makes a difference on HQing from NQ materials. I sometimes get myself into trouble on the 40 durability recipes with not having enough CP to activate it since I quite often need to activate Master's Mend twice.

How much CP do you start with usually? I'm at about 330.

The one thing I have noticed on higher level items is the failure rate of Hasty touch even when Steady Hand II is active.

I've noticed this as well. Conversely, I have about a 95% success rate with Hasty Touch on low level recipes. I think that the 50% success rate is a starting point and it is modified by your level against the recipe level.

[Bizzybeast]

I have lvl 50 ASM/BSM/CUL, 15 in everything but WVR/GSM.

I highly recommend for macro'in, a simply formula like the following

Inner Peace (IP), GreatStrides (GS): [Variables] {Add Rumination in, where your CP fits it- Be mindful of Step Timed abilities!}

- Steady hands 2 (SH-2), Waste Not (WN), Basic Touch (BT) x4 [Alternate Hasty Hands], GS, Steady Hands 2 (SH-1), Advanced Touch (AT) [Standard Touch (ST) used if low CP pool], Rapid Synth (RS). If using more expensive mats/low CP, swap out SH-2 w/ RS, with SH-1, Standard Synth (SS).

- SH-1, ST, GS, ST, GS, ST, SH1, SS. If applicable use Ingenuity 1/2 to boost the SS/BS to finish.

This will give a good return on HQ, and given cheap mats, will be a good enough return to at least replace shards!