The Hydra Helm recipes can no longer benefit from material conservation effects.

So how come that reasoning can't be applied to them not being able to have conservation effects applied to them?

Because I'm more worried about this ability continuously being made exempt on more and more items.

This exactly!

It's only the best-in-slot items that are being exempt. Relax.

My prediction is that next on the list will be avatar crafted necks, if they aren't already - which also makes perfect sense.

If this is the response they get to adding high-end crafted items that have reasonable restrictions, maybe they shouldn't add them at all. Honestly, why can't you just be happy that they're incorporating some of the tradeskill mechanics to the current end-game items?

And just to point out... the "Conservation of Mass" effect is NOT a prestige ability, it's a tradeskill AA that you get by level 20 or so (or prayer shawl proc/rare counter event). You are confusing this with the prestige abilities "Systematic Conversion" or "Mass Production", neither of which would work on this combine since the quantities of each ingredient are only 1.

And yes, the avatar crafted necks should probably be like that too, though admittedly I was hoping for the nice proc when I crafted one earlier... no luck though.

just curious, is it experimentable?
the concept of an undestructable item failing an experiment is intriguing..

You don't craft the Indestructible version (progression is crafted, achievement update, drop update), and no. Gen'Ra Hats and Duo Rings are not experimentable, and the hat recipe completes immediately anyway to prevent you from somehow failing so hard at crafting that you mess up the combine. Avatar necks are experimentable.

On the one hand, more and more individual recipes being made exempt proves just how powerful this ability is. On the other hand its nice having tradeskills associated with an end-game item (even if I don't really consider this crafting, but rather a raid-drop with extra hoops you have to jump through so its more annoying than a regular raid drop or quest).

I'd much rather see individual exceptions instead of broad spectrum fixes to the ability. There are a lot of items that won't allow other modifiers because the devs are afraid of it being imballancing for the PvE and PvP games. I don't see this as being anything different...except its being applied to crafting.

The extra hoops do a couple of nice things:
They give crafters something else to do, which is something we've wanted, especially for items of this quality.
They eliminate the odd drop that no one can use, which would inevitably go to SLR. There is no doubt that the item you have was earned.

I don't want anymore recipes that will never be made by 99.9% of the crafting community. It is a waste of recipe and data base space. Just make it like a regular quest combo and let raiders add the pieces together to get the item.

I think most crafters did not envision this silliness when asking to make items of quality. Probably most expected a nice fabled crafted item from a much less costly/rare component. You know, something that a much larger percentage of the crafting community could make from normal rares.

Well, MasterCrafted is still very well alive for Free Users. However, Raid-Crafted will never be made easily accessible to those Tradeskillers who do not Raid (at least in my mind). For those Tradeskillers who can craft though and the Adventurers who can get the materials but don't craft this form of Raid-Crafted is a very good system.

One could just, well, not research the recipe? Nobody is forcing anyone to research something they cannot make. Also the Hydra Scale Helm is meant to be used past this expansion much like the PoW Cloaks were (Though really am sad Bristlebanes cloak is better for almost all cases). One can go back to Sirens in an expanision and those HM-Fights won't be so HM and then one may get the crafting materials then.

I raid and I am a high level crafter and I still don't like this silly system.

The system is fine.

The hydra helm, rings, and avatar necks are just atypical ways of introducing high-end raid quality loot to that segment of the raiding population. I did find the avatar necks a pretty cool way of doing some high-end raid itemisation (i.e. allowing them to be refined and experimented) and would (occasionally) be happy to see a little bit more of that.

For the more casual crafters in here, if you can't obtain the (raid-level) components, then I just wouldn't worry about any of this stuff, because this content isn't aimed at your demographic.

And anyway, all the raid guilds clearing this content have stables of capable tradeskilling alts within their respective guilds, so you don't even need to worry about researching or obtaining any of these recipes.

This, I don't mind, because they are allowing crafters to actually use their skills and abilities to help raiders make cool stuff. The rings and helms are totally different, and it seems like they made it crafted just to say "See, we let you craft cool stuff!" while in the background they restrict what we can actually do with them. Make them clickies, having a crafter make it is pointless.

This sums up my opinion as well.

I guess I'm in the minority. This is exactly how I envisioned it and proposed it. A crafter alone has no use for the gear resulting from these ingredients, so why should they have easy access to them? When you can easily access the ingredients required to make something, the resulting item loses its value. It's like if we suddenly had diamonds popping up all over the place. The value of that jewelry would plummet. Likewise, something like these hat ingredients showing up all over the place means you're not going to be making a best-in-slot item. You're going to be making a plain old mastercraft item.

No offense, but I think some people have a little too much ego or are too easily offended when it comes to this whole crafting thing. I mean it's not like no one else can do what you do.

You keep saying this, but I don't see a single person here asking for these items, or the items used to craft them, to be made more available. We're asking that instead of giving us useless, temporary, ultra-high end recipes that 1% of 1% of crafters are going to see and calling it crafting content, they instead make the items clicky-combine by anyone regardless of crafting skill, and leave us out of it. Throwing these "bones" at us and then nerfing our skills to compensate for unprepared increase in accessibility only results in cranky crafters.

They are not nerfing your ability, your ability works just like it always has on everything else.
Why not be glad that you as a tradeskiller are included in this process and have a chance to make the item and some money.

Good lord, you have been told what this is for and how it is earned and it is clear that it is an item that is NOT intended to get duplicated.

You keep saying your skills are being nerfed and they are not. They just don't work on this item which you seem to have no problem with. If you want to be left out of this 1% loop' then just stay out of it, there is not going to be ANYONE that earns one of these helms that needs the services of anyone that can't make their own anyway. *I could be wrong here but I'd lay all my plat out that says there is not a raid force in this game that doesn't have access to a TS person on their force that was in on the kill themselves.