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

I understand what you are saying, I really do. And I understand that this is not going to be changed, and that's fine. My comments are pointed more towards the devs so they understand that some of us crafters do NOT count this as crafting content. That it isn't what we envisioned when we were told we would get cool items we could make for raiders. The Avatar necks are a good example of what works, the helms and signets, not so much. So in the future, if they plan to continue to include crafters in high-end raiding gear, they now know how I (and those that agree with me) feel about past content so HOPEFULLY they don't repeat it.

The cool items you can make for raiders are on the researcher. This recipe isn't. You get it by killing a challenge mode raid encounter, and it allows you to craft the helms with materials from that encounter and the challenge duo zones.

Just because you think it should be done by a system other than crafting doesn't mean everyone else thinks that. Personally I think it's a cool idea and I'm glad they added it in... at least it's something different than waiting to see what the RNG put in the chest this time. Making it a clicky effect that just combines the items would be disappointing, why wouldn't you have an armorer craft the helms from these individual pieces? It makes much more sense the way they did it.

Since the recipe auto-completes instantly, are you really crafting it at all anyway?

I don't think anyone other than you has called this "crafting content". It isn't, its raid content. If you aren't raiding the top end, you won't see the components. Even if the top end gets farmed to death, the components only drop once and you get a nice hat for yourself (or possibly one alt if you forgo the hat on your raider that earned it?). That really isn't significantly different than the hat dropping. The major difference is the raid can't sell the drop.

I do like the idea of crafters being able to make high-end items. If those sorts of recipes are going to be introduced then there needs to be controls on how the materials get into the crafters/customer's hands. While you can have raid drops that result in raid quality drops I think that basically makes the item a raid drop with a delayed reward structure. That really doesn't benefit crafters as the customers are vastly restricted to the same people that get equivalent drops from the sources directly.

Instead I've proposed before that a more common drop be used to make raid quality drops. Something similar to an Obol. An object that drops from solo to raid content. You find it more frequently in group content (maybe even more frequently than raid?). Instead of just using 1-3 of each component you would use several hundred of them to create the final item. Unlike Obols, these items should be fully tradeable and brokerable to encourage people to use them as a sort of second currency. If the drop rate was about 1-5 per group instance and you needed 300 of them to make something nice it would give people something to work towards slowly. Now introduce 2 or 3 recipes per tradeskill and you've got choices.

These shouldn't be "best in slot" type items, but putting them on the high end of EM raid itemization wouldn't be bad. It makes them desirable enough that casual players would go for it, but the real high end raiders wouldn't bust the economy trying to get them.

In SF the Mark's of Manaar had the option to buy the "Rare Drops" from the uncommon named from the Heroic Zone and were right up with T2 and even some T3 Raid Gear with the effects. In DoV the Velium Shards were craftable for Ry'Gorr gear but were not tradable. The system has proven to work. The normal "Token Gear" is weak its just on-par with Heroic Gear. The really expensive stuff (300 Marks, 200 Shards, 350 Velium Shards) those kinds of things? Those are the good stuffs.

Obol Gear is imo too powerful because of the tiny-level gap. There was not enough room in the level curve to have that kind of system. I hope it works with Veeshan.

Actually, in the past, the devs HAVE called such recipes 'crafting content'. But if it's NOT crafting content, why make it a recipe involve crafters and add it to an exception list rather then keeping it purely raid content by not involving crafters?

Perhaps because they want to vary the process of obtaining loot a bit? - rather than have everything be "whack mob, loot item". I like a bit of variation personally.

I also very much doubt that any of the guilds completing this content are utilising crafters from outside of the guild for the combines ... so, really, it's not impacting on your playstyle in the slightest.

A special 'forge' where people combine the components themselves w/o need of a crafter would vary the process of obtaining loot without requiring the creation of 'this ability works on everything crafted 'except'' file.

It must just be me that finds it bizarre when others complain about the addition of (actual) content - that doesn't even impact them - when they were perfectly happy with the "less" that they had (before they knew the new stuff even existed). Even the OP in this thread was complaining before he/she even knew what/where/how these Hydra helms fitted into the game (and why those exclusive recipes needed these limitations in place).

The challenge duo zones were another perfect example of this (which imo is some of the most interesting content in recent years, and I hope we see more of it). The devs need to be encouraged to add more variety into the game and look at different ways of doing things, but threads like this must leave them thinking "why bother".

I was perfectly well aware of the zones, the recipes and how they worked before they added the helms to the 'restricted' list.
I, for one, do not consider that kind of recipe to be 'trade skill content'.
And even if it is 'content', I'd prefer they didn't add content that requires specific restriction of other 'content' (restricting material conservation, etc) when there are other ways to get the same effect w/o creating the restrictions on those other abilities.
Basically, I see no benefit to doing it the way they have (requiring special coding and exceptions) and several to doing it in a different fashion (achieves the same effect w/o having to go back and add exceptions to existing abilities).
Suck exceptions are sometimes called 'protective code' in the programming world because it fixes the problem for the specific case, but doesn't address the underlying issue to prevent the problem coming up again in other specific cases.

Did you ever stop to think that I made this post so I could find out WHAT these things were, HOW they applied to crafting, and WHY the ability was being restricted? Or you just saw me complaining and chalked me up as another one of those "stupid whiney crafters"? And I'm a female.

If this was what you were trying to portray, you might want to look back at what you actually typed and reconsider how you say it next time. In this thread alone you complained about this as a nerf in at least 9 separate posts. and in 4 of them (including the OP) tried to claim it was a nerf to a "PRESTIGE" ability, which it isn't even a prestige ability, it's from regular tradeskill aa's that everyone gets by level 20 or so... it certainly does not come across as someone asking for a simple explanation.

Yes, I mistook the prestige, sue me. The OP did not call it a nerf, it was two questions.

So make the components to craft raid quality gear drop from solo content, and make it drop more frequently in group content than in raid content.
This is just another post that is asking for raid gear for doing solo and group content under the guise of giving people 'something to work for'
I guess it will never end.

Nope. There will always be someone who thinks they can get one by the devs, not realizing that ideas like this will go through some kind of discussion before being considered. They must think they're stupid or something because things break all the time.

Or the source could be completely from harvesting. The big point is that you need hundreds of the ingredient to make something. It should be rare enough that most people would start collecting them and give up the idea of hording them when 3 months go by and they've got 30 and you need another 270 to make it work.
Spreading the materials over a large number of people and needing a ton of it means that the only way your going to get enough of the materials is to buy them from other people. Being the equivellent of a drop that usually goes for 1000p means that every component would be worth...about 3 plat. If you paid more than that you could of bought the drop and saved some plat. Bump the required components to 1000 and you've made each one worth even less. Even if you got 10 a day, that would be 3 months of constant playing to reach 1000.
What that does is it shifts the paradigm. The person getting the drops isn't nearly as important as they are now. No individual is going to get enough components to make an item. Only people that are willing to collect them (usually from the broker) will have enough to do something with it. This shifts the paradigm in favor of the crafter who make the final combine. If you wanted to increase the stake crafters have in this all you would have to do is add more steps that require crafting. Re-introducing subcomponents for these recipes would be reasonable. Having the 9 crafting classes refine the raw material into a more usable form, and then using that subcomponent in mastercrafted and fabled versions of the recipes would be interesting. Putting in "rare" ranged ammo that is close to best in slot would make it less likely that the fabled items would be made. Adding other consumable items and adornments using the material would further dilute the possibility that the fabled items would be made.
It isn't so much that you'd want to see the fabled items being made, but that you know its possible for them to be made by any crafter that is willing to go though a lot of effort. Having a bunch of distractions along the way to tempt people into using those resources for an immediate gain is even better. It isn't about making "raid quality items". Its about making something special. Without requiring dedication, effort and sacrifice, nothing is special.

I thought we were trying to get away from the ridiculous grind of gathering up hundreds of this or thousands of that. You may as well bring back faction farming. This is the kind of crap GW2 is putting forth to keep their players "engaged". I've played the collection game before and it really isn't all that much fun or worthwhile.

Raiding takes dedication, effort and sacrifice. Not everyone can fight for the hat drops. That makes these hats special. Reintroducing subcomponents obtained through farming doesn't make an item special, it makes it a chore.

Outside of the helms, though, the complaints about new tradeskill abilities are well-founded. (Even with the new recipes, they are, since they get the not-experimentable tag.)

A couple xpacs back, they give us refining and experimenting rather than new recipes... "here, all your existing recipes are 10 or 20% better!" To the level of some of them (a couple raid-apprentice things) becoming best-in-slot.

Now they give us new content, but we still have our +10%-to-everything refine and +10%-to-5-things experiments. So what do they do? Make the new recipes 20% worse than they should be, so our crafted gear remains at-or-below adventured gear. Now refining and experimenting are required (see anyone with "base" tempered-azure anywhere?) instead of being bonuses.

Or they make the new stuff unable to use any of our new skills, like these new necklaces and helms.

Poor/lazy design decision in the past, and the game suffers for years afterwards.

It would be good to get your facts straight before trying to bring your point of view in here. A couple of xpacs back? It was just last year, when they raised the cap to 95 and gave us new recipes. Then in April we got even more recipes.

The azure gear is customizable any way you want it and the base item should be balanced to factor in in the possibilities of experimenting, especially with how high a person can raise a particular stat. You end up with a nice item for a decent amount of effort.

The helms were, as it was pointed out before, raid content, not tradeskill content. They're trying to get rid of SLR so everyone actually earns their gear and this is one way they plan to do it moving forward.

You can't just call something poor / lazy design because it doesn't work the way you want it to or don't understand the reasoning behind it.