Tier II Mastercrafted Vs. Timorous Deep Quest Gear: Why craft it now?

So I went to Timorous deep last night, and did a few quests to see what the rewards were like, fully expecting to get some transmuting/altar fodder. Boy was I wrong. The quests rewards are pretty impressive, and when comparing some of the mid/late teens items with my MC gear, I found myself tossing the crafted. For instance, I received an earring that is 6 Wis 5 STA (about)23 health and 24 power, and 100ish to a save. This is against the coral earring I had that was 6 wis 6 int 10 health and 10 power.

At first I was thrilled to have received such an easy upgrade, but as the quest line progressed, I realized all of the quested gear here was of similar quality, and the small amount of time I spent doing these quests vs. the hours I spent gathering the rares for the MC set really began to sink in.

So truth be told, I will not be wasting my time with MC in T II anymore. I will just head to timorous deep and quest the gear. It just is not worth it.

Yes. I agree. ;( Seems that TS and quest departments are not connected to communicate to make sure that both are equally rewarding or something like that..
When I saw some players linked some TS items over chat, I thought, "Wow, that's it?" while questing alot and saw lot of nice quest loots already that are better than TS ones.. That is sad.. I am afraid that there might be very little market of T8 TS.. The market of T1 to T7 still is viable thanks to the minimum level requirement of T8 quest loots..

Nocifer Deathblade wrote:

You mean T3 to T7 ;-)

Oops, I didn't realize that you are talking about TIER TWO!! NOT tier 8.. I didn't realize that TD is a newbie zone. I was busy playing in Kylong and I saw T8 MC links and they are pretty weak compared to T8 quest loots as well.
So you are right.. T3-T7 is viable. T1,T2 and T8 need improvements..

Camille@Venekor wrote:

T7 was viable? Like how? They gutted crafted gear in T7. Very little of it even saleable.

Qandor wrote:

Yeah, I believe you that T7 is gutted cuz I was selling lot of T7 rare armors since EOF but I saw huge sale drops in last few weeks as those players are saving up for ROK and I saw no sales lately after ROK goes live.
I assumed that T7 was still viable simply cuz MC gear is still 62 while ROK quest loots are lvl 65+ but I realize that players now simply just wait out to 65+ to get good stuff and skip lvl 62 ones cuz the leveling is SOOOOOOOOO easy now..
So.. T3-T6 is viable then..

Frankly, I really miss Vanguard TS system. I tried it out during Vanguard's launch and it was tedious but felt quite sense of accomplishment when I leveled up and made AWESOME gear that is better than most drops. It also got complexity as well.
EQ2 TS system is borked and wayyyyy too easy and weak right now..
Too bad that I retired from Vanguard last Spring as it launched so bad. One biggest strong point it had was TS compared to EQ2.. You won't believe how much difference that is..
I often tempted to re-subscribe vanguard simply to TS to ENJOY for a change on TS facet of the game that EQ2 lacks to provide..

T-5 Ebon armor used to be what most people aspired to get. They tamed it down for T-6 and T-7/8 are honestly a waste to get or make. If I get Cobalt or Xegonite I will make furniture not armor.

I find the look of the xegonite chain chest armour horrible, so I had a look at what alternatives there were for my swashie (before appearance slots)
From 60 to 64 the only stuff that was better were a few legendary pieces, none of which was common enough to be discovered on all servers. The most common one came from MMC. The best was the guid writ one, but chest/leg molds are very rare drops on such raids.
So Xegonite is pretty good for its level

Nocifer Deathblade wrote:

Maybe we should petition our most lovely goddess of the Tradeskills for a boost to MC armor stats.

Honestly, I had quit the game over the previous TS DEV THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED TS revamp (that got rid of subs, remember those?), but my wife sucked me back in. I was upset about MC armor stats then, I am rather torqued about it now. I kind of dread the next expansion that has all tier zones, Tradeskilling for anything other than bags or consumeables will be totally pointless then. I do not blame Domino for this state of affairs, she inherited a mess, I am just hoping she can do something about it.

Qandor wrote:

T8 was gutted. I crafted some Mastercrafted in Beta and was shocked with the junk it was. I complained that it was nerfed and the thread got locked.
I am sick and tired of the fact that crafted armor is nerfed to the point of useless. And yet there is always some harcore or raider who jumps in and thinks that is just peachy dandy. That crafter should never make anything better than what can be looted. In that respect VANGUARD has a much better crafting sytem as you can actually make things players wnat. Here no one want what is made.
If anything is better than what is dropped you hear a cry from raiders and harcore to nerft it so they can continue to have the best !!!!!

Camille@Venekor wrote:

Gotta go higher than that, lol. There was a Community Summit last February and I asked, begged, argued, debated, and bought shots in an attempt to influence anyone, for a few more points for MC to so many people that they started ducking behind furniture when they saw me coming. (Maybe that's why Dymus left!!)

Calthine wrote:

Where can I send you my firstborn?

As for getting changes, I would say lets get the TS community to boycott tradeskills for an amount of time, but I doubt anybody would notice.

And as for raiders and such, Tradeskilling is as time consuming and to do it well takes as much skill as killing things. We are putting in as much if not more effort than they are, and are getting much less reward for it.

My Tier One quest loot after an hour of play. All of the quests were very simple, "take-this-note-to-the-next-NPC" or in some cases "kill 3 or 4 of these".

No point in mastercrafted/rare gear at the lower levels since the new quest gear is faster/easier to get, and trashes it:

dammmmmn.....nice stuff.
Wanted to add. As a crafter I understand the complaint. As a player however I think this is probably one of the smartest things they have done. I help out a lot of newbies, and while some people may think I am overly generous, I feel that if you can get someone having fun early and making it into the late teens and early twenties there is a good chance they will stay. This gear will do that for those new to the game choosing to start in the Sarank area.

BrashEndeavors wrote:

That illustrates my point beautifully, a lot of that is comparable with the level 12 MC

Some people have talked about these changes being good for keeping people in the game but that statement comes across as an assumption that new players are only interested in adventuring. There are players who will start crafting and want to continue crafting during the early tiers. This will, also, remove a source of potential income for these new players. This lack of an income source early on can easily dissuade new players as well.

These new items, many of which are questable by anyone (not just sarnaks) will essentially make armor and weapon crafting worthless for the early tiers. If the quest rewards for the rest of the tiers are on par with these early tiers crafting armor and weapons will be worthless for the rest of the tiers, as well.

These items either need to have their stats reduced or a major overhaul of tradeskilled items needs to be done.

Kenazeer wrote:

The problem isn't about the stats RoK drop/rewards have, but the comparison with Mastercraft... MC stats should be raised accordingly.

More you quest more you'll find MC armors trash. You can do quests that requires few mobs to kill and got uber gear with +25/30 at 2-3 stats, +heal amount, spell crits, power replenish, +damage, whatever. Treasured plate drops in KCastle has better stats and like +30 miti than MC one...
Our armors is junk while Apprentice IV spells are better of older Master I...
My personal fix, because yes, armors really need a fix:

1. Increase stats/miti to be halfway between dropped treasured and legendary (shouldnt be already this? Or I miss something... ? )
2. Since power regen, + spell damage, + heal amount ecc is VERY common on many treasured/quest reward, add it to armors, for example:

• Vanguard +health regen / melee crits / parry
• Plate + heal amount, + heal crits
• Devout/ melodic + spell amount
• Chainmail +melee / ranged crits
• etc

Just an example, a full vanguard set can have +2 defense on chest, +2 parry on spaulders, 10 incombat health regen on legs, 1% melee crits on gauntles and so... nothing so better than actual tresured stuff. Just similar...

I have the feeling it's tied to the idea of crafting being easy, which RoK has not done anything to address.
Levelling from 61 to 70 took me 26 days, and I was still the second tailor on the server to 70. I'm the first tailor to 80 on my server, and it's taken me two days, of which I probably only spent about 12-14 hours crafting.
Please don't misunderstand, grinding is bad... But at the same time, if they speed up the levelling this much then nerf the rewards because it's too easy they're asking for trouble. I know that I and a lot of others are very strongly invested in the crafting aspect of this game, and the idea that we can make useful things for other people. I'm one of those who recalls how we were assured way back at launch that crafting and adventuring would both be valid options for players, but now it's getting more and more like crafters can make nothing of use for anyone (except those who make consumables, I guess).