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

I'm a level 50 tailor. It took me a long while to get there and I make most of my money from crafting. In fact, I have 7 different crafters. My tailor makes the most money, though. Over the past 6 months I've sold about 500 plat worth of MC gear. Over the past week I have sold almost nothing - a few T5 items and some hex dolls, but my T2-3 gear has not moved, even though I'm a fierce undercutter. SOE has pretty much destroyed tradeskilling with this latest update. I really don't see the point of it anymore since the quest gear is so much better than the MC stuff.

It's not just TD newbie quest armor that's got amazing stats. I'm a lvl 71 adventurer/72 jeweler. The quests from the Kylong Docks are soloable, the mobs have very small agro radiuses, they aren't social, most don't see through invis. I've upgraded at least a dozen items. They don't begin to compare with the jewelry I can make. No one has bought any T8 crafted jewelry. The only reason for me to raise my tradeskill is to be able to make scout adept 3 combat arts.
While I'm willing to concede that decent starter armor should be available by quest for new characters, it shouldn't be better than MC items, and it certainly shouldn't be excellent from solo-take-this-note-to-someone quest.
Making armor, weapons, and jewelry is a joke and has been since T5. Not everyone raids; if people want to kill greenies until they save up the plat to buy a rare mastercrafted piece of armor that is comparable to raid loot, it should be an option. But people shouldn't be rewarded with outstanding quality equipment for killing 10 blue mobs.
This is terribly unbalanced.

Kamarile wrote:

This may be true, however, they have made adventuring just as easy. I rolled a new character last night, and was level ten within two hours of casual play while watching some football. Yes it slows down at higher levels, but there are already 80s running around less than a week from launch. And these quests are not hard. All I need to do for a lot of them is point my char at 4-8 mobs, hit auto attack, and whammo! Fabled gear that says treasured. Crafting takes a lot more effort than that simply because you have to gather the materials, and item stats should be adjusted accordingly. I am not saying it needs to be better, but hadcrafted should be as good/almost as good as treasured, and Mastercrafted should be approaching Legendary in quality. Hell, before the tradeskill nerf a few years ago, it WAS legendary gear, just a hair worse than Legendary dropped gear. I quit for quite some time because of that nerf, and if this situation is not addressed I may quit for good, and I think a lot of crafters might as well f some of the rumblings I have heard are true.

zaneluke wrote:

T8 has the same problem.

And it ia just not a problem with t1,2, and 8. The pattern is from here, any new content added in any tier is going to have the same stat creep. it is only a matter of time before it hits all tiers.

Svetlanavera wrote:

I am not exactly sure what exactly Domino herself can do on this but let them know the natives are getting restless. I am pretty sure as TS dev she is not part of the shadowy cabal of devs in a smoke filled room determining the be all end all of item stats. The thing is, to let the devs know that we are not happy with the state of tradeskills, we need to get the tradeskill community leaders like Niami onboard here. That is really the only way we will get their attention.

Camille@Venekor wrote:

As the tradeskill dev Domino has the end say on the stats of the tradeskilled armors. Therefore, she could work to improve the mastercrafted armor to a level where it would fall in line with the new RoK armor.

Svetlanavera wrote:

Just not the MC armor, but the handcrafted needs a boost as well. It has been unsellable since the tradeskill nerf, and the only thing it is good for is feeding to an altar or grinding guild writs.

I may have the ultimate solution to what one person called 'stat creep'. It is a version of the previous suggected Master III crafted spells.
Add a new line of 'Grandmaster' crafting recipes. These 'Grandmaster' recipes should use nothing but rare materials and a large amount of fuel. Equipment stats of 'Grademaster' recipes should fall between pre-RoK Legendary and Fabled equipment. Yet, should still be better then RoK equipment stats.
Please note these 'Grademaster" recipes should include the previous suggested Master III versions of spells.
Edit: If development time is an issue simply use the previous mastercrafted items as the primary component. Just like we use them for imbuing recipes.

Devilsbane wrote:

That is not a bad idea. I would say use more of the common raws as well to keep it in line with the tiers of tradeskilling. However I do not see it as a total fix. As I replied above, it still does not address the issues with handcrafted gear. I cannot remember the last time I sold common gear. Half the time on our server I see feyiron gear selling for less than one piece of feyiron on the broker, and you know that gear used 3-6 feyiron to make, not to mention roots and whatnot.

Honestly, the only thing that is going to fix the stat creep is a total revamp of all item stats, dropped, quested, and crafted. Some mob difficulties may need to be adjusted, although easier things like sociality and aggro radii could be done to tweak PVE difficulty. as it is right now, I can mae a shaman, outfit it in the t1 quest gear in rok, and autoattack mobs to death ad infinitum.

Camille@Venekor wrote:

Oh no, we can not have a Shaman using Druid tactics (autoattack a dozen mobs and use damage shield and heals)! Revamp/nerf all the RoK tier one and two gear!

Its better then t2-t3 old world Fabled too.

Devilsbane wrote:

You don't understand...I am able to do this with a berserker. This should not happen.

Devilsbane wrote:

That's the thing, this is without damage shields or heals. And I am not saying nerf the new gear, I am saying bring the old gear up to the new gear standards or tradeskilling in not going to be viable for an entire subclass.

Kenazeer wrote:

Newbies have no concept of what is *good* and what is *crud*. Stating that they will stay because they are getting better gear is illogical.
But back on topic. I'm extremely disappointed with the state of tradeskilling now. There is no reason to even bother with it now.
1. It is poainfully simple to do. It's not even challenging/fun.
2. MC gear is useless now. So we have no viable market for even our top-of-line gear.
I for one, am taking a long break from tradeskilling.

Svetlanavera wrote:

Aye, Berserkers like Druids get a nifty in-combat health regeneration spell. As for Shamans they get a regenerative ward. That is why I have plans for a three headed hydra of Berserker, Fury, and Mystic. Then expanding on that hydra with a Troubador (power regen), Coercer, and another mage class. Furies get a interesting AA that allows them to share their salve line of heals with a group member. Think of the possiblilities that a Berserker would has with a healing spell.
Sorry for going off topic, everyone back to our original rant.

Mighty Melvor wrote:

I agree that crafting is painfully easy to do now. I have thought it was pretty easy for a while now. I miss the original system with subcombines and all that. It was so much more of a challenge then. Between my husband and myself we have all the crafting classes available and overlap at tailor. I am still generally content with my alchemist, provisioner, woodworker, and carpenter. I still make useful things on these crafters.

I mainly play on a PvP server so I have a dedicated character for harvesting, she is a lvl 8 guardian, as well as, a lvl 37 tailor. Sadly, I think I am deleting this character because I have nothing else to do with her. I don't like playing a guardian and to be able to advance with my harvesting I would have to level up the tailor levels which is pointless.

It is not just T2 stuff that stuff makes obsolete.
I would much prefer those level 17 treasured Demolition Robes to the level 22 mastercrafted Rukas Blouse my conjuror wears, or even a T4 mastercrafted.
The bonus to spell damage is much better than the extra mit for someone who aims not to get hit.

Imagine you are a new player, going to the steppes after hitting lvl 20 and see, all stuff there is worse than your own?
Timorous Deep quest gear has been a bad Idea for all.

I was a little surprised to see that the t8 mastercrafted set was not even near the quality of the EOF legendary set. I even have to say the quested treasured stuff in Kylong Plains is even better than the t8 mastercrafted. This is kind of odd. I am wondering what the tradeskill department was thinking. This kind of thing makes me envision the SOE developers as several teams that were having a tiff and not speaking to each other throughout most of the project lifecycle.

Goemoe wrote:

Not to mention when that gear goes gray and you HAVE to take the worse gear.