Is crafting weapons and armor irrelevant now with the new update?

Community General Discussion
1

I noticed that a top-tier piece of armor with max crafting quality has an item level of about 606. Of course, that doesn’t include using a enchanted crest as part of the craft. Meanwhile, I had a level 623 veteren piece drop within hours of playing. I don’t see new crafts that are on par with this. Granted I don’t overly understand the use of the enchanted crests to further enhance the crafted item level, but are crafted items just incomparable (and useless) now?

Edit: Just looking more into upgrading a craft with enchanted crests. Referring to the ilvl of 623 item that just dropped (as above), to craft a comparable item one needs a higher level of enchanted crest, which is the enchanted gilded harbinger crest. Along with needing an enchanter, one needs 60 harbinger crests to get the nascent guilded harbinger crest for the enchantment itself. It seems like a lot of (convoluted) work to farm harbinger crests, spark of omens, and valor stones, and to involve an enchanter on top of this, not to mention supplying the regents, just to craft a comparable piece of equipment, that one can casually get from opening chests.

Before the update I was able to craft decent pieces of equipment without needing to have an enchanted crest. Now those pieces seem completely obsolete and there isn’t a way to craft a comparable piece using the same effort with the new ilvl increase. It’s possible that I’m missing something through. Maybe it’s easy to get harbinger crests now.

2

That’s the most important part

It increases the ilvl

Crafted gear is some of the best to utilize

3

This. Crafted weapons and neck/rings are must haves unless you get lucky with the vault.

4

Pretty much every spec wants a weapon embellishment and then a supporting embellishment on another piece of low stat value gear like bracers or cloak.

5

^This.

Base crafted gear is meant for more non-trade solo-oriented player who says “Oh just hit 80, I got some of this cloth in my bag, let me craft some baseline gear”. Usually world quests or misc. stuff can give little pre-spark items (forget name) you can add instead of sparks to get an ilvl boost, so you can get something like 630 to replace the 620 you found.

Then the progression path would be “Oh I did some low content, got these crests, let me get an enchanted crest and UPGRADE the gear by recrafting it so it’s a higher ilvl. Might always change the stats with missives while I’m at it” also embellishments, sparks, etc etc…

Eventually ramping into the highest-levels where even “BIS” gear involves 2 crafted pieces w/ embelesh’s.