Currently in some professions like alchemy it is impossible to get the skill level to guarantee rank 3 of some of the best items.
That means you need to max inspiration to maximise the chances of a rank 3 craft. If you do this then you no longer need rank 3 materials - because your extra skill is now wasted if the inspiration procs.
This is bad for both gatherers and crafters.
There are easy fixes to make skill count rather than become unnecessary.
Lets say player 1 has 380 skill and 120 inspiration. The recipe needs 400 skill.
Lets say player 2 has 280 skill and 120 inspiration.
Both players have the same chance of a rank 3. And player 1 can use rank 1 items because there is no need for rank 3 items.
A fix to make skill count would be to make the amount of skill required for rank 3 affect the odds of inspiration proc. So in the example above player 2 would have the standard chance that inspiration gives. But player 1 would get the standard chance plus a significanlty increased chance due to the extra skill. Other suggestions are possible.
Thereâs a severe lack of understanding and details provided in the current system, and it kind of obfuscates the details a ton with the interaction between inspiration and skill.
Exactly, this has created a gotchya/trap system. Most people donât realize theyâve wasted their permanent spent knowledge points until itâs too late. Spending the max amount possible to increase skill and it still wonât get you guaranteed R3 or even increase your chances to proc. Making it a complete wasted node for players to throw their knowledge points in the trash.
As a JC with maxed cuts on two types I find it very strange that Iâm 9 points shy of guaranteeing a rank3 Illimited cut with rank3 mats. My breakdown is:
Source
Skill
JC level
100
Draenei Racial
5
Blue Prof. Equipment
22
Jewelerâs Toolset Mastery(JTM)
30
Reward stage on JTM
3
Reward stage on JTM
4
Reward stage on JTM
3
Faceting
40
2nd to last reward stage for Faceting
5
Elemental Spec
40
Interstitial reward stages
5x4
Rank 3 Base gem
28
Rank 3 Illimited gem
66
Total
366
Required for Rank 3 cut
375
So my options are either:
Burn an Insight for 9 points (doesnât feel great)
Hope for a 12%-29% chance for way more skill than I need.
As I see it there are a few solutions to this problem.
Increase the skill gained from the specialization âtreesâ; Iâm looking at the 3,4,3 or elemental interstitials above.
Add an enchant for crating tools that adds 5/10/15 skill.
Increase the bonus skill for using higher rank mats.
Change the final Faceting reward from +10% crafting speed to +5% Skill. Crafting speed is nice, but we donât need 40% from just the trees.
If we could guarantee max results then Inspiration would have no purpose. As long as they want to have Inspiration in its current form in the game, we have to fall short of the mark on the highest possible equipment with guaranteed skill.
It is more obvious with Primal gems because there are no embellishments, missives etc. Other crafters can craft 5* epic weapons guaranteed - but not maxed out ones with all the trimmings, and that is by the same design.
You also bring up another important point, the (wildly OP currently) Draenei bonus. It would be horrible design if they set the numbers so that only Draenei could cut guaranteed but nobody else. As it is that +5 gets you close enough that the random bonus (separate from Inspiration) will give you free 3* cuts without Inspiration and that has been enough for a lot of Draenei JCs to make bank already. Although, it is more valuable for Prospecting because there 2* outcomes arenât worthless and that +5 skill is pure profit margin.
I understand why rank 3 in some of the best recipes or rank 5 in armor if you use embellishments depends on rng. it is deliberate design.
However I donât think the consequences of the current design were fully fleshed out. And that is, after a certain point more skill becomes unnecessary and is wasted and that the best ingredient quality becomes unnecessary. It seems wrong to me that someone with much less skill has the same chance of a highest rank proc. There are some easy fixes for this that make both skill and inspiration still count.
My Leatherworker can guarantee rank 5 quality with any of the Mail Decay patterns with any combination of embellishments, missives, and primal infusion without inspiration procs and itâs not even fully invested into Boots yet. As it is I can make the Leather patterns at R4 with the same ârestrictionsâ. Even when I step outside of this realm I still have a very high shot at r4 Mail items, some Leather, and the bow. Inspiration serves a purpose if I leave my wheelhouse, but is virtually wasted otherwise.
It seems extremely odd to me that my JC cannot do the same with the âhigh tierâ cuts when fully invested into that cut.
Are you factoring in the Concentrated Primal Infusion, which adds 50 to the difficulty? Base difficulty of everything except the offhand is 415, assuming my math is correct max possible skill is 342 (excluding racials) + 103.75 from quality 3 mats for 445.75. Thatâs enough to guarantee a quality 5 392 uninfused item or 405 with a Primal Infusion, but itâs 19.25 points short of getting a 418 Concentrated Primal Infusion. The offhand is a weird outlier with significantly lower skill requirements than most other high end crafts.
According to craftsim with Maximized mats and an insight Iâm sitting at 465 skill. With a concentrated primal infusion you need 465 to r5 Acidic Hailstone Treads or Venom-Steeped Stompers; I donât personally have the mats on hand to check the math of the addon but I trust it to be true.
while im not disagreeing with anything said here , it is the first iteration of this stupid system, im sure with the profession stuff coming further down the line they will fix it / make inspiration more useful.
they shoulda just made it so you can guarantee R5 stuff 100% once maxxed out in spec points and then inspiration gives like a 1-10% chance to titanforge stuff or something like that. not make it rely on rng to get said R5
This is essentially what we have though, guaranteed r4 with a chance to inspo r5 which is a titanforged r4. There isnât a simple fix. You canât have guaranteed best and also random chance at better. You have to pick, and they chose random.
Then r5 shouldnât be listed as available then. If you list a higher value, people expect the higher value. This crafting system is needlessly anti-consumer. Oh you want an item made and you have the mats? Well too bad, you need MORE mats if you want the item youâre asking for. This is why FF14 got rid of quality for crafting because it does nothing but make the crafting system needlessly complicated and does nothing for players other than frustrate them.
I wish someone had pointed this out to the current devs bc I am fairly sure weâre getting it now exactly because FF14 had it.
That is an interesting thought in fact. I guess as a compromise you could allow minimum quality on public orders but have it set to at most (max quality - 1). I think it would result in a lot of âbut I want it to be the best not second bestâ but it would still be more popular than now.
You would still have some of the issue of it locking out leveling crafters but not quite as much - I think most (all?) crafters can at least get into position to be able to craft second highest rank outcomes without needing work orders, especially now that they made the tab unlock levels lower.