Grandmasters are a dime a dozen.

[Utope Eljugador]

I guess I missed the patch message that said life was fair...how unfair.

If you're not satisfied with your accomplishment(s) of being 250, there's nothing sony can do to make it so. Nor should they. Accomplishing a task sooner than another person doesnt make you better , especially in EQ, it simply makes you faster, and last I checked this wasnt a race. If it is a race, then you've already won, so whats your actual beef?

I submit to you to examine what it is you're complaining about and think about what you truely want. Once you've assessed that, ask yourself if its for your own selfish reasons, or because its something that would actually benefit the tradeskill community.

[Pootle]

I have to agree, the person with 15% had put time in just as much as you, but his time was directed to working his position in a guild and earning raid points, and eventually being rewarded with a magic item blessing him with higher than natural smithing ability.

He just chose a different path than you.

But then i would have to say that, I am one of those who is lucky enough to weild the 15% Smithing Hammer.

[Sylphan]

I have to add my two cents about fine steel smithing. You should be GLAD you missed fine steel!

Skilling up on fine steel was much harder than skilling up on Shadowscream is now. I can remember when Luclin came out and I could use Shadowscream to get the last few points to 250... OMG it seemed so easy! and cheap!

Actually, when I was skilling up smithing they'd not yet fixed the skillup rates past 200, or the fine steel trivials. I did more combines between 206 and 226 than people today do from 0 to 250... all of it with unstackable sheets and molds, padding I had to farm myself made from unstackable hides, carried back and forth from Highpass to Halas in non-weight-reducing bags, all of it cloaks (3-sheet combine), and lost all the ingredients every time I made a mistake placing the components in the forge.

That doesn't even begin to cover the advantages of large banks, shared bank space, opening more than one bag at a time, the favorites list... I could go on.

Yeah yeah there was a short time after Luclin came out when you could skill up quickly to 242 in the bazaar, but that was an exception.

[Velaraa]

I tihnkyou are seriously overestimating the amount of skill mods people have atm over 5% and the abiliyt to get them, they are pretty rare drop

[Axterix EnObelix]

Originally posted by Pootle
I have to agree, the person with 15% had put time in just as much as you, but his time was directed to working his position in a guild and earning raid points, and eventually being rewarded with a magic item blessing him with higher than natural smithing ability.

He just chose a different path than you.

But then i would have to say that, I am one of those who is lucky enough to weild the 15% Smithing Hammer.

If there were other paths to the same point, that might be the case. As it is, EQ is way too dependent upon raids to get anywhere. Expanding this into something that should not be raid dependent, tradeskills, is not a good idea.

Now, if 15% tradeskill items were made by making no drop items using various tradeskills and then combined in a final combine (sort of like a trophy, but more difficult, using more skills) and all the components were reasonably attainable by a non-raider, there might be justification to it.

But if it's just another thing to encourage you to sell your soul to the raid game, it shouldn't be happening.

[Fulminate]

Padding wasnt that hard to get/make back in the day. I know because I made & sold several 1000 of them. Of course, that was back when spiderlings dropped a lot more silk, and vendor mining was still highly profitable...