Level 1 vs 2 GoD products, and refining

[draethor]

Thres, you make a very strong point that would be a lot of fun, but let me point out some inconsistencies:

I see a lot of my fellow tradeskillers getting bent out of shape because some of these Ultimate Crafted GoD weapons are close to Slightly Good PoP weapons.

The ultimate crafted GoD weapons are nowhere near slightly good pop weapons. The weighty polearm has its advantages over the 34/28 2hs (slightly higher delay, slightly less damage, AC, hp), and we have shown that NToV weapons are of about the same calibre as the best GoD smithed weapons.

Instead, you should be getting bent because in EVERY expansion and for EVERY trade except PoP Jewelry, Elemental bows, and Cultural Smithing, EVERY SINGLE CRAFTED ITEM has been a throwaway for the people who had access to the drop zones.

I would debate this, I believe most of the elemental armor is in high demand (demand obviously varies by type, but earthweave is high in demand, as is farwater scale). A lot of the low level pottery items were in very high demand as well (affliction haste 4 on the ceramic skull of decay is a must-have for any necro who doesn't like tribute, for instance). All of the baked stuff from pop is high in demand. Tinkering became fun and useful with PoP. I would wager that almost all PoP crafted items were immediately useful as soon as people became flagged to farm them.

Kod'taz is relatively harder to farm in than PoP. It requires people well advanced in PoP to progress to, the drops are far rarer, and require a far stronger group / solo effort to obtain. It makes no sense that the tradeskilled items quality should vary between items that would be considered "decent" at eq's release (i.e. the necklace I posted at the front), to items that would've been considered "sub-par" at PoP release (i.e. the best smithed items found to date).

Draethor Ispowerful
Lanys

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

Yes, but how many knights that would be dealing with weapons of this caliber are actually going to be tanking something that nasty?

Most if they try anything chalenging and have a good understanding of their class.

Any that wouldty a hard ldon, even atlow 50's and get a named, the normal mobs it not worth the loss of DPS to turn off attack
mid 60ish peopledoing BoT tower named with a high DPS group.

It is not a smart Day-in, Day-out practice, but it does have it's place.

Instead, you should be getting bent because in EVERY expansion and for EVERY trade except PoP Jewelry, Elemental bows, and Cultural Smithing, EVERY SINGLE CRAFTED ITEM has been a throwaway for the people who had access to the drop zones.

Pop armor as it was just said, is still viable, at least in part, a farwater BP would be better then what I have now, as a time flagged player, a longterm raider, not a new recruit.

we will see what the difference the patch today makes, though.

Dai

[draethor]

It seems the 3/10 patch fixed smithing.

The smithed weapons from KT are significantly better than the smithed weapons using level 1 stuff, and are of a quality that justifies the difficulty in getting them.

Still could use some work though, the lack of hp/mana, the inclusion of weird stats (look below), and the type 7 aug seem to be bugged. However the damage/delay is perfect for what I would expect.

Made this today:

Velium Inlaid Claws
MNK/BST
hth DMG: 16 DLY: 20
STR/AGI/INT/WIS + 7
Type 4 slot
Type 7 slot
Weight 2.0

Unfortunately the items made from jewelcraft, brewing, and tailoring remain unchanged and largely underpowered. Help.

Draethor Ispowerful

[mgrimpo]

The patch also seems to have put a recommended level of SIXTY FIVE on these weapons. Obviously very, very few people that are actually getting these weapons are going to be using them. Before they were subpar weapons. So now we upgrade them, and put a rec lvl 9 levels higher than on the WMBS and windblade. What was the point?

[Calliopeia]

There were some excellent points made in this thread and I think if we really want resolution, we should consolidate the main ones into an email and send it to Sony.

Alternately, I'll be at FF in Vegas and would be willing to field a tradeskill question.

I don't have the time or inclination this evening to do the summary myself. Anyone up for it (hint, hint... like Draethor, who I think made excellent points and is well-written)?

Calli

[feressa]

To make a decent case, people need to define what they want out of tradeskills. I'd say the demand falls into 2 groups:
1) Decent items with a lowish (say 55-60) rec level that are competitive with readily available droppable items that so you can sell them
2) Items of sub-raid quality that can fill in the sub-par slots for people in your guild until they get upgrades. In PoP the earth bows/rings went to my own guild for many months before any ended up on the market.

[draethor]

A summary would be somewhat good at this point, after the 3/10 patch. I don't intend to compose an e-mail to SOE at this point (simply because I think the topic will get greater exposure here than in some CSR's e-mail inbox), and I'm not sure how you would want to form these concerns into a question at the fanfaire, however, these are the points that I feel need to be adressed:

1a) The quality of tradeskill items, except for smithed items, from the Gates of Discord expansion has a terrible risk to reward ratio. The dropped items are harder to attain than most planes of power drops, and the quality of the reward is incredibly low: varying from something a level 50 player MIGHT have used before Kunark release (i.e. the necklace I posted up front, a few players may have chosen it over a BS necklace) to items that very few current players would currently use (i.e. the brewed drinks, the hp/mana on the taelosian tea is nice, but the fact that it's flagged as a normal drink makes it useless).

1b) The quality of the smithed items from GoD is nice, but even after the 3/10 patch, are still far from useful. I would venture that these items are bugged - they have stats that are not useful to the classes that are able to use them (i.e. +int, +wis on the bl/monk only claws), no hp or mana, and a type 7 aug slot, which makes little sense since there are only a few primary/secondary type 7 augs (and they're mostly useless, the best is +15 hp) in the game.

2) From data that has been collected, refining seems to be somewhat useless. Besides there being no solid evidence that skill in making the tier 1 items transfers over to skill in making the tier 2 items, the fact that people have done 50+ of each combine and seen, overall, no change in their yield rate, suggests that it would take an incredible number of combines to become better than simply just turning them in. The vast majority of players (except for guild tradeskillers who are in GoD exclusively for the next couple years and handle all the tradeskill materials) would be far better off just turning in items in abysmal for the refined product.

I hesitate to mention the point initially raised by this post (the fact that kod'taz tradeskill items are far harder to attain yet insignificantly better than the level 1 GoD tradeskill drops), because of two things:

1) small sample size (i.e. there are only 20-30 known recipes of kod'taz items, and comparing the 20 recipes to the hundreds of initial recipes might prove erroneous)

2) This point is no longer true in smithing with the 3/10 changes.

[Edit: Finally, no case needs to be made for "what people want out of the tradeskills." Everquest is a game that has done a very good job balancing risk versus reward. The only point I am trying to raise here is this: It is harder to become kod'taz flagged than elemental flagged, it is harder to obtain kod'taz drops than any other tradeskill drops in the game; yet the quality of the crafted products is *very* far below what the difficulty in obtaining them would logically suggest.]

Draethor Ispowerful
Lanys

[thrashette]

Let's debate

The ultimate crafted GoD weapons are nowhere near slightly good pop weapons. The weighty polearm has its advantages over the 34/28 2hs (slightly higher delay, slightly less damage, AC, hp), and we have shown that NToV weapons are of about the same calibre as the best GoD smithed weapons.

You missed two things:

One, my tongue being in my cheek.

Two, that PoP was misitemized horribly in the weapon category. If you are a monk or paladin these GoD weapons are indeed utter trash. If you are a non main tank warrior, or rogue, they are as good as you can get in the first 2/3 of PoP, up to Rallos Zek. So 'Slightly Good' is a sort of bastard average.

I would debate this, I believe most of the elemental armor is in high demand (demand obviously varies by type, but earthweave is high in demand, as is farwater scale).

Here's my side. Let's say there is a threshold T that has to be passed where people will go to a place to get gear or components for gear. Let's look at some examples.

Sol Ro Tower > T, because it is full of people farming ornate.
BoT > T, because it is full of people farming ornate.
Old Hate > T, because it was full of people farming Hate Gear.
Tactics > T, because people are there farming Highly Polished Gems
Valor > T, because valorium rings and shields are competitive.

Water < T, because it is empty.
Air < T, because it is empty.
Earth < T, because it is empty. There are two groups because of the bows sometimes, but there is no concerted effort.
Storms < T, because it is empty except for Frog Kiters.
Nightmare, the goblin part, < T, because it is empty. Oops, that's the tradeskill part of that zone, ain't it?.
Fire < T, because it is empty except for some Picnic Table AAers and people who sell saps to Aid Grimelers

My point comes down to this--if these armors were truly competitive with what people with access to them are doing, there would be people in the empty zones farming components. The people are not there, and that is an indicator that the armors are not competitive.

farwater BP would be better then what I have now, as a time flagged player, a longterm raider, not a new recruit.

I really feel compassion for you. Your guild must have the worst drop luck ever.

[mgrimpo]

Eh, not necessarily the worst luck ever, perhaps merely common sense. We all know plate wearers got completely jacked in tradeskill armor. Why would you make a farwater BP when you can make nearly three farwater chain tunics with almost the exact same stats with the same amount of materials?

That said - I've seen a lot of people farm PoE for stonehide, bows, and silk. On our server, people kite PoF fields for tradeskill drops as well as castle. PoA and PoW are the only two that are generally empty, but not because the tradeskill items aren't good there. PoA is just a total and completely PITA to kill ANYTHING without a full raid force, and no one wants to go to PoW because of the...uh...water.

Fact is, for the guilds in these zones, whether it be potac, bot (when it required flags) or elementals, the tradeskill items in many cases ARE good stepping stone items. I simply don't see that being the case in GoD in the least.