New skill up rate, DON cultural, and mastery AA

[Wyrdlan]

I took a break from tradeskilling through most of last year but recently got to the point where I had cash in the bank (gasp) and time to kill and wanted to get it started again. I must admit though, the realities of DON cultural were painful for me to admit. I keep trying to see where my logic breaks down, but I'm just not able to at the moment.

Picklenaught is a 243 tinker and a 188 smith. I'd very much like a DON Gnome BP and symbol for him. I began playing with the calculator, and it became apparent to me that the trivials were a cruel, cruel joke on gnomes. While I tried to make myself rejoice that there was even a tinkering option available for the armor, if not the symbol, the math kept laughing in my face.

The math I mean is this, tinkering the DON armor apparently uses the same trivials as smithing or tailoring it, but there are no tinkering mastery AA to level the field.

188 + 5% (+1 AA)
Ajusted Skill = 197
Success chance = 14.5%
With 2 AA = 28.75%
With 3 AA = 52%

243 + 5%
Ajusted Skill = 255
Success chance = 17%
@ roughly 1% per skill up
254 + 5% = 28%
277 + 5% = 52%

In addition, the tinkering route requires additional dropped components from POI.

That's a LONG haul in tinkering, versus 15 AA that I could get while farming the components themselves. It just seems profoundly unfair, though I suppose it may be little better than feet stamping at this point. Am I wrong? Did I make a jump I shouldn't have? Should I just shut my mouth and be grateful?

[chrisian]

i'd say the latter of your options.
similarly, erudites previous cultural armor was all tailored, and the DoN erudite plate is smithed.

having an extra option (even without mastery) is obviously better than just being stuck with smithing, so why complain?

[Wyrdlan]

i'd say the latter of your options.
similarly, erudites previous cultural armor was all tailored, and the DoN erudite plate is smithed.

having an extra option (even without mastery) is obviously better than just being stuck with smithing, so why complain?

That, I guess, is the source of my dismay. It's not better. It's worse in every way. You have to farm more components, it's harder to skill up, you have the same trivial, and in the end you have a lower chance of success than being at level 1 smithing and spending 18 AA.

I was just hoping there was a silver lining someone would point out. Guess not.

[Boleslav]

The silver lining in previous iterations of Gnomish tinkered armor is that they had features that the other armors didn't. For example, the Cog Boost clicky on old cultural arms.

I don't see any difference between the smithed and tinkered versions though. If there were no smithed version I would be with you in being very upset. Seeing that there is a smithed version I can see your issue, but am not ready to grab the pitchforks and protest.

However, if Tinkering is going to have recipes with a trivial of 386 (I assume that is the triv for the GM stuff), then a Tinkering Mastery AA should be on the horizon. Otherwise tinkers will be pretty crippled in making these items.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 67th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Darknyss]

I think you're missing the point on the AA's as well... a skill lvl 1 smith with all 3 Mastery AA's doesn't have a 50/50 chance of making the armor... he has a 50% increased chance... meaning at skill 1, if you'd have a 1% chance at making this armor... you'd now have a 1.5% chance, and I'd be willing to bet those numbers are far off, but make my point. I'm sure that it is not as huge as a jump in success percentage as 200+ skill points in Tinkering would get you.

I'd be extremely happy that you even have 2 paths...

[mewkus]

I don't think that's the way the mastery AAs work. They reduce your chance of failure to half of what it was. As Tanker descibed it, at skill 1 when attempting to make something that's trivial at 300+, you'd have a more than 100% chance of failure. It's that chance of failure that's cut in half (by AA). Then the 5%/95% limits are applied.

[Wyrdlan]

Combining several of the responses does paint a better picture of what I was actually upset about.

Going back to this post in the thread about this issue GM vs AA the exact example I'm faced with is the one cited in someone's explanation of how the AA are "balanced". The main issue being, Tinkering has no AA. I seem to remember a while back there was some issue where they adjusted trivials for Alchemy and Poisonmaking due to the fact you couldn't raise them beyond some point (I hope I'm not completely making that up!) and thus the combine was harder than it should be. I'm just saying I think that's the issue here, the combines aren't fair because tinkering doesn't have the same options other skills do. I do realize after doing more research that maybe it isn't as bad as I originally thought, and it takes the full BSM3 to cancel out the 51 points of tinkering. I still think some consideration should be given to whether or not the tinkering was intended to be more difficult in exchange for existing at all.

[Duradam]

a skill lvl 1 smith with all 3 Mastery AA's doesn't have a 50/50 chance of making the armor... he has a 50% increased chance...

I belive this is entirely uncorrect. I think Maddoc has visited and clarified that the AA will reduce the chance of fail, not increase the chance of sucsess, and outlined how that still won't kill the 5% fail rate. I'll search for it anyone disagrees, but being irresponsable for now, posting and running off.